Jason Day Is “Off The List”

After Jason Day won the PGA Championship last week, he said that he could no longer be described as the best golfer never to win a major. One of the TV talking heads commented that no one wants to be on that list and Day was rightfully pleased to be “off the list”. I think the talking head is wrong. I think there are millions of weekend golfers who would give their eye teeth to be known as the best golfer in the world never to win a major.

CBSSports.com reported yesterday that the NFL has not yet sent out to the team equipment managers the new pressure gauges they are supposed to use this year. This is a $10B per year organization that has been enmeshed in an air-pressure controversy for a bit more than 6 months now and they have not gotten their act together sufficiently to get new and standard pressure gauges into the hands of the folks responsible for inflating the footballs to between 12.5 and 13.5 psi.

With a few training camp brawls this year, some NFL folks are now saying there needs to be an end to this fighting. Unless the league and the union agree that participation in such brawls is a behavior that gets every player who throws a punch gets removed from training camp for the rest of camp time and gets a one-game suspension, the fights will continue. It has to cost the participants something if you want them to stop with this behavior. Rookies tossed from training camp will likely lose their shot at making the team; vets tossed from training camp may have a better shot at sticking with the team but will lose a game check. That is the kind of rule that would minimize the number of brawls, but there is about no chance at all that the league and the union will agree to do anything like that.

Here is another news tidbit emanating from an NFL training camp – adding to the mountain of evidence that there are surely slow news days in those venues. This comes from Greg Cote in the Miami Herald:

“As the Dolphins and Dolfans prepare for Tuesday’s annual Kickoff Luncheon in downtown Miami, running back LaMichael James informs the media he’d like that we call him “LaMike” from now on. Tell you what. First prove that we won’t be calling you “ex-Dolphin” instead, OK?”

Here is another NFL training camp comment from Brad Rock in the Deseret News:

Green Bay wide receiver Jordy Nelson told ESPN the Magazine he worked 12-hour days in the off-season on the family farm because he identifies “more as a farmer” than as a football player.

He makes $10 million a year. Who does he think he is, Kevin Costner?

Creed will be the seventh opus in the Rocky Balboa movie series; it is scheduled for release late this year. In this episode, Apollo Creed’s son wants to take up boxing and gets Rocky Balboa to train him for his fights. I have no idea if the film will be any good – or even marginally interesting – but there is one hopeful sign. At least Rocky is not still fighting for heavyweight championships; Stallone is getting a bit up in years to pull off that kind of casting. Moreover, Rocky fight scenes would stretch credibility due to the bulging of the Depends under the boxing trunks…

The Boston Red Sox shook things up in their front office. They hired Dave Dombrowski to be team president and director of baseball operations and the current GM, Ben Cherrington, decided to leave the Sox after a transition period. Dombrowski has been a “baseball guy” for the last 35 years; when he was only 31 years old, he became the GM of the Montreal Expos. He has been in decision-making positions with the Expos, the Tigers and the Marlins. During his stint with the Marlins, the team won the World Series.

The Red Sox have been disappointing this year. After a high-profile offseason, the team on the field has not come close to meeting expectations. As of this morning, the Sox are 13.5 games out of first place in the AL East and only the Oakland A’s have a worse record in the AL.

[Aside: Looking up the A’s record for comparison, I notice that the A’s are 52-69 and yet, they have outscored their opponents this year by 4 runs. That is not commonplace by any means. Only the D-Backs this year have a record under .500 and a positive run differential – and the D-Backs are only slightly under .500 at 58-60.]

Dombrowski was the exec in Florida who dismantled the Marlins team after it won the World Series because then-owner, Wayne Huizenga, demanded cost reductions and that meant moving high priced players to other rosters. I mention that because the Red Sox indeed have some high-priced players on their roster and a few of them are signed to long-term deals. Dombrowski has a reputation for making big trades – he acquired Miguel Cabrera and Max Scherzer in Detroit and he traded away Randy Johnson when he was in Montreal. Might the Red Sox be involved in some big trades this winter?

Finally, here are two items from Dwight Perry in the Seattle Times:

“U.S. World Cup star Alex Morgan, playing for the Portland Thorns, tweeted that her team’s hotel in Kansas City was riddled with mold and bedbugs.

“Witnesses say they’d never seen a soccer team so happy to get a clean sheet.”

And …

The University of Illinois has been declared the country’s top party school in The Princeton Review’s annual rankings.

But don’t call it getting drunk. Students prefer the term “getting anesthetized before the Ohio State game.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………