sports bonanza

what a crazy day in sports! pro hockey, junior hockey, basketball, home runs, cfl signings, and racing. my man Corey Stillman scored the OT winner against Carolina, while Roy's QMJHL team beat Moncton for the Memorial Cup. the Mavs beat Phoenix to lead 2-1 in the series, and the Toronto Argonauts signed former NFL running king Ricky "spiritual journey" Williams.
the real drama, for me, was the biggest racing day of the year. the Monaco GP was a close race before Kimi and Webber's engines blew up, but the attrition did allow my favorite F1 driver, Coulthard, to earn Red Bull it's first podium. (shown here wearing a superman cape)
the Indy 500, which has lost some of its luster with the Champ Car/IRL split, was exciting for once. the big storyline for me was that my favorite driver all-time, Michael Andretti, was returning to the race from a 3 year retirement just to be able to race with his son Marco. with some good pit strategy, Michael ended up leading the race with 10 laps to go, with his son in second. The problem for Michael was that he was on old tires, and his son passed him with 3 laps to go, and Hornish soon followed. Michael, showed a lot of class in not blocking Hornish, who drove an amazing fourth turn to close the gap to Marco, and pass him at the line. despite my andretti bias, i have to admit it was a great race, and that the better car won. i have even more respect for michael, who proved a lot of people wrong in racing a competitive race after a 3 year retirement, and was one caution short of winning the race for the first time in his 15 years at indy.
i was nearly sick of sports by the time the Coca-Cola 600 started, but in between hockey goals and the basketball game, i did manage to catch the final few laps. i was glad to see that Waltrip's purchase of Cope's car yielded little benefit, as he was out after about 100 laps. i was also glad to see Kahne hold Johnson off to end Johnson's dominance at the track.
And then, to top off the day, Bonds FINALLY hit that 715th home run he's been having nightmares about. It's over, Barry. you're ahead of Babe Ruth in the one category you will ever pretend to care about. sure, you'll never touch his other career records, you took 500 more games than he did to reach 714, and will never pitch a shut-out in the World Series, but you beat him once, and I hope that's enough for your ego. next on the list; Hank Aaron, Bond's godfather, and the true home run king. it'll be interesting to see if Bonds retires to keep the record clean and without controversy, or if his ego gets the best of him again, and he trudges through 2 dismal seasons just to hit a few home runs and break a record nobody will give his steroid ridden body credit for anyway.

what waltrip did

I'm a big fan of the Waltrips in Nascar, but Michael's purchase of a driver's spot in the 600 race this Sunday seems wrong. I understand that his sponsers wanted to be in the race and likely gave him the money to buy the spot, but it sets a bad precedent. Next week, I imagine Donald Trump allowing someone to qualify for him, and then buying his spot. If Michael Waltrip wasn't fast enough to qualify, he shouldn't be allowed in the race. Cope runs his own team, and if Waltrip wrecks his car it would be very hard for Cope to come up with enough money to run the following week (unless of course that's stipulated in the contract). Either way, you shouldn't be allowed to sell your spot in any sport.

In Formula One, Schumacher showed his evil side again, stalling his car in a dangerous spot on the last lap of qualifying, which conveniently prevented anyone from besting his top lap time. He's either the smartest man in racing, or the luckiest. Now if I can convince Trump to buy me a spot in an F1 race...

UPDATE: Schumacher was just stripped of the Pole Position for deliberately interfering with qualifying, and has bene relegated to the back of the starting grid. This is a fantastically intelligent ruling from officials, for once not looking like they pander to the seven time world champion. Yay justice!!

did i mention he eats children?

sports need bad guys, and though nobody likes to see the bad guy win, it's often good for a sport when they do. barry bonds may not pass hank aaron's all-time home run record, but he'll pass babe ruth within the next few days and already holds the single season mark. that means one of the most hated players in the history of baseball will act as a target for good players for years to come. and with our hatred of barry, it'll be fun to cheer for them. the player with the most legitimate chance is albert pujols, who is on pace to break barry's single season home run record this year, and if he stays healthy, has a chance to reach the all-time record. another bonus regarding barry bonds' status as an evil jackass is that you feel absolutely no guilt about reporters constantly hounding him about steroids, or photographers taking pictures of him where he looks like a stoned dandy boy, as is illustrated here.

most expensive glue ever!

Last Saturday, I witnessed one of the most disturbing sports injuries I have ever seen. I've seen worse injuries, but what makes Barbaro's ankle injury so troubling is that if he doesn't recover, he will die!! From projected triple crown winner to the school supplies aisle in walmart may be the fastest swing of luck in sports history.

Goooooooooooooaaaaallllll

and another one. sniff. barcelona is winning

Goooooooooooaaaaallll

Barcelona scored. Sniff. it's tied

Gooooooooooooooaaaaallllllll

Arsenal just scored while one man down against Barcelona. Exciting soccer game? crazy!

say it ain't so, dougy!

Doug Flutie officially retired today, ending both a 21 year career and in effect, my reason to live. I was too young to remember his brilliant college career, or this first stint in the NFL, but I vividly recall his glory days in the NFL, and his triumphant return to the NFL with the Buffalo Bills.
At just under 5'10" it was amazing that he could even see over the line, let alone survive the tackles of 350 pound linemen. He proved critics wrong, and turned a Heisman winning college career into an enduring professional football persona. Off the field, he formed the Doug Flutie Jr Foundation for Autism, which has raised millions of dollars to help fight the disease.
Flutie now moves onto broadcasting, and will work on ABC as an analyst for college games...at least until a younger, taller analyst comes along. Stupid Rob Johnson.

"wie makes cut"

a tiny injury or a golf accomplishment? for non sports fans, it's a valid question. for those addicted to sports, this headline signifies that after 7 attempts, michelle wie has found a tour where she can actually outperform men. that tour is in korea, where professional male golfers are largely overshadowed by the international success of korean female golfers. if ever there was a group of men that are going to take getting beaten by a 17 year old woman personally...

in korea, american michelle wie is either loved because she is of korean descent or hated because she makes so few references to this fact when questioned. personally i'd love to see her do well there. she might have a hard time matching se ri pak's 10th place finish in the same men's tournament in 2003, but she should still leave a positive impression. at the very least she's getting a large paycheck, having already been paid 750,000 just for showing up, which might be enough to pay for a nice vacation on Jeju island. maybe...

laces out, dan!!

Rivet's stick in the way of Carolina's OT goal is exactly the idiotic play everyone's come to expect from him. The sole consolation from my side is that one of my favorite players, Stillman, scored the winner. At the start of the season I foolishly picked Carolina to win the cup because of 'the stillman factor,' as he'd been the last edition to the cup winning Tampa Bay team. Sadly, there's no way they're getting around New Jersey next round, but if all goes well they might be able to poke out a few eyes.

In tragic sports news, Doug Flutie may be retiring. He's 43, but still solid enough to be a number 2 on many teams - just not the Patriots, and he says he loves home too much to go anywhere else for a one year stay. Maybe, after losing Vinatieri and replacing him with the less than reliable Martin Gramatica, the Patriots could use Flutie to do single point drop kicks all year. Anything to keep me from accepting the fact that everyone everywhere eventually retires.

shame on you, premonition

as montreal scored their sixth goal on martin gerber, i warned a skeptical matt that this would be montreal's undoing. much like the last time montreal faced carolina, their offense embarrassed lina's goalie, and the backup dominated montreal in the following games. i hope i'm wrong, but it's looking increasingly hard to beat cam ward. i've tried nearly every superstitious trick in the book in hopes of swaying the hockey gods in montreal's favour, and am left with suspect options such as the reverse rally cap and pele's shavo-rama to toy with chance, and since neither actually exists, i doubt they will work.

here's hoping koivu has two eyes for the '06 season.