7:53 PM This is pretty damn cool: Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times has picked Hoop Dreams as the greatest American documentary of all-time. Ebert also called it the best film of the '90s.
7:50 PM With Newcastle United fans incensed about the perilous direction of the venerable English Premier League team, eminent Northerner Sting has stepped into the breach and formed a group aiming to buy out Owner Mike Ashley.
7:16 PM Former Nationals GM Jim Bowden Tweets this afternoon that the Washington's MLB club has hired Jim Riggleman as its new manager. Our sincerest condolences go out to Riggleman's friends and family.
7:01 PM 26-year-old Steven Smith, an assistant varsity football coach in Paso Robles, CA, has been charged with two counts of attempted murder after shooting a pregnant woman several times, including in the head. He remains in a local jail in lieu of $1 million bail.
Give it to Gatorade: they know how to push Kool-Aid. Despite marketing themselves as the stuff of elite athletes, it seems like you can’t find a bloated kid without a bottle stuck to his lips these days. It’s just sugar and water. Oh, and some electrolytes that kids don’t even need.
Gatorade decided to up the ante with some Michael Jordan/Hall of Fame-themed flavors, even though history suggests anything “flavored” like MJ is going to be a sensory horror show. The CHICAGO TRIBUNE’s wine critic, perhaps as a result of a lost bet, was tasked with trying the three new flavors. He reported that they were all wonderfully delicious and haha no he didn’t they’re bottles of pure ass: Read more…
Proving once again that FOX’s Ken Rosenthal gets to the heart of the biggest stories in MLB, he reported yesterday during the Cubs-Dodgers telecast that the Cubs are going to be getting rid of the Gatorade dispenser in their dugout after Ryan Dempster and Carlos Zambrano beat the living crap out of it in separate incidents earlier this week.
In the good old days, players just laid the wood to a garden-variety barrel that was easily replaced by a new one. But the dispenser (pictured above) is like the self-serve soda machine at your local fast-food joint — an actual mechanism that requires a service call to fix if it’s blasted with 35 ounces of maple. And, “in this economy,” the Cubs decided they didn’t want to have to keep calling the repairman to come put the thing back together.
Dempster, in a somewhat hilarious interview (video after the jump), says the dispenser will be missed but has to share in some of the blame.
As expected, Tiger Woodswins yet another dramatic come-from-behind tournament. Where does this guy get his ginormous grandiose power? If you believe the marketing department of Quaker Oats, it’s their super sports drink Gatorade! (They’re not paying Woods $100 million for you consumers not to believe it.)
As such, Tiger apparently needs a constant supply of Gatorade’s carbs or electrolytes or theanine or whatever it is they put in their multi-colored beverages. And that is why Tiger has come to rely on his own personal on-the-greens Gatorade Lady.
This weekend is a pretty big one for golf fans across the world. It will mark the first time since June of last year at the U.S. Open that the great Tiger Woodswill grace a PGA Tour event with his presence. All of a sudden, golf matters again.
Of course, as a real golf fan you can’t just sit back and be happy that Tiger is back. You need something to commemorate the occasion. You need something that will prove to other Tiger fans that you’re a much bigger fan than the rest. You need Tiger’s DNA, and, according to SPORTING NEWS and USA TODAY’s GAME ON, you can have it for only $25,000.
Ed Price of the NEW JERSEY STAR-LEDGER spotted an odd sign at U.S. Celluar Field (née New Comiskey) in Chicago this week: “NO BOTTLED WATER ON THE BENCH“. Using un-blogger-like investigative skills, he tracked down the reason for the ban on the dangerous liquid: it would make Gatorade very angry.
Gatorade paid a lot for their product to be shown prominently cupping the mouths of Major League ballplayers. If they don’t get their money shot, they will have to seriously consider taking their business elsewhere. And what will dehydrating baseball players do without their electrolyte delivery vehicles? (Besides laying off the caffeine, we mean.)
• Darren Rovell of CNBC pours a 40 in remembrance of the inventor of Gatorade.• The COLUMBIA (SC) STATE hears that the Ol’ Ball Coach is not in the running for any recent job vacancies.
Cade’s $43 of drink supplies in 1965 hath now wrought a multi-billion dollar sports drink industry. We all know what Cade was up to in the beginning - supplying a drink that would effectively replace bodily fluids lost during a football game.But the AP has a few more tidbits:
• Cade on the first batch: “I guzzled it and I vomited.” Researcher Dana Shires: “It sort of tasted like toilet bowl cleaner.”
• “It was first tested on freshmen because (Florida) Coach Ray Graves didn’t want to hurt the varsity team.”
Cade didn’t only help the Gator football team with his research. He also studied hypertension and schizophrenia, presumably to aid and assist all those well-balanced UF football fans we adore.
