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Baltimore Orioles second baseman Brian Roberts missed the final six games of the season with concussion-like symptoms.
Roberts, who is scheduled to have a CAT scan today, told Brittany Ghiroli of MLB.com that he was mystified when he began suffering headaches and loss of balance. Read more…
While traveling with the team to Toronto on Thursday, Baltimore Orioles outfielder Adam Jones was reportedly detained at the Toronto airport for 10 hours.
While he was in custody, Jones Tweeted that he was “detained by immigration in canada for no false accusations till 5am and appreciate someone from the team making sure were ok NOOOOOOTTTTT.”
After Jones was cleared by Border officials to enter Canada, he Tweeted, “last 10 hours have been a blast…yaaaaay. time to sleep off the bull.”
Jeff Zrebiec of the BALTIMORE SUN reports Friday that before the Orioles played the Blue Jays on Friday, “Jones said he wasn’t sure if he was mistaken for Cincinnati Bengals cornerback Adam ‘Pacman’ Jones, who has faced multiple legal issues. But Jones’ mother, Andrea Bradley, made that claim on her Facebook page.”
On August 8, 1976, against my Kansas City Royals, the Chicago White Sox became the first and only MLB team to wear shorts during a regular season contest. Sadly, the experiment lasted just three games.
(Yes, that’s Hall of Famer Goose Gossage. Priceless.)
This week some fun home video of one of those games, August 22 of the same year against the Orioles, was posted on Youtube.
Read more…
Jen Royle of MASN has this shot of the Orioles-Royals game at Camden Yards Monday night:
Photo was taken in the bottom of the 2nd inning. (Must’ve been the traffic.)
You know that a story has become a national phenomenon when Matt Lauer and Meredith Vieira get their paws on it in New York’s “Today Show” studio. That’s where little Emily Montforto ended up this morning with her father, Steve, to tell the tale of how the adorable moppet threw back a perfectly good foul ball at a Phillies game.
But this is by no means unique: As long as kids have been attending baseball games, they’ve been doing precocious things. Let’s break open a sleeve of Graham crackers and a half-pint of milk and take a look back at some of them.
• Why would Allen Iverson ever join the Grizzlies? Because God told him to.
• Andrea McNulty is willing to drop her sexual assault lawsuit against Ben Roethlisberger - as long as Big Ben admits he did it.
• A foolish foursome tries to steal Cal Ripken Jr.’s “8″ statue from the front of Camden Yards.
• The Redskins are redfaced over the bad publicity of suing a 72-year-old woman over season tickets, so they opt not to take grandma’s 66 grand.
• Since when did Cole Hamels go the David Beckham metrosexual route?
Eight is enough … to get you in trouble with the law after you try to steal a statue from outside a MLB ballpark. But that’s what happened to four Baltimore-area teens when they attempted to take off with a statue outside of Camden Yards dedicated to Orioles great Cal Ripken, Jr.
Yes, that is the statue in question above. It is not a life-size portrait or even a bust of Ripken, but simply the number 8. Who exactly would want to swipe a giant “8″, anyway? Were the foursome going to try and sell it on eBay? Were they hoping to start a bidding war between the Ripken family & the Super 8 hotel chain?
Andrea McNulty, the woman who has sued Ben Roethlisberger for allegedly raping her last year, has had her credibility and motivations called into question many times since her lawsuit was filed in July. But now, in an attempt to make her seem both less crazy and less of a gold digger, she has offered to withdraw the lawsuit.
Oh, if it were only that simple. As you’ll see, McNulty’s “offer” may seem like a noble pursuit, but it stipulates that Big Ben do the one thing he’ll never, ever do. So, without further ado, here are the three conditions for having the lawsuit dropped:
• Ain’t that a pain in the butt: An unlucky Italian swimmer suffers a cheeky wardrobe malfunction during a meet.
• The Baltimore Orioles make history - but the good kind, for once.
• The head of L.A.’s schools is seething after Sacha Baron Cohen did a Bruno GQ photoshoot with some high school football players.
• America’s favorite couple is back - Terrell Owens & Joanna Krupa return to compete in ABC’s “Superstars“.
• Stephon Marbury really doesn’t want to go back to New York.
It’s been a rough decade for the Baltimore Orioles. The once proud franchise has long been third fiddle to the Yankees and Red Sox in the AL East, but with the sudden rise of the Rays and the continuing competence of the Blue Jays, it’s hard to imagine a team that’s further away from being a contender in any division in baseball than the O’s.
So it’s fitting that when the O’s finally did achieve something great, nobody was around to see it. Trailing 9-1 to Boston in the fifth inning last night at Camden Yards, the rain came and most of the crowd took off during a 79-minute delay. After resuming, the Sox added a 10th run in the top of the seventh inning before all heck broke loose. Baltimore scored five times in the bottom of the inning off of Justin Masterson. Then they added five more in the eighth that included a three-run pinch homer by Oscar Salazar, and capped off by a Nick Markakis double off of Jonathan Papelbon.
And just like that, history was made. George Sherrill shut the door on the Sox in the 9th and an epic meltdown was complete, sending the nine Baltimore fans in attendance into hysterics (while a few thousand Sox fans sat in stunned silence). Final score: Baltimore 11, Boston 10. It was the biggest comeback in the history of the Orioles franchise (which dates to when they moved there from St. Louis in 1954), and the biggest comeback by a last-place team over a first-place team in the history of the game. For Boston, it was the second-largest blown lead in their history (they choked away a 10-0 lead to Toronto in 1989).
The rally seemingly came out of nowhere, but perhaps we should’ve seen that the Sox didn’t exactly have their heads in it after the rain delay when the entire infield left the field in the bottom of the sixth inning…after recording the second out.
(Fail)
July 1st is upon us, and that means NBA free-agent season is about to kick into gear. Today was the deadline for players with options to decide whether or not to honor their deals or look elsewhere. And with most NBA teams looking to slash payrolls, it’s no surprise that there aren’t a lot of people choosing to opt out. Kobe Bryant heads the list, but nobody really expected him to opt out.
Carlos Boozer, on the other hand, declared months ago that he would be on the open market come July. But a lot has changed since then. Detroit was the only team in position to offer Boozer a substantial deal, but they balked at offering a deal that would pay him more than the $12.7 million he’ll earn next season for sticking around Utah. Plus, Boozer’s really into going to Sundance and he wouldn’t be able to do that in Detroit.
Boozer’s choice to exercise his option, and Mehmet Okur’s decision to do the same, has put the Jazz in a tough spot. They expect to lose Boozer after next season, and probably would’ve preferred if he bolted now. They’d like to sign youngster Paul Millsap to a long-term deal, and will now have to pay the luxury tax if they do so.
Meanwhile, Hedo Turkoglu is officially a free-agent, and while he’s garnering the most buzz, a lot of good players, such as Ron Artest, Jason Kidd, Ben Gordon, Andre Miller, Chris “Birdman” Andersen, and some guy named Allen Iverson could be had for the right price. Another guy on the market is Charlie Villanueva, who the Bucks declined to even make an offer to. TRUEHOOP says that’s a major indication that the economy is really taking its toll on the league. The Rockets are somewhat creepily taking a bit run at Marcin Gortat to replace Yao Ming for the time being, going as far as knocking on his door at 12:01 a.m. and setting up a Gmail account just for Gortat-based fanmail.
(A future star, or a really well paid cheerleader?)
Speaking of Yao, people in China aren’t buying that he’s really all that hurt, suggesting that the Rockets are overstating his injury so that he’ll be cheaper to re-sign when his contract is up next year. But will Houston want him back? Regardless of whether or not he’s healed, China expects him to play in next summer’s World Championships, which could lead to further injury and basically stick the fork in him (if it hasn’t been already).
(If Yao can’t run by next summer, he’s going to reinvent himself as Earl Boykins on wheels)
And now, without further adieu, let’s kick off July’s links with some bad goalkeeping, cheerleader car washes, and disembodied hair:
• Chris Cooley is taking some time from showing everyone his wang to set fire to dead farm animals instead.
• On the plus side, this goalie showed some nice hops in saving this ball from going out of bounds. On the minus side, well, you’ll see (thanks to SPORTS RUBBISH):
• The ONLINE SPORTS GUYS has the story of Florida International’s cheerleaders — whose program was cut from the school’s athletic budget — trying to save their team the only way they know how: a giant car wash. Video goodness within.
• JOCK AND BALLS has 10 mullets we all know and love.
• Pacifiers featuring logos of NHL teams are being recalled because they cause a risk for choking. Surprisingly, neither the Bruins nor the Sharks are among the featured logos.
• Who has the NBA’s biggest payroll? Gotta be the Lakers or Celtics, right? No, actually, it’s New Orleans. And I’m sure that Wizards fans out there will be excited to learn that their team is #3 on the list.
• You’ve got just about three days left if you want to buy Magglio Ordonez’s hair in an Ebay auction.
On second thought, that miiiiight be a dead puli.
• You want to edit some home video footage of Ty Cobb? Better respond to this Craigslist ad fast. He assures you that this is not a fake, because as we all know, people are always trying to pass around fraudulent Ty Cobb videos.
• The BIRMINGHAM NEWS has posted odds on which college football program will be the next to commit a major violation, courtesy of USBET.COM. #1 on the list? USC. Last on the list? The Australian Institute of Ethics.
• Penguins star Evgeni Malkin has a Conn Smythe Trophy, and now he’s cavorting somewhere warm with Oksana Kondakova, a model with creative tastes in bikini tops:
Looks like Malkin’s enjoying the off-season:
