Month: August 2010 (Page 19 of 59)

      Lou Piniella did the right thing by stepping down now

      August 22, 2010 /
      Chicago Cubs manager Lou Piniella stands for the playing of the Star Spangled Banner before the game against the Atlanta Braves at Wrigley Field in Chicago on August 22, 2010. Piniella announced Sunday that the game would be his last game as manager. UPI/Brian Kersey Photo via Newscom

      I don’t blame Cubs fans if they feel cheated by the way Lou Piniella has decided to step down as manager with 37 games remaining in the season. After all, if they have to sit through the rest of this miserably year, why doesn’t he?

      But the fact of the matter is that neither Piniella’s heart nor his mind is in it right now, so why drag the thing out any longer? And besides, does it really matter who’s managing the Cubs at this point?

      Piniella has had to take two leave of absences to attend to personal matters this year, which mainly consists of him visiting his 90-year-old mother who has been ill for most of the season. There are more important things than baseball and seeing as how he was going to retire at the end of the year anyway, there’s no sense going through the motions for 37 more games.

      Following another horrendous loss on Sunday, Piniella had this to say about starting his retirement early:

      “Cried a little bit after the game,” he said, before choking up further in his postgame news conference. “This will be the last time I put on a uniform. This has been very special for me. I’ll go home, do what I have to do there…and enjoy my retirement.”

      Obviously this wasn’t the way he or Cub fans envisioned things ending this season. While the club also struggled last year, many pundits thought they would bounce back and that just hasn’t been the case. The team’s roster is littered with overpaid, underachieving veterans and the youth movement has just begun. It’s a sad way for a World Series-winning manager to walk away from the game, but not everybody can go out on top.

      Piniella wasn’t going to be part of the Cubs’ future and it was probably right that he has decided that they won’t be a part of his present.

      When it’s time, it’s time.

      External Sports, MLB

      Nuggets plan ‘sit down’ with Carmelo…

      August 22, 2010 /

      …just as soon as they hire a new GM.

      Nuggets management is expected to sit down with Melo some time after the team names a general manager, which it is expected to do next week. Former Suns executive David Griffin is the leading candidate.

      Denver is certainly taking its sweet time hiring a GM and whoever they hire will be walking into a veritable sh*tstorm. They’ll have the same task that New Orleans GM Dell Demps had when he had to convince Chris Paul that he had a plan to turn the Hornets around. We haven’t heard much about Paul lately because both sides said that the meeting went well, and Paul said that he was hoping to stay in New Orleans.

      Will the Nuggets have the same success in their meeting with Carmelo?

      First things first — hire a GM already!

      External Sports, Fantasy Basketball, NBA, News, Rumors & Gossip

      Nationals should shut down Stephen Strasburg for the rest of 2010

      August 22, 2010 /
      Washington Nationals' Stephen Strasburg wipes sweat from his face after the second against the Arizona Diamondbacks at Nationals Park on on August 15, 2010. UPI/Kevin Dietsch Photo via Newscom

      After throwing a 90 mph changeup and grimacing on the mound in pain during the fifth inning of Saturday’s game against the Phillies, the Nationals have little choice but to shut down Stephen Strasburg’s 2010 season.

      This is the second time this month that Strasburg has dealt with an injury. A couple of weeks ago he had a shoulder problem that caused him to miss some time and yesterday’s injury has been diagnosed as a strain of the flexor tendon in his right forearm. Considering this is a club that’s 17 games below .500 and 19 games back in the NL Central, this should be a no-brainer decision for the Nationals. Regardless of what a MRI reveals – his season should be over. Why risk further injury here?

      Something that will be lost in the injury news is how well Strasburg pitched yesterday. He threw 56 pitches before departing the game, throwing 38 for strikes and allowing just one run on two hits to go along with his six strikeouts. He showed the type of mastery of hitters last night as he did when he was first called up in June.

      But again, regardless of how good he looked or how many tickets the Nationals want to sell from here on out, they have to look at the bigger picture. Just because he has suffered a couple of injuries this year doesn’t mean that he’ll have issues the rest of his career and in fact, the early indication is that he should be fine. But why take any chances right now? Both the Nationals and Strasburg have more to look forward to than the rest of this season, which essentially means nothing.

      Shut his season down, have him take a MRI and then proceed with how to handle the results. Getting the young phenom back onto the mound should be the least of the Nationals’ concerns right now.

      External Sports, MLB

      Albert Haynesworth rips Redskins following preseason loss

      August 22, 2010 /
      Washington Redskins' Albert Haynesworth is seen on the sidelines as the Redskins play a pre-season game against the Buffalo Bills at FedEx Field in Washington on August 13, 2010. UPI/Kevin Dietsch Photo via Newscom

      Following the Redskins’ 23-3 loss to the Ravens on Saturday night in which he didn’t play until the third quarter, Albert Haynesworth ripped the team in 90-second post game locker room interview.

      From CSN Washington:

      Haynesworth said he wasn’t injured enough to be held out of practice last Wednesday and Thursday.

      “I was told I had ‘headaches’ or whatever and that’s why I couldn’t go out and practice,” he said. “I think it was a little bit more than that.”

      Haynesworth added: “[Headaches] was part of that but it wasn’t all of it. They left out a lot of stuff.”

      Asked for specifics, he said: “You would have to ask them.”

      Haynesworth said the Redskins were holding him out of practice as punishment for skipping the OTAs and mini-camps.

      “I guess to make me look bad for not going to their offseason conditioning program,” he said. “Next year, I’m not coming either. I’ll be with my trainer again and come back in the same shape I’m in and feel good about myself.”

      Haynesworth did not play in the first half against Baltimore and was upset he was on the field in the second half.

      “I’m a ninth year pro,” he said. “I don’t think I should have been out there in the third quarter, but having ‘headaches’ again, that’s what they wanted to do.”

      It sounds like both sides are playing the power-trip game right now. Mike Shanahan doesn’t want to just give Haynesworth back his starting job (which is why the DT didn’t play until the third quarter last night), while Haynesworth probably feels like he’s done enough to move forward and put the offseason mess behind him.

      Either way, there’s obviously still a lot of tension between Haynesworth and Shanahan and neither of them are ready to sit down to a Sunday picnic together and share their feelings. At some point though, Shanahan is going to have to turn this into a positive situation and move forward because Haynesworth gives the team their best chance of winning. When he’s on top of his game (which includes him not being a malcontent), he’s the Skins’ best defender.

      External Sports, NFL

      Documents show that J. Edgar Hoover tracked Alabama’s Bear Bryant

      August 21, 2010 /
      28th February 1961: American President John F Kennedy (1917 - 1963) at the White House with his brother Attorney General Robert Kennedy (1925 - 1968) and head of the FBI J Edgar Hoover (1895 - 1972). (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)

      Former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover secretly kept an eye on a civil lawsuit filed by blacks against legendary Alabama head coach Bear Bryant starting in 1969.

      From ESPN.com:

      Documents released to The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act show that for almost two years, agents tracked the suit filed by a prominent black lawyer against Bryant, the University of Alabama and others to make Bryant recruit black football players.

      Building a file, agents followed the court docket and snipped stories from newspapers about the case, sending the findings to the agency’s office responsible for investigating civil rights crimes.

      The FBI won’t explain why it was interested in a civil lawsuit by a black student organization against a prominent white football coach. The agency kept track of possible civil rights violations and often monitored public figures and civil rights leaders under Hoover.

      But one of the FBI forms in the Bryant file is marked twice with a handwritten capital “H” — a clear indication that Hoover both saw the document and approved of the snooping, said author Curt Gentry, who wrote “J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets,” a definitive biography on Hoover and the FBI under his leadership.

      Per the article, Bryant had black players on his team as non-scholarship, walk-ons, but it wasn’t until five months after the federal suit was filed that ‘Bama signed its first black football player to an actual scholarship (Wilbur Jackson).

      It’s interesting that Hoover had files on high-ranking sports profiles, although as the article notes, he had dirt on everybody – actors, authors, pool cleaners, etc.

      College Football, External Sports

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