Baseball Quiz: Name the top ten in hits, career. [Hint: I’ll give
you Cap Anson…and No. 10 had 3,315 and is perhaps the
hardest to come up with on the list.] Answer below.
Happy St. Paddy’s Day!
Tiger Wins 5th in Row
What an amazing sports moment on Sunday as Tiger drained a
25-footer to capture Arnold Palmer’s tournament at Bay Hill for
his 5th consecutive win on the PGA Tour and sixth worldwide.
In tying Ben Hogan for 3rd on the all-time win list at 64, with
only Snead, 82, and Nicklaus, 73, ahead of him, Woods has also
now won 16 of his last 25 Tour events!
NCAA Tourney
Well, I said before the year started that I was going with North
Carolina and I see no reason to change my mind now. But here
are some random thoughts on the brackets.
I told you Butler was overrated. 12th in the AP poll (3/10),
implying a #3 seed, they received a 7th.
Clemson will go down early. Vanderbilt is incredibly overrated
at a #4.
How could Davidson only be a #10 seed?
I once met with an admissions guy at American University (#15
seed in their first tourney appearance ever) for graduate school
and he laughed me out of his office. “You’re coming here with
that grade average?!” he exclaimed. I then went to an Irish pub
and had a few pints.
Cornell is a #14 and not a #16?! Marquette will exit early.
The ACC can’t complain they received only four bids, even
though it’s the #1 conference according to the RPI. Just a lot of
mediocrity once you get past Carolina and Duke.
Wake didn’t even make the NIT. Good. I’m ready for baseball,
anyway.
Moko…the hero dolphin
Yes, this story is a few days old but it’s my first opportunity to
tell it on these pages.
In New Zealand, Moko the bottle-nosed dolphin is known to play
with swimmers at Mahia Beach and pushing kayaks along. But
as reported by the London Times’ Jack Malvern, Moko played
the role of hero the other day and dolphins as a result should
shoot up on the next release of the All-Species List (this last bit
being my conclusion, not Mr. Malvern’s).
Two pygmy sperm whales appeared to be hopelessly trapped in a
lagoon at the beach, through which there was only a narrow
escape, and human attempts to guide the two had consistently
failed. All seemed lost and a field worker for the New Zealand
Dept. of Conservation was contemplating killing them to prevent
further distress when Moko arrived on the scene.
“ ‘It was amazing,’ said Malcolm Smith. ‘It was like she
grabbed them by the flipper and led them to safety. We worked
for over an hour to try to get them back out to sea…but they kept
getting disoriented and stranding again.’
“The whales – a 10-foot female and her 5-foot male calf – had
been unable to negotiate a sand bar that was blocking their way
to deeper water.
“Mr. Smith was alerted to the whales’ plight early on Monday
morning by a neighbor. ‘Over the next hour and a half I pushed
them back out to sea two or three times and they were very
reluctant to move offshore,’ he said.
“ ‘I was reaching the stage where I was thinking, it’s about time
to give up, I’ve done as much as I can. The whales were getting
tired and I was getting cold when Moko turned up. She just
came straight for us and escorted the two whales along the beach
and out through the channel.’
“He heard Moko and the whales making noises before they
departed, he said. ‘The whales were on the surface of the water
quite distressed. They had arched their backs and were calling to
one another, but as soon as the dolphin turned up they submerged
into the water and followed her.’
“Moko led the whales 200 meters along the beach and once they
reached the end of the sand bar, Moko turned a right angle
through a narrow channel and led the whales to safety.
“Rescued whales often return to the site of their stranding, but
Moko’s actions appear to have had long-term success. ‘She
obviously gave them enough guidance to leave the area because
we haven’t seen them since,’ Mr. Smith said.
“ ‘What the communication was I do not know, and I was not
aware dolphins could communicate with pygmy sperm whales.’
“Mark Simmonds, director of science at the Whale and Dolphin
Conservation Society, said that bottle-nosed dolphins are
renowned for their ability to empathize with humans and other
animals. ‘The whole notion that a bottle-nosed dolphin would
have shown the whales the way out is completely possible,’ he
said.
“ ‘Dolphins have got the ability to plan, to think ahead, to
persuade others to take part. They almost certainly do not have a
common language with pygmy sperm whales, but they would
understand that the whales would have been at risk of stranding.
The first thing a dolphin does when it has a calf is to push it to
the surface so it can breathe.’”
And so we salute Moko, who with its ability to plan ahead has
proven it’s smarter than Eliot Spitzer, I hasten to add; yet another
reason why dolphins rank so far ahead of humans.
Stuff
–The Wall Street Journal ran an analysis of the last 23 NCAA
men’s basketball tournaments, looking at the results of 1,380
games, and among their findings:
“By measuring the distance each tournament team has traveled
for each game since 1985 and then relating that distance to its
performance, we discovered that flying across the country to play
a game can cost a team as many as three points. We noticed that
No. 10 seeds are more than five times as likely to get to the third
round as No. 9 seeds, that the Big Ten has outperformed
expectations lately and that Wake Forest is, hands down, the
most overrated team in the modern history of the tournament.
Not far behind them in dashed expectations – Stanford.”
Well, as a Demon Deacon alumnus, no argument here. We’ve
totally sucked.
The most underrated? Kentucky and Kansas. “For every
tournament game since 1985, we compared the seed each team
was given with the seeds of all the teams it played, and then
correlated the difference between those seeds to the final score.
This gave us a previously unknown figure – what the final
margin of victory should be for any tournament game based on
all the previous matchups between teams with those seeds. From
there, we were able to see which teams have outplayed these
averages and which ones haven’t.”
Back to Wake, “which has probably burned more brackets than
any other team in three decades. Since 1985, the Demon
Deacons have ranked between a No. 1 and No. 4 seed six
different times, and only once, in 1996, did they advance beyond
the third round. That year, Wake got blown out by 20 points in
its quarterfinal matchup against Kentucky. In all those games
Wake played 5.5 points below the average and never beat a
higher-seeded team. ‘I’m glad we’re number one in something,’
says Ron Wellman, Wake’s athletic director.”
–So I love to slam the NBA, but even I have to admit the
Western Conference playoffs could be super. As of Sunday,
after all, there were nine teams with winning percentages of .600
or better, with Denver and Golden State fighting for the last spot.
San Antonio, for example, has just the 4th best record.
–France’s last living veteran of World War I died the other day,
Lazare Ponticelli, 110. President Nicolas Sarkozy expressed
“infinite sadness” at the news. Fewer than two dozen WW I
veterans are thought to be alive.
France has always honored its veterans and former president
Jacques Chirac vowed to hold a state funeral with the last to die,
but Ponticelli didn’t want this.
Ponticelli was born on Dec. 7, 1897, in northern Italy, but owing
to poverty he moved to France, where he worked as a chimney
sweep and paper boy and in 1914 lied about his age to join the
French Foreign Legion, serving in the Argonne and at Verdun.
Curiously, when the last German veteran died this year, there
was no official announcement. [Douglas Martin / New York
Times]
–The New York Giants signed quarterback David Carr to a one-
year deal to back up Eli Manning. Carr had been a bust as the
No. 1 overall pick in the 2002 draft by Houston and in just six
years he has been sacked 262 times, including a record 76 as a
rookie in ’02. 76 times! I would have quit after the first 50.
–I love this line…from a story by Ambrose Clancy in the
Washington Post on restaurants in the wild west of Ireland.
“After a day spent walking the empty, mountain-shadowed
moors, enchanted by the innocence of nimble Connemara lambs
– wooly, black-faced, with slender black legs – we decide to eat
one.”
–Turns out the John Daly fiasco I mentioned briefly last time
was even worse. Daly didn’t show up for his Wednesday pro-am
and was thus ruled ineligible for Arnold Palmer’s Invitational at
Bay Hill, a tourney for which Daly had obtained a sponsor’s
exemption. He said he was told his tee time was 9:47 a.m.,
instead of 8:40 a.m.
Daly’s explanation was that he was given the wrong information
when he called Tuesday to find out his Wednesday pro-am time.
A woman in the tourney office told him 9:47 a.m., which instead
was his starting time for the first round on Thursday.
Daly told the AP on Wednesday, “I should have looked into it. It
stinks for me. I want to do anything I can for the tournament as a
sponsor exemption. I wanted to meet the people I was playing
with in the pro-am. I love Arnold Palmer to death. I called and
talked to him and apologized. And the thing that upsets me is I
cost Nick O’Hern and Ryuji Imada, so now I got these guys mad
at me, too.”
O’Hern and Imada were on the morning alternate list, but neither
was on the property, so both were declared ineligible for the
tournament as well. PGA Tour rules require those in the pro-am
to participate or risk being ineligible for the event. And it applies
to alternates, whose job it is to know where they are on the list
and be prepared in case someone drops out.
O’Hern lives just five minutes away from the course and he was
furious. “When I should have been on the tee, I was giving my
girls breakfast,” he said. “I thought common sense would have
prevailed. This is a tough one to take. Unfortunately, we got
caught up in John’s snowball effect.”
O’Hern and Imada were screwed because of a crazy rule that
odd-numbered alternates need to be prepared for morning pro-am
openings, and even-numbered ones for the afternoon. But No. 1
alternate Fredrik Jacobson was excused from being an alternate
ahead of time and so Imada and O’Hern went from an even
number to an odd number and didn’t know this.
–I agree with USA Today’s Christine Brennan that the
professional golfers who are complaining about the Tour’s new
drug testing policy need to get a grip. Frank Lickliter told the
AP that any drug tester showing up at his house to do his job was
“going to have a hard time getting off my property without a
bullet in his ass.” Fellow golfer and U.S. Ryder Cup captain
Paul Azinger was equally miffed, calling the testing degrading
and undignified. Brennan:
“One wonders what PGA Tour players might have been thinking
was going on all these years they’ve been reading and hearing
about drug tests at the Olympic Games, in the NCAA or at tennis
tournaments like the U.S. Open. Or is it just that they feel they
are so pure, coming from a sport where they call penalties on
themselves, that they shouldn’t have to do what athletes from so
many other sports do to try to ensure the fairest possible playing
field?
“Just last year alone, 8,347 of the tests some PGA Tour players
are whining about were conducted by the U.S. Anti-Doping
Agency on Olympic and Paralympic athletes. It is believed that
every single one of those athletes managed to emerge from the
test without threatening to shoot the tester.”
Or as Brennan further writes, you have the case of swimmer
Michael Phelps, who has undergone 59 USADA tests since 2001,
all without complaint.
–David Feherty on Michelle Wie (remember her?):
“She could be adopted by Britney Spears and be better off. I
want my 16-yer-old daughter to have an enormous phone bill, a
case of the giggles and to be (hacked) off at me for killing her
first three boyfriends. I do not want her out on tour under that
kind of pressure.”
–Congratulations to Lindsey Vonn for capturing the women’s
overall World Cup title, the first American to do so since Tamara
McKinney in 1983. I’d congratulate Bode Miller for his overall
Cup title, too, except he doesn’t give a damn about you or me, so
why should we care about him? Remember, Miller isn’t skiing
this year as part of the U.S. team because of its rules on behavior.
But another American male, Ted Ligety, won the season’s giant
slalom title. We’re looking good for 2010.
Back to Miller, his coach says he hasn’t had a sip of alcohol
since July, as he rededicated himself to the sport. It will be
interesting to see if he even goes to Vancouver, though. He’s
said in the past he wasn’t that interested.
–If you’re not from the New York area, you can still imagine the
kind of coverage we’re getting here with regards to Ashley
Alexandra Dupre, “Kristen.” For starters, I can’t believe she is
living in a luxury apartment that goes for $3,500 a month.
Goodness gracious. One former pimp who ran NY Confidential,
the first call-girl service Ashley worked for at 19, said she was
earning tens of thousands of dollars a month. Jason Itzler said, “I
used to get e-mails [that said] ‘Now I can die happy,’” Itzler said
of Dupre. “This was probably the sexiest, hottest girl I had,” he
added. “She’s no joke. She’s an awesome, awesome, supercool
girl.” [Sean Evans and Larry McShane / New York Daily News]
–Sign of the Apocalypse: At Antietam, site of the Civil War’s
bloodiest one-day battle and from a personal standpoint, the
single best preserved battlefield I’ve been to, there is a proposal
in the works to erect a cellphone tower that would soar 30 feet
above the surrounding tree line.
–From Walter Scott’s Celebrity Parade:
Q: Why does George Clooney date women half his age, like
Sarah Larson?
A: Because he can.
–Yikes…Mike Love of the Beach Boys turned 67 on Saturday.
Top 3 songs for the week of 3/13/65: #1 “Eight Days A Week”
(The Beatles) #2 “My Girl” (The Temptations) #3 “Stop! In
The Name Of Love” (The Supremes)…and…#4 “This Diamond
Ring” (Gary Lewis and the Playboys) #5 “The Birds And The
Bees” (Jewel Akens) #6 “King Of The Road” (Roger Miller) #7
“Ferry Cross The Mersey” (Gerry & The Pacemakers) #8 “Can’t
You Hear My Heartbeat” (Herman’s Hermits) #9 “The Jolly
Green Giant” (The Kingsmen) #10 “Hurt So Bad” (Little
Anthony and the Imperials….my man Little Anthony is
incredibly underrated)
Baseball Quiz Answer: Top ten in hits, career.
1. Pete Rose…4256
2. Ty Cobb…4189
3. Hank Aaron…3771
4. Stan Musial…3630
5. Tris Speaker…3514
6. Carl Yastrzemski…3419
7. Cap Anson…3418
8. Honus Wagner…3415
9. Paul Molitor…3319
10. Eddie Collins…3315
11. Willie Mays…3283
Actives who will threaten the top ten or at least the 3000 hit
level.
Omar Vizquel…2598 [doubtful he’ll get another 400.]
Ken Griffey Jr. …2558
Derek Jeter…2356
Alex Rodriguez…2250
Manny Ramirez…2209
Garret Anderson…2205 [unlikely he’ll get another 800, but
surprised he was this high up already.]
Next Bar Chat, Thursday.
