baseball Page 386 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

The Usual Dash Of Dollar Dog Night Bacchanalia
Wednesday night at the Philadelphia Phillies Citizens Bank Park marked opening night and its first official "Dollar Dog NIght" promotion, which culminated in a Phillies 1-0 loss and, as usual, another mesmerizing display of shit-faced chaos courtesy of the revved-up monkeys. Ever since the Phillies...

Terror From The Sky At Fenway Park
It may seem as if I'm writing this post under the influence of peyote, and believe me, I'm not above trying that. But in this case I'm sober and it's all true: A girl who was part of a school group touring Fenway Park on Thursday was attacked by a red-tailed hawk, who delivered a decisive hawk beat-...

Take A Peek At Baseball's Next Big Thing
According to my calculations, the last pitcher to strike out 10 in his Major League debut was Daisuke Matsuzaka, last season. The last one to throw five perfect innings in his debut was the immortal Ken Cloude, in 1997 (do you know the team?). And the last Cincinnati Red to do either was ... well, n...

Steve Lyons Would Like To See Your Breasts, Please
Here's an odd little story, featuring current Dodgers broadcaster Steve Lyons and a big-bosomed lady named Stacey Roy. From a court document filed on March 9, Stephen J. Lyons v. Fire Insurance, suggests that this is just a messy little money squabble between an ex-athlete and his homeowners insuran...

Giants Show Everyone Their Merkin
Tim Lincecum and Merkin Valdez, what an unbeatable duo. Both were instrumental in the Giants' first win of the season on Wednesday, 2-1 over the Dodgers. Witness this AP paragraph, which is my pick for paragraph of the year so far: The Dodgers announced less than 20 minutes before game time that Hon...

Make Shea Rock Slightly Harder This Year
Right now, you can vote for the song that the Mets should play during the eighth-inning singalong at Shea this year. The choices are as boring as you'd expect: "Brown Eyed Girl," "Sweet Caroline," ... jeez, is that the theme song from "Friends?" Ack!...

Moises Alou's Timing Leaves Much To Be Desired
As has been well documented, if Moises Alou, back in 2003, just slowly jogs away from the left-field wall, no one ever knows who Steve Bartman is, and people can go back to blaming Alex Gonzalez or Mark Prior or whomever they want to blame. (You know, people who actually played.) A few years ago, Al...

Joel Zumaya, Still Rocking
You may remember, from a year and a half ago, Tigers pitcher Joel Zumaya being injured because of his addiction to Guitar Hero. (It happens. We understand.) Well, Zumaya, who is out until midseason, apparently has not lost the jones, as this recent Facebook picture attests....

Those Proofreading Cubbies
Up until this morning, this was what the new Ernie Banks statue looked like in front of Wrigley Field. Yes, they missed an apostrophe....

Pedro Hears A Pop
You didn't think Mets fans were going to stay happy and optimistic about the season very long, did you? Pedro Martinez pulled/tore/yoinked his hamstring/tendon/groin/anal fissure and very well might miss a few weeks. As if just to rub it in, new reliever Matt Wise gave up a walk-off homer to Robert ...

Pat Jordan, Canseco "Square Off" On Howard Stern
This morning, on The Howard Stern Show (a.k.a., the show you used to listen to all the time until either: a) he left for satellite radio, which you don't get; or b) he got divorced from his wife, draining the show of its subtle, mostly hidden pathos), Jose Canseco was a guest. And Pat Jordan, author...

Eric Gagne, A Still Life
Perhaps our favorite ridiculous conspiracy theory about the Mitchell Report was that Sen. Mitchell, a Red Sox fan, was somehow attempting to stack the deck by ignoring potential Red Sox juicers. Not just that, but he happened to nail the one guy Sox fans hated the most at the time: Eric Gagne. Well,...

She Has Yadier's Ass and Bengie's Hips
Are you a moderately attractive female baseball fan who loves her pink jersey, but dreams of a newer, sluttier look for your drunken summer afternoons in the bleachers? If so, then you should probably send me pictures of yourself in various stages of undress take note of Joe Sports Fan's rather bod...

Obviously, Tom Gordon Didn't Get His Balls Blessed
Yesterday morning, right in front of the Mike Schmidt statue at Citizens Bank Park, the Philadelphia Phillies had their balls blessed by a priest, a rabbi and a pastor with the hopes of giving 2007's team to beat an extra boost of godliness to kick off 2008. Well, God was napping yesterday, as the P...

Red Sox Fans, Spread Among The 100,000. What Could Go Wrong?
We really wish we would have attended the Red Sox-Dodgers exhibition game at the Coliseum last weekend, if just because a fight was inevitable....

Finding Harry Pujols
OK Brian Suksomwong, you've got some competition. Meet Harry Pujols — he's Albert's cousin — who is a graphic artist from San Francisco. OK, OK, simmer down, class. It's not nice to make fun of people's names. Although, Harry chose to call himself that; he could have gone with Harold but didn't....

Not Much Worse Than An Opening Day Rainout
While at the Cardinals bar yesterday for Opening Day — the one from the book — we sat through an hour-and-a-half Cardinals rain delay just to hear that a 5-1 third-inning lead had been wiped out. The Cardinals aren't going to have many four runs leads this year. So losing one yesterday was unpleasan...

Cubs Still Somehow Manage To Fukudome Themselves
It all looked good for the Cubs, thanks to the mighty bat of Kosuke Fukudome, who went 3-for-3 with the game-tying home run off the hairy useless mess that now inhabits former lights-out closer Eric Gagne. But the Cubs still lost to the Milwaukee Brewers 4-3 in 10 innings. Bobby Howry gave up a sacr...

Your AL Central "Preview"
All right, well, the season has supposedly started, though rain on Opening Day has to be some sort of cruel trick from God. So let's wrap up the last division....

The Nationals' New Stadium Looks Rather Spiffy
I've been to two new stadium opening days in my life — Safeco Field and Pac Bell (now AT&T) Park — but I wish I could have made it a third in D.C. on Sunday. There's nothing like that new-stadium smell; even the restrooms are minty fresh. Following the jump, a few photos from the Nationals' Opening...