ball Page 1912 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Barry Zito's Suddenly A Zesty Italian!
In response to our light tapping of Alex Rodriguez for playing for the Dominican Republic in the upcoming World Baseball Classic, reader Gerald Smith emails us to set us straight:...

Athlete Run-In: The Mystery Of The Mustache
Today's first athlete run-in story answers a question we've had for a long time: Has Don Mattingly ever not had that mustache? (We were scared enough when Bruce Bochy shaved his.)...

Matt Leinart's Big Post-Heisman NYC Adventure
We present the above picture, with the following story, without comment, sent anonymously to us this morning....

A-Rod, The World's Free Agent
Much talk this morning about Yankees hero of the working man Alex Rodriguez telling a radio station that he is leaning toward playing for the Dominican Republic in the upcoming World Baseball Classic rather than the United States. A-Rod has never, in fact, lived in the Dominican; he was born in Ne...

Life As A Scout
Of all the professions involved in all of sport, the one that seems the least glamorous to us, save for maybe being the guy who pretends to be Clinton Portis' hands, is being a baseball scout. You drive all night to watch some teenagers play a game, you write in your little notebook, a bunch of pa...

Shuffling Off At Rest, Satiated, With Ray King Finally Gone
Former Cardinals relief pitcher Ray King was traded to the Colorado Rockies last Thursday, for equally useless spare parts Aaron Miles and Larry Bigbie. King had once been a popular Cardinal — his rotund nature is a sure-fire crowd pleaser; after the Cardinals clinched the World Series trip in 200...

That's A Quarter Per Sweat Dollop
Far be it from us to tell collectors what is valuable and what isn't — we wouldn't trade our Willie McGee 1987 Topps card for the Shroud of Turin — but we have to say, we're pretty surprised by one of the top items on MLB.com right now....

Adam Morrison is a hero
"Major onions" was how Bill Raftery described it. The play-by-play guy ended the telecast by calling Morrison "the best college basketball player in the country." He may be that, I don't know, but I think JJ Redick's 41 points against the #2 team in the nation at least leaves the issue open for deba...

Mizzou escapes the mighty Islanders
Despite leading for most of the second half, the Texas A&M Corpus Christi Islanders weren't able to pull off the upset against Missouri. Jimmy McKinney hit a jumper with 10 seconds left to put Missouri ahead, but the Islanders couldn't capitalize and missed the potential game-winner at the buzzer....

An all-around ugly day for Texas
The black jerseys, the blowout against Duke... and it's probably not going to get better when Vince Young comes up short this evening. Sorry fellas. More poetry......

#1 vs #2
As a salute to J.J. Redick, all of today's posts about the Duke/Texas game will be in poetry form. You may not know this about me, but I consider myself a master of the limerick....

Purple Paladins and Mountaineers
While killing time until the Duke/Texas tip, I'm checking out a little 1-AA football action. We've got the Furman Purple Paladins against the Appalachian St. Mountaineers. In situations such as this one, it's often difficult to find a rooting interest. But I used to work with a girl who went to Ap...

Athlete Run-In: Blocking Derek Lowe
Today's final athlete run-in story is about one of our favorite people around here: Famed party guy Derek Lowe, who never met a lady (or ladies) he couldn't slur over. This story almost makes you feel a little bad for Lowe, until you visit On The DL and check out some of the great tales over there...

Athlete Run-In: Julian Tavarez's Rocket Arm
Today's first athlete run-in story is about one of our favorite insane athletes, (former) Cardinals reliever Julian Tavarez, a guy just crazy enough not only to break his hand punching a phone in a playoff game, but then come out the next night and try to catch a comebacker with that very same han...

You Learn Something New Every Day
So here's something fantastic. A kindly reader informs us that the throwaway joke we tossed in our last post about ESPN's Times Square New Years Eve celebration about 3rd Bass playing at the show was funnier than we realized. You see, Peter Nash, known as "Pete Nice" in the triumvirate responsible f...

Athlete Run-In: John Kruk, Hero Of The People
Today's final athlete run-in story, to be honest with you, might be our very favorite so far. We might hate the guy on "Baseball Tonight," but there was a reason he was beloved (before his job was to talk for a living) not only in Philadelphia, but around the baseball world....

Julio Franco Cryogenically Signed
What Julio Franco has done, playing professional baseball well into his late 40s, is amazing, astounding, incredible, whatever you want to call it. We salute the elderly when they find things to keep active and useful....

The Baseball Wire: Now Departing At Gate 3 ...
The Hot Stove news is coming fast and furious. Here's a roundup. • Astros, Clemens part ways in tearful train-leaving-the-station scene. [Crawfish Boxes] • Rangers dump Rogers, but say he can still come by occasionally to hit camera guys. Oh, and look: There goes Soriano! [Baseball Time In Arlington...

Athlete Run-In: David Wells' Special Talent
Today's first athlete run-in story is a brief one, but it's our favorite kind, because it involves David Wells and beer. Three beers, in fact. From a Cleveland reader:...

The Daily Destruction Of Busch
The saddest thing we've seen all day — and it's not even 11 — is this time lapse progression of the destruction of Busch Stadium, run daily since the last game in October....