Boomshakalaka! The nail in the coffin?

Sports

The NBA Finals: 10 Points To Watch - Point one, how many nicknames for Dirk Notwitzki can you come up with while watching? Sports writers can come up with INFINITY. Point two, when writing a recap of the games, how many times can you point out that the Heat seem like nice guys, even though they’re being portrayed as the league’s villains? [Smoking Section]

World’s First BMX Triple Backflip - Witness a first for action sports. Of course, saying “action sports” is like saying “jump diving,” but this is pretty cool. I think BMX clips, win or fail, are 90% people going AOOHHHHH. [Buzzfeed]

Dad Drops His Daughter to Catch Foul Ball - We would’ve covered this on Monday, but if you haven’t seen it yet, watch as this dumb jerk completely sacrifices his kid to go for a foul ball. Maybe this is one kid that won’t grow up yelling BALL, BALL, BALL, BALL, BALL at players during games. [Fark]

Productive Outs - A baseball blog. I call them Baseblogs™! And I’m totally not linking it here just because they’ve got an interview with me going up in a couple of hours. Nope! [ProductiveOuts]

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The Chicago Cubs, in a heated race to finish fourth in the National League Central and prove to the Pittsburgh Pirates that they are the better already-eliminated team, received a shocking blow yesterday when outfielder Tyler Colvin was struck in the chest by a shattered bat. Colvin will miss the rest of the season, earning him the distinction of third luckiest Cub behind Lou Piniella and Derrek Lee.

While playing the Florida Marlins, Colvin was running home when Welington Castillo hit a double and his bat broke, sending the bulk of it directly at Colvin, and the sharp, pointy, looks-like-it-would-really-f*cking-hurt-and-make-me-scream-like-a-girl end struck him in the chest, resulting in a puncture wound. Seriously, ouch. Colvin was taken to the hospital, where he is still being treated for pneumothorax, or a chest puncture for my DeVry classmates unfamiliar with hospital speak.

At least we can joke about it after the fact, right Chicago Breaking Sports?

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Pittsburgh Penguins center Sidney Crosby took batting practice at PNC Park earlier this week, and he’s already the Pirates’ best hitter. Derp! Seriously, that’s a good-looking stroke. Watch after the jump as The Cros pops one into the upper deck with the smoothness. But yeah, now that the Bucs have 40 roster spots, you think they could leave one open for this guy? I can’t wait to see Crosby take a dive while sliding into home plate. Read the rest of this entry »

I was always a big Pete Rose fan, so naturally I was bent out of shape when he agreed to a lifetime ban from baseball in 1989. But now Deadspin is reporting that a baseball memorabilia collector has X-ray’d one of the Hit King’s bats to confirm or deny rumors that the bat had actually been corked. And it was.

[Collector] Bill Schubert wasn’t sure what he was expecting. Sure, he had heard the rumors about Pete corking. He didn’t necessarily believe them; he didn’t disbelieve them either. But he certainly didn’t expect to see what he saw.

“I thought that I’d have to send the X-rays off to an expert to tell me if they saw anything funny,” Schubert says. “But as soon as we saw it, there it was, right in front of our eyes. I said, ‘That’s cork in there.’ I was blown away.”

It is, indisputably, cork. And with an unbroken chain of ownership, no one but Rose could have put the cork there. –Barry Petchesky.

Does this put a damper on Rose’s career record of 4,256 hits? Yeah, it does. Whether corking a bat gives a hitter an advantage or not, it’s still against the rules. That said, it’s hard to strip someone of credibility when he had so little at this point. He bet on his own games while managing the Reds, he lied about it, and now this. He’ll still be one of the all-time great players, but he’ll never be one of the all-time great people. At least that’s what my mother would say, right before she wandered into the basement for another hit of meth.

Saint Andrew’s Net is With Leather’s daily link dump. It stole food from Ray Lewis once. Once.

• Everybody has an opinion on this Brandon Spikes eye-gouging thing.
  The Legend of Cecilio Guante, Bleacher Report.
• If you’re one of the three people that hasn’t seen Christopher Walken’s rendition of “Poker Face,” you need to see it. No, it has nothing to do with sports.
  Warming Glow.
• I missed Michelle Beadle’s birthday. That’s not too big a deal; I forgot to get her something, anyway.
  Outside The Boxscore.
• I thought Tennessee’s black jerseys last week against South Carolina were pretty sharp.
  Dave and Thomas.
• It’s amazing that anyone working at Jezebel ever gets laid.
  Jezebel.
• Terrifying sports Halloween costumes? You had us at “mutilated cheerleader.”
  Deadspin.
• Annalynne McCord doesn’t really look exactly like Batman. And my boner is grateful.
  WWTDD.

Send tips and submissions to WithLeather-Tips@Uproxx.com

With all the noise that vampires and the Twilight movies out, it was only a matter of time before bats started going to NBA games. It’s been all over ESPN today so I guess we had to post it here as well. And leave it to one of the dirtiest players in the NBA to knock that rat with wings out of mid-air. But to be fair, that is an impressive left-handed swat from the Spurs’ Manu Ginobili. But they swat things in Argentina all the time–mosquitoes, girlfriends, the value of their own currency. But mostly girlfriends.