Baseball Quiz: Name the five highest-paid players in this season. Answer below.
The Masters
Wow…I went through a bunch of Kleenex after Bubba Watson pulled off a stunning shot on the second hole of a playoff with Louis Oosthuizen to secure his first major at Augusta. No doubt the vast majority of golf fans, at least those in America, were pulling for Phil Mickelson to pick up his fourth green jacket at the start of play on Sunday, but with the ever-popular Watson’s win, golf received a huge shot in the arm of a different kind. A new mega-star to draw the masses. A guy who’s never had a lesson, refuses to have a team of coaches, one who wears his emotions on his sleeve, and is just a good guy.
So congratulations, Bubba. Here’s hoping there are many more joyous Sundays like today.
Meanwhile, the 2012 Masters will also be remembered for…
Oosthuizen’s spectacular double-eagle on No. 2, the first ever on the hole and just the fourth double-eagle in history at the event.
Mickelson’s unreal triple-bogey on No. 4, from which he never fully recovered.
The play of Fred Couples, the oldest 36-hole leader at age 52. It would have been asking way too much for Freddie to still be there after round four, but he did hang in to finish T-12.
Tiger Woods’ surly, totally unprofessional behavior as both he and his game melted down.
Separately, a note on Hank Haney’s book, “The Big Miss,” written about his former pupil, Tiger. As reported by Golfweek, “PGA Tour players aren’t too pleased… Freedom of speech aside, they simply feel that loyalty and trust were breached. In that sense, many believe Hank Haney swung and missed by penning (the book).”
“(Writing) that it’s cold between him and his wife, that’s absolute utter bulls—,” said Ernie Els. “His job is to help the guy with his [expletive] golf swing, and the rest stays [inside].”
Hunter Mahan told Golfweek “he was appalled that people such as Haney and caddie Steve Williams, who has criticized Woods publicly, have turned their backs on Woods after profiting nicely: ‘I think it’s morally wrong,’ Mahan said.”
Ball Bits
—New York Mets 3-0…New York Yankees 0-3.
I was so giddy Sunday evening, I yelled out my third floor window to a little boy in the parking lot.
Kids. No respect for their elders these days.
Anyway, kind of cool that the Mets just handed pitcher Jonathon Niese a new five-year contract and all he did on Sunday in his first start was reward management by no-hitting the Braves for six innings on the way to victory.
As for the Yankees, the last time they started out 0-3 was 1998, and all they did that year was win 114 (114-48) and the World Series, so fans of the team need not get suicidal. [In fact after losing their first three that year, the Yankees went 92-27…good gawd!]
–And how about those 0-3 Red Sox?! Nothing like a crappy bullpen to ruin one’s day, weekend, and year.
–After blowing a save in the Yankees opener against Tampa Bay, Mariano Rivera is 60-for-62 in save opportunities against them.
–It’s amazing to think Alex Rodriguez is starting his ninth season with the Yankees. It’s also still amazing to think he’s signed through 2017.
–A bunch of you have already written in on how much you enjoy listening to the Dodgers’ Vin Scully, through the MLB Network or other venues.
T.J. Simers / Los Angeles Times…on Scully explaining his “love affair” with baseball.
“He talks about standing beside Jackie Robinson in left field at Yankee Stadium during a 1953 World Series workout. And he talks about how excited he was to watch Dee Gordon make a great play at shortstop in the opener Thursday.
“ ‘I tried to play the game,’ says Scully, a center fielder at Fordham. ‘Yale had a pitcher, Frank Quinn. We’re talking 1947. When Quinn graduated he got $100,000 to sign with the Washington Senators. I was so excited for the chance to play him.
“ ‘The point being, I know what it’s like to play this game and how these guys make it look easy. And it’s so bloody hard. I don’t find it boring; I find it amazing the things these guys can do.’”
“ ‘Gil Hodges goes home for the birth of his first child, we’re in Battle Creek, Mich., for an exhibition game, and manager Burt Shotton tells me I’m going to suit up,’ Scully says.
“ ‘They didn’t have a uniform, so I had to wear Hodges’. I was 140 pounds of dynamite and Gil was a marble statue. I put his uniform on and ‘Dodgers’ comes down to my belly…
“ ‘They tell me to go shag fly balls, so I’m out there and Roy Campanella hits a ball about eye high on a dead line to center. I catch it but I’ve never felt a ball hit my mitt with such impact. I knew I didn’t belong out there; what am I, crazy? I left the field.’
“ ‘I head to the clubhouse and kids want Hodges’ autograph. I’m telling them I’m not Gil, but these two kids stay with me the whole way and I’m thinking what a sweet guy Gil is and these kids are going to think Hodges won’t sign for them.
“ ‘So I signed Gil’s name, remembering he made a little circle above the ‘i’ in Gil. I’m embarrassed to say it, but if those kids are still living, they think they have Hodges’ autograph.’”
–This sucks. Milwaukee Brewers fans gave Ryan Braun a rousing standing ovation in the team’s home opener, this after Braun’s off-season positive test for steroids.
“I truly appreciate it from the bottom of my heart. It meant a lot to me,” Braun said.
I’ve lost a lot of respect for Milwaukee as a result of the fan reaction, and I’m thinking of boycotting Usinger’s for all my summer-sausage needs. At least Braun went 0-for-5. [But is 4-for-12 after the first three games.]
—Cleveland and Toronto set an opening day record by going 16 innings. 540 pitches were thrown between the two teams, eventually won by Toronto, 7-4.
–In winning their first contest 1-0, the Mets moved to 33-10 in their last 43 openers, a record. And I need to note the Mets did indeed sell out the game, after the organization was panicking it wouldn’t.
–Next Bar Chat, our EXCLUSIVE look at the first five or so games as we project out full-year stats. The crack staff is sequestered in a nearby hotel and is given just three bathroom breaks a day, plus tea and biscuits, as they pour over the initial data.
Gregg Williams
Documentary filmmaker Sean Pamphilon released audio recordings of then-New Orleans Saints defensive coordinator Gregg Williams exhorting his players to “put a lick” on 49ers receiver Kyle Williams. Gregg Williams also tells his players to “beat (running back) Frank Gore’s head,” and “lay out” QB Alex Smith.
Pamphilon, working on a documentary on former Saints special teams standout Steve Gleason, who has ALS, was given behind the scenes access to the Saints, which is where he recorded Williams’ speech ahead of New Orleans’ 36-32 playoff loss to the 49ers in January. Gleason says the recording never should have been released without his permission.
Bobby Petrino
Last Sunday, Arkansas football coach Petrino had a motorcycle accident with a female passenger on board, an employee of the school, and Petrino told a passer-by not to call 911. So Petrino then gets a ride back to campus where he was met by a state trooper who provides his personal security during the season.
The passer-by described a scene where Petrino and the employee, Jessica Dorrell, “were getting up out of the ditch.” He said Petrino was “walking, but it looked like his face was bleeding quite a lot.”
Petrino was met by his personal security guard after getting a ride to Fayetteville, and the guard, Capt. Lance King, drove him to the hospital, where Petrino was treated for broken ribs and a cracked neck vertebra. Jessica Dorrell had been taken to her own car in town and she never went to the hospital.
On Tuesday, Petrino had a press conference explaining the accident and never mentioned Dorrell, saying “no other individuals” were involved. On Thursday, he issued a statement acknowledging the 25-year-old. She had just been hired by Petrino March 28 as the student-athlete development coordinator.
So Petrino is in major trouble for a number of reasons. He failed to mention having Dorrell with him during the accident and then admitted having an inappropriate relationship with her. The athletic director is now deciding whether or not to fire Petrino, who has a $3.5 million salary, since Petrino’s contract has a clause that says he can be let go for conduct that “negatively or adversely affects the reputation of the (university’s) athletics program in any way.”
Petrino is currently on indefinite paid leave. In apologizing, he said he had been concerned about protecting his family and keeping an “inappropriate relationship from becoming public.”
I mean this is a big deal, especially in light of all the other scandals in college football and basketball, starting with Penn State and Syracuse.
Arkansas, in the midst of spring practice, finished the season No. 5 last year.
1. Indiana
2. Louisville
3. Kentucky
4. Florida
5. Michigan
6. Syracuse
7. Gonzaga
8. North Carolina
9. Arizona
10. Memphis
Nothing on San Diego State. The Aztecs win it all, next year, sports fans!
[Also looks like another dreadful season for the ACC.]
–Syracuse center Fab Melo is entering the NBA draft. Sounds like the sophomore wasn’t exactly a whiz in the classroom, so what the hell. Ohio State’s Jared Sullinger also announced he was going pro. I don’t think Sullinger will be the pro many would have said he’ll be if asked the question a year ago. He’ll just be one of many solid players, but not an All-Star.
–Sports Illustrated asked a dozen of their writers to name “The No. 1 fan experiences in the sports they know best.”
1. Wrigley Field Bleachers
2. Caribbean Series (Santiago, Dominican Republic)
3. College World Series…gotta do this someday
4. Duke vs. North Carolina
5. Lambeau Field
6. British Open at St. Andrews
7. Indianapolis 500…agree, off of my one experience in the early 1980s
8. Notre Dame football
9. Bruins at Canadiens…should do this one time too
10. Wimbledon…no desire
11. NBA Finals Game 7
12. Penn Relays…nice choice
I’m prejudiced…I would have added the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials, baby! Just about two months away for the kid.
SI does list 12 other off-beat venues, and one is Pre’s Rock, where runner Steve Prefontaine died in a 1975 car crash. I’ll be taking in this one for a third time in June.
–Tickets to see Usain Bolt in the 100-meter finals at the London Olympics are going for $1,000 already.
Bolt is the London Games. Without him, fan interest is minimal, I suspect. Just stay healthy, Usain!
Imagine, 16 days of Olympics, but it’s all about 9.5 seconds or so. His agent, by the way, said Bolt will keep competing until the 2017 World Championships, also in London.
–The New York Daily News’ Wayne Coffey had a great piece on Tim Tebow and his prison ministry; as in Tebow has spoken to prisoners, including those on death row, at least ten times and to a man, those inmates interviewed had nothing but high praise for the new Jets quarterback. For example:
“Gerald Evans, 43, is an armed robber whose eight-year sentence ends in November.
“ ‘It’s hard to fool people who are incarcerated,’ Evans says. ‘They can see right through you. They can tell when a guy’s faking, every time.
“ ‘Tim Tebow, he brought a charge to people here. He brought inspiration to people here. He is as real as you can get.’”
—Isiah Thomas was fired as the basketball coach at Florida International after going 26-65 in three seasons. Knicks fans are already having nightmares because of Thomas’ friendship with James Dolan, chairman of Madison Square Garden. Dolan could opt to bring Isiah back.
On the other hand, there are reports John Calipari, despite his denials to the contrary, might be interested in returning to the NBA. So if the Knicks don’t retain interim coach Mike Woodson (and they surely won’t if they don’t make the playoffs), Calipari could be the Knicks’ next leader.
–Mike Lupica / New York Daily News…channeling your editor, who first said last week what Lupica has in his Sunday column.
“Can’t David Stern do something with those draft-night ping pong balls of his so that Kentucky’s Anthony Davis ends up in Brooklyn next season?”
–Nice job, Michael Jordan, owner, Charlotte Bobcats. Your 7-47 Bobcats, that is. Charlotte still hasn’t won consecutive games all season. If they fail to win another game, they would finish the season with a .106 winning percentage that would rank as the worst in league history, besting the 1972-73 Philadelphia 76ers, who finished 9-73 in a non-lockout shortened season, leaving them with a .110 winning percentage.
Charlotte also has a negative-12.8 point differential per game, which would be second-worst in NBA history, trailing only the 1992-93 Dallas Mavericks. [Ben Bolch / L.A. Times]
–What a bizarre deal the other night as the Knicks took on the Orlando Magic, in Orlando. Prior to the game, Magic coach Stan Van Gundy said he knew there were some on the team who wanted him fired, specifically superstar Dwight Howard, in what was described as “a jaw-dropping display of candor.”
Talk about dysfunction. The Knicks rolled, 96-80. Van Gundy apparently will be fired, but not until after the season ends.
—John Cooper was the basketball coach at Tennessee State, the school that handed Murray State its only regular-season loss this year, and now Cooper has been named the new head coach at Miami (Ohio) University. Good for him.
–Congratulations to Boston College for winning the Frozen Four, NCAA hockey title, 4-1 over upstart Ferris State. It was BC’s fifth NCAA title and third in five years. The Eagles won their last 19 contests. I watched just a little of BC’s semifinal win over Minnesota, and Eagles goaltender Parker Milner is indeed outstanding. Ferris State had defeated Union in the other semi.
–I’m getting fired up to watch some NHL playoff action and root on the New York Rangers. But neat thing happened in Winnipeg on Saturday night, as the visiting Tampa Bay Lightning beat the Jets 4-3. Tampa Bay’s Steven Stamkos scored his 60th goal of the season and was given a standing ovation by the hockey crazed Winnipeg fans, a class act.
Just 19 players in NHL history have scored 60 or more in a single season and Stamkos was just the second to do so since 1996; Alex Ovechkin scoring 65 in the 2007-08 season for Washington.
[Stamkos also set a NHL record this year with five overtime goals.]
1. Florida
2. Florida State
3. North Carolina
4. Kentucky
5. Texas A&M
6. Stanford
7. UCLA
8. Arizona
9. Arkansas
10. South Carolina
I have to give Wake Forest credit for winning one of three in each of their recent series against Florida State and North Carolina, as well as being competitive in all four losses. Wake is 5-8 in ACC play. Both wins were extra-inning affairs.
And Wake’s Kevin Jordan, the freshman who last year received a kidney from the Demon Deacs coach, Tom Walter, is playing again and hitting .228, which ain’t all bad seeing as Jordan is still just regaining his strength.
–Wake Forest’s Chris Givens remains ranked No. 7 among wide receivers for the upcoming NFL draft.
–Emmanuel S. reminded me that the Premier League’s rule that the bottom three in the standings each year are relegated is actually the rule for Europe’s other major leagues as well.
—Anchorage, Alaska broke its all-time snow record on Saturday as 3.4 inches fell, bringing the total to 133.6 inches.
–Here’s a scary one, a Ryanair flight from Italy to England on Friday, as the pilot called “Mayday” just 15 minutes after they had taken off from Bergamo.
“As the pressure in the cabin began to drop, the 134 passengers were said to watch as they descended towards the snow-capped Swiss Alps at a rate of 4,200-feet a minute.
“The pilot released oxygen masks and was forced to land the Boeing 737 at Frankfurt, Germany.”
If you’ve flown over the Alps, imagine dropping about four miles in five minutes before the pilot was able to level off.
Ryanair said the pilot received a pressurization warning, deployed the oxygen masks, and descended to 10,000 feet as recommended. 13 passengers suffered minor injuries.
–Tim Tebow inspired sandwich at the Carnegie Deli in New York, the Jetbow: 3 ½ pounds of roast beef, pastrami, corned beef, American cheese, mayo, lettuce and tomato on white bread. [Cost: $22.22.]
–Ordinarily I would comment on the death of artist Thomas Kinkade, 54, in this space but I’m going go to save some comments for that other column I do, because his is as much a financial story as an artistic one. For now, let’s just say the “Painter of Light” reportedly earned $53 million alone for his works from 1997 to 2005.
“But unsuspecting Easter egg hunters may find more than chocolate this weekend as redback spiders have thrived in recent mild weather.
“Vernon Austen first noticed a redback in the bathroom of his family’s West Ryde home at Christmas. While mowing his lawn last weekend he found more than 20 of the poisonous spiders under the base of his six-year-old’s sandpit.”
Pest control expert Dennis Kokontis, said the mild weather and heavy rain had been a boon for many pests, including white tip spiders, also poisonous.
Did you know that funnel-web and trap-door spiders can live for up to several years?
I love Australia, but you can be in downtown Sydney and have a scary encounter with insects.
–The New York Post’s Michael Kane had a story over the weekend on the making of “Animal House.” Chevy Chase turned down the role of Otter, to filmmakers’ relief, who feared his being in it might associate the National Lampoon too much with “Saturday Night Live.” So Tim Matheson was hired for the role.
But then studio execs wanted one “name” actor to “punch up the movie poster,” so they signed Donald Sutherland to play pot-loving Professor Jennings, but the production could only afford to pay him for one day, $35,000.
The entire film took just one month to shoot and went “surprisingly smoothly, perhaps because the cast was almost entirely newcomers eager to make a good first impression. Even Belushi was in a sober period. [Belushi was the only sure thing in terms of the cast from the outset.]
So it debuted on July 24, 1978, premiering at the Astor Theatre in Times Square. Roger Ebert wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times, “The movie is vulgar, raunchy, ribald and occasionally scatological. It is also the funniest comedy since Mel Brooks made ‘The Producers.’”
Despite its ‘R’ rating, “Animal House” was No. 1 in North America for eight straight weeks and earned $140 million (more than $500 million today).
“Warner Bros. passed. Universal Studios boss Ned Tanen said, after eyeing the outline, ‘Everybody is drunk, high or getting laid. I hate this treatment. I’d never make this movie!’ He didn’t change his mind until producers promised to bring it in for less than $3 million.”
The University of Missouri also passed on the flick, with the University of Oregon agreeing to stand in for fictional Faber College for the month’s shoot. An abandoned frat house became the fictional Delta Tau Chi
—Chief Jay Strongbow died; real name Joe Scarpa. Yes, that Chief Jay Strongbow, the American Indian wrestler, one of the best known of his time. His age was variously listed as between 79 and 83. He wasn’t real tall, about 6 feet, but he weighed 250 pounds and at his peak, he was a huge draw in Madison Square Garden and other arenas. In the 1960s he began winning tag team and individual titles, but it wasn’t until 1970 he put on his feathered headdress and joined Vince McMahon’s World Wide Wrestling Federation as Chief Jay Strongbow.
The thing is, Joe Scarpa was actually Italian-American, born in Philadelphia.
–Update: South Africa has barred Vietnamese nationals who have applied to hunt rhinos in the country because it has not been assured that they will not illegally sell the horns. I didn’t realize nearly 60% of the rhino hunting requests since January 2010 came from Vietnam. [South China Morning Post]
–Us Weekly reports that Kristen Wiig, Jason Sudekis and Andy Samberg are leaving SNL at the end of the season, which would be a huge blow.
—Jim Marshall died, 88. Marshall’s stacked amplifiers changed the sound of rock ‘n’ roll. It was in the early 1960s that Marshall invented what became known as the Marshall JTM45 amplifier and his amps are used to this day.
Top 3 songs for the week 4/10/65: #1 “I’m Telling You Now” (Freddie and The Dreamers) #2 “Stop! In The Name Of Love” (The Supremes) #3 “Can’t You Hear My Heartbeat” (Herman’s Hermits)…and…#4 “Shotgun” (Jr. Walker and The All Stars) #5 “The Birds And The Bees” (Jewel Akens) #6 “King Of The Road” (Roger Miller…one of the five or six most underrated artists of all time) #7 “Game Of Love” (Wayne Fontana & The Mindbenders… do this one very well after I’ve lubed up with some domestic) #8 “Nowhere To Run” (Martha & The Vandellas) #9 “I Know A Place” (Petula Clark…my favorite of hers) #10 “Red Roses For A Blue Lady” (Vic Dana… classic Easy Listening tune which helped make this era so great…that it could be a on a top ten list at the height of the British Invasion)
Baseball Quiz Answer: Five-highest salaries for 2012…
1. A-Rod…$30,000,000
2. Vernon Wells, LAA…$24,642,857
3. CC Sabathia…NYY…$24,285,714
4. Johan Sanatana…NYM…$23,145,011
5. Mark Teixeira…NYY…$23,125,000
6. Prince Fielder…DET…$23,000,000
(tie) Joe Mauer…MIN…$23,000,000
