Testing a YouTube Hack, Don't Mind Me

Brett Favre to Stay Retired

Brett Favre will stay retired and not seek a comeback with the Minnesota Vikings, thus begging the question: What will he do in 2010?!

Vick-to-Redskins Rumors Are Picking Up Steam

So says Mr. Steinberg at the DC Sports Bog. Granted, the PFT rumor is fluff as usual, but if it is true that Vick's reps were in Ashburn yesterday (as Chris Cooley's brother Tweeted) then Snyder already has had mind made up. Because once Snyder decides something, he can never be convinced not to do it. If Danny Boy believes that Vick can change, Vick could come into a meeting with a gun tucked into his waistband and a bag of Kibbles N' Bits at his side and it wouldn't matter.

In Case You Ever Had Any Doubt About ESPN's Priorities

During the week, ESPN ignored the story about the civil suit against Ben Roethlisberger. Today, this was the lead story on the network's Web site:

I wonder on which channel the WNBA All-Star game is being broadcast? Hmm....

Buerhle's Perfect Game First In 87 Years

Steroids ruined a lot when it comes to baseball, but it can't ruin stuff like this: Mark Buehrle's perfect game today was the first thrown by a Chicago White Sox pitcher since 1922. Try finding another sport that can make a boast like that.

Godell Strikes Again: NFL Draft Moves to Thursday Night

Roger Goodell's mantra seems to be, "if it ain't broke, fix it anyway." How else to explain the patently absurd decision to move the first round of the NFL draft to a Thursday night?
Here's a little secret about the NFL draft: It's not too interesting. Oh, I enjoy watching it on a Saturday afternoon and seeing how the Redskins can shoot themselves in the foot, but it's not something you budget your day around. Starting it at noon on a Saturday was perfect because you could wake up, plop in front of the TV and watch for a few hours before going out for the evening.
Then Goodell moved it to 3 p.m. for no apparent reason. Now, Thursday night, probably because it has the highest viewership. That worked really well for those games on NFL Network, right Rog?

Terrell Owens Calls Me a Hater

Terrell Owens has a new cereal. As I'm wont to do in circumstances like this, I wrote a post on Shutdown Corner about it, with lines like, "is he positioned on the left side of the box because he refused to go over the middle?"
T.O. didn't appreciate the humor. The new Buffalo Bills receiver apparently read the post and posted his reaction to it on his Twitter account:

TerrellOwens81: oh how charming of @chaztopher!!! a 'hater' @ his best!! thank u!

So there you have it. T.O. is calling me a hater. (And he didn't even know about this site!) I'll be putting that on my business card, which I one day hope to give to T.O., only to see him drop it.

Watson at the British: The Most Painful Loss

It was too painful to watch. When Tom Watson walked down the 17th fairway after pushing his tee shot deep into knee-high fescue at yesterday's British Open, I had to change the channel. I was literally unable to watch as the cameras trained in on Watson, who was resigned to his fate as having come so close to earning the greatest victory in the history of golf, but falling short in the end.
As it was happening, I found myself rooting so hard against Stewart Cink that I thought for a moment his body had been inhabited by J.J. Redick's. I wrote about this on Yahoo's Devil Ball Golf yesterday and, naturally, added to the ranks of commenters who think I'm some sort of provoker who likes getting a rise out of people. But I was serious. I was genuinely rooting against Cink. And now that I'm reading interviews with him and looking at pictures of himself and the Claret Jug on Twitter, I dislike him all the more.
It's not logical, and I know that. But I don't care about Stewart Cink winning the British Open. I cared about Tom Watson capping one of the greatest stories in sports histories.
Great games and players? Those will always happen. It's in the percentages. We're always going to have great duels because, give us enough games, and there will be some memorable ones. But something like this, a 59-year old man with one putt to win a major -- that's once-in-two-lifetime stuff.
Read Joe Posnanski's column from today's Kansas City Star. As always, he says it best.

That's What She Said

From an Associated Press article about the home run derby. (Found by Eugene, of the PYDK podcast.)

With three outs remaining in the final round, Fielder smacked a drive onto the grassy hill in center field to clinch the crown. He posed for a moment with his bat held high, then embraced Brewers teammate Ryan Braun near home plate.

Fielder started out using a bat that belonged to injured Milwaukee teammate Rickie Weeks, then switched to Braun's stick.

"It was a little longer," Fielder said. "Once I grabbed his bat, it felt pretty good."

Just Because the Lerners are Awful, Doesn't Mean They Were Wrong To Fire Acta

All you need to know about the Lerner family is that none of them bothered to show up today to the press conference about the firing of manager Manny Acta. It was bad enough when the Lerners were just cheap. Now they're cowards too.
Not that any of that means the Lerners (or Stan Kasten) made the wrong decision in firing Manny Acta. It's not Manny's fault the bullpen is so bad or that Austin Kearns exists, but it is his fault when outfielders miss cut-off men, sacrifice bunts turn into double plays and lefties stay in against righties who crush them. No great baseball manager was going to make the Nats a playoff team, but no good one would be managing a team that makes as many mental mistakes as Acta's team does. And Major League manager should ever allow a player to dog it like Cristian Guzman has in recent weeks.
It's always been interesting to see how much slack Acta got from DC baseball fans (what few of us there are) given that he had no real track record to speak of, is less-than-stoic in the dugout and never showed much of a personality in interviews or anywhere else. I guess it's because the Jim Bowden and the Lerners have been (accurately) cast in such a villianous light that mediocre ol' Manny became the beacon of hope. Because he wasn't evil, he was good. Unfortunately, nice guys often finish last.

Michael Phelps breaks WR in 100m butterfly

I don't Spanish very well (you can look at my freshman year transcripts for that) but I can understand it well enough to know that this might be the crappiest call of a sporting event this side of Tony Sirgausa. I'm pretty sure the announcers are talking about reaction times for the entire first 50.
Anyway, Michael Phelps looked great in this 100. I'll touch on this more at Fourth-Place Medal tomorrow, but could it be that Phelps' new training has made him dominant in the sprints but vulnerable in the longer distances that used to define him?

Happy 4th of July

I'm just going to come out and say it: Marvin Gaye's rendition of the National Anthem from the 1983 NBA All-Star game is more overrated than Tony Romo. Oh, Marvin sings the hell out of it and looks as cool as can be whilst singing the hell out of it, but listen to that beat. It sounds like it was created by a third grader on a Casio keyboard. It's soulful, sure, but is that a good thing when referring to the Star Spangled Banner?
Anyway, on the Fourth of July, here's my favorite sports version ever:

Also, today marks the debut of Yahoo! Sports' new Cycling Experts Blog. The UK's Martin Rogers, who you may have read on soccer and tennis coverage, will be the expert and I'll be the guy pretending to be. My first post: Lance Armstrong returns on a dizzying new bike.