Author: Vin

Vin is a Philly boy who shouldn't be invited into your house because he'll judge you on your book and music collection. He owns Dawkins, Utley, Iverson, and Lindros jerseys, which is all you really need to know about him. He can be reached at [email protected].

Categories
MLB General

The Full Count: Streaking Giants move into first place


1. Eight is Great: One of the more surprising teams this season has been the San Francisco Giants. Expected to be one of the worst teams in the NL by many, they have moved up to first place with a league-high 8 consecutive wins. They just swept the Dodgers, who gave up their division lead. Bonds didn’t go deep on Thursday, but Ray Durham and Bengie Molina each had two RBIs, and starter Russ Ortiz somehow found a way to pitch well. Brad Penny (3-0, 1.95 ERA) continued his success for Los Angeles, but the bullpen blew a 3-1 lead for him. The Giants, who have the highest winning streak in the majors so far this year, will look to extend it as they face division foes Arizona and Colorado over the next week.

2. Bartolo is Back: Remember when Bartolo Colon won the Cy Young in 2005? Most people probably don’t due to his injury-riddled 2006. But now, after two starts this year, Colon looks to be an ace again. He improved to 2-0 after shutting down the Devil Rays. He pitched 7 innings, with one run allowed and 11 strikeouts. The Angels offense gave him plenty of support, with 11 runs, including a homer by Vlad Guerrero. The Angels were struggling at the beginning of the year, but now after three straight wins, they’re in first place. Their rotation, when healthy, could be the best in baseball: Colon, John Lackey, Ervin Santana, Kelvim Escobar, and Jered Weaver.

3. Still no pitching: Desperate in their search for capable starting pitching, the Yankees gave one of their best prospects, Phillip Hughes, a major league start. While you can’t draw conclusions based on one outing, Hughes doesn’t seem to be much of an improvement over the other guys they’ve tried out. He only lasted 4 innings against the Blue Jays, allowing 4 runs and throwing 91 pitches. But for Toronto, AJ Burnett gave his best start of the year against the Yanks’ great offense: 7 innings, 5 strikeouts, no runs allowed. The 6-0 win for the Blue Jays was New York’s sixth straight loss after getting swept by the Red Sox and Devil Rays. They are currently in last place.

Player of the Day: Josh Beckett, Red Sox: 8 innings, 2 runs, improved to league-best 5-0 in a 5-2 win over Baltimore.

Stat of the Day: Sammy Sosa’s two homeruns against the Indians made Jacobs Field the 44th park he has homered in. That is a major league record.

Categories
Atlanta Falcons

Odds and Ends: Michael Vick loves animals



Vick has a message for dog lovers

Michael Vick’s publicist might just jump off a bridge. The latest incident involves a search of a property in Virginia owned by Vick because authorities believed that dogs were being trained there for illegal fights. Vick doesn’t live at the house but his nephew does.


Early reports indicate as many as 70 dogs on the property, including 60 pit bulls with wounds that appear to be consistent with dog-fighting. Authorities have allegedly uncovered extensive dog-fighting paraphernalia, including rape stands (used to allow fighting dogs to breed while preventing them from attacking each other), equipment used to build strength and endurance in fighting dogs, and controlled substances frequently used in dog-fighting.

Now, we shouldn’t jump to conclusions about the extent that Vick was involved… oh what the hell, let’s just jump to conclusions. How the hell do you now know what your nephew is doing on a property that you own? This is just another example of Vick’s ability to win friends and influence people. Let’s just hope that nobody was pumping the dogs with steroids.

In other news…

[SC]: The Falcons now lead the league in animal cruelty

[Philly.com]: Meet Brian Westbrook’s brother, Byron. No, that’s not confusing at all.

[The Offside]: Croatian Footballer Given a Sheep for Every Goal he Scores. What he does with it is up to him.

[The Big Picture]: What movie sporting event would you have liked to attend in person?

[Our Book of Scrap]: Tony Stewart says NASCAR is fixed

And finally, if you have a lot of time to waste, you can watch cheddar as it ripens. Seriously. Or like us, you can sit around and wonder, “hey whatever happened to Bridget Fonda?” and “why does Nic Cage suck so much?”

Categories
Soccer

Want to buy a piece of an English soccer team?



The Target

Here’s the basic idea: 50,000 members each pony up $70 to buy a share of a “purchase fund”. The resulting $2.7M fund will be used to buy a football club. (In case you’re doing the math and it doesn’t add up — part of the membership fee goes to administrative fees, of course.) Then each member has an equal vote in determining which club to purchase, player acquisitions, starting lineups, etc.

Having fans decide on starting lineups isn’t a completely novel idea. Last summer, the Schaumburg Flyers, a minor league baseball team in Illinois, teamed up with MSN for something called Fan Club: Reality Baseball that put the daily managerial decisions in the hands of the fans. Unsurprisingly, the decisions were less than stellar.

However, Myfootballclub is novel in that it lets the fans actually have an ownership interest. Well, sort of. You can never sell your share and you have to pony up a yearly membership fee. We wonder what happens if the club gets sold for a substantial profit. Shouldn’t the shares be distributed to the ownership trust? We doubt it — but we’ll keep an eye on this site.

It’s unfortunate that a million Cubs fans couldn’t pony up $800 each to buy the Cubs this year. The bitching and moaning of Cubs fans as they argued over players, trades and lineups would have been priceless. The Cubs would be a last place team with a bloated payroll… oh wait, they already are.

Links:
[My Football Club]: How it works
[Wikipedia]: Schaumburg Flyers

Categories
All Other Sports

Boston College hockey coach gets his Pokey on



We’d hit it

Boston College womens hockey coach Tom Mutch resigned abruptly on Tuesday after allegations of inappropriate conduct with one of his players. While the BC athletic director initially cited Mutch’s desire to pursue other career interests, it turns out that he was romantically linked to his top scorer, Kelli Stack.

Mutch was busted when sexually graphic text messages were discovered on Stack’s old cell phone by a teammate. Sadly, Boston College is a private college and we can’t use the Freedom of Informaction Act like Mitch Mustain did to request Houston Nutt’s cell phone records. However, the text messages were described as “filthy. They were very sexual in nature.” Shane Warne would be proud.

Oh yeah, Mutch is 39 years old and married. High Five For shame!

Links:
[Sports By Brooks]: BC COVERS COACH’S LEWD CONDUCT WITH 19 YO PLAYER
[Boston.com]: BC’s Mutch quits amid allegations
[Boston Herald]: Students mum on beleaguered BC hockey coach

Categories
MLB General

The Full Count: Bad + Bad = extra innings Bad



Hell, even Garner looks bored

1. Longest Game of the Year: There have been quite a few extra-inning contests this year, but none as long as the Astros-Pirates game on Wednesday. The Astros always seem to get involved in the really long games, and this one lasted 16 innings. The winner of this marathon was the Pirates after Adam LaRoche hit a walk-off single. It was his first career hit at PNC Park, and only the 7th hit overall this year for LaRoche, who has been in a slump since the season started and is only hitting .106. The teams combined for 15 different pitchers, 30 different hitters, and 476 pitches thrown.

2. Man on Fire: Bonds hasn’t been this good since 2004. He hit a first-inning, three-run homerun on Wednesday against the Dodgers, giving him 7 on the year and 741 for his career. Barry Bonds has now homered in three of his last four games, and leads the league in homers, slugging, and OPS. He’s 14 short of the career homers record, and he Willie McCovey as the Giants’ all-time RBI leader. The Giants won 6-4 over the Dodgers, with Noah Lowry getting the win and Armando Benitez the save. For Benitez, it is his 6th save of the year with an ERA of 2.45.

3. Dueling Complete Games: You wouldn’t expect a matchup between Jarrod Washburn of the Mariners and Joe Blanton of the A’s to turn into a pitcher’s duel, but it did. Both hurlers threw complete games, but Blanton allowed two solo homeruns while Washburn shutout the A’s. Jose Guillen and Kenji Johjima both went yard, supplying all the offense the Mariners needed. Oakland’s loss combined with the Angels’ win over Tampa results in a tie atop the AL West standings.

Player of the Day: Jake Peavy, Padres: 7 innings, 2 hits, no runs, 16 strikeouts. He struck out nine straight from the second to fourth inning.

Stat of the Day: Joel Zumaya hit a batter and then walked four straight against the White Sox. It is only the second time a reliever has issued a free pass to five straight batters in the last 40 years, according to Elias Sports.

Categories
General Sports

April 25 2007 episode of Poor Man’s PTI

Welcome to another episode of Poor Man’s PTI. We go over a bunch of topics in the first half hour, then we discuss the NFL Draft for the second half.

You can download this week’s podcast directly (running time 70 mins) or subscribe to the feed.  

If you use iTunes, just click here and then click subscribe and iTunes will take care of the rest.

This week’s topics include:

  • NBA Playoffs
  • Sebastian Telfair (should he go to the Knicks?)
  • Sad tale of Quincy Carter
  • Is Vince Young one of the top 5 QBs in the league?
  • David Stern fixing the 1985 NBA draft
  • baseball talk
  • the 2007 NFL Draft
  • Overtime: television shows and the Godfather

Hope you guys enjoy the podcast.  If you did enjoy it, please give us a good rating below so we can rise up in the rankings. If you didn’t, send us an email ([email protected]) and give us some suggestions. Thanks for listening.

Categories
All Other Sports

Another reason never to leave your couch


What two things never belong together? Well Najeh Davenport and a hamper… but also an eyeball and a fish hook. According to the U.S. Eye Injury Register, fishing has become the #1 source of sports-related eye injuries overtaking basketball. (See, Kurt Rambis wasn’t just stylish, he was smart.)

Here’s a little story that had us squirming around. You know what’s coming… just read it anyway:


Tuskegee University student Ralph Squire had forked out five bucks for the fishing lure that very morning. When the crankbait became entangled in a bush while he fished later that day, he wanted it back.

That decision will haunt him forever.

I had just bought the lure . . . and right off the bat I threw it up in a bush,” he remembers of the incident last May. “I kept pulling on it with the fishing line, trying to pull it loose from the bush.”

The lure eventually came loose and struck Squire in the face. When several friends rushed to his side, they made a gruesome discovery: A treble hook from the lure was buried deep in Squire’s right eyeball.

Ouuuuuuuuch. Ouch. Ouch. We wish we had a photo of it for you. Actually, no… no we don’t.

Links:

[Sign On San Diego]: Fishing is perilous to more than just fish

Categories
New York Giants

Michael Strahan hates the NFL



Oh the sexual tension!

We know that the life of a professional football player isn’t all money and hos. For most players, it’s a very short ride — the average length of an NFL career is around 3.5 years. But even if you last a long time in the league, chances are all that wear and tear on your body will leave you a shell of your former self once you hit 40. Still, being beat up after making a few million a year is better than, say, getting beat up every day working in a coal mine and not having the money to show for it. So even though we kinda understand where Strahan is coming from in this except from his upcoming book, we don’t exactly feel sorry for him.


You want to be an NFL star? You want to stand in my shoes? Let’s say one day I came to you and offered you a million dollars to let me take a huge hunting knife and wear down the blade until it was rusty and really dull. Then, when it’s really dull and nasty, I would stick it into a pit of burning coals until the blade was white-hot. Finally, I would pull that sucker out of the flames and stab you over and over and over again. Take that blade and stab you in the ankles, your feet and your wrists. Not just stick it in but turn that rusty old knife and twist it when it’s sunk deep into your knees or shoulders.

That is the reality of my NFL. Every single year I have somebody sink this awful, dreadful blade into a few parts of my body.

Geez, Mike, whatever happened to ‘for the love of the game’? Could this be another stab at Tom Coughlin, who Tiki has said is too hard on players during practices?

If he feels this angry about the NFL, we can’t wait to read what he has to say about his ex-wife Jean who took his mansion and $15M of his hard earned money, and implied that he was gay.

Links:
[NY Post]: STRAHAN: THE NFL IS HELL

Categories
NHL General

Maggie the Monkey better step it up


You know why we love Maggie the Monkey? Because she proved that a monkey spinning a wheel was just as good at picking games as a bunch of experts. Well, this year, she is totally letting us down. Going only 4-4 in the first round, Maggie is a disgrace. Hell, even Jeremy Roenick went 6-2. If she doesn’t improve her picks in the second round… well, there’s gotta be a hungry lion at the Zoo.

Here are Maggie’s picks for the second round of the 2007 NHL playoffs:

Detroit over San Jose
Vancouver over Anaheim (oooooh! upset special)
Buffalo over NY Rangers
Ottawa over New Jersey

Maggie is going out on a limb here with the Canucks but at least she’s not just betting the chalk.

Those of you with way too much time on your hands can watch video of Maggie making her picks. It’s actually fairly amusing.

And for one final random piece of NHL news, the mayor of NY declined to do the traditional friendly “we’ll send you our famous food, you send us a case of beer” wager with the mayor of Buffalo. Bloomberg must not like the Rangers chances.

Links:
[TSN]: NHL Playoff Picks

Categories
MLB General

The Full Count: Return of the Big Unit not as good as hoped



Dude, those CANNOT be real

1. Bad Debut for the Unit: Randy Johnson going to Arizona was one of the biggest stories this offseason. But, in his first start of the season due to a back injury, Johnson was not himself. He went 5 innings, allowing 6 runs and an uncharacteristic 4 walks. Johnson did strike out 7, but he ended up losing his matchup with fellow 43-year-old David Wells. Wells allowed just one run less than Johnson, but the bullpen behind him surrendered nothing. The Padres’ offense was the real star in this game. Adrian Gonzalez went 3-3 with 3 runs and 3 RBIs, and hit a rare lefty homer off the southpaw Johnson. Khalil Greene‘s 4-5, 4-RBI performance further helped the Padres in their 10-5 win, which sent their record to 12-8. The slumping D-Backs, meanwhile, have lost five in a row.

2. From Awful to Dominant: As any Braves fan would tell you, the main reason their 14-year division title streak ended last year was their bullpen. Their relievers blew the most saves in baseball last year. But this year, Atlanta’s bullpen is probably one of the best in the National League. That was proven on Tuesday, when they made up for another bad start by Mark Redman with six shutout innings. Redman, whose 3-inning, 6-run start gave him a 10.12 ERA this season, could and should be demoted from the Braves’ rotation. But the bullpen only allowed three baserunners, and Bob Wickman continued his 0.00 ERA season. The Braves’ offense is heating up as well; seven different players had an RBI as they beat the Marlins 11-6. at 13-7, they are a half-game back from the Mets for division supremacy.

3. Underperformers: The Tigers and Angels are two teams with World Series potential this year, but neither is looking good right now. They played each other on Tuesday to end their two-game set, and the performance by both teams was sloppy. There were 5 combined errors, including one by Tigers closer Todd Jones that led to an Angels victory in the 10th inning. But the Angels shouldn’t be pleased with their play either; they gave up a 7-run lead with an unusually poor effort by their bullpen. Both teams are lucky to be within a game of their division leader, as the Tigers are 11-9 while the Angels are just 10-10. Expect those records to get a lot better as the year goes on.

Player of the Day: Vernon Wells, Blue Jays: 4-5, HR (4), 3 RBIs, 4 runs.

Stat of the Day: When David Wells and Randy Johnson faced each other, it was the first time in MLB history that opposing pitchers were each 43 years or older.