Category: Sports

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Angry Brown… Horse? and Hal on Fox News

So yesterday was the 134th running of the Kentucky Derby and Big Brown just ran away from the field. I was around some Reading, Pennsylvania and totally missed the running but caught the race later. It was sad to hear when filly Eight Belles followed a sensational effort of her own to finish second by fracturing both ankles, falling to the track and being euthanized on the spot.

It’s certainly the fastest two minutes or so in sports and for those of you who did not get a chance to see it, i have attached it below. I know some people who say this is an awful sport and its understandable that they say it cause like me probably the only horse races they watch are the 3 major ones and certainly the news of Barbaro is still probably fresh in their minds. However, this seems like a really beautiful sport and honestly if I was bogged down in so many other things, I would probably watch more races.

In other news, Stevens Institute of Technology President Hal Raveche was on Fox News on the first of the month to talk about the struggling economy and what the foreign markets think of the falling dollar. He had interesting points which were countered by a professor from NYU and a couple of people from Fox News. He talks about innovation, preparing the students in his university for the world out there (coincidentally the arson incident is taking place about a week before when supposedly he was overseas.)

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Mike & Mike Eating Contest

UPDATE: I know a bunch of you are coming from Digg and Google search results to watch this video. If you wanna help me out, please click on one or two of the blue ads links on the left to offset the bandwidth costs. Thanks!

Making up for lost time and a less than exciting morning. Here is an eating contest that Mike & Mike had on ESPN and ESPN Radio earlier today. I think this is because Mike Golic lost the March Madness Bracket to his co-host… pretty funny stuff, but definitely not for the light stomached people who like their food.

The trophy presentations after the contest was over. It was funny that they had an ESPN nurse and were sponsored by Pepcid AC. By the way, good luck to those who are on the airplane with Mike & Mike as they travel to Kentucky later today to cover the Kentucky Derby.

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Baseball Season Goal

Well we are a month into the season and here is where I stand on my (revised) goal. There is a constant update on the left sidebar about the Yankees and Blue Jays but I just thought I’d give you guys an update so far with yesterday being a month gone by.

For the Yankees I have caught all 29 games so far and here are some random stats. 23 (79.3%) of those games I have caught on the YES Network which at times I agree can be a bit painful to watch but maybe they are growing on me since I am such a fan of their team. I caught 2 (6.9%) games on radio (one when our apartment had no TV and the other one was the night I was driving down to DC with my roommates for the Cherry Blossom Festival), caught 2 games on ESPN (one vs. the Jays in the opening series for the season and one against the Red Sox in Fenway), there was one (3.45%) that I watched on MLB.TV from Silver Spring, Maryland which is quite unique since I live here and don’t often get a chance to go out of the viewing area during the season and just the other day against the Indians there was a game on TBS. I don’t remember if that game was blacked out on TBS and I watched it on YES but I have it on TBS in my sheet.

For the Blue Jays, it had started off real well when I had watched 8 of the first 9 games but since then it has only been 11 out of 19 games. Overall percentage is down to 67.86% and I still have 62 more games of theirs to catch to reach the goal. Obviously MLB.TV has been the dominant viewing preference because they aren’t on tv much here but I did catch them twice on YES (7.14%) and once on ESPN (3.57%). They have to find ways to start scoring runs again in this tough AL East. I knew New York (even with their injuries), Boston and Tampa would be tough but Baltimore really surprised me this month. Two losses in a row for the Jays where they only scored 1 run on the Red Sox but on the other hand, only allowed 3 runs total in the two games. The pitching has been solid (Halladay with 4 straight complete games but only one win to show for it)… so the offense really needs to start picking this up soon.

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Soccer Coaching & Sportsmanship Story

I had planned to write about this last night but I was just too tired from class and coming home. I did become certified to coach soccer yesterday from NSCAA. It went by faster than I thought and Coach Tim O’Donohue who taught the course really did well. The only other experience I had with him was on the field when he is a passionate, fiery person to say the least but seeing him off the field and talking to him about soccer and just hearing what goes on in his head during a game was awesome. I’m thinking of maybe helping out with the Academy Eagles next year – maybe I’ll talk to Coach McNulty this week and see what she thinks (btw, she’s still the best coach I’ve ever met).

Anyways back to what I was gonna write about. It’s a remarkable story of sportsmanship unlike any other. My sister has it up from yesterday (link) and I’ll throw in an except from what she wrote.

While playing in a College Softball game (the loser would be eliminated from the playoffs), Sara Tucholsky scored her first home run (ever) but collapsed near the first base because of a knee injury. According to the first-base coach, her team could not help her because she would be called out, and even if a pinch runner was put in the home run would just count as a single. Unbelievably, two girls from the opposing team — vying for the playoff spots — picked Sara up and helped her touch the remaining bases and brought her back to home base.

In this day and age, where most people don’t even bother helping others in every day situations that would have no effect on them, these amazing girls helped the opposing team in a competitive setting, just so the results would be fair and Sara and her team would get what they deserved, while knowing they would be eliminated from the playoffs. – link

Below is a thumbnail of the two girls carrying their opponent around the bases. I read a couple of stories on it yesterday and one that really caught my eye was by George Vecsey from the NY Times where he asked whether the Oakland Athletics would have carried Kirk Gibson around the bases after he hit the home run off of them or really if we would have seen it anywhere else in professional sports. Maybe it’s a gender thing that the girls would do it the guys wouldn’t, maybe I’m just jumping to conclusions but it’s a great story nonetheless.

Update (1:50 PM): ESPN has a video up of the 3 girl involved and you can view it below.

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Grab Bag Of The Month

I haven’t really gotten a chance to post recently, been busy with classes and finals and what not but I’ll put up a couple of cool clips I saw recently below the Facebook rant.

Anyways, I had been collecting my “application” requests on Facebook for maybe 2 or 3 months now and finally late last week it cracked triple digits. I have gotten random invitations bid on what my friends are worth in “friends for sale”, another application that is titled “how many kids” and certainly the “which swear word are you?”. Sure every now and then there is a good one like “Oregon Trail” or a March Madness Bracket Selection but the other 100 or so that have stayed on my sidebar to rot (take a look at the thumbnail here) really start to make me angry. Facebook has become littered with these nonsense applications, ridiculous ads and useless features like the chat that they just added. I totally agree with what my roommate said the other day, “Like I don’t have enough ways to instant message someone already? Why do I need this chat?” The “People You May Know” feature on the side that suggests people you may know by looking at common friends is a good addition and you have the potential of meeting with an old friend from another country or elementary school so I will not criticize that but these other things are really making me an ABG.

To view the videos regarding the awesome kick save by a pitcher, a great way to get into home plate without being out and an awesome penalty shock in hockey, please read on.

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