The baseball day in Los Angeles started on a solemn note Monday when the Dodgers held two moments of silence for fallen comrades in arms during Chavez Ravine’s opening day Monday (before a third passed later in the day).

(Pictures from 710 AM ESPN’s Beto Duran)

By the end of the game (an 11-1 pounderation of the San Francisco Giants, who could not devise a hacky time travel solution with the USS Enterprise despite the cross-promotional gold), the area around Dodger Stadium hosted numerous instances of disrespect to human life through stabbings, gun-waving, fights involving dozens of people, and the stray auto accident.

Of course, we would never draw a correlation between the drop in beer prices at Dodger Stadium and violence around the ballpark. After all, fan-on-fan violence is still seemingly less likely than vendor-on-vendor violence or security-on-fan violence. The relative safety of MLB.com’s At Bat iPhone app is looking better all the time, especially now that it works occasionally.

Another object d’mocktastery best safely seen from a distance that works only occasionally: Isiah Thomas. He’s apparently found a reason to leave the house as Florida International University has shown interest in hiring him as their basketball head coach.

(”Look! Look up at that paragraph! It says that someone wants me!  Do you see that?”)

FIU has found a certain comfort level with losing (five straight seasons) and could certainly use the limelight brought by a famous coach. Perhaps Isiah’s excited because he thinks he can ply his trade in a different country unfamiliar with his sordid past. (That’s what the “International” stands for, right?)

Another gentleman of leisure being paid by an NBA team to go away but still looking for a new home will also have to find a new place of leisure as well. At least two of Detroit’s casinos (current count: 439280410) have reportedly tossed Allen Iverson out on his ear for “boorish behavior”, including bodyguard-related scuffling, pouting after a loss, and being generally churlish.

(There’s always golf to ruin one’s forced retirement)

So kudos to the MGM Casino and the Greektown Casino for standing up to Allen Iverson’s shenanigans after he’s left town and will likely never return unless absolutely forced to by contract. Also, way to leak the information once the coast is clear.

We once spotted AI in the Omni Hotel in Atlanta, taking over a section of  the open-air lounge and bar to play cards in the late afternoon with his buddies. He did not order from the bar; instead, he had the bellboy bring his crew a beat-up old cooler filled with their own special reserve.

We did not get a chance to see his favorite drink, but we bet he could get it for 25% less this season at Dodger Stadium. Better bring the bodyguards to carry the overflow.

And now our riot police-approved hail of rubber bullets reinforced by the near-certainty there are relatively few industries interested in “boy whisperers”…

• The talk of Palm Beach, FL, last weekend had to be the NEW YORK TIMES pulse-taker on that chic town and their tumble through the economic dryer, especially the Jewish-Gentile divide between those taken by Bernie Madoff and those who avoided him. So let it be no surprise that the Wilpons, part-time residents of Palm Beach and full-time victims of Madoff, couldn’t stop talking about the con artist for over a dozen years or more.
• Clemson University’s men’s soccer coach has been forcefully granted a leave of absence after an arrest for allegedly beating his teenage daughters.
• A White Sox fan has filed suit against his favorite team for the crippling pain he experiences daily after being caught in the maelstrom that is the T-shirt toss.
• Finally, someone has ditched all that silly sport in rugby and skipped directly to the punching.
• Condi Rice stalks Tiger Woods but falls three strokes short of a restraining order.
• The Calgary Flames and Edmonton Oilers desperately need new arenas to replace their dilapated current homes, well over 25 years after their construction.  That’s according to NHL frontman Gary Bettman, who certainly showed puck-sized cajones to lay out that demand in this economy.
• Your 2009-2010 temporary receptacle for misplaced affection for college days gone well past: Sherron Collins and Cole Aldrich, who will stay at Kansas for another year.
• Donations of human kindness for the decency-deficient (like media abuser Delmon Young) can be made to SPORTSbyBROOKS, c/o this station.
• Tom Hicks can soon kiss the Texas Rangers and Dallas Stars farewell as he has been declared in default by his creditors on his loans through Hicks Sports Group. Of course, the WALL STREET JOURNAL quickly blamed player salaries while burying the lede behind the subscription wall that perhaps Hicks shouldn’t have over-leveraged himself to buy into the English Premier League’s Liverpool side.  Maybe Chan Ho Park will float him some cash…
• Usain Bolt says that drugs are bad, m’kay, soon after suggesting marijuana might be awesome. Don’t step out of line on the corporations, Usain; you’ll never become the $10 million per year man if you do.

It wasn’t enough for Diageo, the makers of Smirnoff vodka, to invite the good folks of Phoenix out to see their hockey team free with the purchase of a bottle of booze.  Now they’re plastering their name across The World’s Largest Beer Garden in an attempt to make further inroads into the sports scene. That’s one way to pay for stadium upgrades if you won’t pony up to the governor.

Wrigley Field will now host the Captain Morgan Club (a restaurant) and the Smirnoff Patio and provide lovely mixed drinks to the fans that like to do a little drinking around 10 am at home and then ride the El to Addison and start downing car bombs around 11:30 am for a 1:20 pm start.

If Cubs fans aren’t careful, they might even put Toronto Blue Jays fans to shame.  That’s not easy to do, either; they can’t be stopped even if Daddy takes the alcohol away for a game.  (Not to mention the gratuitous nudity.)

Also gratuitous: the entire 2008-2009 NCAA women’s basketball season. The University of Connecticut Huskies won their 39th straight game by double-digits to complete their undefeated season and claim the nation’s crown.

Stanford University of Louisville kept this game competitive for about as long as you’ve been reading this article thus far, which still might be the best effort of the year for a UConn opponent.  This could be the point for a snide joke about going pro in a little something we call life, but these young women are already professional assassins.  Yikes.

We know the short-lived hole in the media filter (and the filter on media members themselves) caused by Twitter will soon close and leave us with more canned responses and layers of personal marketing protection.  As we speak, there are businesses springing up around the management of social spaces and new media integration and other phrases that dampen the soul.

For now, though, we live in truly awesome times.  Example: Bill Stewart (West Virginia’s head football coach and the antithesis of R-Rod) has been carrying on like a blessed fool on Twitter, including how he threw all the kickers out of a meeting or how he gets so fired up by Chubby Checker that he sprints into practice at 4:15 am.

Go like this, Coach Stewart.  Go like this all morning long.

And now the twisting hail of bullets that Carl Landry could heal up from in only three weeks…

• Need a Mets ticket? Why not purchase one from a Madoff trustee?  Nothing could go wrong there.
• Finally, justice will be served for Lance Armstrong as the thief that stole his bicycle has apparently been captured. We believe we have found a picture of the culprit:

• Stan Kasten, president of the Washington Nationals, went on Philly radio and told Phillies fans just how much they were welcome to fill those increasingly empty seats at Nationals Park, having apparently forgotten that D.C. sports fans survive the surprisingly harsh winters by burning compressed carbon logs of their own hate for other teams.  You’d think Stan Kasten had bigger fish to fry, frankly.  For example, Dmitri Young just called Stan Kasten’s house because he heard Kasten’s hosting a fish fry.
• Your NBA Draft early departure update: Blake Griffin (as mentioned late yesterday), Jodie Meeks, and everyone in the city of Tucson.  They’re gonna need a bigger green room.
• Senator Ted Kennedy threw out the first pitch at Fenway Park on Opening Day.  Senator Bill Frist saw this video and declared Kennedy alive and well, raising his batting average to .500.
• The San Diego Padres have one chance at a title: Miss California Carrie Prejean (a former “Deal or No Deal” model) will be competing for the Miss USA title in Vegas on April 19th and she’s a former member of the Padres’ “Pad Squad”.  It’s good that she’s no longer with the organization or Becky Moores might demand weekend visitation rights.

• Kellen Winslow, Jr. is now a very rich soldier in Tampa.  In fact, we don’t think there’s been a more wealthy soldier since Sgt. Slaughter committed treason.
• The weather will be miserable at the Masters this weekend.  Hey, at least everyone gets to stay in and around beautiful Augusta, GA.
• Even the Road Runner can’t get out of paying his remodeling contractors, Leandro Barbosa.
• As always, sports governing bodies’ petty infighting makes for complicated reading.  Therefore, please forgive us an analogy: baseball couldn’t hook up with softball to make a 2016 Olympics baby, so they’re slumming with women’s baseball to try to reproduce a “women’s component to its bid to get reinstated for the 2016 Olympics“.  (The IOC is loathe to add a boys’ sport without adding a girls’ sport as well.)  Of course, the idea might go over better if there were more than a thousand high school girls in America that played baseball, much less in other countries.
• Then again, maybe this would all be helped if these sports governing bodies weren’t so monochrome in their leadership that one expert found that the “whiteness is distressing.“

We can only imagine that John McEnroe had a hard time believing the caller on the other end of the line was serious earlier this week. Why? Not just for punchlines. This call brought word that his investment in a New York art gallery was at the center of a fraud investigation.

(The man who scammed McEnroe & others)

According to REUTERS, McEnroe is among a handful of victims taken for a ride by 59-year-old art dealer Lawrence Salander who has been charged with an even 100 charges of grand larceny and securities fraud. Somewhat ironically, McEnroe was invested in two paintings called “Pirate I” and “Pirate II”, all while the man who convinced him to invest was a bit of a pirate himself.

Read more…

• Michael Phelps - from marijuana smoker to motivational speaker. Maybe he can motivate himself not to skip the 2012 Olympics.

• And Mike should have a talk with Terry Glenn, the ex-Dallas Cowboy who was taken in for wandering high & naked through the halls of a hotel.

• As if sports agents weren’t sleazy enough, now they’re getting caught collecting child porn.

• LeBron James doubles his pleasure & triples his fun by going off in a 52-point performance at MSG Wednesday night.

Read more…

Bernie Madoff’s list of cursed clients numbers 13,567, so it’s no surprise that there’s some well-known sports figures on it.

Individual client names were released today, and heading the sports celebs is Sandy Koufax.

So what was Koufax’s connection to Madoff?

Read more…