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All Other Sports

Sep 20 in Sports History: Billie Jean King defeats Bobby Riggs


In 1973: In a tennis exhibition match at Houston’s Astrodome, Billie Jean King defeated Bobby Riggs in straight sets. Many viewed it as a milestone in women’s sports, despite King being the top-ranked women’s player and Riggs being 55 years old. Riggs defeated Margaret Court, another highly ranked player, earlier in the year.

In 1927: Babe Ruth of the Yankees hit his 60th homerun of the season. The Babe broke his own record of 59, set in 1921. His record would stand until 1961, when Roger Maris hit 61. Maris’s benchmark stood until the late 1990s, when several players eclipsed 61 numerous times.

In 1987: In a game against the Giants, Walter Payton of the Chicago Bears broke Jim Brown’s record with his 107th career rushing touchdown. “Sweetness” broke the record in 12 years and retired following the 1987 season. Emmitt Smith of the Cowboys now holds the record with 164. Payton was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1993 and sadly died in 1999.

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All Other Sports

Maria Sharapova’s banana scandal



Men are so juvenile

Maria Sharapova won the US Open in straight sets yesterday but she had to deflect reporters asking her about possible cheating/coaching from her dad and hitting partner instead. Coaching is not allowed in tennis (which makes no sense at all) so there’s an uproar over apparent hand signals and a banana signal. Sharapova claims that the hand signals are just a reminder for her to hydrate and the banana… means grunt like a gorilla.


I believe, at the end of the day, personally, my life is not about a banana. It’s not about what I wear. It’s not about the friends that I have. My career right now is about winning a tennis match. And right now, I’m sitting here as a U.S. Open champion, and the last thing I think people need to worry about is a banana.

Sharapova even got testy with a reporter who kept pressuring her about the banana signal.

Links:
[MSNBC]: Banana issue eats away at Sharapova’s title

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Boxing

August 31 in Sports History: Rocky Marciano killed in plane crash



Oh there they go. There they go, every
time I start talkin ’bout boxing, a
white man got to pull Rocky Marciano
out their ass. That’s their one, that’s
their one. Rocky Marciano. Rocky
Marciano.

In 1969: Former heavyweight champion Rocky Marciano was killed in a plane crash near Newton, Iowa. The only heavyweight champion to retire undefeated at 49-0, Marciano died just one day shy of his 46th birthday. He had 43 career knockouts, including the great Joe Louis and Jersey Joe Walcott.

In 1881: As a precursor to the modern day U.S. Open, the first national tennis championship took place in Newport, RI. Richard Sears won the men’s singles (there were no doubles or ladies matches) for the first of seven straight titles.

In 1990: Ken Griffey Sr. and Ken Griffey Jr. became the first father-son tandem to start as teammates in a Major League game. With dad in left field and son in center, the Seattle Mariners defeated the Royals 5-2. Both singled and went 1-4.

In 1959: Sandy Koufax of the L.A. Dodgers tied Bob Feller’s ML record with 18 strikeouts in a 5-2 win against the Giants in front of 82,000 fans at the Coliseum. Koufax set another mark with 31 K’s over two games. The single-game record would be topped by Steve Carlton (19) in 1969 and again by Roger Clemens in 1986 and Kerry Wood in 1998 (20).

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All Other Sports

Odds and Ends: Andy Roddick vs PONG

OK, we realize it’s just a marketing site masquerading as a game but we can’t help but get sucked into the Andy Roddick vs PONG game. It’s got the three things we look for in a flash game: 1) it’s simple to play 2) it saves high scores for all to see and 3) it’s a complete time-suckage. Sure, it’s not as fun as the Yeti swatting a penguin flash game but it’s kind of addicting. The only problem we have is that we can’t play as PONG. Cause we’d love to kick Andy Roddick’s ass. There’s something about him we don’t like but we can’t quite place a finger on it.

In other news…

[SI]: Ex Blue Jays player shoved down the stairs by his son

[USA oday]: Coach backs Marion Jones, questions positive drug test (maybe she was dehydrated)

[Philly.com]: Stephen Davis tries out with the Eagles

[AZCentral]: If only this comes to pass: New AZ Cardinals stadium could be called Pink Taco Stadium

[AP]: Police: Teen Posed As Reporter at Shea

[Reuters]: Russia declares war on NHL

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MLB General

July 7 in Sports History: 17-year-old Boris Becker wins Wimbledon

In 1985: 17-year-old Boris Becker of Germany became the youngest player to ever win the men’s singles title at Wimbledon. He defeated Kevin Curran of the United States in four sets. Not only was Becker the youngest, he was the first German and the first unseeded player to win the tournament in its 108-year history.

In 2000: We here on Sportscolumn blog have always been suckers for those goofy minor league baseball promotions, and perhaps one of the best ever occurred on this date in 2000. It always seems the lower class of affiliation, the better the promotion. The Class A Butte Copper Kings, an Anaheim Angels farm club of the Pioneer League, did not let us down that year by hosting “John Rocker Awareness Night.” This meant that any of the people that Rocker insulted in his infamous Sports Illustrated interview would gain free admission to the game. The Copper Kings set a record for attendance that evening with 672 (hey, it’s only Class A); as people with purple hair, “alternative lifestyles,” single moms and foreigners attended for free.

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All Other Sports

Odds and Ends (7.6.06): Henin-Hardenne vs Mauresmo in Wimbledon Finals



Yikes

A womens tennis post without Maria Sharapova just seems wrong somehow but #1 ranked Amelie Mauresmo got to her first Wimbledon final by outlasting Sharapova in three sets. On the other side of the bracket, Justin e Henin-Hardenne beat #2 ranked Kim Clijsters. HH has won 17 straight matches and a victory in the finals would give her a career grand slam.

In other news…

[Miami.com]: French fan dies amid World Cup celebration

[USA Today]: When the Cosmos and Pele ruled American soccer

[ESPN]: Bonds’ trainer held in contempt for refusing to testify

[Ben Maller]: Matt Leinart is back in Paris Hilton’s STD-ladened web

[SignOnSanDiego]: Dawgs deal Canseco to Long Beach

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All Other Sports

She’s a screamer

Shrieking, grunting, whatever you call it, Sharapova certainly does it. And does it loudly. Yesterday, her opponent Elena Dementieva said that she needed to turn it down a notch.


Personally I think it’s a little bit too much. I think the umpire should calm down her a little bit. Next time I beat her, I will say something. But when you losing…it doesn’t look good if you go to the umpire and talking about how loud she screaming on the court.

Perhaps Dementieva was distracted by the streaker that ran onto the court and did some cartwheels for the fans. For her part, Sharapova said that if she were told to tone it down a bit, she “wouldn’t change a thing.”

Links:

[MSNBC]: Streaker can’t stop Sharapova from semis
[MSNBC]: Sharapova vows to carry on shrieking

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MLB General

July 5 in Sports History: Breaking the AL color barrier

In 1947: Larry Doby of the Cleveland Indians becomes the first black player to appear in the American League. Doby would join the Indians almost four months after Jackie Robinson of the Brooklyn Dodgers broke baseball’s color barrier. Doby was only a part-time player in his rookie season, but would go on to have a solid career with the Indians, White Sox and Tigers, hitting .283 lifetime with seven straight all-star game invites and two World Series appearances in 1948 and 1954.

In 1946: Two gentlemen named Jacques Helm and Louis Reard helped create what they called “four triangles of nothing.” Spring Break. Senior Week, Sports Illustrated and trips to my apartment complex pool would finally become interesting as the bikini was unveiled on a Paris runway; and it caught on in America shortly afterward. While the two-piece bathing suit had been around for centuries, it took Helm’s design and Reard’s marketing genius (as in,” lets get that thing on a model and show it off”) to help make the bikini what it is today.

In 1980: Sweden’s Bjorn Borg defeated American John McEnroe in the men’s final at Wimbledon in perhaps the most memorable and dramatic finals in tennis history (although we rank the one where Pete Sampras vomited and any of the combined 564 career professional appearances of Maria Sharapova and Anna Kournikova as personal favorites). The match not only see-sawed for five sets, it also featured a dramatic, 34-point tiebreaker in the fourth set won by McEnroe, 18-16. Borg, however, got the last laugh in the fifth, winning 8-6 and capturing a record fifth consecutive Wimbledon men’s singles title.

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All Other Sports

Was a Wimbledon match fixed?



Choker or cheater?

Carlos Berlocq of Argentina is ranked 89th in the world. Richard Bloomfield is ranked #249 and only got in as a wild card. So when bettors put more than half a million dollars on Richard Bloomfield to win and he did, more red flags went up than at a communist parade.

Betfair, a british online gambling site, said that the bets on the match were 30x more than normal on similar matches and that the odds went from 2-1 against to 10-1 against. Because of the unusual betting pattern, they alerted the International Tennis Federation and Britain’s Lawn Tennis Association who are investigating it.

After reading this story, the only thought we have is, “crap! why didn’t someone tell us about the fix!” We don’t condone gambling or anything…

[AP]: Officials investigate Wimbledon betting

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All Other Sports

So why exactly should we watch womens tennis?

The Wimbledon folks are either stupid or in denial about what constitutes good tennis. Starting this year, skimpy outfits that are too low-cut or sexy will be banned from the court. We understand that womens tennis is a sport and not a fashion shoot but why would you ban the only reason why lots of men (and women) watch tennis at all?

We don’t really have much to say about this issue except 1) it’s bad and 2) here’s another photo of Maria Sharapova.

Links:
[Sun UK]: Setsy things to cover up