Armadillo: Thursday's six-pack
-- In their mostly sad 41-year history, the Clippers have never had a road record over .500; they were 16-15 before losing in Atlanta/NYC last two nights, and are now likely to open the playoffs on the road.
-- Memo to Carlos Gonzalez: When you're playing LF on a sunny day, bring sunglasses out with you. Otherwise, a routine fly ball might fall in and the other team might score five runs against a pitcher who is on my fantasy team. Earned runs. Not that I'm bitter or anything.
-- On the bright side, the gritty/gutty A's beat Chicago in 14 innings and are now 10-10 after 20 games. Cespedes was a steal at $9M a year. Wait until he has Manny Ramirez hitting behind him.
-- Braves looked awful the first week of the season, but now they're 12-7 after a 4-2 win in LA, when they scored three runs in ninth inning.
-- Angels are 6-12 and Albert Pujols hasn't homered; they're 8.5 games behind Texas already. Its a long season, but its getting shorter.
-- Spurs sent Parker/Duncan/Ginobili home, still beat the Suns in Phoenix, in what might've been Steve Nash's last home game in the desert. If I'm the Commish of the NBA, I've got a problem with Popovich not being there
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Armadillo: Thursday's List of 13: Catching up with the last six months........
If you’ve been out of the country the last few months, or in a coma, or just haven’t been paying any attention, a lot of strange things have happened in the last six months. Here’s a sample…….
13) At least six Secret Service agents have been fired after a scandal erupted over a fracas in a Colombian hotel over a dispute with a hooker. Over $47. These are the specially-trained agents who protect the President, the most powerful man in the world. Their careers were ruined over $47. Brilliant!!!!
12) San Diego State and SMU are now members of the Big East Conference, though the Aztecs are in just for football. Not sure how little kids will pass geography anymore. I learned Geography and Math via sports. SMU is in Dallas, by the way. That’s Texas, albeit the eastern part of Texas.
11) SMU also hired a new basketball coach, well, actually, an old coach, 71-year old Larry Brown. Last time he coached a college team was 1988, when none of his current players were alive. Brown can coach, but he never stays anywhere very long and last two college teams he coached wound up on probation. Other than that, this was a terrific hire.
10) The football coach at Arkansas was fired after he got into a motorcycle accident, with his girlfriend on the back of the bike. Not only is he married, but the coach had recently hired the girlfriend to work in the Arkansas athletic department. Lying about the whole thing didn’t help his cause any.
9) The unthinkable happened in central Pennsylvania; not only was Joe Paterno fired because one of his top assistants turned out to be a pedophile, but the 85-year old Paterno became ill and died a few sad weeks later. The family has reserved the right to sue the school in the future; this could still get even uglier. All in all, this was just unspeakably sad on many levels.
8) Back in December, the Giants were 7-7 and no one at Swamp Stadium was very happy; six weeks later, they somehow won the Super Bowl, but all the eastern media talks about is the Jets trading for Tim Tebow, taking the spotlight away from the defending champs, who couldn’t be happier.
7) Meanwhile out in Denver, John Fox made the playoffs with the passing-challenged Tebow at QB, but now the Broncos have Peyton Manning at QB, after the Colts let him walk rather than pay him a $28M bonus. Fox is probably the happiest man in America right now, other than the people who split the $218M Mega Millions jackpot a few weeks ago.
6) Mariners/A’s opened the baseball season with two games in Japan; the games started at 5am in the east (2am in their hometown markets) and they counted. This should never, ever happen again.
5) Red Sox fired the manager who won their only two world titles since 1917. If I owned the Sox, Terry Francona would have a lifetime contract and a statue on Causeway Street, but instead he got a new job at ESPN. He seems happy at least. Red Sox fans? Not so much.
4) NBA had a lockout, so they started the season seven weeks late, on Christmas Day, playing a condensed 66-game slate that crammed too many games into too short a time. Miami went from 76 practices LY to 24 this year. The quality of the product was dented, but league office pretended not to notice. As long as people buy season tickets, who cares?
3) New York Knicks plucked a point guard from the D-League who played in the Ivy League; they quickly started winning so many games that the point guard was on the cover of Sports Illustrated twice in the same month. Then team’s lackadaisical star came back from injury, the team’s chemistry was ruined, the Knicks started losing again and the coach got fired, which made the star happy, so he started trying hard again, but the point guard got hurt and now they’re back to where they were last fall, a mediocre team that won’t get by the first round of the playoffs.
2) Vancouver Canucks won the President’s Trophy for the second year in a row, but became the sixth Prez Cup winner to get ousted in the first round of the playoffs. Teams from LA/Nashville/Phoenix/St Louis have advanced in the playoffs. In the hockey world, pigs are flying.
1) New Orleans Saints were blamed for every disaster from the Lindbergh kidnapping to global warming to Digger Phelps still being on TV. Coaches were suspended, players will be soon. The team’s owner is mad at his granddaughter, who was supposed to take his place. In short, its been a wild six months. Where you been?