BASIC NUMBERS

Cautions
Reckless Foul (10): Bornstein (CHV), Corrales (SJ), DeRosario (HOU), Guevara (TOR), Hejduk (CLB), Holden (HOU), Ianni (HOU), Kljestan (CHV), McDonald (LA), Ubiparipovic (NY)
Pushing/Holding (2): Robert (TOR), Thomas (CHV)
Tackle From Behind (2): Evans (CLB), Ricchetti (DAL)
Professional Foul (2): Gordon (LA), Olave (RSL)
Dissent (2): Boswell (HOU), Lopez (KC)
Delaying a Restart (1): Galindo (CHV)

Ejections
Denied Goalscoring Opportunity (Foul) (1): Suarez (CHV) by Batko (82nd minute) at HOU (automatically suspended for 5/11 match vs. NE)
Violent Conduct (1): Espinoza (KC) by Geiger (36th minute) at CLB (automatically suspended for 5/17 match at NY)

REFEREE WATCH

This goalkeeper….helped his own cause, shall we say?

We have the original anti-meth ads on billboards all over here, so these sick, twisted sendups aimed at college football fans are even more worthy of sick, twisted applause.

Last night’s Cubs-Cardinals game on ESPN was yet another example of Joe Morgan being able to say whatever he thinks is true and assert that it is true, whether it’s actually true or not.

Morgan and Jon Miller asked Cubs’ skipper Lou Piniella if he’d considered moving Alfonso Soriano out of the leadoff spot (besides being the Butcher of Lyon in left field, Soriano’s a horrendous leadoff man). Piniella said some players just feel comfortable in certain spots (he used the example of Bobby Bonds, who couldn’t hit his weight in the third spot when he first came to the Yankees in 1975, but had excellent numbers when moved to leadoff), and that as long as Soriano was more comfortable in the leadoff position, that’s where he’ll hit.

Morgan then brought up (what he thought was) a similar case with Tony Gwynn, who Morgan said (repeatedly) just couldn’t hit in the third spot in the batting order. It was just one of those things, the number one baseball analyst for the World Wide Leader in Sports said.

Only it’s not even remotely true. Gwynn’s career splits (thanks, baseball-reference.com) show that he got 53% of his career at-bats and his career hits in the third spot and, oh, by the way, hit .342 there.

Leading off: .324 avg., .389 OBP, .823 OPS in 512 plate appearances
Hitting second: .338 | .385 | .842 in 3,962 plate appearances
Hitting third: .342 | .393 | .860 in 5,417 plate appearances

Gwynn only had 341 plate appearances hitting anywhere other than first, second or third. If you’re going to make the case that there was a position where he didn’t “feel comfortable” as a hitter, you may have to go with fifth, where he “only” hit .283 with a .325 on-base percentage.

In all of 114 plate appearances. 87 of which came in his first two years in the league.

Joe Morgan is a menace.

It had been a while since I had an email read on The Tony Kornheiser Show.

On this date in history:

1707 - The Union of England and Scotland was proclaimed.

1851 - The Great Exhibition opened to wide acclaim in the Crystal Palace in London, showcasing technological wonders from around the world.

1883 - Buffalo Bill (William F. Cody) staged his first Wild West Show.

1884 - The first skyscraper in America began construction: a 10-story building on the corner of LaSalle and Adams in Chicago, Illinois.

1898 - Commodore George Dewey commanded, “You may fire when you are ready, Gridley,” as a U.S. naval force decimated a Spanish fleet in Manila Bay during the Spanish-American War.

1941 - The film “Citizen Kane,” directed by and starring Orson Welles, opened in New York.

1948 - The People’s Democratic Republic of Korea (North Korea) was proclaimed.

1960 - The Soviet Union shot down an American U-2 reconnaissance plane near Sverdlovsk and captured its pilot, Francis Gary Powers.

1963 - James Whittaker of Redmond, Washington, became the first American to reach the summit of Mt. Everest.

1967 - Elvis Presley married Priscilla Beaulieu in Las Vegas.

1971 - Amtrak — which combined and streamlined the operations of 18 intercity passenger railroads — went into service.

1999 - The Liberty Bell 7, the Mercury space capsule flown by Gus Grissom, was found in the Atlantic Ocean 300 miles southeast of Cape Canaveral, 38 years after it sank.

Today’s birthdays:

1238 - Magnus VI Lagabuter, King of Norway, 1263-80
1909 - Kate Smith, singer, entertainer.
1916 - Glenn Ford, actor.
1918 - Jack Paar, TV host.
1923 - Joseph Heller, author.
1924 - Terry Southern, screenwriter.
1924 - Art Fleming, game show personality.
1925 - Chuck Bednarik, NFL linebacker.
1927 - Harry Belafonte, singer.
1930 - Ollie Matson, NFL running back.
1939 - Judy Collins, composer/singer.
1945 - Rita Coolidge, singer.
1946 - John Woo, film director.
1954 - Ray Parker, Jr., singer.
1960 - Steve Cauthen, Triple Crown-winning jockey.
1961 - Charlie O’Brien, Major League Baseball catcher.
1963 - Robert Seguso, tennis player.
1965 - Me.
1967 - Tim McGraw, country singer.
1969 - Carrie Stevens, Miss June 1997.

If you needed any evidence that we’re not going to see a college football championship playoff anytime soon, today’s news that college commissioners think it’s a non-starter and that the NCAA approved two more bowl games for next year should suffice. You see where this is trending, right?

I’m on record as being in favor of a playoff (as you probably are, too), but it’s just not going to happen. You’ll never come up with a format that pleases everybody and you’ll never get college football to give up the hopelessly archaic system tradition of the bowls.

The arguments against a playoff that get trotted out seemingly every year range from the realistic (fan travel) to the ridiculous (negatively impacting academics). In-between is the reality that too many people are already making a lot of money and won’t give up their self-interests.

$222 million went to schools that went to bowl games last year (about $3.5 million per). A playoff reduces the importance of the bowls and exacerbates the braying of idiots like Scott Cowan and Neil Abercrombie who already complain that they’re not getting their due.

There’s a theory that those who have a vested interest in college football actually want there to be controversy most years, to keep people talking. There’s probably something to that.

But even though fans want to see a playoff (most years, it seems) and there are those in the media who want to see a playoff (though it would keep the talking heads like Jim Nantz from making their oh-so-clever BCS/BS jokes),  the people who’d have to make it happen don’t seem to want to make it happen. Time and again, coaches and commissioners and college presidents decry the idea.

34 winners instead of just one. $222 million to 68 schools instead of more money to fewer schools. Not hard to do the math on this.

First, the cartoon.

Later, the rest of the story.

EDIT - Here’s the rest of the story: the above cartoon ran in The Sporting News.

On November 28, 1988.

The more things change….

BASIC NUMBERS

DISCIPLINE

Cautions
Reckless Foul (9): Dyachenko (DC), Franchino (LA), Fred (DC), C Gomez (COL), Hernandez (SJ), Igwe (NE), Olave (RSL), Smith (NE), Talley (RSL)
Professional Foul (3): Corrales (SJ), Moffat (CLB), Thompson (NE)
Dissent (3): Conrad (KC), Gray (COL), Gutierrez (CHI)
Game Disrepute (3): Gallardo (DC), Kovalenko (RSL), Segares (CHI)
Tackle From Behind (2): Boswell (HOU), McDonald (LA)
Delaying a Restart (2): Hejduk (CLB), Hesmer (CLB)
Persistent Infringement (2): H Gomez (COL), Thomas (CHV)
Deliberate Handball (1): Donovan (LA)
Diving/Exaggeration (1): Alvarez (DAL)
Pushing/Holding (1): Garcia (KC)

Ejections
None

REFEREE WATCH

As anniversaries go, this one is at least more fun than the whole “100 years without a World Series title” thing.

25 years ago today, then-Cubs manager Lee Elia unleashed his infamous postgame tirade against the Wrigley Field faithful (audio here, not even remotely safe for work). It’s a part of Cubs lore, and Elia will be back at Wrigley today to mark the occasion.

Of course, it’s a lot funnier now, with the Cubs holding the second-best record in baseball (as Annie Savoy said, “You could look it up“). At the time, it was scandalous - not the kind of thing you heard (or printed) every day. Now it’s cause for a laugh and fond remembrances.

With all the hullabaloo about the NFL Draft this weekend, I thought it would be fun to see how the guys from 2003 have panned out.

Keep in mind these guys were the subjects of those “This is the guy we wanted” stories five years ago. Most of them have contributed, some have been stars and a few are out of the league.

First-round picks should have slightly longer careers than later-round draftees (I don’t know how much longer or if that’s even true, because I haven’t run the numbers, but intuitively, that’s what I’d expect). As you can see, though, this isn’t an exact science, and teams do still miss (sometimes badly) with first-rounders. Remember that when you get all giddy about the guy your team drafted this weekend.

So Miley Cyrus is “embarrassed” by the implied-nude pictures of her that will be appearing in June’s Vanity Fair (wow, first the LeBron cover and now this - Vanity Fair just can’t catch a break, can they?).

First off, she should be embarrassed. So should Annie Leibowitz. Because Ms. Cyrus looks like she was just pulled out of the East River in time for an audition for Lost Boys II: Electric Boogaloo.

I know she’s incredibly precocious. I know she’s very talented. I know she’s going to be worth a kabillion dollars by the time she’s 18. I know she’s an international sensation and on a different plane from your basic, garden-variety 15-year-old.

But she’s fifteen years old. Fifteen. She was born a couple of weeks after Bill Clinton was elected.

In my mind, there’s one person who should take the ultimate responsibility for this: it’s not a 15-year-old girl who is sliding so fast on the Fame Luge that her naturally-suspect decision-making processes are even worse; it’s not a 58-year-old, world-class photographer (though she deserves a bit of backlash, but artists get so full of themselves sometimes that their decision-making processes go all to hell, too); it’s not a 94-year-old magazine; it’s not an 84-year-old media company. Read the rest of this entry »

Actual subject of an actual email I actually just received:

Celebrate Mother’s Day With Gifts From MLSgear.com!

Are you sure? I mean, my mom and I have had our moments, but you think I want to get her something from MLSgear.com? For Mother’s Day?

Are you insane?

Seriously, Dan’s a friend, the funniest guy I know and a great fellow if you get to know him.

But God forbid he decide to shred you, because when he does, I feel like Miss Jane from Romper Room by comparison.

Watch your back, Jack McGee. That’s all I’m sayin’.

In the end, the site wasn’t as important as the Blast defense as Baltimore won its fourth MISL title in six years Saturday, beating a scrappy Monterrey side 14-11 in Milwaukee.

The Blast, whose owner had complained about the neutral site of the championship game, came back from a 6-2 deficit to tie the game at 6-6 at the half. After the teams traded goals to open the third, the Blast scored three straight goals and only a late three-pointer got the final result within three. MVP Denison Cabral was the hat trick hero for Baltimore, who improved to 4-0 in MISL finals (having also won in 2003, 2004 and 2006). Read the rest of this entry »

Life out here on the frontier has its moments. Like this notice I discovered yesterday at the local public library:

Yes, that was at the public library, not the local saloon. Marshall Dillon was unavailable for comment.

Unless you’re the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Their first pick in today’s draft was Kansas cornerback Aqib Talib, who reportedly tested positive for marijuana three times in college (among other incidents of genius). By the way, nice graphic, there, KSNT-TV in Topeka. What, were you high when you did that one?

Especially nice is this comment from an NFL executive in the PFW story:

“He’s got a laundry list of issues. He’s not a one-time offender. Give a guy like him money, and it never gets better. It only gets worse.”

Coming from the team that employs Jerramy Stevens, used to employ Michael Pittman and would have employed Darrell Russell if he could have actually rushed the passer, this shouldn’t be a surprise.

Jon Gruden and Bruce Allen can not be banished from my favorite team quickly enough.