August 2011 Archives
Arizona Diamondbacks president Derrick Hall sat across the desk from Kirk Gibson in the visiting manager's office four weeks ago, as the team had just won back-to-back games to open a series against the San Francisco Giants at AT&T Park to move into a tie for the National League West lead.
"'I told him, 'Wait until the talent (in the farm system) comes up,'" Hall said.
"Gibby looked at me and said, 'We have talent. It's called heart.'"
You know Gibson's ties to the Dodgers. And the ones that Hall once had.
Enough said.
Ten of the players on the Diamondbacks' current 25-man roster weren't around when Arizona opened its season in Colorado on April 1.
The rest of Hall of Famer Terry Ringolsby's column on FoxSportsNet.com (linked here).
Some Sundays, Fox has an NFL doubleheader. Other Sundays, it's a single game, either 10 a.m. or 1 p.m.
Instead of a KTTV infomercial in that slot opposite a CBS NFL game this year, Fox wants you hooked in soccer and the UFC.
Fox starts airing Barclays Premier League matches on Sunday, Sept. 18 with a tape-delayed coverage of Manchester United vs. Chelsea, followed by Tottenham-Arsenal (Oct. 2) and Chelsea-Liverpool (Nov. 20). The games will air either from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. or 1:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m., but will also be live earlier in the day on Fox Soccer. The coverage goes up to Super Bowl Sunday for a live game on Feb. 5, starting at 7:30 a.m.
Meanwhile, on Oct. 30, leading up to the first UFC live primetime match on Fox set for November 12, the network will show a "UFC Primetime" show that previews that upcoming Fox matchupin, which should be announced Friday. The Primetime show airs from noon to 1 p.m. or from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. depending on the NFL game picked to air on Fox.
Jim Rome was on vacation last week from both his syndicated radio show and his "Jim Rome Is Burning" afternoon half-hour TV show on ESPN.
But this week, the TV show is curiously absent, even with him back on the radio (KLAC-AM 570 9 a.m. to noon).
Next week, the TV show isn't scheduled either, replaced by "SportCenter" episodes.
A network spokesman says Rome's current "hiatus" is related to coverage of the U.S. Open. But that's already over on ESPN2.
Why would that matter?
Because starting Sept. 12, ESPN2 will have a new lineup (linked here) - ripping "JRIB" from the 1:30 p.m. ESPN slot, and replacing it with "news and information studio programming" in that time period.
Say what you will about the definition of "news and information studio programming," but the ESPN lineup will move "Around The Horn" to 1 p.m. and "Pardon The Interruption" to 1:30 p.m. on Mondays, going head-to-head with "JRIB." The rest of the week, it'll be back to 2 p.m. and 2:30 p.m. slots.
Two new shows - "Numbers Never Lie" at 12:30 p.m. and "Dan Le Batard is Highly Questionable" at 1 p.m. - will lead into "JRIB," with "SportsNation" following it.
Highly questionable, indeed. Allegedly.
Except when you think of Rome's roots, his original talk show, "Talk2," was on the ESPN2 channel when it was known so hipply as "The Deuce."
Meanwhile, Rome is still celebrating his own version an ESPN misdirection from last week at Del Mar (linked here).
Admit it: Even a Dodger fan can come to appreciate the added value of watching Showtime's summer documentary series, "The Franchise," (linked here) which follows around the San Francisco Giants during their post-World Series season of 2011.
The Giants have produced a fairly decent encore. "The Franchise" deserves one as well.
But tonight's 10 p.m. entry marks the last of eight episodes, only because that was the agreement made before this all started with Mike Tollin's production company and with the decision makers at Major League Baseball. Even then, it stretched a couple weeks past its deadline.
"Since this was the first year of trying it, it's really walk before you run," executive producer Tollin said today from his Valley-based office.
"It was a big leap for the Giants and Major League Baseball to give us this kind of access, and they were comfortable with this treatment. It was so unprecidented that they agreed to give us a chunk of the season, but to cut it off before the pennant race started."
A sort of baseball version of "Hard Knocks," except that it is a live turn-around series that takes place during the regular season, "The Franchise" ended up covering eight months of the Giants' journey. Aside from the opening special that debuted in July, the eight were two more than they'd agreed to extend it to in mid-August because of the successes in all areas of production and viewer reception.
Entertainment Weekly's Lynette Rice wrote (linked here) back in July that San Francisco fans" weren't exactly thrilled to hear" about the Showtime series because "hardly any famous person does a reality show without looking like a tool" and it would distract from their priorites of trying to repeat.
It has been the complete opposite.
"The Franchise" was able to give incredible insight into the current season as well as inserting back-story details on player injuries, managerial decisions, front office manuevering, laundry room pranks and all the peek behind the curtain stuff that you'd only know about if you were a daily beat writer covering the team. And even then, you didn't get half the access.
The fact that the Giants do have so many "misfits," as manager Bruce Bochy likes to call them, made it even more enjoyable. A feature, for example, how how reliever Brian Wilson was raised by a father who died of cancer, and explains why he gives him teh cross-armed salute after every save he registeres, really means something after seeing it explained.
More background on second baseman Freddy Sanchez, the former Burbank High standout and one-time NL batting champ, who has to sit at home in Arizona and watch games from his TV set as he rehabs, are exceptional insights into how a player tries to keep grinding but really is kept apart from his teammates during the process.
The same with injured pitcher Barry Zito (Pierce College, USC) as he carries the weight of his contract with him every time he goes out to the mound -- only to have another physical setback.
The series ends tonight as the Giants seem to be losing their grip on the NL West, as the acquisition of Carlos Beltran isn't quite preventing the Arizona Diamondbacks from climbing over them in the standings.
But another intriguing backstory comes out in tonight's episode -- infielder Mark DeRosa, a clubhouse leader with an $8 million salary who has been injured all year and even going back to 2010, finally coming back, getting a key hit, stealing a base and scoring the winning run in a game against Houston that seems to give the team renewed hope.
Recaps on the season so far from surprise All-Star pitcher Ryan Vogelsong, infielder Pablo Sandoval, rookie Brandon Belt and Zito will also be in tonight's episode.
"This whole experience has been a postive one, and the players say they've enjoyed it, it hasn't been an intrusion," said Tollin (his IMBD.com link here), who developed a relationship with the Giants' front office when he did the "Bonds On Bonds" series for ESPN nearly 10 years ago, and is known more around Hollywood for his production with partner Brian Robbins of such movies as "Coach Carter," "Radio," and "Varsity Blues," as well as do several ESPN "30 For 30" documentaries.
"I hope we're back again, maybe with a different team, and extend it through the season."
"Lets go USC!" seems to send the message that someone had USC in its grasp and then decided to let it go free.
"Let's go USC!" is more likely the message Old Navy meant to convey on their $24.95 women's (or womens) T-shirts for sale on its (not it's) website. But they're (not their) not there any more.
Nor are the shirts dedicated to UCLA, Michigan, Arizona ... There's a whole slew of re-dos as someone in the store's Superfan Nation clothing line didn't do a spell check on the logo before sending it to the hot-iron. They'll add the missing apostrophe ASAP.
An Old Navy damage-controller said the store is replacing the faulty T-shirts, and have posted the message above when you try to click on the misspelled designs that are still up on the website.
Naw, not good enough for us.
We actually want the wrong ones. And we're willing to pay more for them. At least $25.
The more you look at this shirt, the more correct language it probably seems to be for those who only text or Tweet or email most of their lives now. As spelling is less and less important to those doing the communicating, maybe this shirt is really ahead of its (not it's) time.
Whatever happens, just don't (not dont) ship all the boxes of these things some third-world country where kids are running around with Dodgers 2009 NLCS championship T-shirts.
Since the announcement over the weekend that Vin Scully would return for his 63rd season, and Jaime Jarrin would be back for his 54th, it pales in comparison to any announcement that the other six Dodgers broadcasters will also come back for 2012.
But they will be. The team said so tonight.
Rick Monday, who replaced the late Don Drysdale in the middle of the 1993 season, will come back with Charley Steiner to continue doing games on radio for KABC-AM (790). Monday will start his 27th season, while Steiner, who replaced Ross Porter in 2005, is set to come back for his eighth season.
On the TV end, Eric Collins and Steve Lyons have had their deals renewed. This will be the fourth season for Collins, and the eighth for Lyons, doing games for Prime Ticket and KCAL Channel 9 on the road where Scully stays home.
On the Spanish-language side, Fernando Valenzuela and Pepe Yniguez will come back. Valenzuela, who does all home games and those on the road against NL West opponents, will start his ninth season as a broadcaster, while Yniguez will be in his 15th season.
By Rachel Cohen
The Associated Press
NBC's Olympic coverage in London will look very familiar, with one major twist.
For the first time, the network plans to show every event live in some form -- even if it's just raw video streaming online. But the prime-time broadcasts will still use that traditional formula of human-interest features and taped competition.
The man behind that coverage will be someone steeped in the NBC philosophy of packaging the Olympics for a wide audience. NBC announced today that "Today"
executive producer Jim Bell would serve in that role for the 2012 Games.
He fills the spot held by Dick Ebersol, who resigned as chair of NBC Sports Group in May. Earlier in his career, Bell was coordinating producer for NBC Olympics under Ebersol.
"That's what our approach on the Olympics has been and what it will continue to be," said Mark Lazarus, who replaced Ebersol atop NBC Sports Group. "Having Jim do that for the Olympics assures we'll have that sensibility."
Except the prime-time programming bearing that sensibility will no longer be the first opportunity viewers have to watch who wins the gold. Ebersol was adamant even as he left NBC that showing events live during the day would hurt overall ratings.
But to Lazarus, the sports fan of today demands immediacy -- and that doesn't have to be mutually exclusive to highly stylized broadcasts aired when people are most likely to be sitting in front of the TV.
"I believe in that, and that will be some philosophical shift from my predecessor," Lazarus told The Associated Press.
Purple is apparently passé.
It's back in black, white and silver. Gretzky-era garb. And less freezer burn.
The Kings officially announced their changing of the color combos again, using the scheme that was worn as an alternate jersey the last two seasons. On the road, they're going all white.
Fork out the dough, fans. You're getting some new stuff to buy up.
Anyone who has a kid in the Jr. Kings program has caught wind of it. They've had to order new jerseys for the upcoming season that match up to these.
"There was an overwhelming sentiment from our fans and from our players that has led us to this change," said Luc Robitaille, the team's president of business operations.
"Our fans really like the late '80s and early '90s era Kings uniforms which are very similar to this uniform. As a player, the colors give you an attitude and an edge. (Team GM) Dean Lombardi and I talked a lot about it with the players and they love it. We feel our fans believe in it as well."
Bruce McNall believed in it.
The once imprisioned owner ditched the long-time purple and gold to this color palate after he orchestrated the trade for Wayne Gretzky from Edmonton in 1988. Back then, he had a "Los Angeles Kings" chevron logo on the front.
It's evolved to purple, black and white to combine the two looks, but this time, they'll take the "L.A." crest as well as the recent crown logo (not the really cool one from the '60s through the '80s) and put them on there instead. Thankfully.
The Kings will break out the new road sweater on Sunday, Sept. 11, at the L.A. Kings Hockey Fest '11.
For our tastes, we'll stick with the Forum deep blue and shocking gold that started it all (as per Jack Kent Cooke's directive and color description), and Rogie Vachon once wore with purplish pride. As did Robitaille (who actually wore all three previous color combos during his three stints with the team).
== A history of the Kings' sweater and logo changes over the years (linked here).
Highlights of the week ahead in sports, both here and afar:
THIS WEEK'S BEST BET
College football: USC vs. Minnesota, Coliseum, Saturday, 12:30 p.m., Channel 7; UCLA at Houston, 12:30 p.m., Prime:
Top 12 reasons why USC and UCLA won't be playing in a bowl game this year: No. 1 -- The Trojans are on probation; No. 2 -- The Bruins won't win six games. You can fill in the other 10 reasons as the new, improved Pac-12 begins its existence. Actually, there's a lot of deju vu in the air. No matter that the Trojans are in some people's Top 25 rankings, or that UCLA is No. 53 in the USA Today Sagarin ratings, the season starts with more questions than answers. Can USC keep pretending to play for pride, with no payoff at the end except for personal stats? "We can't do anything about the cards we were dealt," safety T.J. McDonald, the son of former USC defensive back Tim McDonald, told Sports Illustrated in its Pac-12 preview issue. "But we can go out there and dominate." The Golden Gophers are first up for the Trojans, who collected a 32-21 win a year ago in Minneapolis that started with a Marc Tyler 3-yard TD run in the first quarter. Tyler, of course, won't be along for the ride this time, suspended by coach Lane Kiffin for Internet transgressions. Watch for Dillon Baxter to begin his own case to remain a starter standing behind Matt Barkley. Meanwhile, in Houston, the Bruins begin to purge the 4-8 finish from a season ago with a game against the Cougars. Last year, UCLA knocked out two quarterbacks -- including star slinger Case Keenum -- and handled then-No. 23 Houston a 31-13 stinger at the Rose Bowl. Jonathan Franklin ran for three TDs and 158 yards in 26 carries. Keenum comes in with 13,586 total yards, fifth all time and only 3,500 away from the No. 1 spot, as well as 107 TD passes, which is eighth-best in NCAA history.
MONDAY
Tennis: U.S. Open, open round, 1-to-8 p.m., ESPN2:
Don't go looking around Flushing Meadows for Sam Querrey. The Thousand Oaks High grad, who couldn't defend his title at the ATP's L.A. Open last month because of lingering effects of cleaning bone fragments out of his right elbow, told organizers of the Grandest Slam of U.S. events that he'll have to pass here, too. "The arm gets fatigued after about an hour of playing, and I don't have the strength to be able to play a three-out-of-five set match at a high level yet," said the 23-year-old Querrey, whose ranking has fallen to No. 79 after going as high as 17th in January. "I think an extra three or four weeks would be beneficial for me." Novak Djokovic comes in as the men's No. 1 seed for the first time in a major, but he has a shoulder injury that forced him to retire in his last tournament. Americans Mardy Fish (seeded 8th), Andy Roddick (seeded 21st), John isner (28th) and James Blake, plus wildcards Ryan Harrison, Bobby Reynolds, Donald Young and Robby Ginepri, are going to get strong backing, but not much else. On the women's side, former champs Serena Williams is seeded 28th and Venus Williams isn't even on the radar among the seeds. That means No. 4 seeded Victoria Azarenka of Belarus could meet Serena in the third round. "Poor, poor, poor Victoria Azarenka," said John McEnroe, who'll be doing color commentating for CBS during the event, starting with the womens' third round on Saturday and Sunday (8 a.m. to 3 p.m. each day).
MLB: Dodgers vs. San Diego, Dodger Stadium, 7:10 p.m., Prime:
The last mid-week day game of the season comes up in the series finale (12:10 p.m., Prime), so watch how many fans actually hit the concession stand in the eighth inning to load up on $1 Dodger Dogs for the ride home. Clayton Kershaw goes tonight in search of win No. 17. The middle game of this series is Tuesday (7:10 p.m., Channel 9).
MLB: Angels at Seattle, 7:10 p.m., FSW:
Joel Pinero back in the rotation? The AL West needs the Angels to stay competitive, and this four game series continues Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday (7:10 p.m., FSW each game).
World Track and Field Championships, 3 p.m., Universal Sports:
Allyson Felix's 400 meter final race is today; she's also targeting the 200 meter final Friday before the 4x400 relay on Saturday and 4x100 relay on Sunday (both on Channel 4).
TUESDAY
WNBA: Sparks vs. Seattle, Staples Center, 7:30 p.m., Prime:
Comedian Jay Mohr, filling in for Jim Rome on his syndicated radio program last week, surmised that more people likely watched the George Lopez weeknight talk show that TBS just canceled than have watched any WNBA contest, even a finals game. This one is televised. Lopez isn't anymore. Break even? The Sparks also play at Phoenix this week (Saturday, 7:30 p.m., NBA TV).
WEDNESDAY
MLB: N.Y. Yankees at Boston, 4 p.m., ESPN:
The chess match continues on the MLB Network for the opener (Tuesday) and the closer (Thursday) of this series, too.
THURSDAY
Golf: Deutsche Bank Championship, first round, noon, Golf Channel:
Winner is paid in German money? From Norton, Mass., with the final two rounds on NBC.
MLB: Dodgers at Pittsburgh, 1:05 p.m., Channel 9:
It's a make-up game from a rain out back in May. Turns out to be the first of 11 straight on the road in 11 days in four cities.
College football: UNLV at Wisconsin, 5 p.m., ESPN; Murray State at Louisville, 3 p.m., ESPNU; Kentucky at Western Kentucky, 6:15 p.m., ESPNU:
Yes, these count.
FRIDAY
MLB: Dodgers at Atlanta, 4:35 p.m., Prime:
They'll finish it with games Saturday (4:10 p.m., Channel 9) and Sunday (10:35 a.m.).
MLB: Angels vs. Minnesota, Angel Stadium, 7:05 p.m., FSW:
No more Jim Thome to worry about. The series finishes Saturday (6:05 p.m., Channel 13) and Sunday (12:35 p.m., FSW).
MLB: Arizona at San Francisco, 7 p.m., MLB Network:
The channel also has Saturday's matchup (6 p.m.) for the NL West leaders.
NFL exhibition: Oakland at Seattle, 7:30 p.m., NFL Network:
Everyone plays tonight -- it's the last slate of games before the real ones begin next week.
College football: TCU at Baylor, ESPN, 5 p.m.:
Not on The Longhorn Network.
Soccer: U.S. vs. Costa Rica, Home Depot Center, 8 p.m., ESPN:
The U.S. roster includes the Galaxy's Landon Donovan and Chivas' Heath Pearce. Home field advantage.
SATURDAY
College football: LSU vs. Oregon in Arlington, Tex., 5 p.m., Channel 7:
It's simply scandalous: LSU's suspensions versus Oregon's suspicions in a full-throttle, Pac-12-SEC matchup that sure smells like a bowl game. It's enough to pull the first "College GameDay" crew out after summer hibernation, making Cowboys Stadium the place to be at 6 a.m. (on ESPN, 7 a.m. on ESPN). The Ducks' spotlight is on the return of LeMichael James, leading the nation in rushing a year ago (1,731 yards) and third in the Heisman voting.
College football: Utah State at Auburn; 9 a.m., ESPN2; Akron at Ohio State, 9 a.m., ESPN; Northwestern at Boston College, 9 a.m., ESPNU; Indiana State at Penn State, 9 a.m., Big Ten Network; South Florida at Notre Dame, 12:30 p.m., Channel 4; BYU at Mississippi, 1:45 p.m., ESPN; San Jose State at Stanford, 2 p.m., Comcast Bay Area; Florida Atlantic at Florida, 4 p.m., ESPNU; Boise State vs. Georgia in Atlanta, 5 p.m., ESPN; Tulsa at Oklahoma, 5 p.m., FX; Colorado at Hawaii, 7:15 p.m., ESPN2:
As Andrew Luck would have it, the highly rated Stanford Cardinal starts the season on Opening Weekend, along with the first looks at Oklahoma, Boise State, Notre Dame, BYU, Florida, Georgia and Colorado.
High school football: Oaks Christian vs. Bellevue, 8:30 p.m., Prime:
They always get the prime TV game, don't they?
Series: "Game Time: Tackling The Past," Channel 4, 8 p.m.:
A brief synopsis of the premiere episode of something that looks like a G-rated "Eastbound And Down" meets "North Dallas Forty": Pro football star Jake Walker (played by Ryan McPartlin, from "Chuck," who also played football at the University of Illinois) is living the dream...or so he thinks. The veteran tight end is on pace to set the all-time receiving yards record and a probable spot in the Hall of Fame. While working out at training camp, Jake receives an unexpected call from his brother Dean (Josh Braaten, "Semi-Pro") - their father Frank (Beau Bridges) has suffered a major heart attack. Jake immediately leaves practice and returns to Riverton, N.C., the small hometown he's avoided for nearly 15 years. Memories of glory and regret flood his mind as he returns to the family and friends he abandoned in pursuit of his career. Jake dutifully visits his dad and brother, but all the hurt and misunderstanding from the past begins to resurface, leaving him counting the days until he can return to his team. Then Jake's agent calls: His contract is not being renewed amid concerns about his surgically repaired knee. To avoid the media circus, Jake extends his stay in Riverton, and, trying to make the best of it, starts reconnecting with the community -- like his high school sweetheart, Sarah (Katie Carr). He takes over his dad's high school coaching job. By the time Jake gets a new contract offer from another team, he's not sure he wants to leave. OK, that wasn't brief. But now you don't really have to know what you're missing since it's up against some prime-time college football.
SUNDAY
Series: "Curb Your Enthusiasm," HBO, 10 p.m.:
In the episode called "Mister Softee," Larry David has a flashback to a painful childhood memory after hearing a particular song played by a passing ice-cream truck, causing him to flub a key play in a softball title game. He's only got one person to turn to for support: Bill Buckner.
College football: Marshall at West Virginia, ESPN, 12:30 p.m.; SMU at Texas A&M, Prime Ticket, 4:30 p.m.:
The Aggies have two Doak Walker candidates in their backfield. If you care to find out who they might be.
Hall of Fame broadcaster Jaime Jarrín will return to the broadcast booth for his 54th season in 2012, he announced during today's broadcast on Univision Radio KTNQ 1020. He, unlike fellow Baseball Hall of Famer Vin Scully, continues to call all 162 games at home and on the road for the Spanish-language station.
"The Dodgers have invited me back for another season, so you will have to be by my side again," Jarrín joked with analyst Fernando Valenzuela on air during the second inning. "I love what I do. It's something I love and it brings me great joy to work alongside you and Pepe Yñiguez. I'm pleased to serve the Spanish-language community and really share baseball with them - such a beautiful and pristine sport."
Jarrín, inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1998, started with the Dodgers in 1959, the year after they moved to L.A. from Brooklyn.
Janet Evans turns 40 today. No matter who's holding a clock to time her on this one, she isn't ready to feel old.
Her son, Jake, also turns 2 today.
"Cupcakes and balloons -- that's fine with me," the three-time Olympic swimmer said from her home in Laguna Beach the other day. "It's an all-kids' party.
"I mean, who wants to turn 40? Every year goes by too fast now. No, I don't need any interventions."
Interruptions, maybe. Like, some quiet time to catch a nap between workouts that could lead to a curious adventure sending her back swimming at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.
Between time spent as a mom to Jake and 4-year-old daughter Sydney, and a wife to Bill Willson for seven years, Evans has put away the teddy bears she used to clutch as a teenager after winning gold medals and bared her soul to the pool again, making not so much something she wants to call a "comeback" but more of an attempt to see what's possible.
You'll find the USC graduate before the crack of dawn at the Golden West College pool in Huntington Beach most every morning, sticking to a plan set by her former USC coach, Mark Shubert.
Evans had a moment to come up for air and explain how things were going as she hit the milestone age mark:
QUESTION: Where do you hurt today?
ANSWER: Definitely, my shoulders. I just swam eight miles and it feels like there's a piano on my back. Then I did two hours of exercise and an hour of lifting (weights). It feels good. But it does hurt.
Q: How in the heck have you managed to avoid a major injury for so long? What's the secret?
A: In my sport, any shoulder injury - that's it. For me, my stroke doesn't put a lot of pressure on the shoulders. The interesting thing about swimming again is that a lot of the things I read, researchers say older athletes can do the same things physically as they did earlier in life, but once they become injured, it obviously takes a longer time for healing. So knock on wood, the shoulders may hut, but it's nothing that a little ice or massage won't help. I've had nothing career-threatening. That's just a blessing.
Q: Coach Shubert has called this a "project" rather than a "comeback." Is that mentally the better approach to take with this?
A: Yeah, I think so. I didn't start doing this to come back for the Olympics. I was just getting close to 40 and at a place in my life where I could find more time to do things, coordinate it with my family. A lot of moms feel they get to a place where you can put things back on the front burner. This is something I felt I could still do, but who knows what'll happen. We take it day by day.
Q: So during this "project" you've been breaking masters records in the 400- and 800-meter freestyle events. Does that kind of create any sort of goal-setting with incentives to push forward?
A: My times are improving and right where I want them to be 11 months out of the trials. It's always great to break a world record - on any level - but I'll need to do more than break those records just to meet (current Olympic) standards. They are a very good indicators, though. The other day, I swam against two people who were 88 and 91 years old. Talk about inspiring! This has been a very interesting journey into the masters' world, but I've loved it.
Q: And there was Dana Torres, at 41, competing in the 2008 Olympics, taking three silvers. That had to be inspiring.
A: Dara and I were on two Olympic teams together - she does the one-lap events and I do 16. So it's very different training. But yeah, what she did inspired all of us. It was incredible. But it's a different journey, a real personal one, for each of us. I know if I never swim another stroke, I don't regret what I've done the last 11 months. Regardless of what Dara did, I'd still be doing this.
Q: There was the story recently about Diana Nyad, age 61, trying to do the 100-plus mile swim from Cuba to Florida. It seems like only the water conditions prevented her from doing it. Is that something you'd ever be able to do?
A: I don't do ocean. That scares me. I'm a very spoiled pool swimmer. I know (Diana) well. I followed her story and it was sad to see it end for her the way it did, but it's not the result that mattered, it was the journey to mentally and physically get there. I'm not sure anyone has given her enough credit for what she did at age 61.
Q: In all the training you've been doing, how important is sleep in the equation of working out, eating right and avoiding stepping on a fork or pulling a muscle stretching for a pacifier?
A: That's a question no one has really asked before. My husband keeps telling me I need more sleep. It's really the only time the body has to recover. The hardest part of coming home after a practice is starting a full day with the kids. As an athlete, you want to lay on the couch and watch TV. I still have the mindset of an elite athlete , but now I come home, and I'm a mom. Sleeping at night has become very important to me, but it's really hard sometimes. You have nights where the kids are up sick. You need husband time. But he's been awesome. He lets me get to sleep by 10 p.m. every night. I get close. But I do have a friend called caffeine that works as well.
The kids are the most interesting addition to training, but the good part is my coach has a daughter that's married to my husband's best friend, and we have kids almost exactly the same age. So my kids are close with my coach's grandkids. And because of that, he understands what I'm going through. I might get up one day and say, "Coach, Jake was up all night with a cough." And he'll say, "OK, then get some sleep, and work out at this time instead." It helps so much to have a coach who really knows what his daughter is going through in the same situation and he's super good with all that.
Q: Your records that were broken in Beijing with the suits that are now banned: Don't you just want to race again, in those LZR Racer suits, to at least feel like you're entitled to at least try to get the records back?
A: I do! I do! But in all honesty, I'm so happy since I'm swimming again that I missed that era. That was so ridiculous and such a black mark on our sport. I'm so happy it's finally over. That really evened the playing field. The sport is based on body type and hard work, but everyone just floated in those things.
Would I like to use one of those suits? I think, 'Gosh, I need all the help I can get.' In our sport, it's about getting tired hips and your body changing position. But with that wetsuit, you keep a buoyancy and the body stays in the same position, so you never get tired. Most swimmers get to a point where they feel they're swimming uphill. But in those suits, it was like swimming downhill.
Q: It's true your training starts with a swim at 4:15 a.m.?
A: I get up at about 4, I swim from about 5-to-7, left weights, then come home in time for my husband to hands the kids off on his way to work. I'm a full-time swimmer, full-time mom, with double workouts three days a week. It's been a little tiring, but I also feel super good, and energetic, and I'm really eating better. Know what I mean?
Q: You're basically working out while your kids sleep?
A: Yeah, and it helps that my parents live close by. They want to see the kids, so they go over in the afternoons . . . it's win-win.
Q: And through all this, you haven't had to change your stroke at all -- still the head bob and the straight left arm?
A: No, and in fact, it's more similar to how it was when I was beginning. By (the 1996 Games in) Atlanta, I weighed about 130 pounds (seen here). Now I'm closer to 112, to when I was in the late '80s when I was a teenager. My stroke has been surprisingly good, which is another reason I could attempt this. If I needed to lose 15 pounds, doing this wouldn't have made any sense. The fact is I haven't swam in 15 years - I didn't swim through either pregnancies -- but I'm in good shape, and it's not like I'm starting from nothing.
Q: How can experience work in your favor when you're in the starting blocks against other competitors? Can you play mind games with them?
A: In my career, at the ripe old age of 40, you know how you did things correctly and incorrectly, so that helps. With age does come wisdom - isn't that what they say? I should put that on my Twitter feed. But as far as having an edge . . . I don't know. If I was a teenager swimming against someone who held a world record, I can't say I'd be super psyched about it.
Q: Your exercise regime now -- yoga, Pilates, weights - must give you such a strong core. How is that different from the training you last did in the 1996 Olympics?
A: Swimmers have always really had to have a strong core. That's the basis of their stroke. You don't realize what great abs you can have, but that's from proper swimming. You use the stomach muscles more than anything. And society is now focused so much on the core muscles, so it's fun to integrate all that.
If swimming was just about pounding out four hours in the pool, that would just be boring. There's less about actual swimming now and more about having a level of fitness and strength outside the pool. If I'm 40, if all I was doing was swimming 15 miles a day, no way would I be doing this. But thankfully the training has changed to make is much more interesting.
Q: Was part of your training throwing out the first pitch at a Dodgers game recently? Nice arm. And you, again, avoided major injury.
A: Everyone told me, "'Don't throw out your shoulder."They know I just don't do well with sports on land. Water only for me
Photo by Jon Soo Hoo/Dodgers
Vin Scully opened the top of the sixth inning of tonight's Dodgers-Rockies broadcast on Prime Ticket by looking into the camera and holding a couple of cookies up with his left hand.
He explained:
"Every time this year, a nice lady in Woodland Hills named Mrs. Marti Squyres sends me some chocolate chip cookies. This year when she sent them, in the letter she said: 'This is a bribe to get you to come back next year.'
"Well, I don't want to make a big deal out of it. You and I have been friends a long time. But after a lot of soul searching, a few prayers, and decided that maybe we could do it, we decided that we will come back with the Dodgers for next year.
"God's been awfully good to me, allowing me to do the things that I've always wanted to do. I asked him for one more year at least. He said, 'OK, be quiet, and eat your cookie.'
"I'll do the same thing."
And with a wink, he added, getting a little choked up: "Let's go back (to the game)."
It couldn't have been much classier. No confusing press conferences (like last year). No waiting until the offseason (when it becomes lost in the other sports).
The Hall of Famer will be starting his 63rd season in 2012 with the same schedule of doing all home games and most of the road games this side of Colorado.
Yippee ki yay: The official launch of the 24/7, ESPN-owned, somewhat controversial Longhorn Network powers up from the University of Texas' Austin campus quad today at 4 p.m.
We're just not sure who, if anyone, will bear witness to the first channel devoted to a single school.
Carriage deals have not been announced. Only a few small, in-state distributors supposedly have it. Verizon FIOS presumably will come on board, but not until Sept. 1. DirecTV and Time Warner, the two biggest media barons, aren't close to hooking horns yet.
Whatever ESPN stands to gain by its 20-year deal that pays the university $300 million remains to be seen - assuming someone sees it before the Longhorns open the season Sept. 3 against Rice on TLN.
"We have confidence someone will see us (on the first day)," said Stephanie Druley, the Longhorn Network's VP of programming. "It's inevitable we're going to be on TV."
A live broadcast of ESPN "College GameDay" starts TLN with Chris Fowler, Lee Corso, Kirk Herbstreit, Desmond Howard and Erin Andrews as the eye candy. Don't look away from Samantha Steele, Kevin Dunn and Lowell Galindo, either. They're TLN signature talent pool.
The first live event arrives at 6 p.m. -- Pepperdine faces the No. 4-ranked Texas women's volleyball team in the Burnt Orange Classic from the campus gym (called by Carter Blackburn and Heather Cox). Then, on Sunday at 11 a.m., Cal State Northridge's womens soccer team gets some TV time facing Texas.
The official website of the network - http://espn.go.com/longhornnetwork -- is already begging you to bang our your cable or dish system to bring it on. Subscriber fees are again a sticking point.
Otherwise, most of the commotion surrounding this channel that the Big 12 allowed Texas to launch so that it wouldn't jump to the now-Pac-12 are the ramifications of plans to carry high school football games. Many perceive that as somehow giving Texas a special recruiting advantage.
The NCAA, calling a rare "TV summit" at its headquarters in Indianapolis earlier this week, has tabled that motion until it can figure out how to level the playing field.
As a follow-up to today's media column (linked here) about FoxSportsWest.com streaming four high school football games on its website starting next Friday, we came across this piece that kind of folds into the way the media is going and who's got issues with how technology is taking over some coverage:
By Todd Richmond
The Associated Press
MADISON, Wis. -- High school athletic associations nationwide say a federal appeals court ruling upholding Wisconsin's right to sell exclusive rights to live-stream games online preserves a lucrative new revenue stream, while newspaper groups fear the ruling could lead to more restrictions on covering games that entire communities follow.
The dispute centers around the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association's exclusive contract with American-HiFi to live stream state tournament games. The WIAA sued in 2008 after the Appleton Post-Crescent newspaper streamed four high school football playoff games on its own.
A federal judge sided with the WIAA last year. On Wednesday, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals backed him up, saying the First Amendment doesn't guarantee media outlets free broadcasting rights.
"It could potentially cause problems down the road," said Paula Casey, executive director of the Arizona Newspaper Association. "(I) could see them infringe on what newspapers can do, if they think they can stand up in court. It could make things very tough for newspapers."
High school associations like the WIAA generally oversee extracurricular sports in their state schools, coordinating schedules and tournaments and sanctioning state champions.
The squabble in Wisconsin underscores the sometimes uneasy relationship between the media and the athletic associations over who owns and distributes game accounts, particularly visual images.
Tensions have only grown during an Internet age that demands immediate reporting and Web posting.
The Associated Press
Blake Griffin is going to work for Will Ferrell instead the NBA.
This week, the Clippers All-Star forward is interning at Funny Or Die, the comedy website co-founded by Ferrell and Adam McKay. Griffin arrived at the site's L.A. offices Tuesday to begin three days of work in video production.
He will help write, shoot, edit and act in several videos for the site. Funny Or Die quickly creates digital comedy videos, often with celebrity guest appearances.
Griffin said he's a big comedy fan and an avid viewer of Funny Or Die. As an intern, he hopes to learn more about film production.
"Just to get an inside look at how things are run here is exciting to me," Griffin said. "I don't know what interns at Funny Or Die are like, but I'm about to find out, I guess."
Mike Farah, president of production at Funny Or Die, pledged that Griffin will be treated like other interns. He noted that the 22-year-old Griffin is, after all, about the same age as most of the site's college interns. (The others, of course, may not be able to dunk over midsize sedans.)
"We're going to put him to work," said Farah. "He's shooting a series of videos, and he's also coming to meetings. He's basically doing everything that an intern does."
Griffin counts "Old School," "Wedding Crashers" and "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy" among his favorite movies. On Funny Or Die, he likes Zach Galifianakis' mock interview series "Between Two Ferns."
"I'll go see a bad comedy over a good action movie any day," Griffin said.
Though Griffin averaged 22.5 points and 12.1 rebounds per game last season, he says he's not above fetching coffee in his week as an intern.
"I don't mind doing stuff like that," he said. "It's not a problem for me."
By Jeremy Last
The Associated Press
TEL AVIV, Israel -- Greeted at the airport by fans singing and banging drums, New Jersey Nets guard Jordan Farmar said today he is excited about playing during the NBA lockout with Israeli champion Maccabi Tel Aviv, a club he followed as a youngster.
Aside from Israel's own Omri Casspi, who plays for the Cleveland Cavaliers, Farmar is the only Jewish player in the NBA.
He is one of the highest-profile players to play for Maccabi, the runner-up in the Euroleague last season and an organization he said is "committed to winning."
Farmar, the former Taft High of Woodland Hills and UCLA star won two NBA titles with the Lakers before joining the Nets in 2010, will play for Tel Aviv as long as the lockout continues.
"I'm committed to this team, to the coaching staff and the organization for the time I am here and I want to do my part to help the team grow," Farmar said at a news conference at Maccabi's Nokia Arena. "Leaving at the end is not something I'm looking forward to ... but there is a business aspect to it. Part of my contract says when the NBA restarts I have to go back."
Farmar has been interested in Maccabi since he visited Israel as a youngster and saw the team play. Farmar's parents divorced when he was a child. His mother is Jewish, and his stepfather is Israeli. His father, former baseball player Damon Farmar, is black.
After playing for UCLA, Farmar became the first Jewish player in the NBA since Danny Schayes -- son of Hall of Famer Dolph Schayes -- retired in 1999.
"Jordan is one of the best and most exciting and I believe most special guards who have come to Israel for a long time. We're thrilled to have him," Maccabi coach David Blatt said. "The great part of the story is Jordan wanted to come and we wanted him. It was really a decision of the heart rather than a professional matter."
Farmar expects to adjust easily to the European game and fit in well with a deep Maccabi squad.
"I'm here to be a positive influence," he said. "I'm a leader by nature, whether I'm on the floor or not. I'm not here to show anybody up. I'm just trying to be a member of the team, a positive influence and whatever they ask of me I'll do."
(AP Photo/Jae Hong)
Kevin Love goes up to try to block a spike by Sean Scott in their first-round match this morning in Manhattan Beach.
Some of the photographic highlights of Kevin Love's attempt to play in today's qualifying round for the Manhattan Beach Open, but one that ended with a one-and-done against the No. 1 seeds John Hyden and Sean Scott 21-16, 21-15 in about an hour:
(AP Photo/Jae Hong)
I've got your double-double right here: Kevin Love signals to partner Hans Stolfus during their first-round match this morning in Manhattan Beach.
(AP Photo/Jae Hong)
Can you dig it: Love comes back to help Stolfus as he receives a serve ...
(AP Photo/Jae Hong)
Love can't reach this one ...
The 6-foot-10 Love told the Associated Press: "Obviously getting beat is never fun, but being competitive, playing against the best team in the country, a team that hasn't lost all summer, was a lot of fun.
"It's addicting. It's an excuse to get on the beach and near the ocean. I definitely want to keep playing, see how good I can get. These guys, they have their 10,000 hours in, so I'm kind of struggling in that regard.
"It's like having a good basketball sense, you got to have a good court sense out there and for me, I haven't spent enough time out there on the volleyball court to really know."
Added Stolfus: "We both said, 'Let's have as much fun as possible.' If we went in too serious we'd put too much pressure on."
Here's a Stolfus blog about playing with Love on his UniversalSports.com site (linked here).
Sports Illustrated's Lee Jenkins revisits the March 31 Bryan Stow beating in the Dodger Stadium parking lot in this week's issue of the magazine (linked here), and tries to extract some new filters to use in telling the tale again.
Such as:
Los Angeles county supervisor Michael Antonovich: "What happened was the direct result of a culture [Frank] McCourt allowed to exist in and out of the stadium. It was barbaric."
Antonovich emailed his spokesman, Tony Bell, on April 1 and told him to announce a $10,000 reward from the county for information about Stow's assailants--which the Dodgers were not pleased with.
Antonovich says: "McCourt's people called the office. They were upset we got involved. They wanted us to ignore it. They tried to sweep it under the rug."
A couple of months ago, Mike O'Hara was invited to be flown half way around the globe to Qatar and give a half-hour speech to the leaders of nearly a dozen Middle Eastern countries about the value of sports to their cultures.
International diplomacy through athletics was hardly a new concept for O'Hara, a two-time UCLA All-American on two national title teams in the 1950s and a member of the winning tandem for the first five Manhattan Beach Open volleyball tournaments.
After commandeering the first U.S. Olympic volleyball team that went to Tokyo for the 1964 Games, O'Hara, who got his business degree from UCLA and an MBA from USC, created of his own international sports management company that has sent him all over the map in search of opportunities like this.
It's just that, coming up on his 79th birthday, O'Hara might not have been sure who was going to listen to him anymore.
"I wanted to speak freely about the subject," he said. "I wanted them to know if they didn't spend capital now for the improved health of their younger ones, they'd spend twice as much for it later.
"I told the position I'd be taking. They needed to hear it."
He didn't even have to show them the self-published book that he recently wrote on the subject -- "Volleyball: Fastest Growing Sport in the World! The Basic Guide to the Sport Challenging Soccer." (linked here). O'Hara found it in three bookstores in Qatar while he was there, which is likely why officials from the country contacted its closest U.S. university affiliate, UCLA, to see if he was up for the journey.
He not only seized the moment, he spiked it clean. Through the gospel of volleyball.
That group of high-octane officials, which also included representatives to more than 30 Western and Eastern European countries, and 11 more from Asia, were at this annual think tank to discuss economic reform for their gas and oil industries, but O'Hara fueled a different discussion.
Profit from having more youths involved in volleyball, he said. Allow more girls to play, too. And do it in the schools already built in places like Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, Egypt and Yemen that are already established.
O'Hara couldn't help but feel like one of the missionaries who years ago helped establish volleyball in poorer countries by stringing a rope tied to two trees and drawing lines in the dirt to mark off a court.
"A big-time missionary," O'Hara said with a laugh. "Or more like Johnny Appleseed."
If you weren't sure about volleyball still emerging as one of the fastest growing sport on the planet - beach or indoor -- O'Hara has a plan to remind everyone of where it's been and where it can still go. And grow.
Mike O'Hara, far right, with partner Mike Bright, pose with Miss California after winning their first Manhattan Beach Open tournament against another beach legend, Gene Selznick, second from left, and Mike Higer.
Never resting on the five plaques that are still on the Manhattan Beach pier to commemorate his historic run from 1960-64 with partner Mike Bright ("he was a surfer dude who could really jump"), O'Hara's post-beach resume after winning 38 open championships in the sand took him from coach and referee to broadcaster, commissioner and consultant on things such as:
== A co-founder of the American Basketball Association, supporting the introduction of the 3-point play in 1969-70.
== One of the architects of the World Hockey League (which signed teenager Wayne Gretzky to his first deal).
== Peter Ueberroth's right-hand man in negotiating an overseas TV rights deal for the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
== Launching a professional track and field circuit.
== Teaming with Jerry Buss to start the World Volleyball League in 1990, after creating a Team Cup league years earlier.
== Creating a sports called Wallyball - a version of volleyball to be played on indoor racquetball courts, that introduced the concept of rally scoring that was eventually adopted for the pro beach and Olympic beach game.
O'Hara's induction into the Volleyball Hall of Fame in Holyoke, Mass., more than 20 years ago seems the most appropriate accomplishment to secure his legacy.
But he's far from throwing in the beach towel.
"I've been trying to help volleyball all my life; it's been real good to me," said O'Hara.
The 51st edition of the Manhattan Open, which begins with elimination matches Thursday morning, gives O'Hara another chance to spread some seeds as he watches what he believes is the rest of the world passing up the Americans in volleyball superiority.
Most of the top U.S. teams, as a matter of fact, aren't in Manhattan Beach this weekend, but overseas playing in FIVB events as the 2012 Olympics near.
"The rest of the world has made volleyball their own," said O'Hara, who lives with his wife Arlen, in the Pacific Palisades. "When I found that out, I was shocked. Soccer, you'd think, would be less expensive than volleyball, but it requires so much real estate, a level field.
"I told the oil rulers: You're not even going to spend a lot to make volleyball big in your countries. You administer it. You build it. You design it. It makes so much sense to them because they have such tremendous resources.
"The problem is so many affluent countries have the same problem getting their kids away from the computers and video games, and fighting childhood obesity issues."
Paul Sunderland, a member of the U.S. men's Olympic gold-medal-winning team in '84 and longtime broadcaster of the beach game, says O'Hara's legacy is "as one of the great players -- forget about putting him in any generation. And he's been a remarkable businessman as well, a real visionary. He's incredibly smart, a hard worker and a super-competitive guy.
"I can see how his business background could get the gulf nations to see his point of view. If Mike sees a way to promote it, he can be a catalyst."
The goal of O'Hara's 176-page easy-to-tote paperback is both to record the history of the game from his perspective, and introduce the philosophies of others who still have a powerful voice about its future - like Doug Beal, the USA Volleyball CEO; beach legend Singin Smith; former women's star Gabrielle Reece; Dr. John Kessel, the USAV director of membership development; assistant USA men's national team coach Gary Sato, and Dr. Jonathan Reeser, a former FIBA medical commission member.
"I want people to know that volleyball is still a big deal, and I'm hoping there are a lot of groups who can still learn about the sport - from the kids, who need to get out of the TV room and do something healthy, to the parents; from coaches to college students, and even senior players on the beach," said O'Hara
.
"There are an awful lot of audiences out there to enlighten. I don't think this book will be finished until 10 years from now."
It might take O'Hara shining his light on it for the seeds to keep growing.
== More on Mike O'Hara:
= The website volleyballmike.com
Agent Scott Boras explained his side of the Jered Weaver negotiations with FoxSportsWest.com columnist Joe McDonnell in a column updated early this morning (linked here).
Bottom line: "It's not my job to make decisions for them," Boras said. "My job is making sure they've thought about all the emotions involved, what prospects are available and every possible financial scenario they might face on their way to making a decision. They are told about what's potentially available with other organizations and in other markets. In the end, I just want them to have the best information possible, so they can make a good decision. Not to try to force them to make a decision, because I don't do that. And I don't want to.
"Jered will tell you that (what) we put him through to prepare for this was something that was difficult for him. (Surprisingly) the Angels still wanted to do this during the season, despite all the work we all had to put into getting him ready to make this decision. It takes a lot of time. Jered was up to it, though, because he really wanted to stay home.
"Obviously, monetarily, (free agency) was something that would have benefitted him more. He knew exactly what he was worth as a (potential) free agent, and he knew exactly what he was worth as a five-year player and what it cost him to sign early. He also knew what the benefits were that are important to him.
"He clearly knew what he was doing when he made this decision."
Did Weaver make the right decision to sign without taking a shot at free agency?
"He knew what he was giving away. He knew it was substantial. And for him there was a gain from that. For other players that may not have been the case, but for him, it was."
(AP Photo/The Orange County Register, Paul Bersebach)
Angels pitcher Jared Weaver smiles at the start of a news conference to announce his new five-year, $85 million contract Tuesday.
Jered Weaver has a soul.
"I don't need the biggest contract on the planet," he said.
Scott Boras probably had a different goal.
But the bottom line Tuesday afternoon when the Angels officially gave the former Simi Valley High and Long Beach State star pitcher a spankin' new five-year, $85 million, no-trade contract extension, super-agent Boras wasn't there for the press conference just outside Angel Stadium.
Fox Sports West arrived to televise the event live. About a hundred Angels fans magically appeared to chant Weaver's name. Former Angels Bobby Grich and Chuck Finley sat in the front row with Weaver's parents and fiance.
Don't bore us with why Boras was a no-show. Officially, he was "traveling" and unavailable.
All that did was give the impression that Boras, so frustrated with his client stealing his thunder, bolted out of town.
And the reason should be pretty obvious -- Weaver sold himself short.
If the 28-year-old two-time All Star could have just been patient and waited until the end of the 2012 season when his free agent status kicked in.
Boras would not have jinxed it. Fact is, he could have Brinks'd it. Meaning, there'd be an armored truck backing into the driveway of Weaver's new home in Newport Beach and dropping gold bricks onto his cement pond.
Dang it, Boras could have even yanked a deal for Weaver that was even more fantabulous than the seven-year, $152 million heist he pulled from from the Yankees just two years ago for CC Sabathia.
Not this time. Not with Weaver's comfort zone as risk of being compromised.
"How much money do you possibly need?" Weaver exclaimed Thursday when asked point blank why he seemed perfectly content with the Angels' deal today rather than something even more ridiculous that could materialize down the road.
(AP Photo/The Orange County Register, Paul Bersebach)
Kristin Travis, left, fiancee of Angels pitcher Jared Weaver, and Weaver's parents, Gail and Dave Weaver, listen during a news conference to announce Weaver's new five-year, $85 million contract on Tuesday.
Jered's father, Dave, was just as mind boggled.
"That's a 'home-team discount'?" Dave asked about his son's guaranteed future earnings. "Eighty-five million? I can't relate to those numbers."
These dreaming Weavers think alike.
A month ago, when the Angels approached Boras and Weaver to ask if they'd be interested in expanding a deal that would bring an average of $17 million a season through 2016, rather than go through that dance of trying to see how much any of the other 28 teams (Dodgers excluded) would be willing to cough up for his services, the decision was made.
This is the greener side of the fence, Weaver decided. So do the deal now.
And Boras did.
What else do you need to know?
"I've never liked the business side of all this," said Weaver, harkening back to May of 2005 when Boras' negotiation tactics nearly led to the Angels balking at signing him after they used a first-round pick for him in June, 2004.
"When I knew the Angels wanted to get this done, I told Scott that I wanted to be in Southern California. There wasn't any conflict between me and him. He just wants what's best for his clients. You can't hate him for that."
You could, on the other hand, be miffed that Boras couldn't make this event a priority.
Plenty of other things had to factor into Weaver's decision.
He probably knows that his lifetime ERA in Anaheim is 2.69, more than a run less than it is on the road.
His friend, John Lackey, has had a rough go of after taking the money and running to Boston with a five-year, $82.5 million deal through 2014.
And then there's older brother, Jeff, who toured the rosters of the Tigers, Yankees, Dodgers, Angels, Cardinals, Mariners, Brewers, Indians and back to the Dodgers from 1999 to 2010.
"I know (Jeff) got the brunt of it and the media ripped him up (during his Yankee days)," said Jered. " I'd rather face seven reporters in a locker room instead of 750. I like to be more under the radar."
Jeff, semi-retired having just turned 35 on Monday and now living in North Ranch, pulled down some $40 million total in his career. But he says you can't put a price on spending time with a team that's in your neighborhood.
"Jered is much more equipped than I am to deal with those kind of issues," Jeff said Tuesday from his home. "He's got a great mental approach to go with his physical approach to get it done anywhere. As someone who played with a bunch of different teams, I know when you're feeling comfortable in one place, and then you switch, it has an effect."
The bottom line: Jered Weaver wanted to stay put. And Scott Boras heard the message.
"He's a grown man and can make his own choices," Jeff Weaver said. "I think he's done enough to prove he's in the driver's seat."
Hear that, Boras?
The fact one his clients appears to have the guts to push back and make his priorities more important than Boras' residual checks goes against all natural order in the agent universe.
Boras is the hired gun to give a player the ultimate chance to seek out his maximum value, if not way more. Right?
"Is that wrong?" asked Jeff, then answered quickly: "I don't think that's wrong at all."
But Jeff adds that one of the reasons Boras is "the best in the business" is that this time, "Scott understood Jered's prerogatives and he worked with that. I think he gets a bad rep a little bit for everyone thinking he does things on his own terms."
In terms of this scenario, then, we're led to believe that Scott Boras should be congratulated as much as Jered Weaver.
Because when Weaver goes to the mound Wednedsay against the White Sox, he'll be looking for his team-best 15th victory, trying to lower his league-best ERA to under 2.00, and his team closer to the AL West lead. He hasn't changed the number on his back to 85.
Boras and Weaver achieved their goal. And neither sold their soul.
And that, apparently, is now how they roll.
No way to know if that's out of context or anything. But on the Internet machine, stuff like that, offhanded or not, is blogger's gold for whatever reason.
Since we weren't there to hear the interview that MLB.com's Chris Jackson did with Dodgers' Triple-A catcher Tim Federowicz -- or know if he collected the quote from another source -- we'll have to assume this isn't really headline material pinned onto the kid who essentially was so worthy of Ned Colletti's attention that he did trade highly-touted local prospect Trayvon Robinson to Seattle, via Boston.
Surely, Federowicz will be asked about it again when he's called up to the Dodgers late next week.
Meanwhile, check out the cheezy 'stache, and judge for yourself for those who love to read between the lines and jump to conclusions: http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20110822&content_id=23573072&fext=.jsp&vkey=news_milb
Highlights of the week ahead in sports, both here and afar:
THIS WEEK'S BEST BET
Beach volleyball: Manhattan Beach Open, 4 p.m., Versus:
How do you beat an NBA lockout? With a beach party. We can't find a proper conversion table to measure a double-double on the basketball court versus one on the beach volleyball court, but Kevin Love, the one-and-done UCLA center and current Minnesota Timberwolves All-Star, would be doing it with enough blocks and spikes as he plays in the "Wimbledon of Beach Volleyball." Consider it a minor victory if he makes it out of Thursday's prelims and into the field of 48. "This sport is not as easy as it looks," said Love, who teamed with Luke Walton and Jordan Farmar in the recent Manhattan Beach 6-man event. "You don't realize how tough this sport is until you're out there on the sand and the ball comes screaming at you. You have to have great timing, agility and athleticism to be good in this sport. These guys are some amazing athletes." The Houston Rockets' Chase Budinger, who lost in the second round of last week's Coronoa Light Wide Open tournament in Hermosa Beach, is also trying to worm into this event. Why not? There's a share of a $200,000 purse awaiting if anyone can do some damage (like John Hyden and Sean Scott, who, like many top two-man teams, aren't overseas playing in FIVB events leading up to the 2012 Olympics). Meanwhile, it's back to international rules for this event, played with "old school" sideout rules a year ago for its 50th anniversary after the AVP shut down in the middle of last summer and left everyone hanging. "Through all the ups and downs of our game, the Manhattan Open has stood the test of time," said six-time winner Mike Dodd, the last AVP commissioner. "Hopefully it will again help usher in a new era of prosperity for the players, sponsors and fans." By the way, if Love is ousted early, he has time to enter the 32-mile Catalina Paddleboard race that finishes up at the Manhattan Beach pier on Sunday as well.
MONDAY
MLB: Dodgers at St. Louis, 5:15 p.m., Prime:
Rafael Furcal is raking at just .216 as a member of the Cardinals after 18 games, and he suffered a sprained thumb after tripping on a rope near the batting cage at Wrigley Field over the weekend. The series continues Tuesday (5:15 p.m., Channel 9) as Clayton Kershaw (15-5, and a league-best 199 Ks) draws the start, and it ends with a Wednesday matinee (11:15 a.m., Prime). By the way: The Dodgers are 3-15 at the versio of this Busch Stadium that opened in 2006 and have dropped seven consecutive series at St. Louis.
NFL exhibition; Chicago Bears at New York Giants, 5 p.m., ESPN:
When the Green Bay Packers made a trip to the White House recently, the team gave him an owners' share certificate. He then jokingly tried to work a deal for his hometown Bears to trade for Packers quarterback Aaron Rogers. Surely, Jay Cutler got a good laugh out of that one. The Bears apparently did try to make a deal with San Francisco for former USC star defensive back Taylor Mays, hoping to convert him into a linebacker, but that apparently fell through.
TUESDAY
MLB: Angels vs. Chicago White Sox, Angel Stadium, 7:05 p.m., FSW:
Ozzie Guillen's team comes off a 10-0 win over the Rangers and is still deeply invested in the AL Central race. The two-game set ends Wednesday (7:05 p.m., FSW).
WNBA: Sparks at Washington, 4 p.m.:
Maybe a side trip to the White House -- a Candace Parker meets Michelle Obama moment? -- but not as the reigning champs. The three-game road trip ends with this one, then it's back to Staples Center for a game against Tulsa (Friday, 7:30 p.m., NBA TV) before finishing the week up to Seattle (Sunday, 6 p.m., ESPN2) against the real WNBA defending champions, who should have Lauren Jackson back by then.
WEDNESDAY
MLB: Boston at Texas, 4 p.m., ESPN2:
ESPN's coverage of the Little League World Series pushes this potential AL playoff match up to ESPN2. You need priorities.
THURSDAY
(AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
Claudine Keane, wife of Galaxy newcomer Robbie Keane, watches the fireworks show before Saturday's game at Home Depot Center against San Jose in Keane's L.A. debut.
CONCACAF Champions League: Galaxy vs. LD Alajuelense, Home Depot Center, 7 p.m.:
Neat-o, Keane-o. There's an Irish spring in the Galaxy's step, at a sweet part of the schedule. The Galaxy, who won their Champions League opener last week, 2-0 against CD Motagua of Honduras, then go to New York for a Red Bull bulk-up on Sunday (4 p.m., ESPN2).
PGA: The Barclays, first round, Golf Channel, noon:
From Edison, N.J., the first of four consecutive PGA events that are part of the FedEx playoffs, and with a staggering $8 million purse. CBS has the final two rounds Saturday and Sunday.
FRIDAY
MLB: Dodgers vs. Colorado, Dodger Stadium, 7:10 p.m., Prime:
Loney In the Sky With Diamonds: Tonight's regular fireworks show will all be set to Beatles music, an ode to the group's historic concert at Dodger Stadium 45 years ago - the group's next-to-last live concert ever (the last was a night later at Candlestick Park). .
They've got more on Saturday (1:10 p.m., Channel 11) and Sunday (1:10 p.m., Prime).
MLB: Angels at Texas, 5:05 p.m., FSW:
And what did we learn last week after the four-game series in Anaheim? That if Mark Trumbo hadn't hit a late-inning homer, the Angels would have been swept under the rug like a ball of dust. This latest go-around pits the AL West-leading Rangers, third best in runs scored and near the top in team ERA, trying to snuff out the Angels' probable last chance to do some major damage before they meet to end the season, in what now could be meaningless. They've got more to play on Saturday (5:05 p.m., Channel 13) and national exposure on Sunday (5:09 p.m., ESPN).
SATURDAY
IAAF World Track and Field Championships, 9:30 a.m., Channel 4:
Eight reigning world champions lead Team USA into this pre-Olympic spotlight event in Daegu, South Korea -- most notably, Allyson Felix, going after that 200- and 400-meter daunting double again, and in line to win four golds as a member of both relay teams. The former L.A. Baptist High star who graduated from USC is a three-time winner in the 200 at the world championships, and recently won the 400 at the USA Outdoor Championships in Eugene, Ore. The 25-year-old's biggest challengers, both in person and trying to spell their names, are Anastasiya Kapachinskaya of Russia and Amantle Montsho of Botswana, and they all meet up today as the 400 heats begin (with the final Monday; the 200 meter heats start Sept. 1 and the finals are the next day). Coverage continues Sunday (9:30 a.m., Channel 4) with the men's 100 meter finals as the highlight.
NFL exhibition: New England at Detroit, 5 p.m., Channel 2:
The Lions say this one may count. If they win.
SUNDAY
Little League World Series, championship game, noon, Channel 7:
Have a ball, kids. The International and U.S. title games are Saturday (9 a.m. and noon, Channel 7), from Williamsport, Pa.
IRL: Indy Grand Prix of Sonoma, 1 p.m., Versus:
Most believe that Lombard Street in nearby San Francisco is the crookestest street in the city. It's actually Vermont Avenue between 22nd and 23rd streets has a sinuosity rating of 1.56 (versus Lombard's 1.2). Sinuosity is a measure of deviation of a path between two points from the shortest possible path. The sinousity index of the Infineon Speedway (formerly known as Sears Point)? We're not sure. It's just a long and winding 2.22 mile,11-turn, elevated up-and-down piece of asphalt pathway that takes a lot of will power and is best viewed via a Google satellite map. Will Power, by the way, won this IRL race last year.
Golf: 111th U.S. Amateur men's 36-hole final, 1 p.m., Channel 4:
California has the most players in the field with 47, including UCLA's Patrick Cantlay, the 19-year-old sophomore to be who made quite a splash as the low amateur during the recent U.S. Open (finished tied for 21st) and then shot a course-record 60 at the Travelers Championship - the lowest PGA Tour round ever for an amateur. Bakersfield's Bhavik Patel, 20, who won the 2011 California State Amateur Championship, will also be hacking around in the fescue grass of Erin Hills, Wisconsin, site of the 2017 U.S. Open. Donny Hopoi, of Aiea, Hawaii, who turned 15 on Monday, is the youngest player in the field; Randy Haag, 52, of Orinda, Calif., is the oldest player. The first three days of the five-day event are on Golf Channel (starting Wednesday), with NBC taking the semifinals Saturday (1 to 3 p.m.) before this match-play finale.
MLS: Galaxy at N.Y. Red Bull, 4 p.m., ESPN2:
The last time David Beckham cruised through New York -- the MLS All-Star game a month ago -- he introduced a new line of "bodywear" for the H&M clothing chain, "following in the footsteps of Karl Lagerfeld, Stella McCartney and Madonna." Your move, Thierry Henry.
NFL exhibition: New Orleans at Oakland, 5 p.m., Channel 4:
No one has seen Al Davis as a Raiders' practice yet. Concern?
Ross Porter admits that when an Orange County-based website inquired about his desire at age 72 to do play-by-play for video-streaming high school football and basketball games, the explanation of it "was so far over my head . . . but I know it's the wave of the future."
With a background that includes a 28-year-run calling games for the Dodgers, and 10 years at KNBC-Channel 4 where he did a live high school game of the week series (sometimes with Sandy Koufax as his colorman), Porter has gotten his head around a new gig with iBN Sports, an online broadcast network and video on-demand service in Lake Forest that has been one of the rising companies in the business.
Starting Sept. 2, Porter will do a prep football game of the week for iBN, most likely one that involves a team from the San Fernando Valley near his longtime home in Calabasas. The company will also have him hosting some of its regular series, and expand his popular "Real Sports Heroes" series that he began in 2007 from a one-minute radio segment to a three-minute video show.
"I'm really excited about this new venture," said Porter, whose newest media rep in the business includes Toi Cook, the former NFL defensive back out of Montclair Prep in Van Nuys. "I've been blessed with a remarkable career, and this is exciting to call high school and some college football and basketball games in a truly unique format.
"It took about two months to get here, but we finally put something together that gets me back to work."
John Mudge, the iBN Sports CEO with a company that does up to 1,000 high school games a year across the country, as well as some mixed-martial arts fight cards and minor-league baseball games, says hiring Porter "is very special for us. We've been listening to Ross Porter for many years."
The iBN high school football games are selected after Fox Sports West and Time Warner choose games for their sites. L.A.-based Vootage.com, one of the first websites to do local high school games starting in 2005, is "on hiatus," according to site co-creator Jeff Proctor.
A sidebar to the announcement today (and Friday's media column, linked here) that the Fox Sports Media Group has signed up a long-term deal with the Ultimate Fighting Championship -- 10 events a year will be simulcast on the Fox Sports Radio Network, heard in L.A. on KLAC-AM (570).
Don Martin, the FSR program director, as well as the orchestra leader for all that goes on Burbank-based KLAC, said Thursday that as long as radio continues to seek content that appeals to that 18-to-34 male age demographic, a mixed-martial arts contest on this medium shouldn't be any different than a fan of the Lakers trying to listen to the game before he gets home to watch it on TV or see it at Staples Center.
"If you're stuck in traffic during rush hour and the match starts at 6 p.m., you'll listen," said Martin.
"We already simulcast the 'NFL on Fox' Sunday morning show, and that's good content. We're always trying to do something different. Unless you try, you'll never know."
Martin said the UFC presence will also involve getting fighters on to the Fox radio shows on the day of their fights.
Fox Sports Radio, operated from the Premiere Radio Networks studios on Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks, has nearly 400 affiliates across the country.
(AP Photo/Reed Saxon)
David Hill, chief executive of Fox Sports, left, is joined by Fox Sports Media Group president Eric Shanks, UFC president Dana White, UFC CEO and chairman Lorenzo Fertitta and FX network president John Landgraf during the announcement today about a seven-year deal between the UFC and Fox.
Ultimately, Fox had no choice but to get into the UFC.
If it put it off any longer, Jay Glazer, the network's esteemed NFL reporter who is also one heck of a mixed-martial arts fan, trainer and competitor, might have had to put the entire upper management at Fox Sports into a lethal choke hold.
"I've been hoping this day would come for a very long time," Glazer said as the announcement became official this morning in Century City - a seven-year, mult-tiered deal with Dana White's Ultimate Fighting Championship that gives the mixed-message sport of MMA its most legitimate media platform to date.
Starting Nov. 12 with a fight card in Anaheim, at least four UFC events will air on Fox's network a year. Six more, starting next spring, will go on Fox's cable partner, FX, now in 99 million homes. That channel will also take up a live version of the popular "Ultimate Fighter" reality show that has been one of the most-watched series during the last seven years on Spike TV, a way to give a more human dimension to the otherwise crazed-looking fighters.
Fox Sports ultimate chief David Hill admits that 10 years ago, when he was first approached by UFC officials about becoming a partner after it was purchased by Zuffa, he was put off by the sport.
He even admitted to USA Today as recent as three years ago that MMA was "totally abhorrent."
"I've changed my mind," said Hill, not waiting to make a mountain out of that molehill.
Why? Follow the grappling greenbacks.
(AP Photo/The News-Journal, Suchat Pederson)
Yoshihiro Akiyama lies on the mat during a match during a bout against Vitor Belfort, right rear, during UFC 133 in Philadelphia on Aug. 6.
The UFC, primarily a company that makes it cash with pay-per-view events, has been one of the few sports franchises to indelibly lock in the coveted men in the 18-to-34 age demographic for its prime-time Octoganal mayhem. That translates to huge ad dollars for whatever network sells its soul to put it on.
That's why Fox's media relations department felt it was proper to entice reporters to its live, web-streamed announcement from its NFL set in Century City by calling it "one of the biggest announcements in its 17-year history." Actor and MMA host Joe Rogan had no fear factor into calling this "an historic moment."
"Since (the start of Fox Sports in) 1994, we've always been opportunistic, but sports is the ultimate supply and demand, and we do a fair amount of soul searching and calculations before we go into bidding on something," said Hill, who declined to confirm reports that the deal was for a reported $90 million a year, and was also coy about Fox being one of several networks in on the rights bidding.
"This is something we firmly believe in," he added.
Hill also noted that some advertisers might have a "do not buy" on the UFC, but "a helluva lot more have a 'do buy' behind it."
Fox had an MMA beta test in 2002 when a UFC 37.5 event was held in conjunction with Fox Sports Net's "Best Damn Sports Show" franchise. CBS and cable partner Showtime have also dipped their toe into the bloody water with a joint effort for over-the-air coverage in recent years, to very mixed reviews.
"Different quality and different production," said Glazer of the competition's efforts, mostly calling then UFC rival StrikeForce for its lesser-known fighters, before the UFC ended up buying Strikeforce. "Fox is the perfect fit now for UFC. We're younger and hipper network. And we let them do the production. Why mess with someone who does it right?"
UFC will produce the fights, and Fox will air them, while Fox's FUEL channel will also be involved. The UFC, in fact, had proposed taking over FUEL and making it a complete UFC channel until talks with Fox Sports president Eric Shanks, a former DirecTV executive, led to this partnership model.
Expect to see former CBS MMA play-by-play man Gus Johnson, now in the Fox tent, to be involved in calling some events, as well as some ultra-dimension cross-promotion of the sport on Fox's NFL, MLB and NASCAR coverage, as well as shows like "American Idol," as events come near.
Think Chuck Liddell on the "NFL on Fox" Sunday morning set someday sitting next to Howie Long, allowing Jimmy Johnson to rate their hair pieces.
"I remember one time bringing Chuck in here, and everyone was asking, 'Who's that guy with the weird haircut and all the tattoos,'" said Glazer. "Now, if we're walking around in Vegas, he's a huge celebrity."
So much might need to be explained in the weeks ahead for Fox's decision to jump into this legal form of "Fight Club," but Shanks even had an answer for that.
He said he owns a Harley Davidson T-shirt that says, "If I have to explain it to you, you wouldn't understand."
"This sports has been legit for a decade," said Shanks.
And Fox has been a legit sports network for even longer.
But some may legitimately question if that's at risk now.
(Steven Gibbons/USGA)
Danielle Kang and her father/caddie, K.S. Kang, teammed up to win the last two U.S. Women's Amateur titles.
Danielle Kang took the last major step from amateur to professional golf on the same day Keegan Bradley introduced himself as a major player to the golf world by winning the PGA Championship last Sunday.
Maybe you missed it.
By winning her second straight U.S. Women's Amateur title, the Westlake Village resident who recently left Pepperdine pulled off something of a remarkable comeback herself.
Kang was tied for 27th place, at 2-over par, during the stroke play portion of the event at the Rhode Island Country Club, and a persistent upper back problem was really affecting her match play after a quarterfinal win.
After some 45-minute readjustment on her ribs and rotator cuff, Kang recovered to advance through Saturday's semifinals and then win the 36-hole final with an impressive 6 and 5 performance over Thailand's Moriya Jutanugard.
Enough people must have seen it on the Golf Channel: Kang said she got 75 text messages, 40 voicemails and 78 friend requests on Facebook before she even went to her post-match press conference.
"I don't accept the person if I don't have a mutual friend, really," she admitted. "My brother always yells at me if I accept somebody. I learned."
As she drove down to Carlsbad this afternoon with her brother, Alex, who plays for San Diego State's golf team and last week was competing at the Western Amateur, the 18-year-old Danielle reflected on where she's been and where she goes from here:
Q: Did you feel as if your title came a bit under the radar with so much more attention on the PGA Championship in Atlanta?
A: I know. That's all right. They'll notice it later.
Q: What kind of situation did you face physically over the weekend? Did you worry that you might not be healthy enough to even finish, let alone be strong enough to repeat?
A: I've had a spinal spasm that hasn't fully healed - it's a long-term injury - and I had so much pain in my upper back and ribs that I couldn't breathe sometimes. (Chiropractor Dr. Ellen McNally) readjusted my ribs and shoulder blades. They were digging into my back. That really released the tension.
Q: How do your plans lay out now for turning pro? There was some mention of maybe playing in the Canadian Women's Open in Quebec starting next week.
A: Right now I need rest for my back. I haven't had much time to relax in months. I'm in the process of contacting agents and talking with companies that could represent me, but my priorities are really with Q-school (starting next month). So, from there, whatever happens, happens. Then I can settle down and talk about maybe playing in some exemptions.
Q: The career of Michelle Wie might be a cautionary tale about having a lot of publicity early and having a tough time living up to expectations -- no matter when she does win. Is there a way to look at her career so far and look at how she has done things with handling marketing, media, exposure, things like that?
A: Um, I mean, Michelle is really a different person. She's a great player, no matter how she markets herself. I don't know about the expectations. I think everyone expects more from everyone else. Everyone wants more. That's just how life is. I'm not sure how to explain it. No matter what, you're pushing yourself to get better. I think Michelle has represented herself well in the media. She's an awesome player. But she really is different.
Q: You've played in all four majors this year - 49th at the Women's British Open to become the low amateur, tied for 50th at the LPGA Championship. How do those experiences translate to playing in the amateur championships, where so much is based on match play?
A: I looked at them all the same. With my personality, match play is more suited for me. I like to attack things. You more aggressive you can be in match play, you do well. But in every major, there's every shot that counts, and you can be aggressive there, too. Every one of them is a learning experience.
Q: Having your dad as your caddy in these major events, what was the dymanics of that like? Was it more than having something of a comfort situation -- he could really help you with club selection and reading greens? Or confirming your decisions? And then moving forward, how do you go about picking a caddy?
A: Mostly what my dad does it keep me comfortable. He's there for me no matter what happens. I always say that the only guy you can ever trust in life is your dad. On the course, he just gets yardages for me. For instance I say, "148, right?" Then he goes, "Right." When I'm selecting a caddy for tour, I want someone that could be my friend. Golf is not all about seriousness or being uptight ... I like to have fun on the course. I play it cause I love the game.
Q: You had a unique learning experience attending Pepperdine. But you're not at the university any more after three semesters. It didn't end on such good terms - academically ineligible right before the team started in the NCAA tournament last spring. How would you describe all that experience?
A: Well, I did graduate (six months) early from high school (Westlake) and I think I'd be pretty young for someone going into my third full year of college (turning 19 in October). I think I got enough experience that I wanted to get in those two years, and I don't think there are many my age who can say that.
I did learn a lot of things. I do want to get a degree someday (she was studying pre-law and business) and I'll probably go back some day, but I'm not sure if it'll be at Pepperdine.
There are some things that happened that I can't say or mention. But things happen and you move on. I come from a family that's very highly educated (her mother is a doctor and licensed acupuncturist and her father is in the communications business) and, you know, it's complicated. School isn't a problem for me. It's just that no average student can skip grades easily.
Q: You're only going to be a teenager one more year - what kind of things do you think you're missing that other regular kids your age do? Or do you really miss it?
A: You know, you start playing ball at an early age, and any athlete who does that has to give up a lot. I missed a lot of things when I was much younger that I don't regret. I still get to do everything I want. Maybe I missed a school graduation, or a prom, but I there's always bigger and better things.
Q: Are you aware of how many LPGA players are there already with the last name of Kang - Soo-Yun Kang, Haeji Kang, Jimin Kang? I'm thinking you might get lost in the mix, or at least people may confuse you with them?
A: That's rare. Maybe it's not as common as the others, but still out there.
Q: Tell me about your relationship with Wayne and Janet Gretzky and them helping you get a membership at Sherwood Country Club. How did that all start?
A: Their son (Ty) became friends with my brother -- they're the same age, played a lot of high school golf together -- and he's been like my older brother, too. And the Gretzkys are now like my second parents. They've really helped me a lot and took care of me. Without them, I really wouldn't be able to play. They let me practice (at Sherwood) before I came to the Amateur, because I didn't have anywhere to practice. Janet called me right after I was done. She was like, "Oh, my God." I think she was crying..
Q: And you've become golf buddies with Marcus Allen and Eric Dickerson?
A: We play together sometimes at Wood Ranch (in Simi Valley). Eric has become a good friend and Marcus has been close. He's always giving me calls and texts before I tee off. He's pushing me all the time to play better. If I shoot a 69, he says I could have had a 65. If I shoot a 65, he says next time shoot 60. So what are you going to do?
Q: There was this quote I found, you talking to the USGA about turning pro: "Everytime an amateur decides to turn pro, they always think, am I ready? That's what they ask themselves. Now I know I am and I have to go to the next level." Was there one or two things that happened, something that clicked, that made your decision easier and confirmed you were ready, physically and mentally, to take that next step?
A: I'm always ready for a challenge and am not scared to go for it. I just know that I'm ready and I want to be on tour and compete. I'm ready for the next level. You gotta dream big and go for it.
More on Danielle Kang:
Birthdate: Oct. 20, 1992, in San Francisco
High school: Attended Oak Park for two years, graduated early from Westlake (2010). Once shot a 10-under 57 at the Marmonte League tournament at the Westlake Golf Course to break the women's course record by four strokes.
College: Attended Pepperdine (2010-2011). Golfweek All-American second team both of her seasons at Pepperdine. She ranked No. 14 nationally in the final Golfweek/Sagarin index following the 2010-11 season. Her sophomore-year scoring average of 72.42 ranks second on Pepperdine's single-season records list. A career stroke average of 72.81 in 13 tournaments and 37 rounds with the Waves. Declared academically ineligible and missed the Waves' postseason in 2011.
Amateur highlights: Won the 2010 U.S. Women's Amateur in North Carolina with a 2 and 1 victory over Jessica Korda of Bradenton, Fla.
HBO/SI's Jon Frankel, left, talks with John McEnroe during the "Real Sports" piece that aired Tuesday.
What's real and what isn't on HBO's "Real Sports," neither John nor Patrick McEnroe are even debating today. They're just sure their approaches as to how to grow more U.S. tennis championships isn't as different as the cable network show tried to make it out to be.
During a 14-minute segment in the latest episode of the HBO series that debuted Tuesday and is hosted by Bryant Gumbel , Sports Illustrated reporter Jon Frankel set out to shine a light on "a solution to what's ailing American tennis" in the world Grand Slam scene, just as the U.S. Open is about to begin.
Frankel's interviews with the McEnroe brothers were the foundation the discussion, and their common concerns about the cost of private lessons as well as how the sport may not be "sexy" enough when compared to football or basketball are key to the discussion. But then the focus goes more to how their opinions differ.
Patrick, for example, has been involved in the United State Tennis Association's efforts to invest some $15 million into junior tennis academies.
"Now here's where the brother's efforts to reinvigorate American tennis get interesting," says Frankel. "Because John, not surprisingly, thinks Patricks' institutionalized USTA approach is wrong. . . . The McEnroes disagree on many ideas."
During a conference call this morning with both Patrick and John McEnroe to promote ESPN's coverage of the U.S. Open starting Aug. 29, the question about whether they really do disagree seemed to be a very moot point.
"Welcome to HBO 'Real Sports,'" said Patrick, who said he watched it this morning. "That wasn't the way they sold the piece to me. They made it about the state of U.S. tennis. (The opinions John and I) are only slightly different. And that's pretty darn slight."
Added John, who said he did not see the piece yet: "Sometimes what makes a more interesting piece isn't where we end up but getting to where we've got. The bottom line is Patrick is a much better politician and he's in an important position. Ultimately it will be a win-win for us as opposed to be appear we're going in opposite directions."
Frankel, who doesn't interview the two together, goes back to each one later in the piece to see if he can get one to say his brother is doing things "wrong."
Patrick allows that "in my experience, it's pretty unlikely" that John's idea of having kids do less regimented activity will produce the next great American players. But he also says there are many different way to go about finding them.
John says "we don't talk about (their differences) as much as I'd like to," but that he doesn't bully Patrick about it.
Both Frankel and host Gumbel have a post-segment discussion about how there seems to be a "Catch 22" aspect about how the U.S. game won't get popular until it has an American champion, but we can't get an American to win until it gets popular in the U.S. somehow.
"I did feel that was their message, not ours, that it'll take a superstar to create a buzz, but how do we get there without a buzz," said Patrick. "I don't believe that, and I don't believe John believes that."
Added John: "I don't think Patrick and I are as far off as people make it out to be. I simply believe there should be different options provided for people. ... All those options should be out there."
HBO spokesman Ray Stallone said the network had no comment.
Highlights of the week ahead in sports, both here and afar:
THIS WEEK'S BEST BET
Little League World Series, round robin play, Day 1 Thursday: Asia-Pacific vs. Mexico, 10 a.m., ESPN; Midwest vs. Northwest, noon, ESPN; Caribbean vs. Japan, 2 p.m., ESPN2; Southeast vs. Southwest, 5 p.m., ESPN:
Stammer all you want about how TV has ruined Little League 11- and 12-year-old kids -- boys, that angle never gets old -- but ESPN got a new tongue-lashing about it last week when it decided to stay with the conclusion of a Little League World Series qualifier, pushing coverage of a highly-hyped U.S.-Mexico soccer friendly to ESPNEWS for the first 20 minutes. That's more than just good, sound programming. It's the way we do things at the World Wide Leader, said an ESPN spokesman, who tried to be friendly when he tweeted: "Starting US-MEX on ESPNEWS was unfortunate circumstance but this is one of the challenges of back-to-back live events. ESPN almost always sticks w/ the live event until it ends. Soccer fans would want the same if a match ran long." ABC, which first broadcast this event in Williamsport, Pa., in 1963, will get into the national exposure mix with preliminary games on both Saturday and Sunday afternoon, leading up to the network's coverage of the U.S. title game (Saturday, Aug. 27) and the overall championship game (Sunday, Aug. 28). West Regional champs Ocean View Little League out of Huntington Beach opens Friday against Rhode Island (noon, ESPN). It's kinda of odd to think that Angels backup catcher Hank Conger, recently sent back to Triple-A, actually played for the Ocean View team that made it to the West Regional championship in 2000.
MONDAY
MLB: Angels vs. Texas, Angel Stadium, 7:05 p.m., Channel 13:
There's that dynamite TNT series called "Leverage," with Timothy Hutton as a former insurance investigator. He's got this bogus L.A.-based firm called Leverage Consulting & Associates, but they're really more modern-day Robin Hoods -- a thief, a grifter, a hacker and a retrieval specialist use their skills to right corporate and governmental injustices inflicted on ordinary citizens, justice league style. Ordinary Angels fans realize their bogus L.A. team could use all the leverage it can get in their latest battle against their AL West combatants, using this a four-game series (all at 7:05 p.m., with Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday on FSW) as a direct path toward stealing first place in any kind of method of thievery, grifting, hacking and retrieving. The key match up is Wednesday: All-Star C.J. Wilson against red-hot Ervin Santana. The Angels have won in nine of his last 10 starts, and he's gone from 3-8 to 9-8 in the process, lowering his ERA by more than one full run. They know there's three more to play against each other in Texas next week (Aug. 26-28) leading up to the final series of the season (Sept. 26-28).
MLB: Dodgers at Milwaukee, 5:10 p.m., Prime:
What's brewin' here? Same ol, same ol. Milwaukee, with manager Ron Roenicke, has command of the NL Central, bolstered by a bullpen that includes two former L.A. All-Star closers -- Takashi Saito and Frankie Rodriguez. And the Dodgers, starting a 10-day, three-city tour, plan to combat that by using recent callup Nate Eovaldi up against Zack Greinke on Wednedsay (5:10 p.m., Channel 9), with Clayton Kershaw going into the afternoon finale (11:10 a.m., Prime).
MLB: San Francisco at Atlanta, 4 p.m., ESPN2:
Meanwhile, back in a world where Dan Uggla is no longer mentioned in the same breath as Joe DiMaggio ... The MLB Network has Thursday's game at 4 p.m.
NFL exhibition: N.Y. Jets at Houston, 5 p.m., ESPN:
It's Mark Sanchez, in 30 snaps or less. Without Plaxico Burress to test out his injured ankle. But no longer wanting to slug Rex Ryan.
TUESDAY
CONCACAF Champions League: Galaxy vs. Club Motagua, Home Depot Center, 7 p.m.:
Apparently, the sooner the Galaxy can import Robbie Keane from Ireland with a two-year, $8 million deal, and export Juan Pablo Angel and his guaranteed contract, the better. Meanwhile, there's a gap in the MLS action so that the Clausura league champs from Honduras can come to Carson to play a tournament. After this diversion, the MLS resumes Saturday (vs. San Jose, Home Depot Center, 7:30 p.m., Prime).
WNBA: Sparks vs. Atlanta, Staples Center, 7:30 p.m., Prime:
The Sparks (9-13) can dream big -- they've got back-to-back wins for the first time in a month, and Candace Parker may be coming back tonight after her knee injury in early June. After this one against the Dream, there's one more home game this week -- Thursday vs. Indiana, 7:30 p.m. -- before a road trip starts in Minnesota (Saturday, 5 p.m.) and Tulsa (Sunday, 4 p.m.)
MLB: Arizona at Philadelphia, 4 p.m., MLB Network:
Cliff Lee, coming off his 2-1 win over the Dodgers, is scheduled to get his bat back into the Phillies' lineup against the current NL West leaders. The three-game series includes another national TV game on Wednesday (4 p.m., ESPN).
THURSDAY
NFL exhibition: Philadelphia at Pittsburgh, Channel 4, 5 p.m.:
The Michael Vick Traveling Circus and Mega Team -- defying all NFL cap salary space and time -- shows off more of its moving parts in the Steel City. Last week's exhibition opener had an impressive 18.5 local Nielsen TV rating in Philly, with the mark exceeding 21.0 in the first quarter. It's either this, or the Saskatchewan Roughridgers against the Toronto Argonauts live in a real Canadian League Football game over on the NFL Network.
PGA: Windham Championships, first round, noon, Golf Channel:
Post PGA Championship and pre-FedEx Cup playoff, this event in North Carolina could have included Tiger Woods in the field, but he declined after failing to make the cut last week. Bad move? He's down to No. 33 in the world rankings, which the Associated Press golf writer Doug Ferguson thinks hasn't happened since 1997. During the second round of the PGA Championship coverage last week, analyst Gary McCourt, himself fashionable with his handlebar mustache, noted: "You know, the guys with the scruffy growths are playing better. Adam Scott (above) ... Steve Stricker has it going. Time to man up, Tiger. He's got the little thing growing. Not working for him, yet." But then, what is? Golf Channel has the second round; CBS has the final two rounds.
FRIDAY
NFL exhibition: Atlanta at Jacksonville, 5 p.m., Channel 11:
Keep an eye on this bunch of Jags. They could be your new L.A. team. Which means they could finally get rid of their mascot, named (really) Jaxson de Ville. It should be on the sidelines handing out bags of your Cheetos.
MLB: Dodgers at Colorado, 5:40 p.m., Prime:
Think of it this way: The Dodgers sweep, and they're probably overtaking the Rockies and climbing into third place in the NL West. The series includes games Saturday (1:10 p.m., no TV) and Sunday (12:10 p.m., Prime).
MLB: Angels vs. Baltimore, Angel Stadium, 7:05 p.m., FSW:
The Angels took two out of three from the Orioles recently at Camden Yards, with Vlad Guerrero on the DL. He's back in the lineup for the O's, hitting fourth and DHing, but he has yet to go long this month. The series includes Saturday (6:05 p.m., FSW) and Sunday (12:35 p.m., FSW).
MLB: Cleveland at Detroit, 4 p.m., MLB Network:
Attention Jered Weaver: The AL Central-leading Tigers just put second baseman Carlos Guillen, hitting .207, on the 15-day disabled list with a sore left wrist.
SATURDAY
Gymnastics: Visa Championships, St. Paul, Minn., 8 p.m., Channel 4:
Shawn Johnson, the 2008 Olympic all-around silver medalist and season six winner on "Dancing With the Stars" after she talked her mom into moving to L.A. where she finished her senior year of high school with private tutors, remains committed to making the 2012 Olympic team after a long break. But the 19-year-old hasn't looked up to her championship form, falling off the balance beam at the Cover Girl Classic in Chicago last month. She still had her petition accepted to compete in this U.S. championship event. Her 2008 teammates Chellsie Memmel and Alicia Sacramone have shown more promise and should contend at this meet. Highlights of the men's competition, where reigning U.S. champ Jonathan Horton is expected to win, airs Sunday (Channel 4, 1:30 p.m.), but it's live on Universal Sports on Friday (5 p.m.). Universal Sports also has the women's prelims (Thursday, 5 p.m.).
NFL exhibition: Oakland at San Francisco, 5 p.m., Channel 5; New Orleans at Houston, 5 p.m., NFL Network:
Here's what happened to Raiders coach Hue Jackson's team in their opening exhibition loss to Arizona last week: They won the coin toss. Jackson told them to defer to the Cardinals. One player told the ref they wanted to kick off instead. So Arizona started both halves on offense. As a result, Raiders defensive back Hiram Eugene was on the field to start the third quarter, when he shouldn't have been. He dislocated a hip in that opening Cardinals' drive.
SUNDAY
NFL exhibition: San Diego at Dallas, 5 p.m., Channel 4:
There's a clause in the Chargers' lease at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego that allows them to leave between Feb. 1 and May 1 each year by paying up a substantial early termination penalty. But if you see Philip Rivers on the sidelines with an L.A. cap after the first quarter, there's your first clue. NBC gets this game instead of the canceled exhibition in Canton, Ohio between the Bears and Rams.
(Hans Gutknecht/Staff Photographer)
Instead of losing a sleeve of balls on a golf course or taking a long mud bath during a spa day, Dodgers general manager Ned Colletti admits that he's recently allowed himself a guilty pleasure.
About once a month, he's been going to dinner with "five or six guys who are well-versed in life," he says. "We talk about whatever comes up. If we're there three hours, I hope the baseball conversation is only 15 minutes."
The other night, the group included Tom Sherak, the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; Bob Moore, the president and general manager of KABC-AM radio, the team's flagship station; KABC host Peter Tilden; Beverly Hills physician Dr. David Kipper; and Michael Franzese, a motivational speaker and author.
Oh, and Jason Alexander, aka George Costanza from "Seinfeld." His sit-com character once worked as the assistant to the traveling secretary to the New York Yankees. That apparently allows him some carte blanc into some sharp-witted baseball conversation.
"Here's how the dinner opens," says Colletti. "Jason says, 'You know I don't follow it (baseball, or the Dodgers) real close.' I say, 'Yeah.'
"He says, 'So how'd you blow a six-run lead (to Philadelphia on Wednesday)?' I said, 'Thanks, Jason. Thank you. I appreciate that.' "
A dinner for schmucks?
It's one thing to disentangle yourself from watching a franchise Colletti once built into an National League pennant contender now fragment into one just trying to stay out of the NL West basement, all while team ownership is hashed out on TMZ and Commissioner Bud Selig has sent someone in to babysit.
It's another to just try to find a simple way to temporarily escape the grind of the game, exhale, and relax. If only through a couple of appetizers before the main course.
"I think that's a problem," the 55-year-old Colletti said from his suite before Friday's Dodgers-Houston game, asked how he's able to decompress during the season. "I don't. I try to use every minute of every day."
We borrowed a few of them for a Q-and-A, hoping it might give him a reprieve from watching what would be a tight 1-0 Dodgers win in 10 innings over the Astros:
Continue reading Getting inside Ned's head: "Nobody's tougher on me than me".
Without an announcement, Tony Bruno's week-long suspension ended a show early, as he quietly reappeared on tonight's "Into The Night" syndicated show (KLAC-AM at 7 p.m.).
From a studio in Philadelphia (97.5 The Fanatic), where he has spent the last week with family, Bruno didn't address - at least in the first two hours (podcast can be heard here for hour one and here for hour two) - what happened a week ago Friday when he tweeted about San Francisco Giants pitcher Ramon Ramirez being an "illegal alien," then deleted it, then apologized for it (linked here). Parent company DirecTV suspended him for it.
In an email Bruno sent to us earlier in the day, he wrote about the lesson he's decided that he learned: "I will only use Twitter to promote guests on my show, never to comment on sports outrages."
Richard Deitsch of SportsIllustrated.com mentioned Bruno on his latest "media power list" column (linked here) by writing: "His tweet was indefensible, an ethnic slur that rightly touched off plenty of anger. ... At last check, Bruno's Facebook page had become a depository of people smacking him down. Bruno has had a long career in sports radio and, for the most part, he's been very good at it. He should offer contrition on the air upon return because part of his lifeblood is getting guests from pro teams. If he wanted to really elevate the discussion, he could examine how and whether an athlete's ethnicity plays into fandom. But this is sports radio, after all, where too often low-hanging fruit is the meal of the day."
So far, no such deal.
It's the CBS Sunday night show sweeping the nation that isn't called "60 Minutes."
The next episode of "Same Name" (Channel 2, 9 p.m.) takes former USC Heisman Trophy winning tailback Reggie Bush, now with the Miami Dolphins, and has him trade places with Danville, Ill., farmer and high school football coach Reggie Bush.
Just like "Trading Places," without the Duke brothers, Eddie Murphy, or Jamie Lee Curtis dressed as a hooker.
When farmer Bush comes to L.A. to see how NFL Bush lives, he must be pinching himself. But, whether or not it's done for the TV cameras, farmer Bush will be supplimenting his time "working out" and "socializing" by refurbishing some low-income homes in Southern California.
"Ultimately" according to the CBS press release, "the Bush families discover their common ground, and the local high school football team is moved to tears when the football star gives back to the community."
Former Cal State Northridge womens' basketball coach and L.A. Sparks assistant Michael Abraham, once sentenced in 1998 to 18 months in federal prison for his role in a crack cocaine conspiracy charge (link here to 2006 Daily News Q-and-A), is the founder, director, and coach of one of the country's most successful AAU girls' basketball programs, Portland, Ore.-based Team Concept (story linked here from the Portland Oregonian).
Starting this year, Abraham cannot coach from the bench at any NCAA-certified tournament because he is a felon who served time in federal prison. A change in NCAA policy this year prohibits anyone convicted of a felony from coaching in NCAA certified girls tournaments. This means Abraham must be in the stands or on the sidelines while his team competes.
Shelley Smith reports on the story as part of Sunday's ESPN "Outside The Lines" (6 a.m., ESPN, repeated at 9 a.m. on ESPN2).
"I make sure if there's a guy with a felony, my kids aren't going to play for him. I just think they need positive people around and positive role models around them," says Chris Morrison, an AAU coach who also coaches girls basketball at St. Anthony's High in Long Beach. "If they sold drugs and been convicted of those things, what is that telling the kids that you're coaching?"
Moorpark High senior Grant Rohach, who has given a verbal committment to attend Iowa State, will be part of an ESPN special called "Elite 11: Top High School Quarterbacks" that begins today at 4 p.m.
Rohach was one of 24 high school QBs who took part in this ESPN "Year of the Quaterback" initative, a two-tiered contest that took place recently at Pepperdine University, narrowing the field down to the final 11 for the next round (which airs on ESPN Aug. 19 at 4 p.m.)
Because the competition has already ended -- spoiler alert -- we can report that Rohach didn't make the final 11. Jameis Winston of Hueytown High in Alabama, a commit to Florida State, was one of three MVPs of the group, with Neal Burcham of Greenbrier (Ark.) High (not committed yet) and Tanner Mangum of Eagle (Idaho) High (headed to BYU).
The other eight: El Cajon's Shane Dillon (going to Colorado), Bart Houston of Concord De La Salle (going to Wisconsin), Chad Kelly of St. Joseph's in Buffalo, N.Y. (going to Clemson), Zach Kline of San Ramon Valley in Danville (going to Cal), Jeff Lindquist of Mercer Island (Wash.) High (headed to Washington), Austin Appleby of Hoover High in North Canton, Ohio (going to Purdue), Zeke Pike of Dixie Heights High in Fort Mitchell, Ky. (going to Auburn) and Chad Voytik of Cleveland (Tenn.) High (going to Tennessee).
Among those in Rohach's first round were Jake Rodrigues of Whitney High in Rocklin, Calif. (going to Oregon) and Travis Wilson of San Clemente High (headed to Utah).
ESPN's Trent Dilfer was the lead evaluator in selecting the final roster spots alongside the other Elite 11 coaches: Former Jets QB Ken O'Brien, private QB coach George Whitfield, ESPN HS Director of Events Brian Stumpf, Nike FB Head Coach Matt James, and college football analyst/former USC QB Coach Yogi Roth.
It's one thing that former Raiders (Oakland and L.A.) punter Ray Guy isn't in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Even worse, the guy recently filed for bankruptcy and was ordered by a judge to sell his Super Bowl XI, XV and XVIII rings to raise money to pay off his debts.
In a sale by L.A.-based Nate D. Sanders Auctions that took place this week, Guy's rings sold for $96,216. Guy's Super Bowl XVIII ring that he won with the L.A. Raiders has 23 diamond-encrusted stones shaped into three footballs.
Guy, a Raider from 1973-'86, made seven Pro Bowls and, in 1994, was named to the NFL's 75th anniversary team. The Ray Guy Award is annually given to college football's top punter each season.
Click on the photo below to start the video:
A foul ball snagged by a little kid at Dodger Stadium on Wednesday afternoon, only to have the usher snatch it away from him, was purely a joke that the audience watching the game on Prime Ticket didn't get to see the punch line.
It was the sixth inning of the Dodgers-Phillies game, when the Phillies' Shane Victorino fouled a pitch high over the backstop screen, landing into the high-rent seats, before the kid jumped on it and picked it up.
The Prime Ticket cameras caught it all (linked here and click on the video above).
Said Vin Scully: "Oh, the little guy got it and he is ecstatic. Good for you. Great ... Now just don't put it in a drawer with some old socks. Use it."
Just then a Dodger Stadium usher comes up to the kid asks him for the ball and walks away, leaving the kid to leap from his seat asking for the ball back.
And Prime Ticket didn't catch it all after all.
Cut back to the game. "One and two to Victorino," says Scully.
Rob Menschel, the Prime Ticket director for Wednesday's telecast, explains:
"The usher was just teasing the little boy and handed the ball back to him just after the shot changed. I didn't cut back to the child immediately because the camera (high above home plate) had to return to its normal position for the next pitch. By the time the next pitch was thrown, everything was over.
"As Vin didn't mention or see the usher take the ball, I thought returning to the child on camera would have made little sense at that point. However, as it apparently caused some confusion in our audience, I probably should have anyway. My bad. I'll take the hit for it."
The hits, of course, seem to be coming from many anonymous blog postings (like this one).
Then the Associated Press decided to pick up on it (linked here) and go with this angle: "Depending on who you talk to, the Los Angeles Dodgers this year are no laughing matter or a laughingstock. Maybe that's why a television camera failed to catch the punchline on what the team is calling an usher's joke during Wednesday's loss to the Philadelphia Phillies."
Really?
While those based at the ESPN L.A. offices wonder just which NFL may soon be coming to a Farmers Field nearby that has yet to be built, KSPN-AM (710) announced today it has made a deal to be the New York Jets' affiliate and broadcast every games that the team plays this NFL season, starting with the Sept. 11 opener against Dallas.
And, yes, having former USC quarterback Mark Sanchez as the Jets star attraction helped make that decision easier.
"It's an honor to be able to bring Mark Sanchez back to L.A. and back to his huge local fan base," said Scott McCarthy, Vice President/General Manager ESPN LA. "There is tremendous passion for the NFL here in LA, and this partnership with an elite franchise will further energize the Southland's sizable population of football fans, who continue to express excitement about the potential return of an NFL team to the region."
Said Sanchez: "I'm happy that Jets fans in the L.A. area will now be a part of our 2011 season. Their support has always been very important to me, and I look forward to sharing this exciting time with them."
Bob Wischusen and Marty Lyons call the games on the Jets' radio network from their ESPN New York 1050 flagship station.
The move fits in KSPN carrying USC's football games as well as launch a new show with former USC and Jets star Keyshawn Johnson that begins Sunday from 8-to-9 a.m.
I got a text on Monday night just past 7 p.m. asking if I knew why Tony Bruno wasn't on his syndicated radio show heard locally on KLAC-AM (570).
My text back: I sent out a tweet (twitter.com/tomhoffarth) about a half-hour earlier, that Bruno had been suspended by the show's parent company, DirecTV. Anyone following my Twitter feed would now know that piece of info.
"Oh, OK," came a reply.
Oh, no, I said to myself at that moment. Did I just do something right, wrong or fall into a black hole of no return?
For all journalistic intents and purposes, I could have been just as stupid about my use of Twitter as Bruno was last Friday night. During his show, while he was watching the Phillies-Giants game, he got caught up in the moment of a brawl igniting. An unabashed Philly native, Bruno tweeted out his frustration, not only calling Giants manager Bruce Bochy a "coward" but referred to Giants pitcher Ramon Ramirez as an "illegal alien."
The Bruno backlash was predictable, even though he had taken down the tweet just minutes later and apologized for it on his Facebook page. Over the weekend, Bochy addressed the incident by calling Bruno's response "racist," giving it much more national exposure. And leading to Bruno's suspension.
Continue reading An (under)current event: the Twitter riptide of breaking news.
Photo by Hannah Foslein/Getty Images North America/via Zimbio.com
Dodgers GM Ned Colletti watches batting practice before the game at Target Field against the Minnesota Twins on June 27 earlier this season.
We've scheduled a Q-and-A with Dodgers GM Ned Colletti prior to Friday's Dodgers-Astros game at Dodger Stadium.
We're open to suggestions on anything you might want to ask him. Send them to thomas.hoffarth@dailynews.com.
Dodgers team historian Mark Langill finds out Dodger history sometimes in the most bizarre places.
Like, in this case, the $3 DVD bin at Big Lots.
He came across a copy of the 1969 Elvis Presley movie, "The Trouble With Girls (And How To Get Into It)," (linked here), and picked it up as a gift for someone in the team's office who happened to be a big fan of the King of Rock N Roll. Neither of them knew that inside the DVD were five black-and-white postcards -- promotional movie stills from the MGM marketing department.
One of the five happened to be the shot (above) of the Dodgers' future Hall of Fame center fielder Duke Snider, posing with Elvis. Snider had a role in the flick, a character named "The Cranker."
But Duke's claim to fame in Hollywood apparently could have been as a stunt double. Because on the back of the post card, it identifies Snider as "Col. Parker," a mistaken reference to Elvis' manager, Col. Tom Parker.
Or, it could have been Wes Parker. We're not sure.
Snider at the time was working for the San Diego Padres as their first broadcast analyst, then became a minor-league manager for the team before going to Montreal to become a radio analyst on Expos games.
Either way, just more of the Duke Snider lore, as his No. 4 continues to be mowed into the center field lawn at Dodger Stadium, and his legacy cemented in bobblehead.
Photo from JaegerSports.com
Trevor Bauer, then of Hart High in Newhall, poses with Alan Jeager.
That's the headline on the story Sports Illustrated has this week on Trevor Bauer, the UCLA pitcher drafted No. 3 overall by the Arizona Diamondbacks and expected to be called up when rosters expand at the end of this month.
The piece by Lee Jenkins (linked here) explains far more in depth about how, when Bauer was 12, he started working with Valley pitching guru Alan Jaeger, the former CSUN infielder who started his own pratcial theories about long-toss and later helped tutor players like Barry Zito and Dan Haren.
"Once he was warm, Jaeger urged him to let fly," wrote Jenkins. "Trevor would bike to a park near his house with a milk crate full of balls and hurl them 300 feet against an adjacent tennis court's fence before the pro ran him off."
Bauer was a sophomore at Hart High when he studied Tim Lincecum's freakish delivery and broke it down like a physics lesson.
"It started making sense why he did what he did," Bauer says, standing to demonstrate. "The more you delay your hip and shoulder from opening up, as long as you're moving toward home, you're shortening the distance to the plate and adding tension to the body, stretching the elastic band. If you fire your back hip and keep the front side of your body closed, you get more torque. The more torque you get, the more impulse you will get when you release."
Translating to more money you'll make in the big leagues. A good read.
This is a bumper sticker we found placed on the railing at the end of the aisle of the upper deck at Dodger Stadium, which we happened to find when we were up there before the Phillies-Dodgers game on Tuesday.
We expect someone to have it exterminated by Wednesday.
UPDATE: Monday at 6:30 p.m.: DirecTV, which owns Bruno's syndicated radio show, has suspended him for this week.
When we saw the Tony Bruno-Twitter story concerning what he sent out about San Francisco Giants pitcher Ramon Ramirez over the weekend -- Friday, in fact, on the night it happened -- we decided we weren't going to be the first to over react to it, and knew we wouldn't be the last.
This would get more nasty before it got closer to being resolved. We wanted to watch from the sidelines how nature would take its course.
We know Bruno (his show linked here) is a passionate Philly native, saw "his" team get into a brawl with the Giants, so in the heat of the moment, while on his Fox Sports syndicated sports-talk show that's heard on KLAC-AM (570) and eminates from Burbank, he did what his bosses probably want him to do -- he used social media and let loose.
Then he probably realized: This isn't going to fly well.
It's why more coaches of teams, in every level, try to ban their players from using Twitter. Or Facebook. Or getting near a TMZ flipcamera. It's all to protect them from themselves, and the mess they can create for everyone else.
On the flip side, this is why radio and TV bosses of employees who appear on their own radio shows or "Around The Merry-Go-Round" may eventually push them to do it more often -- the backlash created is a new-found avalance of attention that everyone else wants to react to, puff up their chests, and supposedly earn their paychecks.
Let's all join in on the public stoning.
All if plays right into the nature of this satanic-like beast: It keep's the cycle of jibber-jabber going, 24/7, on an otherwise stagnant day of news. Here's some more interpersonal context to add to it, a few more political hot-buttons to push, until we can beat this holy thing into the ground.
Because, when you break it all down to the bare essentials, it was a white guy who has a radio show called an Latino big-leaguer an "illegal" when he should have known better.
The wolves dressed as media watchdogs pounced on Bruno within seconds. The tweet captured for posterity and was widely distributed. What happens in Twitterland, stays in Twitterland, and cyberspace, and then explodes elsewhere.
Bruno, who has been in this radio business more than 30 years, threw in his lit match, and it blew things up good.
Too late that Bruno took down the tweet and apologized for it.
On his Facebook page (linked here), Bruno wrote: "My stupid and insensitive twitter post was up less than one minute before I realized it was caustic. It was removed immediately and I typed a quick apology on twitter and here. Since I was doing my live radio show, I apologized more emphatically on the air, and the podcast is available on my website (tonybrunoshow.com, hour 3) for those who choose to actually get some facts to go along with the hearsay or bloggers who spread falsehoods about my apology not being 'sincere.'"
That's another problem for another day. You can already read the vile stuff put up there by those who love to knee-jerk react right back at him. Like someone named "SF Lunatic Fringe":
"So, let's get this straight Tony. You call Bruce Bochy a swear-word, you call Ramon Ramirez a racial slur...you come on here and apologize, and call Bochy more names, and then you go on to call people that call YOU names classless and vile in the same post? Okay, no name calling. I promise. But (bleep) YOU Tony. I mean that from the heart."
Then we have Giants manager Bochy calling out Bruno for his "racist" comment, two days after Bruno also called Bochy a "coward" for allowing Ramirez to hit the Phillies' Shane Victorino, who homered earlier, in the sixth inning.
"Forget the remarks about me," Bochy told the San Francisco Chronicle. "That doesn't bother me. For a guy to make a racist comment like that and have the ear of so many people, that bothers me. I can defend myself as a coward. I don't know if you can defend yourself making a racist comment."
Ramirez, from the Dominican Republic, said Sunday he is in the U.S. legally and wouldn't be able to work in the major leagues otherwise.
"I'm not interested in what he thinks about me," Ramirez said. "I'm not interested in what he has to say. I don't need to pay attention to what he has to say about me. A lot of people say things about me. I know who I am. How would I be able to work here if I were an illegal? He put it on the Internet? I can't believe that. ...
"Everyone says what they feel in their heart,. But I feel that's not right."
There will be, and already has been, a big-time number of big-time mistweets. It's the nature of this double-edged media sword.
And you may ask why we don't use our own Twitter account for anything other than to alert you if we have posted a new story that you might be interested in? We're trying to protect ourselves, you and anyone that might be offended by something we skipped right past all the filters and just threw out there.
Or, we can just make another sweeping generalization: Maybe all this is related to what happened to another Philly native, Kobe Bryant, when he mouthed the words of a gay slur at an NBA referee that happened to be caught on camera.
It's just their nature. When you kick a bulldog, and they bite back, then we're allowed to put them down.
So out to Dodger Stadium the next three nights, and you'll see it on display.
Before we have any further stupid commentary, we'll talk to Bruno later this week, after cooler heads prevail. We'll find out what he learned here -- good and bad.
Until then, maybe read what Bob Frantz, a free-lance writer who submitted this piece to the San Francisco Examiner (linked here), had to say about it. He's got the right angle on this so far:
"Bruno's apology won't exactly stop the torch-and-pitchfork crowd in its tracks, since he basically reaffirmed his loathing of Bochy in the process, while calling his critics 'classless and vile.' Still, are we so afraid of mere words that we're willing to destroy someone's livelihood over them?
"We are talking about sports here, and I can guarantee you that the players themselves scream far worse things at each other in those on-field scrums while tensions and testosterone levels are higher than the national debt ceiling.
"Regardless of the outcome for Bruno, the episode should serve as a reminder for all tweet-happy athletes, media personnel and other assorted public figures: The keyboard can be a deadly weapon.
"Just remember, if you wouldn't say into an open microphone on national television what you are about to type into cyberspace, then find the "backspace" key before you spot the "send" button. The career you save might just be your own."
Highlights of the week ahead in sports, both here and afar:
THIS WEEK'S BEST BET
Golf: PGA Championships, at the Atlanta Athletic Club, Georgia; Thursday through Sunday, TNT and Channel 2:
The pairings committee for those who want to win the Wanamaker Trophy did their best to separate four-time winner Tiger Woods from no-time winner Adam Scott -- the former will tee off on the 10th hole at 8:35 a.m. local time Thursday, about 40 minutes after Scott (and Woods' former caddie, Stevie Williams) continues his victory lap from the WCG Bridgestone on the same hole. Woods is paired with '97 winner Davis Love III and '08 champ Padraig Harrington.
It's the 20th anniversary of John Daly's first major win. But as much as we'll try to forget, many will bring up what happened at this event a year ago -- Martin Kaymer won it in a playoff against Bubba Watson at Whistling Straits in Kohler, Wisc. But it only happened after Dustin "No Guts, No Glory" Johnson blew a one-shot lead playing the 18th hole in the final round when he drove it well right into a patch of sand where the gallery had been walking all week. It was ruled that he grounded his club in a bunker and was later assessed a two-shot penalty that left him out of the playoff and into a tie for fifth place.
The 26-year-old had to adjust his card to an 82, the highest score in the PGA Championship by a leader from after 54 holes since Fred McLeod shot 83 in the Golf Club of Chicago in 1911. It was also the worst score as Johnson professional.
Johnson seems to be pretty much over it -- on his website home page (www.dustinjohnson.com), he's selling T-shirts that read "What Bunker?" for $24.95. And there's no where to hide here: He's paired with Rickie Fowler and Sergio Garcia for the first two rounds, which are on TNT Thursday and Friday (10 a.m. to 4 p.m.). CBS has the final two rounds (11 a.m. to 4 p.m.) on the weekend, with TNT on from 8 to 11 a.m. each day.
MONDAY
MLB: Dodgers vs. Philadelphia, Dodger Stadium, 7:10 p.m., Prime:
Cy Young winners Roy Halladay (14-4, 2.55, and 8-1 since May 20) and Cliff Lee (11-7, 2.89, who pitched seven shutout innings in a 3-1 win over the Dodgers on June 6 with 10 Ks) may put the fear of Phillies into the L.A. lineup the first two nights. But the starter on Wednesday afternoon (12:10 p.m., Prime Ticket) might be more unpredictably scary. Not Roy Oswalt or Cole Hammels. Try Vance Worley, the 23-year-old out of Long Beach State, who is a mere 8-1 with a 2.35 ERA, and the team has won all nine of his last starts going back to June 18. The game Tuesday (7:10 p.m., Channel 9) will honor Hall of Fame Duke Snider with a bobblehead, five months after his passing.
MLB: Pittsburgh at San Francisco, MLB Network, 7 p.m.:
Who'd have thought this three-game series could be an NL playoff preview?
TUESDAY
MLB: Angels at New York Yankees, 4:05 p.m., FSW:
Since we can't join A-Rod in Tampa for a poker game during his rehab from knee surgery -- he's not supposed to be back in the Yankees' lineup until later this month -- we'll try to figure out who the Angels will use to replace Joel Pineiro in the pitching rotation sometime this week. Reliever Hisanori Takahashi seems to be the best option to face A.J. Burnett when the series continues Wednesday (4:05 p.m., FSW), and former Angels Cy Young Award winner Bartolo Colon is scheduled to face his old team on Thursday (10:05 a.m., FSW).
MLB: Detroit at Cleveland, 4 p.m., MLB Network:
More drama in the AL Central than we can handle.
WNBA: Sparks vs. Tulsa, Staples Center, 7:30 p.m., Prime:
This could have been a homecoming game for the Shock's Marion Jones, but the former Thousand Oaks High star was released from the team about a month ago. The Sparks' two-week home run continues Friday against Phoenix at 7:30 p.m., assuming all the X Games dirt has been sufficiently swept up from a weekend ago.
THURSDAY
NFL exhibition football: Seattle at San Diego, 5 p.m., ESPN:
Seahawks coach Pete Carroll tweeted the other day: "Who's got a submission for our 1st offensive play in our game vs SD next week? let's go! send it in w/ the #SEAtweetplaycall tag!" He's always competing, in a practice game that we at one time wasn't sure was even going to happen. All the while, he's still waiting for Nate Robinson to show up for a tryout that he insists he wants during the NBA lockout. This is the first day of exhibitions, with Baltimore-Philadelphia, Jacksonville-New England, Denver-Dallas and Arizona-Oakland.
MLB: Milwaukee at St. Louis, 5 p.m., MLB Network:
Not enough NL Central drama for us to appreciate.
FRIDAY
Pro Basketball Hall of Fame induction ceremony, 5 p.m., NBA TV:
At Springfield's Symphony Hall, they'll honor former Lakers assistant Tex Winter, Chris Mullin, Artis Gilmore, Tara VanDerveer, Teresa Edwards, Arvydas Sabonis, Herb Magee, Satch Sanders, plus Harlem Globetrotter Goose Tatum. Oh, right. And Dennis Rodman. The Hall (linked here) will never be the same.
NFL exhibition: Tampa Bay at Kansas City, 5 p.m., Channel 11:
Chiefs QB Matt Cassel gets to try out his real cool K-Swiss shoes. Just shut up and wear 'em. Day 2 of the exhibition openers include Cincinnati-Detroit, Miami-Atlanta, Pittsburgh-Washington and San Francisco-New Orleans.
MLB: Dodgers vs. Houston, Dodger Stadium, 7:10 p.m., Prime:
No more Hunter Pence, Michael Bourn or Jeff Keppinger for these Astros, who are 25-some games out of the NL Central and pretty much have been mathematically eliminated from any sort of personal enjoyment at this point. Before the weekend finishes with games on Saturday (7:10 p.m., Prime) and Sunday (1:10 p.m., Prime), keep an eye on the BaseballReference.com stat that measures how poor a team really can be. The Astros are an MLB-worst .375 in the "pythW-L%" category -- that would be the Pythagorean Win-Loss Percentage, which is an estimation of the team's win-loss percentage based on runs scored and runs allowed by the team. So pay no attention to their real W-L percentage, which last week was a far less impressive 327.
MLB: Angels at Toronto, 4:07 p.m., FSW:
Just to show Vernon Wells what he's been missing north of the border. Jered Weaver is supposed to be back after his six-game suspension on Saturday (10:07 a.m., FSW) leading into Sunday's finale (10:07 a.m., Channel 13) and the end of the week-long roadie.
Little League: West Regional semifinals, San Bernardino, 2 p.m. and 8 p.m.:
Dodgers scouts are standing by. The regional final is Saturday (6 p.m., ESPN). The winner goes to Williamsport, Pa.
SATURDAY
U.S. National Diving Championships, UCLA's Spieker Aquatics Center and Dirks Pool, women's platform final, men's 3-meter final, 11 a.m., Channel 4:
USADiving.org's website claims this event "will feature more stars than the Hollywood Walk of Fame," starting with Troy Dumais (above) and five others who were part of the 2008 Olympic team. It's the one sport where you don't try to make a big splash, except UCLA's $11 million swim facility will be doing so, hosting about 125 of the nation's top divers going after 10 national titles and qualifying for the Pan Am Games later this year, as well as establish a platform for the 2012 U.S. Olympic team. It started with Tuesday's prelims. The men's platform finals are Sunday (noon, Channel 4) followed by the women's 3-meter and men's synchronized 3-meter final (1:30 p.m., Universal Sports). UCLA's Dashiell Enos (Studio City), Laura Winn and Annika Lenz are also competing.
NFL exhibition: Green Bay at Cleveland, 4:30 p.m., NFL Network:
More practice games today with New York Giants-Carolina, Buffalo-Chicago, Indianapolis-St. Louis and Minnesota-Tennessee. There's a New York Jets-Houston matchup on Monday night.
SUNDAY
IRL: At Loudon, N.H., 12:30 p.m., Channel 7:
Proving that New Hampshire has enough land to accommodate a race track and the homesteads of Daniel Webster, e.e. cummings, Robert Frost, Franklin Pierce and John Paul Jones.
NASCAR: Sprint Cup Helluva Good! Sour Cream Dip at Watkins Glen, N.Y., 10 a.m., ESPN:
Hampshire Sour Cream has nothing to do with New Hampshire? That's a heckuva good question to ponder.
And the reaction in the 18th tower from CBS' Jim Nantz and Nick Faldo:
Nantz: "Wow! That's all you can say. And that will be talked about for days to come. You win 13 majors with Tiger and now you call this one the greatest week of your life. . . . What was your reaction to his comments to David?"
Faldo: "I'm a little shocked as well. That was quite a little, a little more than a dig there, I would say."
Hermosa Beach's Alison Riddle defended her title as the women's champion of the U.S. Lifesaving Association's National Lifeguard Championships in Cape May, N.J., edging L.A. County teammate Taylor Spivey of Manhattan Beacy by .75 points.
Riddle, who had a 10-point lead after Friday's first day's competition, finished the 28-event competition on Saturday with 59 points, just ahead of Spivey's 58.25.
The L.A. County lifeguard team also overcame the first-day lead by Monmouth County, N.J., to win its 25th consecutive title with 679 points covering 161 events, winning by nearly 50 points. It was L.A.'s 37th national title since the competition began in 1970. The California State Lifeguard Association team finished fifth (85.5), behind Monmouth County, Sussex County, Del., and South Jersey in the "A" chapter category.
L.A.'s Brian Murphy of Redondo Beach, the 2010 men's champion, finished second this year with 45.24 points, three behind Dylan Newbiggin of Destin, Fla. L.A.'s Tyler Morgan (El Segundo) was eighth (19.5), Jeff Monroe was ninth (18.5) and Chad Carvin was 10th (18.25). Last week in Hermosa Beach, Carvin, a silver medalist swimmer in the 2000 Olympics, led Venice to a first-place finish in the Bud Stevenson Intracrew Relay race, the feature event of the L.A. County Lifeguard Championships.
Spivey's surge in the women's division came after she won the open run-swim-run race and the American Iron Woman competition, and then teamed with Riddle in the winning board rescue event as well as the Taplin Relay.
Riddle, who won Friday's Iron Woman competition, was second in the American Iron Woman event, which involves swimming, rescue board and a run over at 1,400 meter course.
L.A.'s Tandis Morgan of El Segundo finished seventh in the womens' open division (23.75 points) and Kelsey O'Donnell of Rancho Palos Verdes was eighth (22.75).
Morgan and O'Donnell teamed with Kailey Makuta and Shauna Letvin to finish third in the Taplin Relay; Riddle and Spivey were with Tracey Crothers and Zahra Shahalayi on the Tapin winning team.
In individual men's races, L.A.'s Murphy was second in the Surfski race, with Morgan third; Murphy and Carvin were second in the board rescue race, and Murphy teamed with Carvin, Morgan and David Cartlidge to finish second in the Taplin Relay.
L.A. County men's age group winners include in the 2K beach run: John Matesich in the 70-plus and Eldin Onsgard in 60-64; in the American Iron Man: Onsgard in 60-64 (with Joel Gitelson third), Mitch Kahn in 50-54, Rob Pekley in 40-44 and Jeff Lombardo in 30-34.
In the age groups for the American Iron Woman, L.A.'s Chari Ellington won the 50-54 (with Margaret Cook second), and Bridget Rome was the 35-39 winner.
Women in the 1940s go after some grunion in a photograph from a UCLA dissoration on grunion spawning by Boyd Walker in 1949 (linked here).
We took a detour in our recent search for answers (linked here), but it's worth offering up some of the real info that some of the experts gave us from their professional experience.
From Dr. Karen Martin, the Pepperdine biology professor (linked here) and creator of Grunion.org:
== On the best time of year to go out: "With all forms of fishing, there are no guarantees. Plus, now you have the very late time in the season going against you. Mark your calendar for next April and May, closed season when the grunion are protected from capture -- the best time to see a strong run."
== On what attracts the grunion to the shore, if not a flashlight: "They are not attracted to lights so neither flashlights nor candles will bring them in. In fact, shining a light out into the water will startle them away."
== On whether global warming has anything to do with where they are migrating these days: "Their habitat range has traditionally been from about the middle of Baja Calif. to Point Conception, more or less. We have seen a few small populations appear north of there over the last few years so global warming could shift the habitat range northward. Global warming won't expand the actual range because as it shifts at the top end, the lower limit will probably also shift north.
"This makes sense when you consider that the whole point of spawning on the beach -- well, maybe not the only point from the fish's point of view -- is to leave the embryos developing in the eggs in the sand above the water line, where it is warmer and better oxygenated than in the ocean. The eggs will overheat if there is a warmer climate. Also, there is much less sandy beach coastline north of Point Conception than south of it, with less habitat for spawning to occur. So in answer to your actual question, they should be in L.A.for the foreseeable future. Farther north, the runs may continue later in the season than farther south in the range."
== On any other obvious things we should know: "One, don't try to catch the first fish you see, let the run get started so you don't frighten the fish away. Consider them watchable wildlife, aware of the surroundings. Two, if you do want to catch, be kind. Many grunion are trampled and mangled in haste. Consider releasing the fish so it can return next year. Everyone over age 15 needs a fishing license to take the fish. And three: Whether or not the fish show, enjoy the outing and the opportunity to see the beach in an out-of-ordinary way.
From Charina Layman, the public programs manager at the Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla (above, left, during an interview with a local San Diego TV station):
== Are southfacing beaches any better than others? "I think it's more about the quiet beaches. Grunion will run wherever. I found them in Mission Bay once. Somehow, they just found themselves where there were some nice wave-swept beaches."
== About the time of the year: "The peak season really is from April through June, so we're really at the end here. You're not going to find as many now."
== The best way to wrangle them: "Catching them is easy, but one of the most important things is you can only use your hands. No buckets or traps. Actually, if you're used to holding slimy things, they're easy to grab. And it's really thrilling when you do see them. The whole beach sparkles. It's so wonderful. It just takes a little luck and a lot of patience."
More resources:
== The Scripps Institute for Oceanography grunion program
== The Cabrillo Museum in San Pedro
== The DFG site for 2011 grunion runs
== The DFG site for license info
== The Pepperdine Grunion Greeters project.
Photo, left, by Bill Hootkins
What in the name of Flipper can we do at this point? We brought the music and candles, and put them up on the lifeguard tower. But again, the grunions didn't come during their most recent run last week. Only one more window of opportunity left this season.
Your bucket list might be complete with a Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, running the Boston Marathon or going on a kayaking river run through the Grand Canyon.
Mine, sinfully, still hinges on trying to fill a bucket during a grunion run.
I'm 0-for-50 years. Not one sighting in the slightest of the skittish silver surfers as they make their way out of the Pacific, supposedly from Point Conception to Baja California, to do the things they do in the soft sand during a high tide, all so that we can grab us some, roll 'em in cornmeal and toss them in the deep fryer for a crispy treat. Or, at the very least, a new pizza topping.
Since you need a fishing license to legally do this kind of thing, it must fall under the official classification of a sport.
Since you have to lumber down to the ocean shore past midnight, with a flashlight, dodging seaweed and perhaps a beached seal - not to mention teen-aged kids laughing and running all over the place while smoking something that the state's Department of Fish and Game doesn't license (yet) -- it must fall under the official classification of a perfect waste of time.
The locals can give you all the hot spots for grunion congregations around here - Will Rogers and Zuma beaches in Malibu, south of the Santa Monica pier, the North Jetty of Mother's Beach in Marina del Rey, White's Point or Cabrillo in San Pedro. Our last attempt, at the popular 33rd Street site in Hermosa Beach during the most recent four-day officially-approved window, was another dry run.
Our official SpongeBob SquarePants lunch pail container -- OK, we're not even using a bucket here any more -- wasn't even unlatched.
We're not fishing for compliments here. Just point us in the right direction.
Some say global warming now makes May and June better months than July and August. Others insist you need to be at a south-facing beach. Or go with the full moon instead of the new moon.
We're willing to give a shout-out to whoever can tell us whether any of these are suburban legends. Go ahead, give us a yell.
"You've got to go into stealth mode and do this as quietly as possible," said Charina Layman, the public programs manager at the Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla (linked here).
Hear that, you stupid kids? Stop shining the lights all over the place and sifting through the whitewash like you're at Knott's Berry Farm panning for gold.
"You are considered a predator, like a raccoon, a feral cat or a shorebird," Layman said. "The most important thing is to not scare off the scout. He comes out first and he's the one that sends the signal back to the rest that it's safe to come on shore."
The little fella sends a tweet? A text? Apparently we lack this Grunion App for our DumbPhone.
"Put it this way: If the scout doesn't come back, it's not a good sign for the rest of them," she said. "They are masters at surviving."
The whole purpose for their visit, Layman reminds us, is survival of the fittest. The females grunions to come ashore, wiggle around in the sand and lay eggs. Then the males stagger up there, fertilize them, and head back.
Just like if National Geographic did a Frankie-and-Annette movie.
Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but that sounds like mating season. That alone should spawn new ideas on how to look at all this.
It has to be about setting the right mood here. Maybe a little Teddy Pendergrass. Some candle lights. A glass of wine.
"I'm sure they'd prefer sparkling wine," suggested Dr. Karen Martin, the Pepperdine University chair in the Natural Science department, a professor of biology, on the board of governors for the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists and executive director of a group called the "Grunion Greeters" research team (www.Grunion.org).
"I actually have an entire playlist devoted to grunion music on my iTunes: Elton John's 'Can You Feel The Love Tonight,' REM's 'Nightswimming,' and, of course, Van Morrison's 'Moondance.'"
A fantabulous night to make romance.
"Marvin Gaye might work, but I think cheesier grunions might prefer Al Green, circa 1971," said Raul Reis, a member of the Long Beach Grunions (linked here), a group that, according to their website, are "totally cool, really fun, high energy swim team and social club for gays, lesbians and their friends."
We're totally cool with that.
"We have done some grunion runs in the past," added Reis, also the chairman of the journalism department at Long Beach State. "On those occasions, we mostly congregated on the beach near the Belmont Pool in Belmont Shore, lit up a bonfire if we got a chance, roasted marshmallows and traded stories. No running around screaming for us."
Sounds like a plan.
So one night, just before 2 a.m. -- too late for last call at the local watering hole by now -- I'm standing there with the license in my back pocket, a couple of candles out on the sand and a boom box overhead. It must have looked like John Cusack in "Say Anything," trying to coax the critters out with a little Al Jarreau singing the old theme to the "Moonlighting" TV series.
Maybe Wilson Pickett's "In the Midnight Hour" had more soul.
Say anything you want, but it was worth a try.
There's gotta be some kind of grunion pick-up lines we haven't thought of yet. For the record, we haven't given up.
Marci, the cashier over at Big 5 Sporting Goods, wasn't any help. Her only suggestion was to buy the full-year fishing license at $43.46, instead of the one-day ($14.04) or two-day ($20.86).
Or we could go with a license at all. It's not as if we're using the thing. (And it is waterproof, so there's that).
There's one more grunion run on the schedule - next weekend, Aug. 13-15. Then it's hibernation until the spring of 2012.
This is our last dance, last chance for romance.
Last stop is over at Grunions Sports Bar in Manhattan Beach, but weekday barkeep Mike McLaughlin was of little help with some parting advice.
"How do fish run, anyway?" he asked.
Save that philosophical discuss for when we're sitting around the campfire before a snipe hunt. You don't need a license for that, we're told.
L.A. County lifeguard Alison Riddle won the iron woman event for the second year in a row, was part of the team that won the womens' open rescue race and was third in the open board to take a commanding lead in the U.S. Lifesaving Assocation National Lifeguard Championships in Cape May, N.J., after the second day of competition today.
Riddle, an Hermosa Beach resident and former USC water polo player, has 32 points, 10 better than Ft. Lauderdale's Jennifer Noonan.
(More background on Riddle, see today's story).
On the men's side, L.A.'s Brian Murphy, last year's high-point champion, won the board race for his seventh time in his career and the iron man for the fourth time. He is second to Monmouth County Chapter's Matt Nunnally, a 15-time national champion, after Friday's 14 events, trailing him 26 points to 24.75 points. L.A.'s Jeff Monroe is seventh (11.5 points) and Chad Carvin is eighth (10.75 points).
L.A.'s Taylor Spivey is third behind Riddle (with 20.25 points) on the women's side, with teammates Kelsey O'Donnell fifth (14 points) and Tandis Morgan 10th (10 points).
Monmouth County leads the overall competition with 358 points through 100 events, with L.A. County, winners in 2010 and a 24-time champion, second with 334.5 points.
More than 1,000 professional lifeguards from around the country are competing for individual and team honors in the water and beach course events that challenge their lifesaving skills. Nearly 80 of them are from L.A. County.
Individually, L.A. County's Carvin was second in the Open mens' surf race, and the L.A. team of Monroe, Benjamin Gottlieb, Brian Davidson and Micah Carlson was second in the open men's rescue race.
In the womens' rescue race, Riddle was joined by Spivey, Morgan and Bridget Rome on the winning team.
In the age-group competitions for the men's surf race, L.A.'s Monroe, Jeff Lombardo and Benjamin Gottlieb finished first through third in 30-34, Carvin won the 35-39, Rob Pelkey was second in the 40-44, Eldin Onsgard was third in the 60-64 and Ed Heinrich second in the 65-69 category
L.A.'s Shannon Sullivan won the women's 55-59 surf race, while Margaret Cook and Cheri Ellington were first and second in the 50-54 age bracket. Rome was second in the 35-39 category and Ann Finley was second in 45-49.
In the board race breakdown, L.A. had a winner with Carvin in the men's 35-39 category, Tom Seth and Pekley were first and second in the 40-44, Mitch Kahn won the 50-54 slot, Heinrich won the 65-69 and John Matesich won the 70-plus category.
On the women's side, Cook and Ellington were first and second in the 50-54 division, Morgan was second in 30-34 category, Rome was third in 35-39, Finley was second in 45-49 and Sullivan was second in 55-59,
The races continue today. More info: www.uslanationals.org.
A replay of "Ed Sabol: King of Football Movies," about the 94-year-old creator of NFL Films that originally aired Monday, will be shown again Saturday at 11 a.m. and 11 p.m., before and after the Pro Football Hall of Fame ceremony on the NFL Network (4 p.m., following a three-hour "Total Access" preview show).
Profiles as well of inductees Marshall Faulk and Deion Sanders, two NFL Network analysts, will also reair. The Faulk special, "Rush to Canton," is Saturday at 9 p.m.; Sanders' "Canton Goes Primetime" will go Saturday at noon and Sunday at 1 a.m.
Another inductee, Shannon Sharpe, the CBS studio NFL analyst who will be pesented by NFL Network analyst and his brother Sterling Sharpe, has a doc on him called "Jounrey to Canton" that reairs at 9 a.m. Saturday.
The Sabol special, which we've alluded to in previous blog postings, really spells out how NFL Films all came to being, and some of its memorable moments leading to Ed Sabol's induction as the 19th "contributor" to the NFL.
Such as :
== Ed Sabol's hobby with a 16mm camera was to shoot the football practice of son Steve's Haverford School in Haverford, Penn., in the late 1950s. After starting his own small movie company, he bid on the 1962 Bears-Packers NFL "World Championship Football" game. "Being the visionary he was, it was easy for him to make the leap from filming a little boy's football game to the National Football League," said Steve Sabol.
== From Phil Tuckett, an NFL Films producer and cinematorgrapher from 1969 to 2006: "He was like the original film mogels. The vision made them great. And that's what Big Ed brought to it. He cared about the romance and the adventure. That's what the style of NFL Films became."
== The John Facenda-narrated "They Call It Pro Football" in 1967 was "the 'Citizen Kane' of sports films at the time," Steve Sabol said. "(Commissioner Pete) Rozelle told us that if the NFL was to succeed and flourish, it would have to do so on television. And in order to succeed on television, it would need a certain image, a mystique. 'And the film I saw yesterday -- that's the way we want to market the league.'"
ESPN is so geeked about this, they've created a one-hour special on it -- today, 5 p.m.
The Total Quarterback Rating. Presented by an underarm deoderant. The suggested retail price of which doesn't factor into the calculation.
Ron Jaworski, Trent Dilfer, Jon Gruden, Jerry Rice, Lou Holtz and Kirk Herbstreit are on hand to talk you through this latest installment in the "Year of the Quarterback" campaign. Bottom line: Just because Jimmy Clausen had the lowest quarterback rating of any QB last year (linked here) -- 58.4, because of the fact he had nine picks versus three TD passes, was sacked 33 times with a league-low 120 yards passing per game -- doesn't mean Derek Anderson is better than you.
From the ESPN press release -- and please note: it intentionally is not branded as an ESPN stat -- here's how Total QBR works, minuses the Xs, Os and #s:
== ESPN Stats & Information Group Production Analytics unit of Senior Director Jeff Bennett, Director Dean Oliver (who used to be a stats analyst for the Denver Nuggets) and Analytics Specialists Alok Pattani and Albert Larcada, with the help of Menlo College professor Ben Alamar (who does work for the NBA's Oklahoma City and the NFL's San Francisco 49ers) came up with this thing to determine "precisely how much he impacts his team's performance and chances of winning."
== ESPN analysts Dilfer, Gruden and Jaworski supplied imput "to understand the mindset and the demands placed upon the modern NFL quarterback."
== It uses a 100-point system (the existing NFL Passer Rating has a confusing perfect score of 158.3.) A rating in the high 90s is exceptional; a season-long 65-plus rating is Pro Bowl caliber. A season rating of 50 is considered average.
== It takes all of a quarterback's plays (rushing, passing, sacks, fumbles, interceptions, penalties, etc.), and calculates the per-play net impact of the quarterback on the ability to score.
Each play is weighted by the situation (down and distance, field position, time during the game) and its importance to the game's outcome.
For example, a completed five-yard pass on 3rd-and-3 would increase a quarterback's QBR more than a five-yard completion on 3rd-and-15 because the former continues the drive and thus improves the team's chance of scoring. Also, plays in closely contested games carry a greater value than plays in less competitive situations.
== Division of credit is another important Total QBR principle: It assigns a percentage to how much credit a quarterback should get for a positive play - or blame for a negative play. Also factored in: how far a pass travels in the air, where the ball was thrown on the field, the yards after catch, and whether the quarterback was facing defensive pressure, among other factors.
== QBR is based on analysis of 60,000 plays over the past three years.
== ESPN will use it on its broadcasts as much as possible.
"The quarterback position is played so differently now than when the NFL Passer Rating was adopted in 1973," said Bennett. "We created QBR to account for all the important categories as well as the game situations in which plays are made to help tell the entire story about a quarterback's performance. If you want one stat that measures the totality of a quarterback's performance, it's QBR."
In the special, a Sport Science feature will help visualize how the new system works, there's a look at the top five NFL quarterbacks from the past three seasons based on QBR, and there's an examination of the new rating by Matthew Berry from a Fantasy Football perspective.
Because, bottom line, if Peyton Manning is no good by this new system, we're kicking him to the Astro-turf curb.
Tosh.0
Get More: Tosh.0 Videos,Daniel Tosh,Web Redemption
About a month ago, comedian Daniel Tosh had the first Tosh.0 Marathon in Hermosa Beach -- giving him enough material for his Comedy Central show. The key component of it: No one had to leave that area in front pier. It consisted of a bunch of stationary running machines, and the first to finish the 26.2 miles was the winner.
Of course, a Kenyan was victorious.
Our next visual challenge: The Tour de France. Without going to France.
Luckily, the ad just popped up for this on ESPN's "SportsCenter," so sorry if you've already cycled through this one, but the British guy selling the Tour de France stationary bike has caught my attention.
Yes, two weeks after the race has ended. But I'm gearing up for 2012 and looking for a cool yellow tight shirt.
The Pro-Form bike has a lot of features, but since I can't understand the narrator very well -- he's very much a mix of Paul Sherwin and Phil Liggett, with a bit of the Red Stripe Guy thrown in there to avoid having to pay a real spokesman -- I'll have to wing it a bit.
We've surmised it has a 20 percent incline as well as a 20 percent decline, "so you'll experience exactly what the road does."
And it's powered by Google maps virtual cycle tours. And it has a pretty bitchin' computer on the handlebars that allows you to do pretty much what you'd do at the 24 Hour Fitness, except this one had no stinky stains on it, and there's some kind of hydrolic lift behind the seat to really make it feel like a Disneyland Adventure ride.
Find it at ProForm.com along with other ellipticals, treadmills, exercise bikes, ab gliders and other Jillian Michaels-endorsed products. Or call 800.470.1703, chappy.
Order "now" for $0 down (that can't be good once we find out the total price) and a "free upgrade" to rush shipping (doesn't the thing just pedal itself to your porch?)
OK, now full disclosure: It's not bad at $1,299. Plus some service plans that you can add from between $109.95 to $379.99. A Pro-Form specialist will also chat on the website with you if you like.
And consider the treadmill accessory kit discounted at $25: a white towel, some surge protector keys, a tube of lubrication and a surge protector.
It's eBay item 330595884400 (linked here), eminating from Calabasas, and started as a mere 99-cent special back on July 31 -- but with 20 bids in already, it's north of $120 just a few days left before it's gone.
Uh, the award-winning Keith Olbermann wasn't actually awarded this blurry 1986 Golden Mike when he was back working at KNX-AM (1070), was he?
Nope. The auction item, put up by KNX-AM sports anchor Randy Kerdoon, points out that it's a clear copy, so the station could celebrate the fact that "Countdown" host Olbermann, the former ESPN "SportsCenter" anchor who spent some days in L.A. at KTLA-Channel 5 and KCBS-Channel 2, worked there doing sports commentaries at the CBS Radio affiliate in L.A.
Olbermann has his original, amongst his collection of 16, somewhere in his own safety deposit box. Or, as doorstops at his home.
Kerdoon notes on the post that the this "was the actual trophy on display in the old Columbia Square Studios 'awards wall,'" and when the place closed down, "those awards were basically either tossed or taken for souvenirs. I grabbed this with the idea to give it to Keith. It stayed in my locker at the new KNX facility for some 4+ years."
Kerdoon contacted Olbermann about it, and Olberman responded in a tweet (linked here): "IT'S A DUPLICATE - FEEL FREE TO SELL IT. I SUSPECT YOU COULD GET $9 FOR IT ON EBAY!"
So here it is. Plus $16 for shipping. Kerdoon includes a photo of Olbermann's Twitter page as verification that it's cool to sell and he's not responsible for any lead poisoning that may come from licking it.
Kerdoon said the sale has "been taking a life of its own" after Deadspin.com (linked here) picked it up, as did LARadio.com.
"It had been languishing at about $24.50 until then," said Kerdoon, then wondering aloud why Olbermann hasn't promoted the sale on his Current TV show yet -- which could add up to perhaps three more bidders.
Kerdoon said he also got the OK from KNX to put it up, but the Golden Mikes folks weren't as pleased about it.
"I told them it was a one-shot deal, and there's no such thing as bad publicity," said Kerdoon, who has received a dozen Golden Mikes in his day. "I just think I'm doing my best to keep America green by keeping it out of a landfill. It's amazing what rationale you can come up with when you have to."
Kerdoon added that one of Olbermann's former producers at Channel 2 went on Kerdoon's Facebook page to say that working with Olbermann was both amazingly frustrating and rewarding, having him work so hard that he'd often just want to punch someone.
"I hope he wins it," said Kerdoon, "so that he can blow it up and write it off as therapy."
NFL Films
Ed Sabol, left, and Steve Sabol, at the NFL Films compound in New Jersey.
How close was Ed Sabol to becoming the commissioner of the NFL?
Not now, of course. The founder of NFL Films is 94 years old and doesn't want to give up his nice retirement home in Arizona.
But there's a clip during an NFL Network hour-long documentary called "Ed Sabol: King of Football Movie," which reairs at 11 a.m. Saturday prior to Sabol's induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame (on the NFL Network, 4 p.m.) that implies it was at least discussed.
ABC's Howard Cosell and Jack Whitaker are sitting in a hotel lobby with Sabol puffing on cigarettes when Cosell makes the suggestion that current NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle might someday want to branch off and focus on the business part of the sport, leaving someone like Sabol to be the next visionary.
It ends with everyone laughing at an impromptu joke that Sabol comes up with, but it never answers the question.
"My dad would never have wanted to do that," said Ed's son, Steve Sabol .
Steve, who will be presenting his father at Saturday's ceremony, continues to take chemotherapy treatments for a brain tumor that was discovered last March. His mind isn't working quite that well these days, he admits, but he knows the answer to this question without hesistation.
"That would have been too difficult," Steve said of the commissioner job. "He had too much of a sense of humor. Rozelle was all about business and my dad was all about movies."
After a two-year experiment with a winter season, the International Basketball League has decided to go back to a summer schedule and will start up again in April, 2012.
The Los Angeles Lightning, which won the 2009 IBL title, are among the teams that will skip playing this winter as planned and pick it up in eight months with their home base contining to be Cal Lutheran's Thousand Oaks campus gym.
"We support the league's vision and new ownership," Lightning owner Mark Harwell said. "We'll be ready to go when training camp starts in April."
The Lightning, whose roster has included former NBA and local college standouts such as Lamond Murray, Toby Bailey, Bryon Russell, Fred Vinson, Darrick Martin and Tyus Edney, will start their fourth season, while the IBL prepares for its eighth season.
Five Midwestern teams that competed in last year's winter season have dropped out of the IBL and joined a local league. All the teams are within a four-hour drive of each other.
"In this economy, it's hard for the smaller-market teams to survive and break even, especially in the Midwest," said IBL founder Mikal Duilio, who sold to league to Bryan Hunter in early July. "We did everything we could to help them by adding a Winter schedule during the traditional basketball season. They felt that would get them over the top but it just didn't work out."
The league will focus on teams in L.A., Vancouver; Albany, N.Y.; Portland, Oregon and Edmonton, Canada. The Vancouver Volcanoes won this year's IBL title with a 124-116 victory over the Edmonton Energy on July 3.
"Those teams have the best potential to obtain TV coverage and sponsorships, which was our original goal," said Duilio.
On a night when the Philadelphia Phillies are at Dodger Stadium holding back their laughter about what's going on with the Dodgers -- while they're giving out Duke Snider bobbleheads -- another group of L.A.-based Phillies fans will be laughing it up during a fundraiser for Bryan Stow.
"Comedy for a Cause" will happen Tuesday night at The Shack in Santa Monica (2518 Wilshire Blvd. 310.449.1171. www.shacksm.com), a well-known Philly sports-fan hangout. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. and the comedy begins at 8:30 p.m. with Alonzo Bodden, the third-season winner of the NBC reality show "Last Comic Standing," as the headliner. Yucksters Ray Grady, Erin Foley, and Dwayne Perkins are also on the bill.
Family members of Stow, the San Francisco Giants fan who continues to recover from a March 31 attack in the Dodger Stadium parking lot, will be in attendance with donations accepted to the Bryan Stow Fund.
Admission is free and will include a silent auction, raffle, wine tasting, comp appetizers and drink specials.
More info: https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=102553093172297
FYI: The arraignment of the two men now accused of attacking Stow will take place the next day, Aug. 10.
The Associated Press
NEWPORT, R.I. -- The Big East is still considering expansion as it prepares to negotiate a television rights deal that Commissioner John Marinatto called the most important in its history.
The conference will add Texas Christian University as its ninth football member, and 17th member overall, in the fall of 2012. The move gives the Big East another huge television market, along with New York, Philadelphia and Chicago, but could further complicate the relationship between the schools that play football and those that don't. The football members would like to add another school, but that choice has to appease the basketball members, too.
Marinatto said today he will only consider adding a school that brings "value."
"There is no magic number for us," he said. "We want quality. We're a nontraditional conference. We find ways to make things work. We keep defying the odds.
The expansion issue will have to be settled before the Big East can dive into its TV rights negotiations. The Big East has separate TV deals for football and basketball with ESPN. Each expires in 2013.
The other conferences have been scoring staggering deals over the last year, the latest coming last month when the Pac-12 signed a 12-year, $3 billion deal with Fox and ESPN.
Marinatto said the Big East was close to signing an extension with ESPN, but decided to test the market instead. That market is expanding with NBC now stepping into the cable sports network game and Fox looking to add to its inventory.
"Having last bat, last dance, provides us an opportunity to evaluate what everybody else has done," Marinatto said. "Our agreements four years ago were negotiated in a very different marketplace and during a difficult time for our conference.
"We now have a golden opportunity to secure our long-term security. We can again achieve equity with the other major conferences. ... We can't make a mistake this time."
Frank McCourt's attempt to hire a company that would market a new the Dodgers' media rights has led to Fox Sports' Prime Ticket filing court papers trying to block it.
The Wall Street Journal reports (linked here) that McCourt has asked the bankruptcy court to allow him to hire the Blackstone Group, but that violates a deal Prime Ticket has with the team for exclusive negotiation rights through November, 2012, the Fox channel says. Prime Ticket has a TV rights deal with the Dodgers through the 2013 season.
Fox attorneys filed the paperwork Friday with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Delaware.
Fox has a 17-year, reported $2.7 billion extension on the table with McCourt and the Dodgers, and, according to the WSJ story, has already advanced to him all the fees for the 2011 TV rights. McCourt contends Major League Baseball is holding up approval of the media rights extension that could have prevented him from the bankruptcy filing about five weeks ago.
MLB commissioner Bud Selig rejected the deal because McCourt said that nearly $400 million would be spent to cover his current divorce settlement with former wife, Jamie.
Without a new media rights deal, McCourt will likely be forced to sell the team, or face MLB from taking possession of it and finding another owner.
To understand the nuances behind this high-five above, go to the official Kabletown link.
Starting Jan. 2, Versus changes to NBC Sports Network. Golf Channel stays (not adding "The" in front of it). Universal Sports, which finally got put onto DirecTV, remains universal.
And everything else Comcast owns remains dedicated to pushing GE appliances.
This is the Comcast-NBC way of trying to create some synergy, creating the NBC Sports Group. With a new logo.
They announced this all in Beverly Hills today as part of the summer TV critics tour.
"This effort is a major step towards a complete strategic alignment of all our platforms and businesses," said Mark Lazarus, the new-ish chairman of the NBC Sports Group since Dick Ebersol has left the building. "This is more than just a name change for Versus. It's a complete repositioning of the brand to provide value for marketers, consumers as well as all our affiliates and distributors. We want anyone who comes into contact with any of our assets to immediately connect with the NBC Sports brand promise."
For some reason, we're more intrigued by the explanation on how the "evolutional" peacock logo changes. That was then. This is now.
The NBC press release explains it this way:
== The peacock is slightly larger.
== The letters "NBC" are still bold but have a new font which puts them in balance with the peacock.
== "Sports" maintains its scripted feel, but features a new hand-lettered font exclusively created for NBC Sports. Previously, "Sports" was on an angle, but it has been straightened to allow for "Network" to fit easily beneath it and to accommodate the on-air design of commonly used sports tickers.
Can you imagine being in all those meetings as ideas were exchanged, arguments raised, subcommittees set up, graphic designers hired and fired, and trips to the zoo to more closely examine the peacock's anatomical prefections happened over the last few weeks.
Sounds like fodder for an episode of "30 Rock."
The Sports Business Daily reports Versus will move more of its operations of out Philadelphia (where Comcast is based) to New York. Bob Fernandez of the Philadelphia Inquirer also notes that the "goal of the Versus name change -- and other changes expected to be announced in the coming months -- is to make the sports channel more popular with fans so that Comcast can charge higher per-subscriber fees for it."
Take that, Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, next time you appear on a Comcast cable channel.
More on the whole name-change thing from another one of the NBC companies (linked here).
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