Team USA puts on a show — for those who actually go to the stadium
All those empty seats at the Women’s World Cup semifinals Wednesday stirred visions of Dodger Stadium. …
The play of Abby Wambach and Team USA did not. …
ESPN’s Ian Darke, alluding to the last time the U.S. won this competition, said the Americans hope to “party like it’s 1999,” which surely brought a frown from goaltender Hope Solo. …
“To be honest,” she says, “we’re tired of hearing about ’99. It’s time for a new team to come in here and make history.” …
Clayton Kershaw and the Dodgers are 200-1 shots to win the World Series, according to odds posted at bodog.com. …
They opened at 35-1 in March. …
The Texas Rangers are slight favorites to squeeze past Jered Weaver and the Angels in the American League West. …
Derek Jeter rarely makes a false step, but he probably realizes he made one in skipping the All-Star game. …
Jeter’s lame claim of physical and mental exhaustion reminded USA Today’s Reid Cherner that always quotable college basketball coaching legend Abe Lemons once said, “Explain to me how an Apache brave can chase down a runaway mustang and I’ve got kids who get tired playing basketball.” …
The last Dodger to be selected most valuable player in the All-Star game was Mike Piazza, who also was the last Dodger to drive in a run in the game before Andre Ethier did it Tuesday. …
Juan Rivera won’t cure what ails the Dodgers. …
Bob Miller, noting that he would have welcomed the challenge of calling Kings games involving Mike Richards, Brad Richards and Brad Richardson: “The 1978 Montreal Canadiens had [Guy] Lafleur, [Jacques] Lemaire, [Guy] Lapointe, [Pierre] Larouche, [Michel] Larocque and [Yvon] Lambert.” …
They also had La Coupe Stanley, the Stanley Cup. …
“Given the stir the royal couple created during their L.A. visit,” reader Dan Bates of Dana Point writes, “I felt compelled to add Prince William to my fantasy polo team.” …
Forty years ago Wednesday, Reggie Jackson hit a mammoth All-Star game home run off the power generator atop the right-field roof at Tiger Stadium, stopping to admire his blast as pitcher Dock Ellis stewed on the mound. …
“He paid for it,” Ellis later said, ripping Jackson for “styling” on him. “I hit him in the face the next time I faced him.” …
That was five years later. …
Andre Agassi, who wrote in his autobiography that he hated tennis “with a deep and dark passion,” said after being inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame, “I fell in love with tennis far too late in life. But the reason I have everything I hold dear is because tennis has loved me back.” …
Rory McIlroy looks perfectly capable of joining Tiger Woods, Bobby Jones, Ben Hogan and the other all-time greats who won the U.S. Open and British Open in the same year. …
Jack Nicklaus, surprisingly, never pulled it off, twice finishing second in the British Open after winning the U.S. Open. …
“As his trial gets underway,” Brad Dickson of the Omaha World-Herald writes, “Roger Clemens had just one request: He asked for the Casey Anthony jury.” …
Among those being enshrined Sunday at the College Football Hall of Fame are ex-USC running back Sam “Bam” Cunningham and former UCLA offensive guard Randy Cross. …
Cunningham is the 37th Trojan to be inducted into the college football shrine, Cross the eighth Bruin. …
Not surprisingly, the NFL’s two most efficient quarterbacks in blitz situations last season, according to STATS, were Super Bowl winner Aaron Rodgers and MVP Tom Brady. …
A Sporting News listing of the eight NFL players it believes are poised for breakout seasons in 2011 includes former UCLA cornerback Alterraun Verner of the Tennessee Titans. …
Former Dallas Cowboys receiver Michael Irvin, in an interview with the gay men’s magazine Out: “I don’t see how any African American, with any inkling of history, can say that you don’t have the right to live your life how you want to live your life.” …
Irvin’s late brother, Vaughn, was gay. …
New Coach Hue Jackson says of the staggering-for-years Oakland Raiders, “We’re chasing greatness.” …
Mediocrity, they’ve caught.
