sad Page 40 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Bullrider, 12, Trampled And Killed; Everyone Shrugs And Says It Was "Nobody's Fault"
A 12-year-old Colorado bullrider was killed Sunday when he was thrown from his mount and trampled, rupturing his heart's left ventricle. That's awful enough. Then everyone sprinted through all five stages of grief and headed straight for damage control....

Former Boxing Champion Begging For Change In New Jersey
Rocky Lockridge was a two-time world featherweight champion in the 1980s and is in the New Jersey Boxing Hall of Fame. Today, he's homeless and living on the streets of Camden. Don't ever become a fighter, kids. [Star-Ledger]...

Please Help The Stephen A. Heckling Society Of Gentlemen
Sad news: The Stephen A. Heckling Society of Gentlemendid not get tickets to tonight's NBA Draft. If anyone can get these invaluable correspondents into WaMu this evening, please contact me at [email protected] Let the sock roar again....

Iowa Prep Football Coach Gunned Down At High School
Ed Thomas, one of Iowa's all-time great high school football coaches, was shot and killed this morning in his school's weight room, reportedly by a former player. Thirty students were watching; none was hurt. The gunman was taken into custody....

Ryan Leaf Used To Be Carried In The Arms Of Cheerleaders, Part 47
New blue blood/Great white hope, Ryan Leaf was finally captured at the US-Canada border after dodging Texas authorities for close to a month. [San Diego Tribune]...

Ninjas Responsible For The Death Of David Carradine?
So says Carradine's attorney, Mark Geragos, who told the NY Post there might be some foul play involved. Geragos was contacted by other media outlets about his ninja theory, but he was immediately banned from commenting any further...[DListed]...

Mike Tyson's Daughter On Life Support After Accident
This is awful. Mike Tyson's 4-year-old daughter, Exodus, was in "extremely critical" condition last night after she was found with her neck caught in a cord of a treadmill machine. Her 7-year-old brother found her. [AP via Yahoo]...

Wife Of Pitcher Scott Schoeneweis Found Dead
Gabrielle Dawn Schoeneweis, the wife of Arizona Diamondbacks reliever Scott Schoeneweis, was found unconscious in the family's home today and sheriff's deputies were unable to revive her when they arrived. No cause of death has been determined yet. She was 39. Terrible news. [Arizona Republic]...

MLB.com Really Can't Figure Out This Whole Death Thing
According to MLB.com, Nick Adenhart is still the 35th best major league prospect. However, right above his profile, there is an editor's note explaining that he died....

A Sad Postmortem On NYT's <em>Play</em> Magazine
Sigh. Columbia's New York Review of Magazines has a lengthy look at the "the short, happy, tragic life" of Play, the Times' much-beloved sports magazine and, for my money, sportswriting's last good shot....

Yahoo's Righteous Crusade To Purify College Sports
Yahoo, as noted earlier, has another story out in its long-running series on the generous redistributive polices of the USC athletic department. I hate to go all Jason Whitlock here, but, well ......

Pistons' Coach Chuck Daly Dies
Pancreatic cancer. He was 78. [Freep]...

Joba Chamberlain's Mother Still Has Some Problems
The mother of the Yankees' hurler was arrested for dealing meth to an undercover officer. This is written by the same newspaper that did the long-ish profile on her last fall. [Lincoln Star Journal]...

Former AFL QB, VP Nominee, HUD Secretary Jack Kemp Passes Away At 73
Jack Kemp, best known for his work with supply-side economics and frequent runners-up Bob Dole and the Buffalo Bills, has lost another battle — this one to cancer....

High School Baseball Player Killed By Wild Pitch
Junior Patrick Clegg of Waynesville, Missouri, was struck in the head by a pitch during a game this week—it hit just below his batting helmet—and was pronounced brain dead on Thursday. Very sad. [FOXNews]...

Tommy "The Hitman" Hearns Reduced To Fighting Chickens
Good job, Michigan State. Your failure to rescue the city of Detroit from financial ruin has forced a once great boxing champion to play tic-tac-toe against poultry for money. I hope you're happy....

Happy St. Patty's Day, Dan Rooney
President Obama nominates Steelers owner Dan Rooney as the U.S. ambassador to Ireland. They should love Steely McBeam over there. [Boston Globe]...

Tampa Bay Baseball Outsider, We Hardly Knew Ye
Apparently Carter Gaddis' new tell-all blog told too much on the first day. Like the Norwegian Blue, his blog is no more. It's an ex-Parrot. But what killed it? Dude, where's my blog?...

Sad Tale Of Missing Boaters Only Gets Sadder
The Coast Guard suspended its search for Corey Smith, Marquis Cooper and Will Bleakley last night and now begins the mourning, the healing and all the "what went wrong?" wondering....

Time Running Out For Missing Boaters (Update)
The search continues today for three football players who were still lost at sea, even as family members realize there is not much hope of finding them alive....