•Fed up with the Ducks' — and LeGarrette Blount's — performance on opening night, one Oregon alumnus sent coach Chip Kelly an invoice for his ticket and travel expenses. He received a personal check from Kelly for $439. Getting a refund for an awful product? I hope Jerry Jones has $1.3 billion in his checking account.

•Do you know there are 1-year-old children who've never seen the Yankees make the playoffs? New York rectified that, clinching at least a wild card spot with a 6-5 win in Anaheim. And if Derek Jeter is so valuable to his team, why couldn't he will them to the playoffs last year without Sabathia and Teixeira?

•The dreaded swine flu is running rampant through Gainesville; six more Gator players and an assistant coach have come down with H1N1. Expect Tebow to lay his hands on them, and cast the disease out into a herd of pigs, who drown themselves in the Galilee.

•Zack Greinke shut down the Red Sox, and somehow lowered his ERA. Anyone who says he doesn't deserve the Cy Young should be dragged out into the street and shot. He's never going to have a chance to win anything ever again.

•Curt Schilling announced on "Joe Buck Live" that he won't run for Massachusetts' vacant Senate seat. Expect him to show up on election day with a bloody petition that puts him on the ballot.

•Perhaps after seeing Kim Clijsters win the US Open, former no. 1 Justine Henin will be making her return to tennis. She's missing something though. If only she had read every single goddamn article about Clijsters she would know that having a baby during her time off was a key component of her comeback.

•Thanks to SportsbyBrooks for bringing this to our attention: in America, crazy drunken fans run across the field. In Canada, they climb the goalposts. I believe that's called a rouge and is worth 2½ points.

Aaron Smith, of (I assume) Las Vegas, put down two bets totaling $21,750 on last Thursday's matchup between the Royals and Indians, What would possess someone to do such a thing? Well, Zack Greinke was pitching and that guy like ... never loses.

Even if you hadn't read this story from last week, you could probably guess how this one ends. Greinke and his bullpen blow a 3-1 lead and the game-winning RBI in the tenth bounces off a seagull that had parked himself in the outfield. Royals lose! Now Smith—a man who willingly wagered over $20,000 on the Royals— somehow thinks he has the worst bad beat story of all-time and will give $1,000 to anyone who can top it. That shouldn't be too hard. (Especially since the Indians had two on and nobody out against Kyle Farnsworth. The bird was the least of your issues. Of course, this contest make no sense unless the guy is trying to sell something—or he's an even worse gambler than we imagine.)

But walk into any poker room in the country and say, "Boy, did I have some rotten luck today," and you'll have 50 degenerate gamblers swarming you with sob stories that would make the hardest leg-breaking mob enforcer weep.

And to think all this guy lost was money!

When birds attack: a terrible gambling story, and $1,000 offer if you can top it [Ball Star]
Cleveland's Flock Of Seagulls Scores Another Hit [Deadspin]

In the last month alone, three baseball players have retreated to the disabled list with cases of social anxiety disorder. Some doctors — including Dr. Allan Lans, who called the diagnoses "a little off the wall" — are beginning to question the validity of these mental disorders, but these illnesses are not necessarily new among athletes. And as more athletes admit to their struggles with depression, social anxiety and burnout, recovery narratives are abundant.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Zack Greinke, Sports Illustrated

That's the game Bell and Baird grew up in. But on that February morning, they saw a young pitcher in pain, and they told him to go home and stop thinking about baseball. "There's business and there's personal," says Baird, now a special assistant with the Boston Red Sox. "And most times in the game, business comes ahead of personal. But I think in this situation, we were talking something bigger than business. There's right and wrong, and I don't think there was any gray area here."

Greinke took two months off, during which he was found to have social anxiety disorder, a condition marked by tension in social settings. He began taking medication, which made a big difference. He began to think more positively about baseball, too, which made a big difference. When he returned to pitch that June, at Double-A Wichita, he found himself enjoying the experience. He started to throw as hard as he could.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Elena Delle Donne, The New York Times

But, by age 13, she said, she began to notice a lack of fulfillment. She did not seem to enjoy basketball as much as the other girls. This startled her because she was the star and thought she should be having even more fun than her teammates. She kept her feelings to herself but felt a growing, gnawing discontent. Why am I doing this? Because I want to? Because everybody else wants me to?

"I was overdriving myself because I was so into becoming the best," Delle Donne said. "I always thought someone else was working harder than me, which really made me go nuts with it. It wasn't fun. It was like a job, and it was a job I wasn't getting paid for."

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Chamique Holdsclaw, Sports Illustrated

On July 28 Holdsclaw played in her final game of the '04 season, and the Mystics' front office cited undisclosed "medical reasons" to explain her departure. Rumors swirled: Was she pregnant? Addicted to drugs? Suffering from cancer? Three months later Holdsclaw went public with her diagnoses of clinical depression, discussing it with reporters in her lawyer's office.

"Looking back, I wish I had gone up to somebody in the front office earlier and said, 'Look, I'm having a tough time. I need some time off,'" she says. "But I saw my situation as embarrassing. There's a stigma, especially in the African-American community. We're such prayerful people, the answer is always, 'Let's go and pray.'"

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Shaun Andrews, The New York Times

Andrews said he had seen a psychiatrist last summer in Little Rock, and then in Philadelphia, but that he was not currently undergoing counseling. He did say he was taking antidepressant medication, along with the drug Adderall to treat attention-deficit disorder. He said he understood that some people had little sympathy for a highly paid professional athlete, that even some of his teammates might feel he was exaggerating, or using depression as an excuse for an indifference to football. "That's fine," he said. "I don't work for them. They don't pay my bills. They don't take care of my family."

"A lot of people say football should help you channel your anger and aggression," Andrews said. "But it's not as easy as people think it is."

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Josh Hamilton, ESPN The Magazine

Two years earlier, in 2006, not long before he was reinstated by Major League Baseball after years of drug addiction and depression, Hamilton had a dream. In it he was being interviewed by a female TV reporter at a Home Run Derby at Yankee Stadium. He had a bat in his hands, but he didn't know how many home runs he had hit. He couldn't even tell what uniform he was wearing.

"The nerves don't hit you until you're actually there," he said, recounting the Derby as a line formed inside the bookstore. "I was the last guy to hit, so after the introductions, I went back inside the clubhouse and took off my shirt and unbuckled my pants and flopped down on a couch. The couches are so deep, people behind me didn't even know I was there. When the contest got to about the fifth guy, I popped up, and everybody was like, 'Aren't you in this thing?' That's when I started to get ready. That's when I started feeling it."

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Warrick Dunn, The Sporting News

Yet there is a sad irony to his warm deeds. No matter the considerable joy he has brought others, he has been engulfed all these years by a void that even his kindness can't negate. The depression that has overwhelmed him for the past 12 years, since robbers gunned down his mother just after his 18th birthday, has prevented him from truly feeling good about himself or about what he has done for others.

"His mother wasn't just his mother; she was his soul mate," says Maelen "Choo-Choo" Brooks, who coached Dunn as a youngster and is a man so close to Dunn that Dunn calls him "Pops." Brooks says, "She would call him 'my little man.' When she passed, she left a hole inside him that didn't want to heal."

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Barret Robbins, San Francisco Chronicle

This time, Barret Robbins says, he didn't check into a country club. A probation violation last spring landed him in a locked-down, substance-abuse treatment facility in Houston, where he sleeps in a dormitory room filled with bunk beds and as many as 19 other men wrestling with drug addiction and mental illness. His day starts at 5 a.m. and ends with lights out at 10 p.m. Usually, he says, he is so drained by all the group meetings and heavy emotional lifting that he falls asleep by 8:30, his 350-pound body stretched over a narrow, twin-bed mattress.

"I can't complain about a single bed," Robbins said by phone the other day, "not when you consider where I've been."

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Ricky Williams, Los Angeles Times

It wasn't until a year ago that he was diagnosed with social-anxiety disorder, a syndrome that leaves sufferers with an intense fear of scrutiny by people in social situations. With therapy and medication, he has made what he and others believe are dramatic steps toward a normal lifestyle.

"I'm finally at peace with myself," he said Tuesday. "I'm getting through this. I'm definitely at a point where I can help a lot of people."

Here's a look at some of the goings on around baseball:

• Phil Hughes did his part in helping the Yankees suck by making it through just over one inning and giving up 8 runs to the Orioles before being replaced by New York's spectacular bullpen. Miraculously, the Yanks only lost 12-5.

• The amazing Zack Greinke was handed his first loss of the season by the Angels in a 1-0 LA win. Despite the loss, Greinke still pitched a four hit, one run complete game. Way to underachieve, kid.

• Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau hit back-to-back homeruns two nights in a row, a fact that does not please Mauer.
""I hit a home run, it doesn't happen a whole lot," Mauer said. "Then he's got to go back and show everybody that he can do it too." To which Morneau replied "Na na na na naa naa" and stuck his tongue out.

It's all about the moms today, so expect a lot of emotional ceremonies and junk. Today's Mother of the Year award sponsored by Joba Chamberlain.

Why wouldn't you? Six wins, three complete games, two shutouts. Two earned runs? And he's sick in the head! Adversity, overcome. He's like Jim Abbott, Josh Hamilton and Christy Mathewson all rolled into one! Oh ... he's also a Kansas City Royal, which is like being handicapped in its own way.

There is absolutely nothing you can't like about this guy. Even his name is cool: Zaaaaack Greinke. The sounds like the alter ego of a comic book hero. Oh, man. I'm getting lightheaded just thinking about his curveball. I need some help here, Joe P.:

It was startling to watch. But there was something even more remarkable than Greinke's brilliance. The night was alive. Monday night baseball games in Kansas City's springtime have been dead affairs for many years. It only figures. Monday is a school night. Spring evenings in the heartland can be chilly. The Royals have routinely gotten off to sluggish starts (which have, traditionally, transitioned into sluggish middles and then sluggish finishes).

But Monday night felt like a bit of Kansas City past, going back to the 1970s and 1980s, when the Royals always seemed to win. A crowd of 21,843 may not make people across America gasp, but this was a Monday night in Kansas City, and there were probably 10,000 more people in Kauffman Stadium just because Zack Greinke was pitching. And it was a different kind of crowd, too....

[Cue "Battle Hymn Of The Republic"]

At the time he was uncertain if he would ever return. He was found to be suffering from social anxiety disorder and depression. He started to take some medication. After a few weeks away, he gingerly returned to baseball.

Now here it is, three years later, and he's pitching about as well as it is possible to pitch. Every time he comes out, it is an event, a happening. That's what it was on Monday. A happening.

He makes me proud to be an American, is what he does. Damn proud.

6-0…Zackkkkkkkkkk Greinke! [Ladies ...]
The Secret to Greinke's Success [Why's My Head Growing?]
Rumors and Rants » Blog Archive » Zack and AP Make A Porno [Rumors and Rants]
Zack Greinke's Quest for the Cy Young [Simon On Sports]
Greinke is magic on the mound [KC Star]

We don't know Zack Greinke, but we have heard some interviews with him from 610-AM sports radio in Kansas City, and, well, we find it difficult to imagine that he's plagued by existential dread and angst. That is to say: We're not sure the elevator goes up to that floor.

First, last year's famous "he cried when he hard Brad and Jennifer broke up, and then this week's gripping discussion of whatever the heck Greinke says with his slackjaw cadence.

We wish Greinke well with whatever plagues him, and wonder if he knows how to read.

Zack Greinke, 2006 [The Da Show]
Zack Greinke, 2007 [The Da Show]

Rockies blog Bad Altitude tries to tackle the issue and comes up with one possible (and optimistic, we think) answer: He can't stand pitching for the Royals anymore and is frustrated and bored. Greinke's success has always been based in his intellect, and there are rumors that he's having difficulty handling life in baseball's wasteland. For his sake, we hope that's all it is.

Greinke Dealing With Issues [KC Star]
The Mysterious Case Of Zack Greinke [Bad Altitude]
Have You Seen This Pitcher? [Royals Authority]

(UPDATE: An interview with Zack Greinke brings up serious questions about that whole "intellect" thing. When asked if he could have dinner with any famous person, dead or alive, he says, "Brad Pitt." He also punched his car when he found out Pitt and Jennifer Aniston and cried himself to sleep. Seriously.)