Well, with so many things going on that I want to get to that happened this weekend, I’ll try and touch a few of the happenings.
ESPN’s Bracket Buster Weekend
This thing is very intruiguing. It does a few things that no two conferences would typically agree to. The Bracketbuster event forces the “mid-major” conferences to compete against each other for one day out of the season. This is a good thing to get the schools and conferences out of their usual comfort zones of non-conference schedules, and requires that the two teams matchup the following season on the original visitor’s home court. So, this season Missouri State went to Milwaukee to play (and beat) Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Next season, Wisconsin-Milwaukee will make the trip to Springfield, Missouri to take on Missouri State as a part of the Bracketbuster requirements.
I see this as a conspiracy of the “major” conferences to keep the “mid-majors” canabalizing themselves instead of taking on and coming after the “major” conference schools. But, hey, with all the publicity the Missouri Valley is getting this season (5 teams projected in the NCAA Tourney - Northern Iowa, Creighton, Wichita State, Southern Illinois, Missouri State), I’ll take it.
Now, this Bracketbuster idea is also a double-edged sword from the stance that some of these teams might well be on the bubble of the Tourney, and a loss to another “mid-major” team could quite possibly burst that bubble … hence, my conspiracy theory.
NASCAR’s Daytona 500
Watch highlights »
Was definately all it’s cracked up to be! I watched the race from Green to Checkered and there wasn’t a dull moment (for race fans that is), my wife would disagree. I really can’t put it all into words, so here’s the story from ESPN.com:
Jimmie Johnson has to bear the stigma of a questioned champion after winning his first Daytona 500 less than a week after his crew chief was kicked out for illegally altering his car. Johnson won a two-lap shootout Sunday to claim the victory, capping a roller-coaster week that saw NASCAR send Chad Knaus home after he cheated during qualifying.
Just moments after Johnson crossed the finish line, his rivals were wondering if the win was legitimate.
“This could still be the first opportunity for NASCAR to pull away a victory if the thing is illegal,” third-place finisher Ryan Newman said. “It’s disappointing. I think a lot of Jimmie Johnson and his talent, but I’m pretty sure at least three of his last four wins have had conflictions with the cars being illegal.
“You know, it’s not necessarily good for the sport.”
After a three-plus hour inspection, NASCAR finally cleared Johnson’s car. It doesn’t change the perception of his team, but Johnson thinks it’s overblown.
“This is a huge statement and something that I’m very proud of,” he said with a bottle of champagne sitting on his lap. “We know that there are rules, a set of rules. Chad broke the rules. He’s admitted that. He’s in Charlotte watching the race. He missed the event. We’re serving our penalty.”
There’s probably more to come. Johnson has indicated that the team expects NASCAR to suspend Knaus an additional three races. The team will probably also be docked points, knocking Johnson off the leaderboard.
The team has a history of misdeeds and questionable conduct.
NASCAR accused Knaus of cheating following Johnson’s win in Las Vegas last March when his car failed post-race inspection. Knaus was suspended for two races, but appealed and had the penalty reduced to probation.
Then, following a September win in Dover, Del., the No. 48 Chevrolet again failed inspection. Only this time NASCAR said Knaus had exploited a loophole in the rule book, and the sanctioning body quickly closed it.
So with Knaus out of commission for the foreseeable future and lead engineer Darian Grubb acting as temporary head coach, the Hendrick Motorsports team will try to work its way out from the dark shadow the crew chief’s actions have cast on them.
Johnson took the first step by scoring the biggest win of his career, then deflecting Newman’s criticism.
“There’s been a lot of hating on the 48 team over the last year,” Johnson said. “I kind of look at as jealousy and [Newman] doesn’t have a crew chief in there working hard enough to get the job done.”
Johnson’s latest troubles started shortly after he posted the fifth-fastest time in trials and his car went through post-race inspection. NASCAR said it discovered a blatant attempt at cheating when it found an alteration that had been made after the car passed an initial inspection.
Knaus was kicked off the property, his motor home removed from the lot. And although Johnson claimed Knaus was back in North Carolina, competitors wondered if the crew chief wasn’t hiding somewhere inside Daytona International Speedway and communicating with the team via cell phone.
It probably didn’t matter because Johnson was intent on winning The Great American Race on his fifth try.
“I knew deep down inside my heart that this team could still win,” he said. “There’s no doubt that not having Chad here was a huge handicap, but everybody stepped up. I am just so proud of this team.”
Johnson stayed calm and avoided trouble in a wild race that saw Tony Stewart eliminate three contenders: Jeff Gordon, Matt Kenseth and himself. Then Johnson worked his way to the front, staying in line and waiting for his chance to pounce.
It came with 14 laps to go when he squeezed past teammate Brian Vickers to grab the lead just as a caution came out. Johnson was at the front of the field on the restart, the lead driver in a single-file pack of cars sprinting toward the end.
From his rearview window he could see Dale Earnhardt Jr. slicing his way through the field, making a last, desperate push to mark the five-year anniversary of his Dad’s death with a win at the track where he died.
But Jamie McMurray wrecked with seven laps to go to bring out one final caution. It set up an overtime finish, but no one was able to challenge Johnson.
Earnhardt was the first driver to pull out of line and make a run at Johnson, but got no drafting help and had zero chance of catching him. Then Newman took his shot. But just like Junior, he didn’t get any assistance and could only squeeze back into place.
There were no more challenges to Johnson, who won when a final accident brought out the caution and allowed him to cross the finish line under a yellow flag.
Casey Mears, part of the three-man team that won the 24 Hours of Daytona sports car race earlier this month, was second and Newman, who was trying to give Roger Penske his first Daytona win in 33 tries, finished third.
Stewart was fifth, rookie Clint Bowyer was sixth and Vickers was seventh. Earnhardt wound up eighth after leading a race-high 32 laps. Ken Schrader and Dale Jarrett rounded out the top 10.
Johnson stayed under the radar — and away from Stewart — to pull out the victory.
Earlier this week, Stewart forced NASCAR to crack down on bump drafting and aggressive driving when he warned that someone could be killed in the 500.
Then he became the first Cup driver to be penalized under the new watchdog policy.
He began his day by hitting Gordon — a heavy favorite to win a second straight 500 — early in the race to eliminate him from contention. Then Stewart took out a second potential winner when he made a hard left turn into Kenseth.
It wasn’t clear if Stewart’s contact was intentional, but it severely damaged Kenseth’s car and NASCAR quickly penalized Stewart by ordering him to the back of the field. The punishment dropped him from fifth to 34th.
Clearly angry, he pushed his in-car camera away so television viewers couldn’t see him raging.
Just seconds later, Kenseth exacted his revenge as the two cars raced each other off pit road. Kenseth passed Stewart, ran him low to the apron and appeared to hit him. NASCAR then called Kenseth into pit road for his own penalty, but the driver was irate and slow to comply.
“You’ve got to come in, Matt, they are going to pull our scorecard!” crew chief Robbie Reiser radioed.
“Not until they tell me what I did. I put my hand up, asked him, ‘Why did you do that?’ That’s all I did,” Kenseth replied. “What did I do?”
“You were screwing around with [Stewart], you have to come in,” Reiser said.
It didn’t really matter at that point. Kenseth, who had led four times for 28 laps and had a car capable of racing for the victory, was two laps down and had too much damage to his Ford to rally for the win.
“It’s just really disappointing — Tony went out and said all that stuff early in the week,” Kenseth said after the race. “If he’s worried about people’s lives and he’s going to wreck somebody at 190 mph, that’s tough.”
East - 122
West - 120
LeBron is the MVP. Slam dunk contest is still good. You know, I don’t care much for the regular season of the NBA … I’m more of a college basketball fan. I’m a fan of actually trying to run a play, stop someone from running their play and strategy. When your strategy night in and night out is just run - shoot, run - shoot, run - shoot, clear out for me to run - shoot … it makes it very uninteresting to watch on TV.
BUT, the All-Star weekend activities are much different. That’s the type of game I expect to see. You’ve got the best players in the game out there playing with each other, let’s just see who can score the most while being the most flashy and “professional” looking.
Read more about the whole weekend’s events »
from MLB.com - Mark Newman is enterprise editor for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.
It is the secret of the world that all things subsist and do not die, but only retire from sight and afterwards return again.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
And so it happens again today, as it has through a lifetime, with the first Major League Baseball players returning to sight after retiring for a winter.
All is good with the world again.
It begins in Florida and in Arizona, with pitchers and catchers for eight teams reporting this afternoon to their respective Spring Training camps. Leading the way this year are the Tigers, Orioles, Rangers, Angels, Mariners, Cubs, Dodgers and Giants. This official reporting process, the mere act of professional ballplayers showing up and “checking in,” is now regarded by everyone as the start of an epic and gripping novel that has a happy ending in late autumn for only one of 30 teams.
Formal workouts begin Thursday morning, and progressively over the new few days all pitchers and catchers are due to report and start things off. Position players join the workouts shortly thereafter. Then come the exhibition games. Then comes the regular season, and life’s routine begins again.
“I’m excited to see actual baseball instead of just talking about it and reading about it,” said new Rangers general manager Jon Daniels, whose club expects to compete for a playoff spot. “I look forward to getting back to why I enjoy the job: coming together as a team, playing the games, the clubhouse camaraderie. It’s putting the business side down and getting back to why you get into this in the first place.
“You have 30 teams that are optimistic. Everything is right, just about everybody is healthy. Thirty teams believe they have a chance. Some are more realistic than others but it’s a very positive time of the year.”
One-hundred eleven days have passed since Bobby Jenks threw the last pitch in a Major League game to clinch the White Sox’ first World Series championship in 88 years, and now the game returns at last.
See, they return, and bring us with them.
– T.S. Eliot
‘O Earth, O Earth, return!
‘Arise from out the dewy grass;
‘Night is worn,
‘And the morn
‘Rises from the slumberous mass.
– William Blake
They return, and some of them return in bigger ways than others. Consider Jim Leyland. He managed the Pirates of the early 1990s to the playoffs, managed the 1997 Marlins to the World Series title, and managed the Rockies before retiring from sight. Now, as Emerson put it, he returns again as the new manager of a Tigers club whose pitchers and catchers file into Joker Marchant Stadium in Lakeland, Fla.
It marks the 40th anniversary of the club training in that familiar spring home, and Leyland brings with him new hitting coach and his former Pirates catcher, Don Slaught. Although Leyland says he’s “not a big guy on performance in Spring Training,” now he gets to find out what he has to work with.
“I came here to win and see if we can get it done,” Leyland said.
Another non-player in Florida who will get a lot of attention at this time is Leo Mazzone. After all those years of working with dominating Braves pitchers, he will be rocking back and forth in the Orioles’ dugout this time. His pupils will include starter Kris Benson, who came over from the Mets, and first-year closer Chris Ray, the replacement for B.J. Ryan, who signed with Toronto.
For solitude sometimes is best society,
And short retirement urges sweet return.
– John Milton/Paradise Lost
It is a wholesome thing for them to return to the people.
– Calvin Coolidge
This year’s return brings one especially unique circumstance. Not long after players report and begin their workouts, select players all around the Cactus and Grapefruit Leagues will leave their regular teammates for a bit and report to their World Baseball Classic team. That inaugural 16-nation event will be played March 3-20 at sites in Florida, Arizona, Japan and Puerto Rico.
The Cubs are just one example. Carlos Zambrano is due to report to Mesa as usual on Wednesday, and later he will join his Venezuela teammates and will be on a strict pitch count in the WBC as will other pitchers there. The Cubs might also go without their top three catchers for most of March, because Michael Barrett was named Tuesday to the 30-man USA roster; Henry Blanco is expected to play for Venezuela; and Geovany Soto is on Puerto Rico’s roster.
Mark Prior reports Wednesday for the beginning of what he hopes will be an injury-free season after two consecutive years that were not. Greg Maddux, who turns 40 on April 14, returns as well and hopes for his usual 200-inning term.
See, they return, one, and by one …
– Ezra Pound
The stage is not merely the meeting place of all the arts, but is also the return of art to life.
– Oscar Wilde
The Mariners? They lost 192 games over the last two seasons, but they are happy to return. Two reasons: veteran Jarrod Washburn and youngster Felix Hernandez, who report to Peoria, Ariz.
The Angels? They don’t have Washburn or Paul Byrd (now with Cleveland), but Kelvim Escobar is expected to return to the starting rotation. Bartolo Colon, John Lackey and 2005 playoff sensation Ervin Santana are back on that staff, and the fifth starter is open to competition at their camp in Tempe, Ariz.
The Giants? While it’s all about the players who are returning, for them it also is about a beautifully renovated facility that greets them in Scottsdale, Ariz. It was a $23.1 million project by the City of Scottsdale to keep San Francisco training there through 2025.
The Dodgers? Eric Gagne comes back to another camp after missing most of 2005 with elbow surgery. He is throwing without discomfort, but now comes the test of throwing to batters. Ned Colletti, the Dodgers’ new GM, comes to Vero Beach with his new players and hopes the revamped roster equals a big comeback season.
“What I would most like to see is the players have the seasons they are capable of,” he said. “If you take every starting pitcher that people say are penciled into the rotation, they’re all capable of 180 to 210 innings. If we get that, we’ll be in decent shape. I’ve learned to never expect or require performances that exceed the player’s ability. If they just equal their ability, that’s what you want.”
This is how baseball is supposed to be.
Everything is supposed to return to where it began. In a perfect world, it happens that way when you run the bases, starting at home and then finishing in the very same place. If the world is a run, then on Wednesday everyone is back home, safe, ready to go again. Pitchers and catchers are reporting at last.
All things return, both sphere and mote,
And I shall hear my bluebird’s note.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Mark Newman is enterprise editor for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.
BARDONECCHIA, Italy — Kelly Clark might not have medaled Monday, but she set the bar a little higher for women’s snowboarding with the run that almost was.
After qualifying first overall, Clark was in third place after the first of the two finals runs in the women’s halfpipe event. And she was going for gold.
“It’s the Olympics,” she said. “That’s what you have to do.”
Just prior to dropping in for the second run, she and coach Ricky Bauer talked about toning back her run, changing her final trick from a frontside 900 to a tamer 720. Clark wouldn’t have it.
“That’s the run she came here to do and that’s the run she did,” said Bauer. “She came to win.”
In 2002, the Mt. Snow, Vt., native had her first big snowboarding successes, winning gold at both the X Games and the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City. Last month, she won the X Games again, choosing to compete in the contest when teammates Hannah Teter and Gretchen Bleiler withdrew (citing the stresses of training, qualifying and competing in the Olympics as reasons to take a rest). After Clark won at the X Games, it appeared she might just duplicate her 2002 feat.
And until the last possible second Monday, it looked like she would.
Clark hit five tricks — a frontside air, a backside 540, a frontside 540, a method air and a frontside 900 — with more air than any woman in the contest and more air than some of the men in Sunday’s event.
“She was at least 12 feet out of the pipe,” Bauer said. “Double-overhead. I’ll say it, she is technically the best women’s snowboarder out there.”
Because of the amplitude of Clark’s tricks and the lateral distance she travels on each hit, she can fit only five tricks down the pipe where the average rider can fit six or seven. Her amplitude comes from the speed gathered by taking more aggressive lines (angled more down the pipe rather than straight across) and riding cleaner edges (without checking her speed) across the pipe than any other rider.
That huge frontside 900 would have been an exclamation point on a perfect run had Clark not shifted her weight a bit too much in the transition. She just couldn’t hang on. “I just got a little too far backseat,” she said. “It was the best run of my life up to that point.”
Even with the fall, the judges rewarded Clark’s amplitude with a 38.1, over 10 points higher than any other rider who had a fall. Still, it wasn’t enough to hold on for a medal. With Teter sitting in first position with a 44.6, Bleiler landed a big crippler 540, her trademark, at the beginning of a second run that earned her a 43.4 and a silver medal. Norwegian Kjersti Buaas made up for her near-miss of the podium in Salt Lake (she finished fourth) by throwing down a great run for a 42.0, edging out Clark’s 41.1 from the first run for bronze.
“I couldn’t be happier for my friends,” Clark said. “And Kjersti came up with a great run, no one deserves it better.”
But no one deserves more props than Clark, showing that she can fly just as high as anyone.
