[Posted Sunday p.m., prior to conclusion of Mets-Yankees and Packers-Seahawks]
Baseball Quiz: What three players have both the most hits and RBIs after age 41? [Starting in age-41 season…all three modern era players.] Answer below.
NFL…Week 2…reminder, I am not remotely attempting to cover every game.
–Before we get into the Giants’ attempt to put the Week one debacle against the Dallas Cowboys behind them, the other day the NFL admitted it wasn’t just Eli Manning who blew it, the league’s officials did, too.
“The league told the Giants earlier this week that referee Bill Vinovich and his crew botched two crucial calls in the Cowboys’ 27-26 win….The first was a pass interference penalty on Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie in the third quarter that set the Cowboys up on the Giants 2 and led to their first touchdown.
“The second was on the Giants’ fateful final offensive play, when Eli Manning rolled out on third down and threw the ball away while under heavy pressure from the Cowboys. The reason he threw the ball away was because the intended receiver on that play – tight end Daniel Fells – never got off the line of scrimmage because he was being badly held by Cowboys safety Barry Church.
“The admission of the two blown calls, which was first reported by the NFL Network, was largely meaningless, though, since the damage had already been done. But it can be argued that had the refs gotten either call right – most definitely the second one – the Giants would’ve won and would never have been in position to mess up the game in the end….
“Rodgers-Cromartie (who never touched the Cowboys receiver as he made a spectacular play on the ball, but was called for interference anyway), said he heard the NFL admitted its mistake, but it was too late to really matter.”
So now it’s Sunday. The Giants were beating the Falcons 20-10 in the fourth, a very solid effort, but suddenly Eli Manning fumbled it away on the Atlanta 8, Matt Ryan leads the Falcons down for a score to make it 20-17, then he hits the amazing Julio Jones at the one on the next series, Atlanta goes in to score and the final is 24-20.
Like I said the last time, thank god I’m not a Giants fan. Two straight weeks to open the season that were virtually identical. Two wins turned into losses. Two total screw-ups by the quarterback who had just signed the mammoth extension with the $65 million guarantee.
It doesn’t matter Eli had a solid game (30/46, 363, 1-0), he f’ed up in a key spot, again.
For the record, Odell Beckham Jr. had 7 receptions for 146 yards and one score, while Julio Jones had 13 catches for 135.
One other note…on a crucial play, late, Giants safety Landon Collins cost his team a critical 7 yards when he forgot to ‘touch’ an Atlanta receiver who had just gone down after a catch, thinking the play was dead. What a freakin’ idiot.
Pittsburgh (1-1) beat San Francisco (1-1) at home, 43-18, as Ben Roethlisberger threw for 369 yards and 3 touchdowns. Receiver Antonio Brown was of course the prime target (9-195-1). The Steelers led 29-3 at half.
The Cardinals (2-0) defeated the Bears (0-2) 48-23 in Chicago as Larry Fitzgerald had another big game, 8 receptions for 112 yards and 3 touchdowns; Fitzgerald being my favorite NFL player (it helps he went to Pitt).
For Chicago, quarterback Jay Cutler was injured. Not that I give a hoot…but it’s a hamstring pull.
The amazing Cleveland Browns (psst….that’s for my friend, Trader George, now Club Mgr. George) defeated the Titans 28-14 as both teams are now 1-1. Johnny Manziel was 8/15, 172, with 2 touchdown passes, both to Travis Benjamin.
For Tennessee, Marcus Mariota was good, 21/37, 257, 2-0, but he coughed up two fumbles, not good.
The other big rookie QB, Jameis Winston, led Tampa Bay to its first win, 26-19 over the 0-2 Saints. Winston was 14/21, 207, 1-0, with another 23 yards rushing and a score.
Adrian Peterson made his homecoming in Minnesota and was well received by the hometown fans, rushing for 134 yards on 29 carries in the Vikings’ (1-1) 26-16 win over the 0-2 Lions.
Dallas moved to 2-0 with a 20-10 win over the Eagles (0-2), but quarterback Tony Romo left the game with a fractured left collarbone and is out an estimated 8-10 weeks! Brandon Weeden was 7-of-7 filling in but this will be interesting to watch. For the Eagles, DeMarco Murray had 2 yards on 13 carries against his old team.
–In Thursday night’s stirring 31-24 comeback win over the Kansas City Chiefs, Denver’s Peyton Manning became the second quarterback in NFL history to surpass 70,000 yards passing in his career. Brett Favre holds the record with 71,838, while Manning is at 70,122 after throwing for 256 yards, 26-of-45 with three touchdowns.
–Finally, there was more devastating research on players and brain disease. A study conducted by the Department of Veterans Affairs and Boston University found that 96% of former NFL players tested had evidence of the degenerative brain disease, with 79% of all football players tested – who played at all levels – showing signs of it.
“The researchers tested the brains of 165 former football players who competed at the high school, college, semi-pro or professional level. Of those tested, 131 showed signs of CTE.”
Forty percent of those who tested positive were the offensive and defensive linemen who are coming into contact with each other on every play, and the findings support past research suggesting that it’s the repeat, more minor head trauma that occurs regularly in the sport that may pose the greatest risk, as opposed to a violent collision that causes a concussion.
The findings were released as part of a PBS’ “Frontline” program and as Nate Scott adds, “It must be said that there is a major caveat in the research, because those people and families who agreed to be tested are more likely those who suspected they might have that disease.
“CTE can only be diagnosed after death – it’s impossible to get a definitive diagnosis from a brain scan of a living person.”
The NFL issued a statement to “Frontline”: “We are dedicated to making football safer and continue to take steps to protect players, including rule changes, advanced sideline technology, and expanded medical resources. We continue to make significant investments in independent research through our gifts to Boston University, the [National Institutes of Health] and other efforts to accelerate the science and understanding of these issues.”
CFB…comments are written prior to release of the latest AP Poll….
No.1 Ohio State struggled mightily to defeat Northern Illinois 20-13 (NIU being a 34 ½-point underdog), as the quarterback combination of Cardale Jones (who was benched a second straight week) and J.T. Barrett combined to go just 15 of 28 for a measly 133 with one touchdown and three interceptions. The Buckeyes also lost two fumbles, so five turnovers in all. OSU only outgained NIU 298-190.
But last year the Buckeyes got off to a poor start and they ended up winning the national championship and I have no doubt coach Urban Meyer will get his boys back in shape quickly.
However, No. 2 Alabama lost to No. 15 Ole Miss 43-37 in a huge upset.
“It certainly wasn’t how Ole Miss (or Alabama) drew it up.
“The No. 15 Rebels faced third-and-1 at their 34-yard line on their opening possession of the second half at Bryant-Denny Stadium. Already trailing by a touchdown, the No. 2 Crimson Tide needed a stop.
“The Rebels snapped the ball over quarterback Chad Kelly’s head. Somehow, Kelly was able to collect the errant snap, but then threw into double coverage as he got leveled by two Crimson Tide defenders.
“Two defenders converged on Rebels receiver Laquon Treadwell as the ball fell to him. The ball was tipped in the air and bounced off the helmet of Alabama defensive back Minkah Fitzpatrick. What happened next will likely never be forgotten by anyone who was there to witness it.
“Somehow, the ball bounced directly into the hands of receiver Quincy Adeboyejo, who caught the tipped pass and ran into the end zone for an improbable 66-yard score, giving the Rebels a two-touchdown lead.
“Ole Miss held off a furious Crimson Tide rally in the fourth quarter for a 43-37 upset, which gave the Rebels back-to-back victories for the first time in a series that dates to 1894.”
No. 3 TCU beat SMU 56-37 as quarterback Trevone Boykin is back in potential Heisman form, going 21/30, 454, 5-1. But the Horned Frogs lost a key starting cornerback, Ranthony Texada, to a season-ending knee injury, the sixth defensive starter lost to injury or defection thus far.
No. 4 Michigan State was hardly impressive in defeating Air Force, 35-21.
No. 6 USC lost to Stanford 41-31, which looks even worse because Stanford had lost to Northwestern in the season opener, and 23 Northwestern, despite beating Duke 19-10 on Saturday, just isn’t that good.
No. 7 Georgia will rise at least a notch in the polls with its 52-20 rout of South Carolina as UGA quarterback Greyson Lambert had a record-setting performance.
Lambert, who transferred to Georgia from Virginia, broke an FBS record by completing 96 percent of his passes…24-for-25, 330 yards and three touchdowns, while Heisman candidate Nick Chubb rushed for 159 and two scores.
No. 8 Notre Dame whipped 14 Georgia Tech in South Bend, 30-22, in a contest that wasn’t as close as the final score. Sophomore QB DeShone Kizer, who replaced injured starter Malik Zaire, was 21/30, 242 and a touchdown. ND running back C.J. Prossie had another big afternoon, 22-198-3.
Friday night, No. 9 Florida State defeated Boston College 14-0 in a game that must have been death to watch (I was watching Mets-Yankees instead) as FSU outgained BC by 217-195. Ughh.
No. 10 UCLA held on to defeat 19 BYU, 24-23, as the Bruins’ Paul Perkins rushed for 219 yards on 26 carries, to overcome the dreadful play of freshman QB Josh Rosen, who threw three interceptions.
No. 12 Oregon defeated Georgia State, 61-28, behind backup QB Jeff Locke, who replaced Vernon Adams Jr. Adams, suffering from a broken finger, supposedly could have played.
No. 13 LSU put a fork in 18 Auburn’s season (the Tigers are finished, already), 45-21, as running back Leonard Fournette rumbled for 228 yard with three touchdowns on 19 carries.
No. 16 Oklahoma beat Tulsa 52-38 and the story in this one was Sooner quarterback Baker Mayfield, a transfer from Texas Tech, who had a school record 572 yards of total offense, 32/38, 487, 4-0, through the air and another 85 yards and two scores on the ground. As Ronald Reagan would have said, “Not bad…not bad at all.”
No. 22 Missouri avoided an upset when UConn decided to try to fake what might have been a game-tying 42-yard FG and instead had the pass intercepted…final score: Mizzou 9 UConn 6. Must have been riveting to watch this one…cough cough.
Miami remained undefeated with a 36-33 overtime win, at home, against Nebraska. It was 30-10, Miami, after three when Nebraska scored 23 points in the final 8:36, sending it into OT, whereupon Summit High School’s own Michael Badgley kicked the game-winning 28-yarder. Badgley was 5 for 5 on his field goal attempts, tying a school record.
Speaking of field goals, I was watching Wake Forest-Army up at West Point and Wake pulled the game out of their butts as kicker Mike Weaver hit a truly spectacular 47 yarder as time expired…Wake 17 Army 14.
The thing was the snap was muffed, but the holder barely managed to get the ball upright when Weaver, not missing a beat when every other kicker in the land probably would have, still nailed it.
What was very cool is he’s from upstate New York and had a lot of friends and family in attendance so it was a touching scene at the end of the contest. The sophomore kicker, who has talent but has had his rough moments, was big this time and Wake secured victory number two in what is a lock to be a 3-9 season.
Pitt lost at Iowa, 27-24 (season over for the Panthers), while Furman upset Univ. of Central Florida 16-15, UCF’s first loss to an FCS (Div. I-AA) school since 1996 when it joined the FBS.
Kennesaw State defeated (Frank) Shorter, 18-10, (Kobe) Bryant beat (Charlie) Brown 20-16, and Valparaiso manhandled the College of Faith, 86-0, as the latter’s students abandoned all hope and transferred to Ole Miss following the contest.
—And then there is Rutgers…About six hours after posting last time, Rutgers suspended head football coach Kyle Flood for three games while fining him $50,000. University president Robert Barchi told NJ Advanced Media:
“This suspension is the result of the very detailed extensive investigation that we carried out over the past several weeks regarding the allegations that the football coach had an inappropriate contact with a faculty member who was the instructor of one of our football players, a contact that is in violation of the university. That is what it’s all about. That is what it’s in response to.”
“I’m guessing at this point, every time Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany does a face palm in his Chicago office, it leaves a red mark on his forehead in the shape of a block R.
“Rutgers accepted the Big Ten’s invitation on Nov. 19, 2012, and since then, it has been one embarrassment after another. I won’t recount them here. We’ve lived through them. We’re living through them.
“So now it’s the football program, with seven arrests since the season began a couple weeks ago, and the head coach, suspended for his improper – and, in some circles, laughable – contact with a university professor in hopes of changing a grade for one of his players.
“Delany has to be horrified. Who wouldn’t be? His conference has the No. 1 team in the country, but for three straight days, ESPN turned its cameras to the most recent dumpster fire in Piscataway.
“And now predictably, the flawed storyline that probably will never go away is resurfacing: That Delany made an epic blunder when he opened his exclusive club to the Scarlet Knights….
“But the reality is, he didn’t make a mistake, and he has a few million cable boxes throughout the New York market to help him sleep at night. Delany was never tapping Rutgers for its rich athletic tradition, although the football team’s success at the time had to make that easier.
“He wanted Rutgers to put his Midwest league on the doorstep of New York City, to secure a holding on the East Coast with Maryland. He was going for the long play here, and I’m guessing – no, scratch that, I’m certain – that he would do it again knowing what he knows now.”
Last year, for example, the Penn State-Rutgers matchup (aired on the Big Ten Network) was the most watched college football game in both New York and Philadelphia.
Well, I haven’t seen the ratings for Saturday night’s meeting at Happy Valley, but Rutgers got their butts kicked, 28-3, as Penn State running backs Saquon Barkley (21-195-2) and Akeel Lynch (10-120-1) combined for 315 yards on the ground.
Afterwards, interim coach Norries Wilson gave his first press conference. As described by Dan Duggan for NJ.com:
“Typically, coaches begin a press conference with a statement and then open the floor to questions.
“But Wilson, who was the head coach at Columbia from 2006-11, went a different direction.
“ ‘Do I pick a person or pull lottery tickets or what do they get?’ he asked as he sat down at a table in front of a room full of reporters.
“Wilson then proceeded to go around the room calling on individual reporters one at a time. The first person he called on worked for Penn State athletics and was simply at the press conference to record quotes, so he didn’t have a question. Later, he called on a photographer who was only filming, and she also didn’t have a question….
“When asked about a curious decision to kick a field goal while trailing by 21 points on fourth-and-9 from the Penn State 11-yard line early in the fourth quarter (which Kyle Federico converted, still leaving them behind by three scores), Wilson was asked if it crossed his mind to go for it instead of kicking a field goal?
“ ‘Well, I decided to kick it (because) it was fourth-and-9 from the 11,’ Wilson said. ‘We had just run what we though was one of our good choices in that distance so we decided to kick the field goal.’”
Wilson was then asked why struggling QB Chris Laviano wasn’t replaced by backup Hayden Rettig.
“I didn’t think the situation called for Hayden to go into the game.”
“I’d have to go back and watch the film. I don’t want to give you an answer that’s not fully qualified.”
And that’s your Scarlet Knights football program, sports fans.
–Last week I blasted the Pennsylvania high school game between Meadville and DuBois that produced state records for rushing and passing in a 107-90 affair. Just who is playing in these games, I wondered?
So the Sept. 21 issue of Sports Illustrated actually listed the game as their “Sign of the Apocalypse.” That DuBois scored 90 points and threw for 782 yards – and lost by 17.
–And now, the latest AP Poll….
1. Ohio State 3-0 (42 first-place votes)
2. Michigan State 3-0 (7)
3. Ole Miss 3-0 (11)…wow
4. TCU 3-0
5. Baylor 2-0
6. Notre Dame 3-0
7. Georgia 3-0…surprised not 5 or 6
8. LSU 2-0 (1)
9. UCLA 3-0
10. Florida State 3-0
12. Alabama 2-1
17. Northwestern 3-0
–The schedulers lucked into an attractive Subway Series with the Mets and Yankees both playoff bound, baring a total Yankees collapse.
Friday night, Mets rookie Steven Matz ran his record to 4-0, 1.80 ERA, in just five career starts by pitching six strong in the Mets 5-1 victory. Matz has yet to yield more than two earned in any of his outings.
But Saturday afternoon, seven Yankees pitchers combined to shut out the Mets and Noah Syndergaard, 5-0, behind home runs by Carlos Beltran and Brian McCann, in a listless effort by the Metropolitans.
St. Louis 93-56
Pittsburgh 89-60…4
Chicago 87-62…6
In Thursday’s loss to the Cubs, 9-6, Pirates rookie shortstop Jung Ho Kang suffered a torn left MCL and fractured tibia and will miss the rest of play this year after the Cubs’ Chris Coghlan slid into Kang while unsuccessfully trying to break up a double play, what was clearly a dirty play and illegal slide, Coughlan not even coming close to being near the bag when he took out Kang. But Kang, through his agent, said the slide was within the spirit and rules of the game. Cubs manager Joe Maddon called Coghlan’s slide “a good, hard baseball play.”
Then Friday, Maddon went off after first baseman Anthony Rizzo was hit by a pitch in the seventh inning of the Cubs win over the Cardinals 8-3.
The Cubs believe Cardinals reliever Matt Belisle intentionally threw at Rizzo in retaliation for St. Louis outfielder Matt Holliday being hit by a pitch on the helmet in the fifth inning. Rizzo was then hit on the leg by Belisle, who was ejected along with Cardinals manager Mike Matheny.
After the game Maddon said, “I’m really disappointed in what the Cardinals did right there. We did not hit their guy on purpose. That was an absolute mistake.
“To become this vigilante group that wants to get their own pound of flesh, that’s absolutely insane, ridiculous and wrong. We don’t start stuff, but we will stop stuff.”
Maddon added: “I don’t know who put out the hit. I don’t know if Tony Soprano is in the dugout. I didn’t see him in there. We’re not going to put up with that from them or anyone else.”
Back to the Pirates, after losing to Zack Greinke and the Dodgers out in L.A. on Friday (see below), they came back on Saturday night to defeat Clayton Kershaw 3-2, Kershaw falling to 14-7, 2.18, as he lost his first game in three months, though he was solid, 3 earned in 7 innings.
Saturday the Cubs beat the Cardinals, as rookie Kris Bryant hit his 25th; the Cubbies cutting the Cards’ lead to five.
But Sunday, the Cards won 4-3, while Pittsburgh beat L.A. again by the same score, the Bucs’ Gerritt Cole improving to 17-8, 2.64.
“In the 95 years of baseball’s live-ball era, only two National League starting pitchers completed a season with an earned-run average of less than 1.75 and a winning percentage of more than .850: Dwight Gooden in 1985 and Greg Maddux in 1995.
“One of the most dominant seasons in recent memory continued Friday night, when Greinke pitched into the eighth inning and allowed only two runs and four hits in the Dodgers’ 6-2 victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates at Dodger Stadium.
“The victory established a career high in wins for Greinke (18-3), who has a major league-leading earned-run average of 1.65.”
–Some performances worthy of note since my last chat…
Wednesday, Toronto’s David Price improved to 16-5, 2.42, in the Blue Jays’ 9-1 win over the Braves, while Astros ace Dallas Keuchel was lit up for 9 earned in 4 2/3 as his record fell to 17-8. The Cy Young battle in the A.L. is between Price and Keuchel.
Bryce Harper hit his 40th home run, Wednesday, in the Nats’ 12-2 win over the Phillies. Only six others have hit 40 at age 22: Mel Ott, Joe DiMaggio, Eddie Mathews (1953 and 1954), Johnny Bench, Juan Gonzalez and Alex Rodriguez.
[Harper then hit No. 41 over the weekend and his 3-for-4 Sunday brought his average to .343, .470 OBP, .674 SLG. Stephen Strasburg had another outstanding start today with 10 strikeouts in 7 innings for the win over the Marlins.]
Prior to Sunday’s Yanks-Mets game…
Mets 84-64
Nats 78-71…6.5
–Thursday, as the Angels opened a critical 4-game series in Minnesota for the wild-card, Mike Trout hit two home runs, Nos. 37 and 38, as L.A. won game one 11-8. Then he hit No. 39 in a doubleheader sweep of the Twins on Saturday (4-3, 5-2), as the Angels tightened the wild-card race.
Meanwhile, Albert Pujols’ hitless streak went to 0-for-25 on Saturday, a record for him, before singling in the second game, one in which he got 2 RBI.
So both the Twins and Angels are 2 ½ back of the second wild-card slot behind Houston.
–Rays prospect Blake Snell was named Minor League Player of the Year by Baseball America and others. Snell finished 15-4, with a 1.41 ERA and 163 strikeouts in 134 innings.
Golf Balls
—Jason Day continued his spectacular play as he opened up the BMW Championship in Lake Forest, Ill., with a PGA Tour record-tying 61-63, and then cruised to victory in the third of the four FedEx Cup playoffs, besting Daniel Berger by six strokes.
It was his fifth title of the season (fourth in six events) and earned him the No. 1 ranking in the world. Only Tiger Woods and Vijay Singh have won five or more tournaments in a season in the last 20 years. The same two, plus Tom Weiskopf (1973) and Nick Price (1994), are also the only ones in 40+ years to win 4 in 6.
Day’s “Q-rating” continues to soar, along with Spieth’s. Rory’s? He needs to win again.
I think you still have to give Jordan Spieth Player of the Year honors, but if Day wins the Tour Championship next week he’ll clearly get it.
What would set the stage beautifully for next year, though, is if Rory McIlroy won the Tour Championship, which would only add to the anticipation for the Masters and the other majors.
—Tiger Woods announced on Friday that he had undergone a second microdiscectomy surgery on his back Wednesday. It was March of last year that he underwent his first one, which limited that season to only seven PGA Tour starts.
Woods won’t play the rest of the year but said he is hopeful for an “early 2016” return.
“This is certainly disappointing, but I’m a fighter,” Woods said. “I’ve been told I can make a full recovery, and I have no doubt that I will.”
Woods said on his website that he had felt discomfort in his back and hip in recent weeks, including during his season-ending 10th place finish at the Wyndham Championship last month. Woods had a small disk fragment that was pinching a nerve removed.
The surgery was a surprise in that Tiger had committed to play in the Frys.com Open next month, but in a previously scheduled follow-up doctor exam, the new issue was discovered.
The same surgeon in Park City, Utah, performed both surgeries.
–Speaking of fantasy sports sites, as noted in a piece for Bloomberg, it’s estimated that players on DraftKings and FanDuel spent a combined $60 million on entry fees the first weekend of the NFL season, vs. sports bookies in Vegas who were expected to handle about $30 million.
But just as in Vegas, you have some serious gamblers on the fantasy sites. One 27-year-old, Saahil Sud, told RotoGrinders, a stats site for players, that he’s made more than $2 million so far this year from his two-bedroom apartment in downtown Boston. Sud, a data scientist and former software consultant, “spends 8 to 10 hours a day scraping data from various public sources online, creating predictive models, and using software he’s built to generate lineups. He says he submits about 200 entries nightly during baseball season and more than 1,000 a week when the NFL plays. He risks an average of $140,000 a day and averages 8 percent in profit a night. He wins and loses thousands with every touchdown, field goal, and interception….
“During the first half of the current baseball season, only the best 1.3 percent of players won money, according to analysis of one unnamed daily fantasy site published in July by Sports Business Journal.”
DraftKings spent $21.8 million on roughly 5,800 commercials in the seven days ending Sept. 10. The company has 4.5 million users, up from 1 million in April.
Premier League
Chelsea finally picked up its second win of the season after losing three of its first five; when the defending champions had lost only three all last season. So manager Jose Mourinho is under the gun but Saturday’s 2-0 win over Arsenal quieted the masses for at least a week.
But in reading a piece by Joshua Robinson of the Wall Street Journal, he offered this:
“Inside the bubbling pressure cooker of the English Premier League, off-years aren’t allowed. This is a league that fires managers more than three times as often as the NFL. In the course of any given Premier League season, up to half the 20 clubs will make a change in the dugout….
“Chelsea’s volatile billionaire owner Roman Abramovich made a rare appearance at practice late last week. He has disposed of nine managers since buying the club in 2003. When Abramovich makes surprise visits, it isn’t to award Employee of the Month.”
By the way, I watched the Chelsea-Arsenal contest and what a total [cue Jeff Spicoli] striker Diego Costa is. Followers of the sport know where I’m coming from.
West Ham handed Manchester City its first loss, 2-1; Manchester United came back to defeat Southampton 3-2; Tottenham defeated Crystal Palace 1-0 and has yielded just four goals in its first six; Norwich had a great effort in tying Liverpool, 1-1, with the Norwich goalie playing super when I was watching this one; newbie Bournemouth shut out Sunderland 2-0.
Speaking of newbies, Bournemouth is 14 in the standings, Watford is 10 and Norwich is 11.
Standings after six of 38…
1. Man City 5 (W) 0 (D) 1 (L)…15 points
2. Man U 4-1-1…13
3. West Ham 4-0-2…12
4. Leicester 3-3-0…12
5. Arsenal 3-1-2…10
9. Tottenham 2-3-1…9
13. Liverpool 2-2-2…8
15. Chelsea 2-1-3…7
Stoke, Newcastle and Sunderland are winless thus far.
—Denny Hamlin won the first of the 10-race Chase for the Sprint Cup in Chicago, while defending champ Kevin Harvick got into it in the pits with six-time champion Jimmie Johnson over an altercation that dropped Harvick to the back of the field. To be continued….
–One more on the passing of NBA legend Moses Malone, your editor having noted in the immediate aftermath that I admired his work ethic more than anything.
This week in Sports Illustrated, Jack McCallum writes:
“(An) argument could be made that if you had to choose one center to win one game, you would go for the three-time MVP over all others, not because he was better offensively than Wilt Chamberlain or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, better defensively than Bill Russell, or better athletically than Hakeem Olajuwon or David Robinson. He was none of those. But over 48 minutes Moses would absolutely not be intimidated or outworked, no matter the opponent.”
—Stephen Curry returned to his alma mater, Davidson, on Thursday as part of the school’s homecoming festivities, and you can imagine the campus went nuts. Very cool on Steph’s part.
Curry also extended his deal with Under Armour through 2024. The terms weren’t disclosed but you can imagine it is quite substantial, plus he receives an ownership stake in the company, according to ESPN’s Darren Rovell.
–This story was in every paper around the world on Saturday…a female zookeeper having been killed by a Sumatran tiger at Hamilton Zoo in New Zealand. She opened a gate to allow the zoo’s three tigers to enter a public viewing area and somehow what should have been a routine exercise turned deadly.
It’s not clear if the zoo intends to euthanize the tiger responsible.
–We note the passing of novelist Jackie Collins, who died of breast cancer at the age of 77. Her longtime publicist said Jackie sold some 500 million books. The Collins family in a statement said, “She was a true inspiration, a trail blazer for women in fiction and a creative force. She will live on through her characters but we already miss her beyond words.”
Jackie was of course the sister of actress Joan Collins.
–So when I first started seeing commercials for the upcoming movie, “Black Mass,” the way it was shown I just thought it was another mob movie. Then I went online and it said it was the Whitey Bulger story. So I thought, tens of millions in America know who Whitey Bulger is, why the heck don’t they say so in the ad?
Well, on Saturday I saw the first ad that said, “Black Mass: The Whitey Bulger Story.” Finally. The thing is it’s getting great reviews and reading one from TIME just now, Johnny Depp is super in the title role. In fact he bore such a resemblance to Bulger, during shooting he scared some local residents.
—The Who had to cancel the rest of their North American tour as it was revealed singer Roger Daltrey had been diagnosed with viral meningitis.
“We are very sorry to disappoint our fans in this way,” Daltrey said in a statement. “For the last four weeks, I have been in and out of the hospital (and) am now on the mend and feeling a lot better but I am going to need a considerable time to recover.”
Top 3 songs for the week 9/25/82: #1 “Abracadabra” (The Steve Miller Band) #2 “Jack & Diane” (John Cougar) #3 “Hard To Say I’m Sorry” (Chicago…whatever …)…and…#4 “Eye Of The Tiger” (Survivor) #5 “You Should Hear How She Talks About You” (Melissa Manchester… who, tell me…) #6 “Eye In The Sky” (The Alan Parsons Project…these guys weren’t bad…) #7 “Who Can It Be Now?” (Men at Work…this one hasn’t aged well…) #8 “Somebody’s Baby” (Jackson Browne…ain’t mine, kid…) #9 “Hurts So Good” (John Cougar…he was kind of hot back then…) #10 “Love In In Control” (Donna Summer)
Baseball Quiz Answer: This was in ESPN The Magazine, a story on Julio Franco. So….
Pete Rose 559
Julio Franco 409
Carlton Fisk 403
Fisk 232
Franco 213
Rose 204
