So, About That LeBron/Kobe Final ...

In case we needed any more proof how worthless Coach of the Year awards are, Mike Brown just finished one of the most poorly coached series I've ever seen as his Cleveland Cavaliers were outplayed in each of the six games by the Orlando Magic. Brown was so bad he made Stan Van Gundy look like Red Auerbach.
Like I always say, I don't know squat about the NBA, but after watching Game 1 I figured the best plan would be to let Dwight Howard get his points while defending the perimeter against the Magic's sharpshooters. Brown's team did the first part of that, but their inability to guard Howard didn't lead to any better defense of the three-point line. They guarded the hell out of the mid-range jumper though.
So the dream matchup between LeBron and Kobe didn't happen, as those kinds of things rarely do. Does this make LeBron more likely or less likely to bolt for New York in a year? I'd say less, because I don't think he'd bail on Cleveland after winning a title.
Throughout the series I found myself rooting so hard against the Cavs that I surprised myself. I dislike LeBron, but I didn't think I disliked him that much. But I was pulling for the Magic so much you'd have thought I cared about the NBA. I do have to say that I like how LeBron walked off the court immediately after the loss instead of exchanging BS hugs with the guys on the Magic afterwards. I hate fake sportsmanship. I like it much more when guys show they care.
Although, now TNT is saying that LeBron left the locker room without talking to the media, which is an obligation not a trite gesture like slapping hands with Hedo Turkoglu. And that makes him a sore loser. (Also, I guess that huge shot is relatively meaningless now.)
A special congratulations to my old college roommate TJO, who used to delude himself every year into thinking that a healthy Grant Hill was going to lead Orlando back to the NBA Finals. This one's for you, O'Reardon:

The Onion: "Manny Ramirez to David Ortiz: 'Road Trip'"

A must-read.

Ramirez and Ortiz were subsequently sighted exiting a Terre Haute, IN 7-Eleven store wearing Indianapolis 500 baseball caps and brand new neon-orange sunglasses.

"The bigger one kept asking if he should get the hat, and the other one said he would buy one if [Ortiz] did," 7-Eleven cashier Kip Petrun told reporters. "They must have tried on sunglasses for 30 minutes."

Goodbye, Jason La Canfora

Remember Jason La Canfora? The Redskins beat writer who waged a personal vendetta against Vinny Cerrato in the pages of The Washington Post and accused him of slander? The guy who whined about Cerrato feeding stories to the national media? The reporter who repeatedly wrote that "sources" told him that Gregg Williams was going to be the next head coach of the team? The blogger who did an excellent job covering Sean Taylor's murder in real time?
Yeah, well he's gone.

A Soldier Lives On Through Soccer

On Memorial Day weekend, a holiday whose meaning always seems to get obscured by excitement of summer, barbecues and trips to the beach, here's a nice look at the legacy of a fallen soldier. This first aired last year on ESPN, but has been running this morning on SportsCenter.

KickForNick.com

Update: The LeBron Buzzer Beater

Basically, this is an excuse to show off Yahoo! Sports' new, embeddable video player -- the key word there being "embeddable".

I've been going back and forth on who I hate more, LeBron or Kobe. All year I think LeBron would have been my answer. But having sat through 90 seconds of Spike Lee's ode-to-Kobe "Kobe Doin' Work" and watching him grimace after making shots and milking everything to full effect for the cameras (including tonight when rested his hands on his knees during a post-game interview like he was about to cough up a lung), I realized that Kobe is so much more hatable because he's fun to hate. I enjoy disliking Kobe, whereas with LeBron, I don't love it. I just do.
Maybe that's because he beats the Bullets all the time. But how does that make him any different than, say, Detlef Schrempf or Richard Jefferson or Jason Kapono? Everyone beats the Bulleta. Why should we hold it against LeBron that he does so more often than most?
D.C. fans love to make rivalries with teams that don't care (sort of like Philly with Dallas in football). Maryland, Duke doesn't hate you because they don't care about you. And, Bullets, you have to beat the Cavs at some point to make it a rivalry.
So, yeah, I can't stand LeBron either. But let's focus our energies on hating Kobe because it's so much more fun to do.
Case in point: Watch LeBron's post-shot celebration. He has no idea what to do. He raises his hand, he looks for a teammate to hug, he doesn't know which teammate to hug, he's not sure whether this should be an individual celebration, he's unsure of how much jumping to do ... it's all very bush league. It's almost pity-hate at that point. Sure, then he brings the "it was a great shot" description of his own shot and you're reminded of why you started hating on LeBron in the first place, but it's not enough. The signs are there, yes. But it's a work in progress.
Kobe: He's a master well on his way to creating his Mona Lisa. If he had hit that shot, you know he'd have had his celebration plan set. One-third Michael, one-third Magic, one-third the end of Hoosiers. Because Kobe, if he's anything, is an aggregator. He knows which way the wind blows and he wants to be blowing in the same direction. And that would be hatable. Then, in the post-game interview he'd have given credit to Jordan Farmar for no apparent reason and we'd be all, "oh shut up Kobe." It would have happened.
So, you tell me. Who is more fun to hate?

The Problem With LeBron's Classic Buzzer-Beater

If there's no Wizards, I start watching the NBA Playoffs during the conference finals. And the pair this year have been phenomenal, including tonight's thrilling Game 2 in the East, won by a buzzer-beating three by LeBron James after the Cavs inbounded with 1.0 seconds left.
But even in a historical NBA moment (and we'll be seeing this one for years, particularly if the Cavs go on to win this year -- it could be the shot that started it all), I can't help but be bothered by one thing. After Hedo Turkoglu hit the go-ahead shot for Orlando with 1.0 seconds, the Cavs called timeout. They were inbounding the ball under their opponent's basket and called timeout. Yet when they came out of the timeout, the Cavs inbounded the ball from midcourt, 47 feet from where they orginally had the ball. By simply calling timeout, Cleveland moved the ball half the length of the floor. Had the ball been inbounded where it should have been, the odds would have been severely stacked against Cleveland hitting the shot. It wouldn't have been impossible, but it would have been a lot harder than it was. Getting it at mid-court: Easy pass to LeBron and, for him, easy shot.
The inbound/timeout rule is preposterous. College doesn't have it, because they know its preposterous. The NBA does too, but they don't care. They just want to promote offense. It turns the game into a farce though. Advancing the ball a magical 47 feet just by calling timeout is like saying that a coach tying his shoe should change the possession arrow. It's illogical.
The team had the ball on the baseline. They should inbound it from the baseline. When a football team calls timeout on their own 35-year line, they don't set the ball on their opponent's 25 on the next play?
LeBron may have hit the biggest shot of his career tonight, but he only did so because of a ludicrous NBA ruling that turns the game into a joke.

Thursday Links: Read Some Joe Posnanski

A few articles worth a read if you have some time to kill this Memorial Day weekend:

* Joe Posnanski's Sports Illustrated cover story about Cleveland.

* More Joe P: On his website, he addresses something that always annoys me: Every time there's a new 300-game winner (a club which Randy Johnson will sometime soon), everybody always says it will be the last one. They said it with Clemens. They said it with Maddux. They said it with Glavine. And now there's saying it with The Big Unit. Posnarski describes why. (And if you're going to read that, you might as well read his discussion about the topic with Bill James over at SI.com.)
I never realized Randy Johnson was such a late-bloomer. It's articles like this that make baseball great. You could never have a discussion like James and Posnanski had about football or basketball.

* A lengthy New York Times Magazine piece about Conan O'Brien's takeover of The Tonight Show. Effusive praise for Johnny and Dave, not so much for Jay. I'm not a Leno fan, but I sort of feel sorry him when he gets dumped on as much as he does. NBC pulled a Goodell by pushing him out the door.

* And, finally, it's been about a year since I've embedded this YouTube clip so I figured it's about time to do it again. Presenting, my all-time favorite internet video:

Two reasons the Redskins' name isn't as offensive as it should be

Every few years there's a call to change the name of the Washington Redskins and every few years it fails, mainly because nobody cares all that much. The topic has become trendy once again, thanks to a victorious legal battle for the team in a trademark case.
After the decision, there has been the usual rabble-rousing in the media to get the name changed.
Seeing as how public pressure is the most likely route to a switch from "Redskins" (any legal proceedings would likely be bogged down for years in appeals), this might be the beginning of the tipping of the Coke machine (like with Don Imus). Or it could be the start of nothing (like with Martha Burk and Augusta National).
For the record, I think using "Redskins" as a team mascot is tremendously insensitive. It's offensive and, frankly, amazing that the name still holds today. The name is something that most fans don't like talking about because they realize how ridiculous it is, but would much rather the team be called "Redskins" instead of "Redhawks" or something lame like that.
Seeing as how ripping the name is like shooting fish in a barrel, here are two major defenses of the mascot of my favorite football team:
1) Native Americans don't care. I'll repeat that for effect: NATIVE AMERICANS DON'T CARE. In a 2004 poll, only nine percent of Native Americans said the name was offensive to them. Nine percent of people probably hate sunshine. Nine percent of people probably hate everything. So that's a pretty small minority. If the people who should be offended by the name don't care, why should a white dude in New York get all riled up about it? This isn't exactly Selma, people.
2) There was a fruit plate in the lounge yesterday at work that had strawberries, cantaloupe, grapes and blackberries. As I reached for one of the blackberries I thought about how strange it was that my phone was named after a fruit. In the ten months I've owned a Blackberry and the five years I've been conscious of their existence, it never once occurred to me that the fruit, blackberries, and the Research In Motion smartphone brand name, Blackberry, were the same thing.
Racism and phone names are different, obviously, but the point is that sometimes words are just words. When people think of the Redskins, they don't think of the Trail of Tears or Little Big Horn or Wounded Knee. They think of Sonny Jurgensen, Joe Gibbs and Clinton Portis. The team's name is the meaning now.
It's not like calling the team the Blackskins, because that name would cause everyone to think of skin color. In 2009, the word "Redskins" connotates football. In 1909, it connotated scalping Indians and forcing natives off the land.
The only time most people ever think about how racist the name "Redskins" is is when they're being told how racist it is. That doesn't make the name right, mind you. But it makes it less wrong.

Tony Kornheiser leaves Monday Night Football (or was he fired?)

In a semi-surprising development, Tony Kornheiser will leave Monday Night Football and be replaced with former NFL coach Jon Gruden. As a football and TK fan this pleases me endlessly, as he was horrible in the booth, miscast in that role as Matthew McConaughey would be in Hamlet. Plus, there's a good chance he'll be back on radio soon, where he is excellent. To paraphrase what MJD wrote today on Shutdown Corner, he's as good at that as he is bad at MNF.
Speaking of Shutdown Corner though, as someone who does a live blog on Monday nights during the NFL season, I'll miss Kornheiser immensely because he gave me about 35 percent of my weekly material. I fear Jon Gruden won't be as easy to mock, although if his penchant for defending his coaching career translate to the booth, it might be easier than I expect.
The dude at DCRTV says he heard TK's excuse about hating flying (while true) was just a cover for the fact that ESPN fired him. That wouldn't be at all surprising, given that it'd be in everyone's interest (ESPN and TK) to keep a firing on the hush-hush.
My biggest question is, does this mean Jon Gruden is content to not coach again? He's only 44 years old and has yet to experience what it's like not to be coaching in the NFL. (Remember, he was fired in January.) This decision to sign a deal with ESPN while still in the prime of his coaching career seems pretty rash, no?

Where the Caps Debacle Ranks on All-Time D.C. Disappointments

On a D.C. sports radio show this morning, the hosts were talking about where the Capitals Game 7 meltdown ranked on the all-time list of D.C. sports disappointments (game-wise, not Kwame Brown-wise). Here's the list my cousin George came up with:

1 - Super Bowl XVIII
2 - Last night
3 - MD losing to St Johns in 99, Stevie Francis
4 - NFC Championship 1986, 17-0 in NY
5 - 1975 Bullets losing to Golden State

That's a pretty good list, albeit one that's heavy on recent stuff because, obviously, we don't remember the old-time disappointments. George's brother added the Georgetown-Villanova championship game from 1985. Though that was a nice addition, I respectfully disagreed. The Hoyas aren't huge in D.C. and they had just won the year before.
Disappointment has to be the culmination of years of frustration, which is why the Red Sox loss in '86 would have been worse than if the same exact thing had happened in 2005. That's why the MD loss to St. John's in the '99 Sweet 16 (the Terps were a No. 2 seed, the Johnnies a No. 3) fits. The 'Skins NFC Championship loss doesn't follow that rule, but the embarrassment of getting shutout adds to the ignominy.
But I digress. My main thought is that the list really could be all Redskins-related. They're the only team that really matters in D.C.. Sure, last night was disappointing to the city but, aside from those 10,000 or so die hard Caps fans, it was a temporary feeling. It's like dropping your ice cream cone on the ground. It sucks at the moment, but you won't really care about it an hour later.
On the other hand, when the Redskins have a disappointing game, it's like dropping your ice cream cone, getting kicked in the nuts and having the side of your car keyed at the same time. It's different. I was disappointed last night, but only about 1/100th as disappointed as I was when the Redskins lost to the Rams in a regular season game last October (damn you, Pete Kendall). I think, generally, Washingtonians feel the same way. To most, the Caps are sort of like watching a U.S. team or athlete in the Olympics. You care at the moment and then it leaves your head until the next time they're in an important spot.
As for the list, even though it was 69 years ago, the Redskins 73-0 loss to the Bears in the 1940 NFL Championship game has to rank No. 1. Can you imagine if that happened today? Even Tony Romo gets his team some points when he gets blown out in a big game.

Bill Simmons Continues With His Len Bias Hagiography

This afternoon on Google Reader, I shared the following excerpt from Bill Simmons' back-and-forth email conversation with Malcolm Gladwell (you may remember him from his inane piece on the press in college basketball, a piece that he doesn't defend well at all in this email chain):

In my book, I make the point that we spent so many years searching for an archrival for Jordan -- the Frazier to his Ali, someone who'd bring the best out of him -- when really, that player was Lenny Bias, and one cocaine binge ruined what should have been a fierce rivalry. Of the incoming NBA stars from 1984-90, only Bias possessed the talent and swagger to stand up to MJ in his prime.

Here's what I wrote in response:

Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP. There's no telling what Bias would have done in the NBA. But let's say he makes it past that fateful night in June. The mere fact that he was blowing lines to celebrate getting drafted suggests that he might not have handled fame and fortune very well. Not that said fact made Bias a bad person or automatically means he'd have blown his NBA chance. I'm just saying that to presume that Bias was going to challenge MJ just because he was beastly at Maryland is insanity. If Sam Perkins had died after getting drafted in '84, people would be saying the same thing about him. I mean, James Dean wasn't that good of an actor either.

The "Bias-as-savior" fantasy is a popular one for many people, Simmons in particular. It's not wrong, per se, but it's certainly not right either. It's impossible to know what lay in store for Bias in the NBA. A lot of guys were great in college and they didn't pan out in the pros.
There's a lot of revisionist history that goes on years after specific drafts. Everyone assumes Sam Bowie was the worst pick ever. At the time, nobody made much of a big deal that Jordan went third (behind Olajuwon too). And Brad Daughtery was everyone's No. 1 pick in 1986, not Bias.
Len Bias may have been an NBA superstar. But it's much more likely that he would have been either a very good one or a total bust.
This doesn't make his story any less tragic, by the way. I just think it's deceiving for Simmons and others to make broad assumptions about a career that never happened. What's wrong with saying that Bias had the potential to be great and that said potential was cut short by an untimely death? Obviously, that doesn't make for nearly as good a story.
Len Bias isn't a folktale and his story shouldn't be treated as such.

Ryan Zimmerman, the anti-Gil, gets his streak to 30

On April 20, the Washington Nationals announced they had reached a contract agreement with Ryan Zimmerman that was to pay the 24-year old third baseman $45 million over five years. Since that day, Zimmerman is batting .430, with six HR, eight doubles, 16 RBI, an OBP of .474 and an OPS of 1.231. Oh and, of course, Zimmerman has continued the hitting streak that began in the season's third game.
After singling in his first at-bat in San Francisco tonight, Zim has run his streak to 30 games. Only 43 players in the entire history of Major League Baseball have had longer streaks. Since 1989, 11 players have had streaks of 30+, but amazingly, eight of those players had their streak snapped exactly at 30. That doesn't bode well for Zimmerman Wednesday night in San Fran, but it'd be great if he can extend it one more game so he can come back to D.C. with the attention of the baseball world following him.
When they gave Zimmerman the deal, I was lightly critical, figuring that Zimm hadn't done all that much (except play one stellar season of defense) to deserve such money. His defense had been great, but his offense was suspect. That appears to have been due, in part, to lack of protection in the Nationals anemic lineup. Now that Zimm has Adam Dunn hitting behind him in the cleanup spot, pitchers are forced to go at Zimmerman which has clearly helped him at the plate.
How refreshing for a guy who just signed a huge extension to be performing at such a high level. Recent D.C. sports history is littered with guys who didn't live up to expectations after inking a huge deal, but so far Zimmerman has exceeded expectations. As I dubbed him on my Twitter feed last week, Ryan Zimmerman is the bizarro Gilbert Arenas. He's the anti-Gil.
Let's go anti-Gil.

Uh-Oh, I Don't Think Jeff Teague Is Coming Back

Since Jeff Teague announced that he'd be testing the NBA draft waters without hiring an agent, I've figured he wouldn't get a lottery guarantee and would come back to Wake Forest to improve his standing for 2010. Indeed, the rumors (which I denounce as scurrilous if I don't like what they have to say, but buy into if they tell me something I want to hear) said that Teague would return to school if he didn't have a lottery guarantee.
But in a Luke Winn column on SI.com today, Teague's father said something a bit different:

Neither Teague nor his father, Shawn, a former guard at Boston University, said they've set a definite bar, stock-wise, that Jeff needs to meet to remain in the draft. But, Shawn said, "If there was a guarantee somewhere in the middle [of the first round], it would be very hard to say no."

Shit.
That's bad news. When the bar isn't set very high, it's a whole lot easier to hurdle. And when you tell yourself that you want a guarantee for the middle of the first round, you're more likely to settle for a near-guarantee of the middle of the first round. Basically, this quote suggests the Teagues aren't interested in 2010 at all. This makes them more likely to listen to agents with one agenda (getting Teague to go pro right now) and teams that give bogus, self-serving guarantees.
Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but I don't think I am. That's the quote of a man who wants to see his son in the NBA next season. For the first time since March, I think Wake Forest will be without Jeff Teague when the team opens its season in November.

Caps Force Game 7, Zimmerman Extends Streak to 29

This picture from Mr. Irrelevant says all you need to know about Game 6 of the Caps-Penguins game:


Despite being on the wrong end of one of an absolutely mind-bogglingly-bad penalty call at the end of regulation (I hate referees so much), the Caps won a thriller in Pittsburgh to force a Game 7 on Wednesday night. I'm very happy about this, but for once I don't like the every-other-day pattern of the NHL playoffs because I've been looking forward to the season finale of Lost all week. I usually watch the Wednesday night Losts the following Sunday night, but had been planning to watch the finale live because people always seem to be talking about it the next day and I don't want to hear if, for instance, Kate and Juliet get it on on that sub. Here's hoping.
While the first 13 games of the Caps' playoff run has been great, it's been weird to be watching so much hockey. As I've written, I'm a fair-weather hockey fan. In between the Caps' 1998 Stanley Cup Finals run and the arrival of Ovechkin, I didn't watch too much hockey. Since the team started playing well under Bruce Boudreau last year, I've watched more, but never entire games outside of the playoffs. I'm more of a flipper in the regular season.
But now that I'm watching the entire games, I find myself confused a lot of the time because I don't know much about the intricacies of the game. So, I'm trying to analyze the action like I do with football or basketball, but because I don't know anything, I can only form the most basic of opinions (that goal was good, that goal was bad), etc.
I never really know what to think about certain penalty calls (unless they come with 2:02 left in a tied Game 6), plays, coaching decisions and various small things about games. Like, just how bad is it for a team to get two "too many men on the ice penalties" in as many games? It seems bad, but I really don't know. Or, on a scale of 1-10, with one being "awful" and 10 being "Shaun Suisham", how poorly is Mike Green playing these playoffs?
Anyway, Go Caps. Game 7 should be fun.

* Ryan Zimmerman extended his hitting streak to 29 games tonight. Only one other third baseman since 1900 has had a longer streak. That's freakin' awesome. I thought the streak might end tonight since today was the first day I noticed the national media really taking an interest in the story and that's the way things seem to work. Now that I've mentioned it here, expect it to get snapped tomorrow.
Baseball Reference has a list of the longest streaks in the last three years. Moises Alou has that honor, thanks to his 30-game streak in 2007. Zimmerman is right behind him.

Stephen Strasburg Is Making It Hard For Me To Curb My Enthusiasm

I've been preparing myself not to get too excited about Stephen Strasburg, the presumptive No. 1 overall pick of the Nationals in next month's MLB Draft. For starters, the notoriously-cheap Lerners might not even sign him. Depending on how much Scott Boras is asking, that might not be a terrible thing. No pitcher who has ever been selected in the top ten of the MLB Draft has gone on to a Hall of Fame career. No pitcher who was taken No. 1 has ever done anything of real consequence in the Bigs. Pitchers are a big risk and while the Nats would be insane not to take Strasburg (who some are calling the greatest prospect ever), they shouldn't necessarily let Scott Boras commit felony robbery either.
All that being said, Strasburg is making it hard to lower my expectations. Tonight, in his final home start, the San Diego State hurler threw a no-hitter while striking out 17 Air Force batters. I can now say that I'm officially starting to get way too excited.

Poking Holes in Gladwell's New Yorker Piece

Malcolm Gladwell has a much-ballyhooed piece in this week's New Yorker about the power of the full-court press in basketball. Basically, the gist is that teams should use the full-court press more often. Evidentally, it's the best way for underdogs to beat great teams.
The article is a lot like Gladwell's latest book, Outliers, in that it's filled with cherry-picked half-truths that lead to a grand conclusion that doesn't make much sense, and even if it did, it wouldn't be that earth-shattering.
What The New York Times' Michiko Kakutani wrote about Outliers works in regard to this article too:

[It is] peppy, brightly written and provocative in a buzzy sort of way. It is also glib, poorly reasoned and thoroughly unconvincing.

I genuinely like Gladwell's work, but a few points from this article (much like Outliers) bothered me:

1) Gladwell uses a Fordham-UMass game from 1971 as proof that the full-court press works. He writes breathlessly about how the "scrappy kids from the Bronx and Brooklyn" were able to beat Dr. J and UMass by using the full-court press.
Rick Pitino (a freshman at UMass at the time) is later quoted as saying that there was no way UMass should have lost that game. Digger Phelps (who was the coach at Fordham) says, well, exactly what you'd expect Digger Phelps to say.
It's a great story, but it's completely misleading.
UMass was a fine team in 1970-1971, finishing 23-4 and making the NIT. But Fordham was better. The Rams went to the regional finals of the NCAA tournament before losing to a Villanova team that would take UCLA to the brink in the national championship. Digger and Fordham finished 26-3 on the year. It's hard to believe that anyone would have considered Fordham beating UMass anything more than a nice road victory.

2) Of Pitino, Gladwell writes:

College coaches of Pitino’s calibre typically have had numerous players who have gone on to be bona-fide all-stars at the professional level. In his many years of coaching, Pitino has had one, Antoine Walker. It doesn’t matter. Every year, he racks up more and more victories.

First of all, who cares what guys do at the professional level. It's college basketball. To which I say: Mike Krzyzewski. He's had some future NBA talent (Grant Hill, Shane Battier), but no guys who are going to go to the Hall of Fame.
Not that we should be crying for either Pitino or Coach K. They get the best talent in the country. That they are able to succeed with guys who end up not becoming great pros says a lot about their coaching, but nothing about the effectiveness of any specific strategy. If we're going by that logic, then Duke's man-to-man team D should be the end-all, be-all of defensive play.

3) The team used as the primary example for the story is made up of 12-year old girls. To say that NCAA and NBA teams should press because of what happens in a game between adoloscents is like saying that Coca-Cola should set up stores on the side of the road because the kid across the street had a good day running his lemonade stand.

Manny Gets Caught

If there was ever a star power hitter who MIGHT have been clean, it would have been Manny Ramirez. He never had huge jumps in his power totals, didn't increase body mass like the purple chick from 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' and seemed so oblivious to everything that it was reasonable to assume he actually didn't know what a PED was. Yet the news today that Manny will be suspended for 50 games for using an as-of-yet undetermined PED is not surprising in the least bit. Nothing is surprising in baseball anymore. You say Greg Maddux was juicing and I won't bat an eyelash.
That's the damage that Bud Selig and Don Fehr hath wrought from years of turning a blind eye to steroids. Everyone is guilty until proven innocent and since there's no way to prove people innocent, everyone is presumed guilty.
It's a good thing David Ortiz stopped using PEDs last year or else both those Red Sox championship teams would be completely tarnished. That nobody discusses the real reason that Ortiz has fallen off the face of the earth. Maybe now they will. Well, unless ESPN buries this behind five stories about Brett Favre.

Hats For Sale; More Thoughts on Caps-Pens Game 2

* The NHL playoffs are pretty damn exciting. It's like the NBA playoffs, only the exact opposite.

* That's a lot of hats in that picture, snapped by Klinny after Alex Ovechkin's hat-trick. Greg Wyshynski (you ladies might know him as Puck Daddy) says it may be the most hats he's ever seen thrown onto the ice. I'll defer to him on this one. (I'm glad I wasn't at Verizon Center sitting near the rink. Any hat I'd wear to a game is a hat I wouldn't want to part with. It would have been like Sophie's Choice. Same thing with catching an opponent's homerun ball at a baseball game. Screw you, I'm not throwing it back. If you want to throw it back, catch your own damn ball.)

* It should be interesting to listen to the post-game analysis of the Caps' 4-3 victory over the Penguins tonight, a win which gives them a 2-0 lead in the series. Even though the Caps were down 2-0 (and 3-1) in their last series and were counted out by nearly everyone, I wonder if we'll see an opposite, overconfident sense from fans tonight. I think some are probably making plans for the Eastern Conference Finals, but the diehards will be remembering how these Caps-Pens series always have gone in the past.

* Even Crosby's hat-tricks are wimpy. Congrats on the empty-netter, Andy Samberg. (Pic of Crosby for comparison. Not an exact match, but it's there.)

* The anti-Ovechkin tone from almost every national announcer I've heard during the playoffs (granted, that's just been the guy for NBC and the color analyst for Versus tonight) has been remarkable. It's fascinating to listen to. They hate him because they're Candian and he's Russian. Every compliment is back-handed (after his third goal, the Versus commentator (whose name I don't care enough about to look up) sneered, "he'll shoot at anything." It wasn't a compliment.)
Hearing xenophobic comments from Don Cherry is one thing. That's his schtick. But for other "straight" announcers? How can networks let that continue? Can you imagine if people hated on David Ortiz because he was Dominican? Or Tyler Hansbrough because he's white? Or Vince Young because he's black? That person would be fired in a second.
Granted, the anti-Ovie stuff isn't overtly racist, but the underlying tone is there.

Dylan Covers Harrison in Liverpool

Bob Dylan played in George Harrison's hometown of Liverpool, England tonight and honored his former Traveling Wilbury bandmate with a rousing cover of my favorite Harrison/Beatles song, "Something".
After George died in 2001, Dylan surprised a Madison Square Garden crowd with the same song. Amazingly, he sounded better tonight, attempting (and hitting, sort of) the higher notes of that perfect bridge.
Fantastic stuff: