Earlier today native Chicagoan and famous comedian Bernie Mac died at the age of 50 of complications from pneumonia...interestingly, will the Chicago Cubs fans forgive Bernie Mac after the incident that took place on October 14, 2003 during the 6th game of the NLCS when the Cubs were playing the Florida Marlins...it was a game that seemed like the Cubs were guaranteed to win as they had a 3-0 lead and were 5 outs away from the World Series...
Most people know about the infamous Steve Bartman incident when he grabbed for the foul ball preventing Moises Alou from making a sure out...immediately following that play,the Cubs fell apart and lost the game and then got smacked in game 7...
But most people do not realize that hard core Cubs fans blame Bernie Mac and not Bartman for the Cubs demise in that series...during the 7th inning stretch, Bernie Mac sang "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" which is a time honored tradition started by the late Harry Caray...when it came to the stanza of "... root, root, root for the Cubbies...," Bernie Mac changed the lyrics and sang, "... root, root, root for the Champions..."...
Cubs fans believe that Bernie Mac started the strange events by jinxing the Cubs when he used the word "Champions"...Bernie Mac later said that he hated the Cubs as he was a hard-core Chicago White Sox fan...
So it will be interesting to see how the Chicago Cubs fans react to Bernie Mac's death...and is this just another way that Bernie Mac is jinxing the Central Division leading Chicago Cubs?...remember, on the day Bernie Mac died, the Cubs have a 5 game lead over the Milwaukee Brewers....
Chris Hine of the Los Angeles Times writes about the great beach volleyball duo of Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh who plan on getting pregnant soon... "But ask what they'll be doing a year from now, and the answer has little to do with beach volleyball. "Hopefully, we'll both be pregnant," Walsh said. "Pregnant, but with two gold medals." ...
Moreno caught the nation's attention mid-way through the 2007 season he reeled off 5 straight 100 plus yard rushing games - the first Bulldog to do that since a guy named Herschel Walker....during those five games, he averaged 153 yards per game ane overall had nine touchdowns...included in that stretch is when he torched Florida for 188 yards and 3 scores...
After being redshirted in 2006, Moreno started the season with a 70 yard game against Oklahoma State and followed it up the next week with 101 against South Carolina....he finished his freshman season as the unanimous SEC Freshman of the Year, as well as the featured tailback on the Freshman All-American first team, All-SEC first team, SEC All-Freshman team. Moreno was also the Sporting News' Freshman Offensive Player of the Year...
Moreno is from Belford, New Jersey and was the #10 running back and #73 overall prospect according to Rivals.com...
Enjoy this 24 yard touchdown that Moreno had against Auburn last season...
Charles Elmore of the Palm Beach Post defends ESPN's "It Girl" Erin Andrews in his August 5th commentary....read it below
Commentary: Erin Andrews is no bimbo
Braves announcer Skip Caray dies, and the nation's blogosphere is consumed with a column written about the dress ESPN reporter Erin Andrews was wearing in the Cubs' clubhouse last week.
Sad and ridiculous? Absolutely.
"Skip would have been the first person to call me," Andrews said by telephone Tuesday. "He would have said, 'Give 'em hell.' "
If you want to debate about what is an appropriate hemline, fine. But it's not fair to suggest Andrews is a bimbo who is lost in a sports atmosphere.
Andrews had to earn the respect of Caray, who died Sunday at age 68, when she worked for Turner Sports. By her account, he was, like a lot of men in the world of sports, not too sure about her initially. Here was a 5-foot-10 blonde woman, a University of Florida graduate and former member of the school's Dazzlers basketball dance team. Did she know anything about sports?
"I had to prove myself to him," Andrews said. "When Turner let me go and I was hired by ESPN, he left a phone message for me in his big announcer voice, 'Now let's send it to Erin Andrews. Oh wait, Turner made a mistake. She's going to be a huge star with ESPN.' ''
Caray was right. Her star rose, particularly in cyberspace. Bloggers followed her every move. By 2007, she was voted "America's Sexiest Sportscaster" by Playboy.
The backlash arrived in the Cubs' clubhouse.
Andrews said she has gone over in her mind everything a newspaper columnist wrote about, everything that touched off the blogo-bluster. There was the print dress, described as revealing and showing a lot of leg; acting friendly toward players and touching Alfonso Soriano "suggestively" on the bicep; hearing Cubs skipper Lou Piniella say, "Hey, hey, hey! Look at this! Are you doing a baseball game today or a modeling assignment?"
"I went back and examined the whole day in my head," Andrews said. "I thought, 'No, I didn't do anything wrong,' ''
Andrews said she examined Soriano's injury scar, and was not feeling his bicep. She took Piniella's remarks as standard clubhouse joshing, which occurs every day.
ESPN executives have backed her in public statements. They should.
Look past the Web sites naming her "hottest broadcasting babe" and all that. Looks do not entirely explain her appeal. After all, sideline reporter Lisa Guerrero didn't last on Monday Night Football. There is a gawky, tomboyish quality to Andrews that offsets the supermodel aura, and gives her a different dimension, almost sisterly.
"She works very hard to prepare, and she's like one of the guys," ESPN colleague Kirk Herbstreit said at a Florida Atlantic University appearance Monday.
She laughs off a lot of things said or written about her, but the latest business really seemed to sting, Herbstreit said. It brought her professionalism into question. It went "above and beyond."
GateHouse News Service columnist Mike Nadel, who wrote the piece that stirred the pot, said later in a Web interview he had not seen enough of Andrews' work on camera to judge whether she is good at her job. He was just writing about what he saw in the clubhouse. Her work bolsters her case. She conveys respect and enthusiasm for college games, for example, not treating them like the minor leagues.
"When we come to a town, it's a big event for us," she said. "It's our Super Bowl every week."
Judging by the fuss, you'd think some terrible incident had occurred that had brought dishonor to female sports journalists everywhere. Horrors - ballplayers and male journalists noticed some leg flesh. But where's the beef? Did she climb into the lap of a player or give him a smooch? No. Her sin seemed to be she tried to get players chatting without going straight to a question about their batting average against lefties. Somehow this does not seem to rank with Janet Jackson's nipple shield.
Here's predicting Andrews will survive all this just fine. Basketball analyst Charles Barkley, no stranger to controversy, got in touch with her amid a wave of calls and text messages. He suggested at her next game, a Yankees-Rangers contest tonight, she should show up in a fur coat.
"That was funny, but I'm going to wear a dress," she said. "Are you kidding? It's 100 degrees."
To paraphrase Ralph Waldo Emerson, if you shoot at a sideline queen, you must kill her.
Check out The Zone Blitz today...he has three interesting stories about: - It's been 1 year to the day that Barry Bonds set the career homerun record...where is the pitcher who threw that infamous pitch?... - The RCA Dome will have a slow, but peaceful death... - President Bush signs a bill that will rename a highway Tim Russert Highway that passes in front of Ralph Wilson Stadium...
Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald reports that former Michigan quarterback Chad Henne (number 7) is surprising people with an impressive camp...
The quarterback battle will not gain true clarity until the preseason games, but several veteran defensive players have expressed surprise with how much Chad Henne has injected himself into the race, outshining John Beck and challenging front-runner Josh McCown, who threw three interceptions Tuesday.
Defensive end Vonnie Holliday said Tuesday that before camp started, he would have been surprised if Henne ended up starting on opening day. And now? ''I wouldn't be that surprised,'' he said. ``I like the way the guy carries himself. He's not intimidated.''
Henne has worked extensively with the first team for three consecutive practices and has exceeded expectations, safety Yeremiah Bell said. ''He has a chance to win this job,'' Bell added. ``You can't overlook that he's very impressive.''
Michael Eynon is one of the richest college football players in the country. No, he didn't take any money under the table. Instead it was just luck. The Ohio University senior offensive lineman won $250,000 on the Mega Millions. He failed in winning the $34 million prize, but he did land the second-best prize, which after taxes will be $172,500.
According to The Post, a student-run daily newspaper, Eynon checked the lottery numbers online, and then said, "This isn’t right." Eynon, business pre-law and accounting major, picked 9-21-36-38-55 all correctly. He did, however, miss the mega ball number -- which, of course, was the unlucky number of 13.
According to the newspaper, "The NCAA views the lottery as a game of chance (such as a raffle) and winning it is not in violation of any rules."
The odds of doing what Eynon did? One in 3,904,701.
Eynon is from Westlake, Ohio.
Prsonally, I have two questions for Eynon: 1. What's more important, winning the MAC or the $250,000?... 2. How does it feel to be making more than most of the Ohio State football players?...
This day in baseball history, 46-year-old Satchel Paige threw a complete game shutout in 1952...Craig Mulder of the Baseball Hall of Fame has the story...
By Craig Muder The numbers are mostly gone, lost forever among the echoes of the Negro leagues.
But Leroy "Satchel" Paige, maybe the greatest pitcher baseball ever knew, lives on in the stories of the men who hit -- or tried to hit -- a man who was still a star long after most players have left the limelight.
Paige, born July 7, 1906, in Mobile, Ala., pitched from 1926 to 1947 for Negro league and barnstorming teams. Records of his accomplishments are spotty or missing, but tales of him striking out batters with his infielders sitting down are rampant. And when Paige faced Major Leaguers in exhibition games, he usually came out on top. Brought to the Majors by Cleveland Indians owner Bill Veeck in 1948, Paige helped the Tribe win the World Series that year. Paige then followed Veeck to St. Louis, where in 1952 the 46-year-old right-hander was a remarkable 12-10 with a 3.07 ERA for a Browns team that lost 90 games.
On Aug. 6, 1952, Paige became the oldest Major League player to throw a complete game or a shutout by beating the Detroit Tigers, 1-0, in 12 innings.
Four years and one day later, on Aug. 7, 1956, Paige pitched in front of 57,000 fans at Miami's Orange Bowl -- the largest crowed in Minor League Baseball history -- leading the Miami Marlins past Columbus in an International League game. He finished that season with 11 victories against only four losses.
Paige was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1971. A statue of Paige stands at the Hall as a monument to his singular career.
Group: Journey Song: Faithfully Album: Frontiers Year: 1983 Written by: Journey keyboard player Jonathan Cain Anyone who listened to "The Tony Kornheiser Show" on ESPN and Washington Post radio remembers that he had a segment called "Old Man Radio"...as a spin-off, Stiles Points is going to be doing a weekly feature called "Video Review" where we look back at a classic song and video...the band Journey will start this off with the song "Faithfully"....
What is great about this video is that is shows what life is like on the road touring, which was on the cutting edge for a music video at that time...another interesting fact is that Journey hired NFL Films to record a video documentary of their life on the road for their Frontiers and Beyond Tour...in one his final works before dying, John Facenda, voice of NFL Films, narrated the documentary...
My thoughts - the song deals with life on the road and being away from the person you love the most...the video shows the grind of being on tour...you even get to see lead singer Steve Perry with a mustache...
I was in 8th grade when this song rose to #12...even though I was not big Journey fan then, I am sorry that I never saw them in concert while Perry was the lead singer...to me, Journey is now a pretend group without him as the lead along with Jonathan Cain, Ross Valory, Neal Schon, and Steve Smith to round out the group...every week I will pick out my favorite line of the song...so make sure to listen for the line... Favorite line: They say that the road Ain't no place to start a family
David Leon Moore of the USA Today has a nice feature of the greatest female beach volleyball team ever of Misty May-Treanor (right) and Kerri Walsh (left)...interestingly, they almost broke up in 2006... "Walsh, who turns 30 on Aug. 15, is a 6-3 string bean who has the most intimidating block in the sport and is uncommonly agile for a big blocker. May-Treanor, 31, is a 5-10 defensive whiz and brilliant shot-maker. Both have all the skills required, partly because they were NCAA indoor stars, Walsh at Stanford and May-Treanor at Long Beach State." ...
While looking through the internet, I came across this interesting story about former Auburn head football coach Pat Dye...this past July, a person recovered a pair of Dye's lucky golf pants that he lost for over 20 years...the interesting part, she found the pants in a lake...at the bottom, enjoy a video clip of Patrick Fain Dye as head coach of the War Eagles!!!...I always loved Dye because he would wear a baseball cap with his shirt and tie...
Associated Press
Published: July 3, 2008
ALEXANDER CITY — Shannon McDuffie made a surprising find on Lake Martin’s drought-expanded shoreline: Pat Dye’s long-lost, mud-caked pants and alligator leather wallet.
From two decades ago.
Eventually, McDuffie managed to track down the former Auburn football coach and College Football Hall of Famer and reunite him with his britches. Dye was at a loss to explain how he lost them in the first place.
“Well, I had a place in Still Waters in the early 80s. ... I don’t remember losing it, but now listen, that was a long time ago,” Dye told the Lake Martin edition of “Lake Magazine,” which reported the discovery in a story published online Tuesday.
McDuffie spotted the green-and-blue Madras golf pants sticking out of the mud along Lake Martin in the Emerald Shores area near Still Waters last December, with the water down 15 feet below full pool.
She carried the mud-caked wallet home and washed it off. Inside were a number of credit cards from the mid 1980s, an Alabama driver’s license, an honorary Alabama State Trooper card and a Delta Frequent Flyer card. It also contained a Chevron government credit card with the words: “University of Auburn Athletic.”
The name on the cards: Patrick Fain Dye.
McDuffie’s initial reaction: “Patrick Fain Dye — who is that?”
“Then I got to thinking, Pat Dye, Pat Dye, there was a Dye who was an Auburn coach ... and about that time my husband came home from work and we both suddenly realized, in fact, that this was a wallet that once belonged to the famous Auburn football coach Pat Dye,” she told the magazine.
“After we had shared all the excitement with my mom and dad, we got in our golf cart and rode back down to the lake to retrieve the pants that were left in the mud.”
She said the pants were still folded and creased. The pockets held a set of Toyota car keys on an Auburn helmet key chain and a plain white handkerchief.
McDuffie was unable to reach Dye until the magazine helped her track him down. She brought them back to him at his Notasulga house.
Asked how he lost his pants, Dye responded: “Was there any money in there?”
But, he added, “I do remember those pants.”
“I don’t have any idea how I lost ’em,” he said, “but we can make up a good story.”
Dye invited McDuffie to attend the Blue Jean Ball, where he said he would donate the pants and their contents. The annual charity event is held on the weekend of the Auburn-LSU football game at Auburn Oaks, a commercial hunting property adjacent to his 786 acres, to benefit the Auburn University School of Nursing.
Dye led Auburn to a 99-39-4 record and four Southeastern Conference titles from 1981-92. He still serves as a special assistant to the president.
Longtime Atlanta Braves announcer Skip Caray died on Sunday...Harry Christopher "Skip" Caray Jr., who was 68-years-old, was the son of legendary broadcaster Harry Caray...
After the brouhaha this past week when ESPN's Erin Andrews, "The It Girl," sauntered around the Chicago Cubs locker wearing a skimpy dress (photo below), the following issues "arose"...
1. Maple bats were no longer the hardest wood in the Cubs locker... 2. Lou Piniella was wishing for the days of Rob Dibble... 3. Kerry Wood's blister came back - but this time on the palm of his hand... 4. Jay Mariotti was no longer the player's favorite reporter... 5. With that low cut dress, Derrek Lee noticed the "I Love Steve Bartman" tattoo on Erin Andrews' left breast... 6. Everytime new Brewer C.C. Sabathia was in his wind-up, the Cubs players started chanting "Erin Andrews!"... 7. To try and relive the moment, the next day the Cubs veterans made all the Cubs rookies dress like Andrews - for the most part, it didn't work... 8. Everyone found out why Carlos Zambrano is known as "Big Z"... 9. Alfonso Soriano tried to impress Erin Andrews with his Ronnie "Woo Woo" Wickers imitation... 10. WWHCD? - What Would Harry Caray Do?...
James Varney of the New Orleans Times-Picayune writes about the 10 issues the LSU Tigers face this football season - with the #1 issue being at QB... "While Miles has held his cards closely on this matter, it seems clear the No. 1 quarterback on the depth chart entering camp is Andrew Hatch. That's largely because the 6-foot-3, 214-pound sophomore is the only quarterback on the Tigers' roster who has taken a college snap, completing one of two attempts last year for a 4-yard gain." ...
On Friday (August 1st), it was 42 years that Charles Whitman climbed The Tower on the campus of the University of Texas and killed 13 people...in a non-sports story, the Austin American-Statesman has a feature story about Claire Wilson James, one of the few survivors from that day...
Jenna Marina of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution writes the Georgia Tech football team is not too excited about their new uniforms... "The players have already started brainstorming about mixing up the color scheme. Shaw said he's partial to an all-blue look while Gardner said he would prefer all-white."...
Robbie Andreu of the Gainesville Sun writes that the big issue at camp for the Florida Gators is about their porous defense... "Florida is going to be a maddening team to contain in 2008. Some are predicting this has a chance to be the best, most explosive offense in school history. Close to unstoppable. But what does it matter if UF's defense isn't better, much better, than a year ago when the Gators had trouble stopping anybody and everybody?"...
Former Alabama head coach Gene Stallings' son died on Saturday in Paris, Texas...John Mark was 46-years-old and had Down's Syndrome...John Mark was always by his dad's side while he was the coach with the Arizona Cardinals and Alabama...Stallings also wrote the book Another Season: A Coach's Story of Raising an Exceptional Son,which describes the love he has for his son, John Mark...
Richard Sandomir of The New York Times writes how Mark Cuban wants to buy the Chicago Cubs, but does Major League Baseball want him... "His eight years in basketball as the Mavericks’ owner have shown that there is no one in baseball like him, the closest being George Steinbrenner or Ted Turner as younger men." ...
Earlier today native Chicagoan and famous comedian Bernie Mac died at the age of 50 of complications from pneumonia...interestingly, will the Chicago Cubs fans forgive Bernie Mac after the incident that took place on October 14, 2003 during the 6th game of the NLCS when the Cubs were playing the Florida Marlins...it was a game that seemed like the Cubs were guaranteed to win as they had a 3-0 lead and were 5 outs away from the World Series...
