Most Unfortunate Headline of the Week

Football Head:  Gay Players Welcome

The Story from the Local (German edition)

The head of the German Football Association has called on gay football stars to come out of the closet and openly declare their homosexuality.

Players should have the “courage to declare themselves,” Theo Zwanziger said Tuesday during a public discussion on sexuality in elite sports at the Sportschule Hennef near Cologne. He said the situation for gay players in football was much better than it had been.

The comments come amid increasing criticism of star footballer Philipp Lahm over remarks he made earlier this week implying that Germany is not ready for gay athletes.

“Football is like earlier gladiatorial combat. Sure, politicians can now come out as homosexuals. But they don’t have to play in front of 60,000 spectators week after week,” Lahm said, according to the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung.”

And so it goes.

Real people being real in the comments.

How Fat Are Manny Ramirez's Kids?

Manny Ramirez has turned down a $45 Million contract offer from the L.A. Dodgers.

"This isn’t another cutesy case of Manny being Manny," writes Scott Soshnick for Bloomberg. "This is Manny being moronic."

Ramirez called the offer "not enough." Well, I guess it is 'chump change' compared to the Obama administration's stimulus bill. But still.

This whole episode rekindles unpleasant memories of former basketball player Latrell Sprewell, who in 2004 turned down the Minnesota Timberwolves’ offer of $21 million over three years. Insulting, was the word used by Sprewell, who made matters worse by rationalizing his rejection by telling the world that he had a family to feed.

[...]

Speaking of feeding families, Ramirez and Boras should chat with the folks at the Los Angeles Regional Foodbank.

Citing the sinking economy, the charity said its member agencies have seen a 41 percent increase of new clients requiring emergency food assistance. The Foodbank provides 700,000 meals a week at a cost of $175,000.

It’s amid that L.A. backdrop that Ramirez says $45 million, or $42 million deferred, isn’t enough.

Earth calling Manny. You may or may not have heard, but there's a devastating economic crisis, brought about by a mortgage and credit implosion, going on right now. And it's affecting all sectors of the economy. Long story short. Your loyal fans can no longer afford to borrow against their highly leveraged assets in order to buy baseball tickets. Don't be a goof.

Fighting for Freedom in Thailand -- Early Prison Release for Champion Boxers

Prison officials in Thailand have their sights set on the next Olympics. The talent pool of Thailand's prison population is just what the trainer ordered to fill out the ranks of country's next Olympic boxing team. Among the nation's pickpockets, purse snatchers and parasites, pugilists abound. Who knew?

And they believe that among their current crop of criminals there is a champion.

Hanging from the grey walls, which are decked with barbed wire, is a banner carrying pictures of former pickpocket Amnat Ruenroeng, a world championship bronze medalist and Beijing Olympic quarter-finalist, and convicted drug dealer Samson Sor Siriporn, a women's world light-flyweight champion, with the words: "Superstars for the 2012 London Olympics.

Among the prison population, there is no shortage of willing recruits for boxing training. While other prisoners toil away in the kitchen, the laundry, or the tool shop, the boxers train in the gym. However, as anyone who has ever seen a Rocky movie would imagine, this drill is anything but cushy.

They rise daily at 5.30 a.m. for 90 minutes of jogging. Afternoons are spent weight-lifting and sparring under the watchful gaze of mean-looking guards equipped with hefty batons and dark sunglasses.

All the more incentive to excel.

"I want to go free and box for my country and I'm 100 percent sure I have what it takes to go to the Olympics," said Parinya Nopchaya, a gap-toothed 26-year-old whose muscled body is almost entirely covered in crude jailhouse tattoos.

And the offer of freedom is genuine. Early release awaits those thieves and drug dealers and other assorted thugs who can prove their mettle and make the national boxing team.

High School Diplomas and Hoop Dreams

There's a line from an old Boomtown Rats song: "Someone told me nothing happened today." Is that what was going through the mind of the assignment editor of the Times-Journal in Selma, Alabama, when he sent the intrepid reporter Barrett Welsh out to cover the great scheduling debacle?

Under the headline "Graduation Exam Mucks Schedule," Welsh informs his worried readers --

The Alabama High School Graduation exam wreaked havoc on several of Tuesday’s high school basketball games.

The most notable was the Dallas County-Southside matchup. The game was cancelled on Friday so players on both teams could focus on the exam.

But don't you panic now ...

“It was a scheduling oversight,” said Southside coach Cecil Brown. “It really didn’t affect us too much. We could’ve played this week. We get to play this week.”

Southside’s contest on Friday with Central Hayneville is expected to take place as scheduled.

Whew. That's a relief.

But, while the suggestion that the graduation exam was "mucking" the basketball schedule might reasonably lead one to conclude an odd set of priorities at play here, the basketball coach wishes to set the record straight.

“Because we’re under (adequate yearly progress), we’re trying not to schedule more than two games a week,” said Dallas County coach Willie Moore. “Our schools are trying to improve academically, and we just want to make sure the general public knows we’re supporting education.

“We really don’t want the folks to be on a basketball game. We want the folks to be on academics because they’ve got to have that to go off to college.”

A lesson well learned. Folks have to wait 'til college before folks can put basketball ahead of book learnin'.

MLB - AL -- The Beasts from the East Beat the Best from the West

The American League Eastern Division has long been the toughest division in baseball. In the last 15 years, the AL pennant has been won by a team from the East Division 10 times. Now, that's 10 out of 14 pennants in 15 years (the playoffs were cancelled in 1994 due to a players' strike).

So it should come as little surprise that the top team from the AL East has handily defeated the top team in the AL Central, while the team with the best win-loss record in the major leagues has gone down to defeat at the hands of the Wildcard team (from the AL East). Because of the unbalanced schedule, of course, the LA Angels of Anaheim played a disproportionate number of their games in a weaker division which they dominated, while the Tampa Bay Rays and the Boston Red Sox each played the lion's share of their games in a much stronger division which they both likewise dominated.

The only surprise really -- and a pleasant one at that -- is that the division champion was, in fact, Tampa Bay.

Meanwhile, pressing the point further, the wildcard team was also from the AL East, and has also won it's preliminary series. As such, the upcoming series for the American Pennant will feature the Tampa Bay Rays and the Boston Red Sox.

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Oh, and some stuff is going on in the National League too.

An MLB Diversion

Taking a brief respite from bi-national election stuff, and other weighty matters to say ...

TAMPA BAY WINS THE PENNANT!!! TAMPA BAY WINS THE PENNANT!!!

Note to self (and anyone who is interested): I've been a Blue Jays fan since 1977 (sometimes casual, sometimes die-hard). But I've always had a thing for upstart underdogs (as long as they don't threaten my civil rights). The Rays have come out of their perennial last place position to capture the brass ring. It's the sort of thing that cheesy Hollywood movies are made of.

The Tampa Bay Tribune trumpets Worst To First.

Way to go, guys. I'll be looking for you in The Fall Classic.



Photo Credit: Duane Burleson/AP

5 Boxers, 3 Medals for Ireland

As I referenced before in a Diversions series post, of the 16 athletes that the Irish sent to Beijing, five of them are boxers. Well, of the five boxers, three will land back at Shannon Airport in Dublin with Olympic medals.

Tom Humphries, writing in the Irish Times, lauds the achievement of Darren Sutherland, the latest to join the fraternity of pugilistic podium perchers.

My favourite lines from the article:

"Only by an act of God, or a miracle of pharmacy, could an Irish athlete outshine the boxers this time."

and:

"I don't want to get emotional," he said, emotionally. "But four years . . . of hard, hard work has paid off. To come back from that injury and to be standing before you . . . an Olympic medallist, it's amazing." [emphasis mine]

Sutherland joins team mates Paddy Barnes (Belfast) and Kenny Egan (Dublin) in the winners' circle, establishing Ireland's best showing since Melbourne in 1956.

9/100ths of a Freakin' Second. Sheesh.

Mike Brown came within 9/100ths of a second from breaking Canada's Olympic medal drought in the pool. Coming within a hair's breadth of the podium, he finished a frustrating fourth place by less than 0.01 seconds.

Bruce Arthur of the National Post explains:

Brown was one of Canada's few real performers in the pool at the 2004 Olympics, finishing sixth in the 200-metre breaststroke during a meet where it was all but considered a victory that nobody drowned. He was the only one of our swimmers to set a Canadian record, and he did it three times. Afterwards he promised, "I will definitely be on the podium in Beijing."

Four years later, he was just nine one-hundredths of a second away. A sliver. A fingernail. It was, for him and for Canada, a heartbreaking miss.

"About as frustrating as it gets," said the likeable Brown after swimming a 2:09.23 in the 200-metre breaststroke final. "Fourth place is probably the worst spot you can get at the Olympic Games, especially by a tenth of a second. My time from the semi-finals would have been silver there. That's extremely disappointing."

The Rest from the Post.

It's an old observation. Luck follows good fortune, but Murphy's Law dogs those who struggle.

MLB -- Tampa Bay Tops AL East

One-third of the way through the 2008 Major League Baseball schedule, and the always tightly contested American League East does not disappoint. But it does offer a couple of surprises. The most notable, is the early run of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, the perennial last-place team.

As of the end of May, the standings are as follows:

Tampa Bay -- 34 (W), 22 (L), .607 (pct.), 0 (GBL), 21-12 (vs. East)
Boston -- 34(W), 24 (L), .586 (pct.), 1.0 (GBL), 10-11 (vs. East)
Toronto -- 31 (W), 27 (L), .534 (pct.), 4.0 (GBL), 7-10 (vs. East)
New York -- 28 (W), 27 (L), .509 (pct.), 5.5 (GBL), 13-14 (vs. East)
Baltimore -- 26 (W), 28 (L), .481 (pct.), 7.0 (GBL), 11-15 (vs. East)

So, at present, Tampa Bay is fending off the Red Sox, and keeping a respectable distance ahead of the Yankees. The Blue Jays, meanwhile, are occupying their usual third place spot. An initial glance at the last column (wins and losses within their own division) tells a story. At present, Tampa Bay is the only team in the American League East that has a winning record against the other four teams. And, in fact, of 56 games played to date, 33 of them have been against AL East teams, more than any other team in the division. In the unbalanced schedule of the MLB, if you want to win you have to beat teams in your own division. Period.

Currently, the Tampa Bay pitching staff is fifth in ERA in the American League (3.67), and sixth in team batting average (2.63).

At 34 wins so far in this campaign, Tampa Bay has already won just over half of the 66 games they won all of last season. Now, a baseball season is more akin to a marathon than a sprint. But assuming (big assumption, by the way) that they were able to keep up the pace, Tampa Bay would be on track to win roughly 99 games, and a post-season bid.

Let's check in on them again at the All-Star break in about a month.

Spokane Wins Memorial Cup -- Then Breaks It (DOH!!)

Well, the CHL Memorial Cup tournament ended with the championship game between the Spokane Chiefs and the Kitchener Rangers. In a way, both teams were winners. But in another much more accurate way, Spokane was the winner. The Spokane Chiefs defeated the Kitchener Rangers by a score of 4-1, to earn CHL Junior A Hockey bragging rights for the next year.

With a military escort, the cup was gingerly escorted to centre ice. The Memorial Cup was then presented to the Chiefs' captain, who then did the sort of thing that phobic dreams are made of -- he dropped the cup and broke it in two pieces. As the Waterloo Region Record reports:

The Spokane Chiefs busted the Memorial Cup Sunday at the Aud.

That was just an accident.

But first they broke the hearts of the Kitchener Rangers and their fans by winning the Canadian Hockey League title game 4-1 before 6,807.

They did that on purpose.

Memorial Cup Weekend

The semi-final match has just been completed in this year's Memorial Cup Jr. A hockey tournament. The Kitchener Rangers defeated the Belleville Bulls in commanding fashion by a score of 9-0. Coincidentally, the score of this hockey game matches precisely the outcome of the Supreme Court of Canada ruling yesterday regarding the case of the fly in the ointment (er, water bottle). I'm just saying. Anyway, the tournament championship will be played on Sunday afternoon at the Kitchener Memorial Auditorium (the Aud).

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Not to put too fine a point on it, but GO RANGERS!!!