You’ve got to feel sorry for Alex Rodriguez. The poor guy can’t even pay a social visit on Madonna without the whole world knowing about it.
It’s just like last year, when he decided on a whim to visit a strip joint in Toronto and decided to take along a friend. The New York Post, nosy nest of gossip mongers that it is, felt obliged to tell its readers about it. It was thoughtful enough to describe the friend:
“His tight-bodied, bleach-blonde gal pal was clad in a snug pair of blue jeans, a shiny, light T-shirt and wedge-heeled shoes.”
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I’m sure there’s a sillier rule in sports somewhere, but Major League Baseball’s rule about no-hitters has to be near the top of the list.
All the headlines and all the sports shows announced Saturday that two Los Angeles Angels, Jered Weaver and Jose Arredondo, threw a no-hitter. It would be hard to call it anything else. They pitched the entire eight innings allotted to them and gave up no hits.
But they lost the game, 1-0, thanks in part to Weaver’s fielding error. Also, they only pitched eight innings because the Dodgers were leading and didn't have to bat in the ninth. Therefore, according to Major League Baseball, it’s not a no-hitter.
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The idea is called “30 Seconds of Nothing,” and it’s one of those ideas so deliciously loopy that only three college students could come up with it. What’s really amazing about this one is that it was born without the aid of beer.
The concept is simple. Three college kids from Marietta, Ga., want to purchase a 30-second ad during the broadcast of next year’s Super Bowl. They’ll use the time to sell no product and mention no advertiser. They won’t even put their own names on the screen. It will be 30 seconds for no purpose other than to consume 30 seconds.
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There should be great rejoicing in Dallas at the news that Tony Romo has told gal pal Jessica Simpson that it’s been a fun summer, but now it’s time for football.
Simpson probably isn’t used to hearing that there is something in the world more important than she is. It’s not anything most women, let alone a famous actress and singer, want to hear from their men.
But if you’re a football fan, it’s exactly the right news. Quarterbacks, not even famous ones playing for the legendary Dallas Cowboys, don’t have time for romances with high-maintenance celebrities. Look at Tom Brady, the other swinging NFL bachelor quarterback.
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The American Film Institute, in another of their annual exercises designed to drive normal people to distraction, has had the audacity to name the top 10 sports films of all time. As can be expected when you assign a group of people whose lives are devoted to making films the task of ranking the own works, the list is high on drama and abysmally short of movies people actually want to watch.
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I can’t wait to see what all the people who thought the U.S. Open’s 18-hole playoff between Tiger Woods and Rocco Mediate was stupid have to say now. You know the ones. They pop out of the woodwork every time the U.S. Open goes another 18 holes on Monday, and they’re really ticked off about it.
They’ll give you a whole lot of reasons why 18 holes on Monday is a bad idea: People can’t watch on television; they’re usually anticlimactic; everybody else uses some form of truncated playoff or sudden death. But the real reason my colleagues hate these affairs is that it screws up their travel schedules. It’s a real bummer that way. You have to extend a night in the hotel, make a new airline reservation, call the limo company that was going to pick you up.
The reason you do it is because of what we saw Monday at Torrey Pines. If there had been a four-hole playoff, we’d have missed one of the great finishes in Open history.
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Evander Holyfield is broke?
That’s what the Associated Press is reporting. According to the story, the former cruiserweight and heavyweight champion of the world -- who was once cannibalized by Mike Tyson and made more than $200 million during his career -- is so busted he says he can’t even afford $3,000 a month child-support payments for one of his 10 children, which are by a number of women, a couple of whom he was actually married to.
This is simply sad.
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You don’t lose a player like David Ortiz and not feel it. And if Boston loses Big Papi for the season – and don’t count out that possibility – it’s going to be the biggest challenge this team has faced since it claimed its as one of baseball’s elite teams.
The word out of Boston is that he’ll be out about four weeks with a partially torn sheath on one of the tendons on the top of his left hand. The sheath holds the tendon in place, and the injury is said to be similar to the one Curt Schilling had on his ankle back in 2004 – you know, the bloody-sock injury. With the sheath torn, the tendon slides back and forth over bone. This is painful – too painful for Ortiz to continue playing. If it’s still too painful when he tries to come back, he’ll go under the knife and it’s bye-bye Papi until next season.
I don’t know if it will be an insurmountable problem. According to the Boston Herald, Ortiz has missed 43 games in five years and the Red Sox are 32-11 in those games – a nifty .744 winning percentage.
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No Dice-K? No problem for the Boston Red Sox.
This is the measure of how well Theo Epstein and Larry Lucchino have built this Boston team: the Sox can face the possibility of losing their best pitcher for weeks or even months and not feel obliged to go into panic mode.
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I don’t know what Mets owner Fred Wilpon is waiting for, unless it’s for his underachieving team to go on a 10-game winning streak and save Willie Randolph’s job. But it ain’t gonna happen, and all Wilpon is accomplishing is the public torture of one of the finest men ever to play sports in New York.
I hate to say it, but Randolph is done in New York. The sooner Wilpon and general manager Omar Minaya fire him, the sooner the Mets can get on with the business of messing up this season. And I’m pretty sure that’s what they’ll do, because the Mets problem is on the field, not in the dugout.
But as much as I think Randolph isn’t to blame for the Mets’ disappointing start, I’m even more convinced that he’s been so damaged he can no longer lead the team. As his center fielder, Carolos Belttran, was honest enough to admit, when the manager’s job is in jeopardy, it’s a big-time distraction.
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