Sure, Denver Bronco fans booed Jay Cutler with all their might last night when he returned to play against his old team for the first time, but the boos eventually faded to mild displeasure, and then the eventual realization by the home crowd that they are, in fact, really stuck with Kyle Orton. The Bears won the first half — when both guys played — 17-3, and won the game 27-17.

In other words, the Broncos are about to fade into oblivion, somewhere they really aren’t used to inhabiting. It just took last night’s game for it to finally sink in. Even the lady pictured above doesn’t really seem to have her heart in that sign. She’s quite clearly not lovin’ it. Chargers fans, meanwhile, are already clearing their weekends in January. They could probably take four games off this year and still win the AFC West.

Cutler, of course, played well last night for his new team despite all of the distractions and a concerted attempt by the Bronco defense to make things as tough as possible on him. Suddenly, the Bears are brimming with confidence heading into their opener at Green Bay, and thinking they might be able to duplicate their Super Bowl run a couple of years back — this time with a QB who isn’t allergic to footballs.

Orton, of course, didn’t even make it to halftime because he sliced his finger open on another player’s helmet. For what it’s worth, he actually played fairly well (12-for-16 for 96 yards). But this is a guy who the Bears really only grudgingly let be their starter because a better option wasn’t available. Are there even five other teams where he’d be the #1 guy?

FOX SPORTS’ Alex Marvez just comes right out and says the Broncos were fleeced in the trade, not only in the 50-cents-on-the-dollar they got in return, but because of the way coach Josh McDaniels and owner Pat Bowlen botched the whole situation from the start. Maybe Mike Shanahan had lost his way a little, but wouldn’t your average Bronco fan rather have him and Cutler than the McDaniel-Orton combo? Did it really have to come to this?

Well, at least you can look forward to some more scenes like this out at the local bars, Denver:

Some idiot blogger totally wrote off the Giants last week after they lost an excruciating game to the Rockies that dropped them four games back in the wild card hunt. In fact, all of the talk was about how Colorado might even run down the Dodgers when all was said and done. And no, I wasn’t the only one sticking the fork in San Francisco.

What a difference a week makes. Edgar Renteria, perpetually just barely good enough to keep getting a job, hit a grand slam that lifted the Giants to a 9-5 win over the Rockies and a series sweep. The teams are now tied heading into baseball’s official stretch run.

(Edgar Renteria: When your team just doesn’t care enough to find a better shortstop)

I knew, of course, that Tim Lincecum and Matt Cain would always give their team a chance to win. But I hadn’t counted on the sudden rejuvenation of Barry Zito. Since a meltdown against the Padres on July 18th that made me wonder if they’d find a way to get rid of him altogether, he’s posted a 1.92 ERA in his last nine starts. Throw in Jonathan Sanchez, whose ERA has been right around 3.00 since the beginning of July, and you’ve got the best starting pitching in baseball right now. Just think if they could hit!

Now, the Giants have to find a way to stay close over the next 10 days. The Rockies start a 10-game homestand on Tuesday and host the Mets, Diamondbacks, and Reds. San Francisco, on the other hand, travels to Philadelphia and Milwaukee before returning home to play the Padres.

(Yes, that is Zito not only tipping his cap, but also receiving applause)

• The US Open is starting today. An 18-year-old kid named Devin Britton won the NCAA championship this year, and his reward is a first-round match against Roger Federer. Let’s hope he handles the pressure better than Richie Tenenbaum did:

• TRUE HOOP has a great post about last week’s episode of “Mad Men,” which had a subplot dealing with the outrage about tearing down the old Penn Station to build Madison Square Garden in the 1960s, and how MSG is revered today as a sports venue:

Four decades later, it’s ironic that the building that was the bête noire of architectural preservationists has become the defining symbol of basketball preservationists — a receptacle for the sort of sentimentalism that fueled the opposition to its creation. 

• 124th-ranked Heath Slocum drained a 20-footer to beat Tiger Woods, Padraig Harrington, and Ernie Els by a shot at the Barclays tournament in Jersey. Tiger missed a six-footer on the 18th that would’ve tied it. The real winner of the day, though, was former MLB hurler Heathcliff Slocumb, who I briefly thought about for the first time in 10 years.

(Think the Red Sox regret trading him for Varitek and Lowe?)

• I’m not saying Daisuke Matsuzaka is finished, but a 49-pitch, five-run first inning in a AA game isn’t a good sign that things are back on track.

• Tedy Bruschi is going to retire today, and then become the 18,214th talking head on NBC’s NFL coverage.

• The Pirates have now lost 21 straight games in Milwaukee.

• A 26-year-old female rugby player had her head run over by a two-ton grass roller set free by a bunch of teenage male rugby players while she was camping in a tent in Wales. Now she looks like, well, like she just played rugby:

• Are the Cardinals really the team to be scared of in the NL? We all know that pitching rotations shorten in the playoffs, and the Cards are 29-4 since July 1st in games started by their big three of Adam Wainwright, Chris Carpenter, and Joel Pineiro.

• Want more evidence that the Mets are a little cash poor? They’re canceling their fall instructional league because it costs too much. The NY DAILY NEWS’ Adam Rubin says it costs about $300,000 to put on, which is about 1/40th of Oliver Perez‘ 2009 salary. Of course, the whole story is just Rubin angling for a job in the organization.

•  The LA TIMES’ Kurt Streeter is the latest to say what we’re all thinking. Gambling on football is rampant, so why isn’t our country making any money off of it?

• This is what the world has come to in 2009: There is now a “Twitter Warning” sign at the US Open cautioning players against revealing too much “inside info” in a tweet.

Maybe it’s just because I’m a Cubs fan who lived through the infamous Bartman Game, but I’ve never understood why adults care so much about shagging foul balls that they’re willing to put themselves at risk to get them. It’s not a valuable souvenir, nobody you show it to is particularly impressed, and presumably if you can afford a ticket to a ballgame you can afford to go purchase your own baseball if that’s what you’re needing. It’s not quite as strange as standing in line for hours to get an autograph, but it’s up there.

At last night’s Cardinals/Pirates game in Pittsburgh, one Cardinals fan (figures) did more to prove the idiocy of the foul ball lunge than a paragraph from me ever could when he flipped face-first over the PNC Park railing, smashing his face and causing a 10-minute game delay in the process.

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I’m not here to make some sort of claim that all St. Louis Cardinals fans are lunatic drunkards. Wait, yes I am. But the point of this post is these two particular drunkards below.

(Stay classy, ladies)

Meet Bridget Matarazzi and Laura McClure, two fun-lovin’ 25-year-old gals who may have had a little too much booze and merriment on Saturday at Busch Stadium. How much booze? Matarazzi was arrested and accused of pushing an elderly usher out of his wheelchair. Just think: Sometime in the future, some kid is going to run across the photo above and say, “Mom?”

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It seems like only yesterday when Dodger pitcher Guillermo Mota was plunking Mike Piazza, then scampering away into his own dugout like George Costanza fleeing a fire to escape the slugger’s wrath. That was 2003, but Mota — in his second stint with the Dodgers — was the sacrificial lamb once again in last night’s 17-4 win over the Brewers in L.A.

The Brewers had hit Manny Ramirez earlier in the game, presumably for being Manny and admiring a slump-busting home run he hit as part of the Dodgers’ biggest home scoring outburst since 1979. So, with Ramon Troncoso warming in the bullpen with a 13-run lead and two outs in the ninth, Mota beaned Prince Fielder. Mota was tossed immediately and a befuddled Fielder had words for him as he left the field. Troncoso came in for the last out, but the situation was far from over.

After the game, Prince decided he wanted to go have a friendly chat with Mota and the rest of the Dodgers, so he tried to storm their clubhouse. Like, actually go in there and try and throw down, I guess. Fortunately, a combination of security guards and Brewer teammates were able to keep him out. Prince was soon safely in his regular spot in front of the postgame spread. Mota, once again displaying mighty courage, was nowhere to be found afterward and left Russell Martin to speak for him.

This is the sort of thing that happens all the time in baseball, but two aspects were troublesome: One, obviously, is Fielder’s attempt to actually go in the opposing clubhouse and get in a confrontation. Baseball has always had their “codes” and all that, but it’s supposed to stay on the field. Fielder’s choice to escalate the situation showed pretty poor judgment. But I don’t think Joe Torre is off the hook here. Hittting Fielder wasn’t the problem. But the Dodgers should’ve at least preserved the conceit that the whole thing wasn’t pre-planned. It’s hard to say “it just got away from him” when you have a pitcher warming up in the bullpen with one out remaining in a complete blowout. Clearly this was not only permitted by Torre, but presumably was encouraged, which may earn him a suspension.

*UPDATE* CBS 2 in L.A. has video of Prince’s attempted post-game visit.

(I don’t think Mota wants to run into Piazza at a Dodger reunion any time soon)

Meanwhile, things may have finally hit rock bottom for the Mets this year. Francisco Rodriguez blew a two-run lead in the ninth, then Albert Pujols hit a granny in the 10th to lead the Cards to a 12-7 win at CitiField. It was Pujols’ fifth grand slam this season, and he has hit six homers in his last 11 at-bats with the bases loaded. Even more frustrating for Mets fans, pitcher Sean Green hit the previous batter, Mark DeRosa, with the bases loaded to allow Pujols to come to the plate. This with two out in a tie game. To add injury to injury, as the Mets have been doing all season, Luis Castillo sprained his ankle on the dugout steps.

(”Hey Albert, up here. Up top, bro. Do you see me here? No, dude, not the guy in the white shirt.”)

Horrifying news coming out of the Pittsburgh area last night, as a man opened fire at an LA Fitness gym in the southwest suburb of Collier, killing at least three people and wounding at least 10 others. At this time, it’s assumed that the gunman then killed himself. The PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW has the scary details:

Allegheny County police Superintendent Charles Moffatt said the gunman may have fired 50 shots at the 20-22 women inside the room at the time before turning one of his guns on himself and taking his own life. There were perhaps another 50 people in various other parts of the facility at the time.

Moffatt said the gunman left a note inside his gym bag that indicated he expected to die in the carnage.

From all accounts, this seems like the sort of attack that is nearly impossible to stop. The 49-year-old gunman, who has not been identified as I write this, was a member of the club who was able to gain access simply by swiping in. It could, however, not be as entirely random as it looks now, as he specifically went into a room where an aerobics class called “Latin Impact” was taking place. He only shot women who were in that room, then apparently killed himself.

Despite the chaotic scene, a number of people lent whatever help they could:

Richard Walker went to the gym to play basketball with a group of friends. Two of them left carrying shooting victims, both women, over their shoulders, Walker said.

They got 50 yards from the gym’s side entrance, and took cover between cars as soon as they reached the edge of the parking lot, he said two hours after the shooting, his Oklahoma All-State T-shirt covered in dried blood down its right side.

“They were like losing blood and almost freaking out,” said Walker, 23, of Carnegie, who recently moved from Tulsa. “I just knew you put pressure on the wound.”

Thoughts go out to all the victims. Let’s hope all of the wounded are just that, and don’t take any turn for the worse.

On that note, the show goes on:

• NBA schedules are out, and the Celtics host the Cavs in the marquee matchup of opening night.

• Because nobody asked, Clinton Portis wants you to know that he’s not gay:

“I don’t think there’s a woman in the United States of America that would say I’m gay. So, you know, I don’t hang around men.”

• Based on this video posted by NESW SPORTS, I don’t think LeBron James would even be a top 5 pick in my Monday night pickup game. At least he doesn’t have to worry about getting dunked on again:

• Joe Posnanski is the newest senior writer at Sports Illustrated. He’ll still write for the K.C. STAR on occasion, but the exodus from traditional print outlets continues.

• The PHOENIX NEW TIMES has dug up records suggesting that the city of Glendale and the NHL have essentially been preparing to hand the Phoenix Coyotes over to Jerry Reinsdorf for months, well before the team began looking for a new owner. Such a deal is bad for the owners, who could make much more money selling the team to a group that would move the team to Canada.

• Once the most talked-about guy in baseball, Roy Halladay is now just another guy losing to the Yankees.

• Drew Carey is excited about tonight’s FC Barcelona-Seattle Sounders match at Qwest Field. But the real gem is at the end of the story: Seattle midfielder Freddie Ljungberg says he missed a penalty kick in the MLS All-Star Game because of a migraine triggered by eating food with red wine in it. Oh, soccer players.

(When you need a guy to miss a penalty kick, accept no substitute)

 • Predictably, it looks like the NFL is going to be the first major league to draft a policy addressing the use of Twitter by its players, according to the WASHINGTON POST.

• Stolen golf carts. Guys peeing on trailers. No, it has nothing to do with Donald Trump. It’s just your average week at the (no longer) Buick Open.

• I think Jennifer Love Hewitt would probably be the #1 pick in my Monday night pickup hoops game if she showed up wearing this:

If Vegas actually had a betting line on Pete Rose making it into the Baseball Hall of Fame, it would have probably been taken off the board for “suspicious activity” after the events of the last few days. The odds improved significantly when Henry Aaron - a close friend of Commissioner Bud Selig - mentioned to reporters that he’d like to see Rose in the Hall of Fame, leading to a report by the NEW YORK DAILY NEWS that Selig was “seriously considering” lifting Rose’s lifetime ban.

But if ESPN is correct, betting on seeing Rose anywhere in Cooperstown other than selling autographs at a card table might be a sucker bet. Their sources are saying that Selig is not considering reinstating Rose, leaving him to be happy with his place in the Soup Bowl Haircut Hall of Fame (alongside sartorial luminaries as Moe Howard, Chairman Mao and Jim Carrey from “Dumb and Dumber”).

Personally, I could care less one way or the other - at this point, the only way Rose actually makes it into the Hall of Fame is through the Veterans Committee, and they are chock full of grumpy old men who would keep people out of the Hall of Fame for not wearing suits and hats on their train rides during road trips, much less betting on baseball. The only person I feel sorry for is Ray Fosse, as he has to deal with a new round of awkward questions about Rose turning him into a tackling dummy and ruining his career.

All of which Rose finds pretty funny, I guess:

And speaking of “suspicious activity,” I guess you can go ahead and add The Big Security Threat to Shaquille O’Neal’s list of monikers. While appearing on “The Mike Wise Show” a few days ago to promote his stint tonight on WWE Raw, he asked the hosts if they thought he could get into the White House and meet President Barack Obama if he dropped in unannounced. DC SPORTS BOG has the answer, and it’s a resounding “No.”

Shaq actually tried it yesterday, as part of a bet (1,000 push-ups) with one of his handlers. While the guys at the front gate were “nice,” they weren’t going to let Shaq act like this is a Tonight Show episode from 1982, and he’s Bob Hope interrupting an interview between Johnny Carson and an 82-year-old shoe collector to do a walk-through on the way to his latest special. Between the economy, the Middle East and studying the White Sox roster to find Walt Weiss, President Obama might have better things to do.

As far as Raw is Shaq went: he hung out with a leprechaun:

…and then kissed a sweaty guy prone to bouts of irrational anger:

So yeah, I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t want him hanging around the Oval Office.

Finally, Jim Bunning might be a Hall of Fame pitcher, but it turns out that the Republican Party has no problem pulling him early and telling him to hit the showers. The WASHINGTON POST says that the Senator from Kentucky is bowing to pressure within his own party and will not run for re-election in 2010, a political fall from grace that would have been almost unthinkable a few years ago.

Of course, it turns out that openly discussing when a Supreme Court Justice with “the bad cancer” is going to die isn’t the savviest political move. And his “lousy” fundraising so far for the race - he only $376,000 in his war chest - isn’t helping matters either. Or the persistent rumors that he’s dealing with Alzheimer’s-related dementia - you know, the “bad dementia.” All of which adds up to his seat being widely considered as the most vulnerable in the 2010 elections, making him a problem the Republicans couldn’t ignore any longer.

So what happens to the 77-year-old Bunning? Perhaps a seat on the Veterans Committee - or at least a table at a card show next to Pete Rose.

Other sports news that happened while you were accidentally shooting three people with your brand-new Taser gun.

• If the Washington Nationals were looking to enhance the trade value of Josh Willingham, they just received the Mother Lode of all gifts last night. He became the 13th player in MLB history to hit two grand slams in one game in the Nats’ 14-6 rout of the Brewers. To put this into perspective, Willingham had 14 home runs this season - 12 solo shots, and 31 RBI. So the real story here is that the Nationals actually loaded the bases twice in one game.



• Speaking of grand slams: Alfonso Soriano’s walk-off slam in the 13th inning gave the Cubs a 5-1 win over the Astros. Meanwhile, Matt Holliday had an RBI double in his home debut with St. Louis and Brendan Ryan had four hits as the Cardinals stayed a half-game back in the NL Central with a 6-1 win over Los Angeles.
• Yesterday we told you that the crowd of 180,000 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for the Brickyard 400 on Sunday was a huge disappointment. Turns out we weren’t the only ones who felt that way - the SPORTING NEWS says that Allstate will not be renewing their title sponsorship of the race.
• Police feel they are making a break in the case of former Memphis Grizzlies player Antonio Burke, who was shot in the leg and abdomen during a robbery of a dice game at his house on July 20 - they’ve arrested a 16-year-old as an accessory after the fact in the shooting.
• And it’s one, two, three punches and you’re knocked unconscious at the old ball game! At least it was in Irvine, CA as a baseball game turned rowdy, with a steal attempt turning into a brawl that left four people taken the hospital and two people arrested.
• Here’s what you need to know about Jerry Byrd Jr., a high school football coach in Shreveport, LA: he came to the Superior Bar and Grill to do two things - drink some beers and get arrested for disorderly conduct. And he’s been cut off from having more beers.
• If you’re young son is a budding tennis prodigy and you’re looking for a tennis academy for him, here’s a good rule of thumb: if the coach says he’ll need nude pictures of your kid for his computer records, you might want to look elsewhere.
• Anyone claiming to be”TheRealJoePa” on Twitter is a fraud, as Joe Paterno will have none of your “Twittle-do, Twittle-dee,” thank you very much.
• BALL DON’T LIE points out that nothing says “I love you” like Stephon Marbury Valentine’s Day cards. For that special, totally insane person in your life.
• You might remember Caleb Campbell as the former West Point football stand-out whose shot at the NFL was taken away from him when the Army backed out on a deal. Now he’s getting his second shot at athletic glory - this time as a potential Olympic bobsledder.

On paper, the RIVERFRONT TIMES’ idea to publish the home addresses of current and former St. Louis Cardinals’ players may have seemed like a good idea. I don’t know what the exact result of revealing that information was — Tony La Russa’s house besieged by stray dogs? — but the paper now seems to be having twangs of remorse. After a bit of screaming by the Cardinals’ front office, including the team pulling the Times’ credentials to the All-Star Game, editor Tom Finkel has written an apology today. Sort of.

It’s kind of a half-baked apology, if that. In it, Finkel points out that the players’ address information is freely available to anyone at the St. Louis County official web site, and that all they did was locate the real estate tax database and search it by owner’s name. “You type in Stan Musial or Al Hrabowsky and up pops an address. You don’t even have to log in,” Finkel wrote. So is the dispensation of such freely available information an invasion of privacy, or a first amendment issue? That would have been a good debate, and I wish Finkel would have addressed it. As it is, I’m not even sure the Times is taking a stance on the issue; I can’t decide if Finkel’s article is an actual apology, or another tweak at the Cardinals. You be the judge, following the jump.

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With Joe Jack Buck’s passing, there’s probably no more revered man in the St. Louis baseball scene than Stan Musial. “Stan The Man,” you may recall, is the Cardinals’ franchise leader for home runs with 475, and he was named to a jaw-dropping 24 All-Star Games (they named him to one in 1997 after a clerical error, and he went 2-3 with a double and 3 RBI).

Musial’s also 88, and there’s discussion that his health is on the decline. This year’s All-Star Game, then, was the “last, best hope” for a proper send-off for the Cardinals legend - a la Willie Mays in San Francisco back in 2007. Unfortunately, he wasn’t the real VIP in the house.

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By most standards, the 2009 All-Star Game in St. Louis was a success. City leaders were falling all over themselves in praise, because that’s what they’re supposed to do any time an event comes to town [it’s called being gracious. try it sometime.–ed].

(The Lothario himself, planning seating capacity for all his daughters.)

But above all else, the entire undertaking is simply a logistical nightmare, one that demands constant attention from multiple levels of suits. One of those suits, predictably, was Bill DeWitt, president of the St. Louis Cardinals. But his quote about the 3-day gala may have revealed a deep, dark secret about his personal life.

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To recap, Albert Pujols does not take steroids — and to prove it, won’t you please accept this tube of scented bath gel and join him in the tub? Our Cardinals hero used the day before the All-Star game to reiterate his contention that his numbers are not chemically enhanced, and in fact he’s getting downright militant about it. Want to check and see? Seriously — Pujols will pee in a cup in front you right now.

Ever since December 2007, when it was reported by several outlets that his name was included in the Mitchell report - since proven to be false - Pujols has waged a one-man campaign to clear his name. And now, with his astronomical numbers at baseball’s halfway point, Pujols is on the offensive again. You may not be taking the juice, Albert, but your quotes are injected with hilarious goodness. Let’s proceed.

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St. Louis, Missouri is a miserable place to be in the middle of summer, even in years when the Mississippi River’s not threatening to flood its banks. Temperatures rise regularly to the upper 90s, as do the humidity levels. Large swarms of flying insects (including mosquitoes) make even the shortest of outdoor walks miserable, if not painful. Even larger swarms of enormous red-clad hilljacks from southern Illinois and the inner wilds of Missouri eat their way through the city on the way to their annual Busch Stadium pilgrimages. Oh, and don’t get mugged.

(Is this what they mean by Show-Me State?)

If all that wasn’t unpleasant enough for visitors, at least most of us don’t have the St. Louis city government (motto: “60% Population Decrease Since 1950″) trying to take our hard-earned and ever-decreasing work bonuses away from us. Unfortunately, the same can’t be be said for the players selected to the 2009 MLB All-Star Game in St. Louis, who stand to lose a chunk of their All-Star bonus to The Man…even if they don’t play in the game.

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