Slow Sports Day for ESPN

All right, fine, so nobody got in a fight last night, no NFL players were busted with a prosthetic penis in their bag and hey, Teammates isn't on again until Tuesday! But still: There must be something more to fill Sportscenter than a dewy-eyed, soft-focus, John Tesh-scored Jeremy Schapp feature on Albert Pujols from seven months ago. Yet there it was this morning, an eight-minute segment on Pujols' devotion to fighting Down Syndrome (he has a child with the disease). It's a nice story, and Pujols seems pretty sincere about the whole thing ... but we were touched (well, kind of) by this story when it ran in October. (Look, we have proof!) Surely Schapp could have found someone else to rub onions under last week, right? (Money quote from the director of the National Down Syndrome Society, clearly a big baseball fan: "People say Albert Pujols has a big bat. And he does. He has a tremendous bat. But he also has a tremendous heart.")

St. Louis Affiliate on ESPN! (National Down Syndrome Society, October 25, 2004)