Sharks fans can talk all they want now that the Los Angeles Kings have been eliminated from the Stanley Cup Playoffs, but know two things:
One, your team didn’t get to do it Saturday, so Game 82 is now just a meaningless exercise at the end of a meaningless season.
And two, the sport is poorer for losing Darryl Sutter in the spring, when the repetitive questions and annoying rules make him swallow his own face. You cannot be a hockey fan and not want that, no matter how provincial you want to be.
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So Troy Polamalu is retiring after 12 years of playing lead battering ram for the Pittsburgh Steelers. Here’s hoping his post-football career is as happy for him mentally as his time playing the game. That’s not necessarily the way to bet, but it’s a worthy aspiration.
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With the NBA playoffs about to begin, here’s a scouting report on Dallas’ Rajon Rondo. Basketball is his second best sport. From ESPN’s Baxter Holmes:
“Rondo would play (Connect Four on his family porch), decimating friends and family deep into the night while his mother worked the graveyard shift at the Philip Morris factory to support her four kids. "If you did win once, he would beat you five or six more times to let you know he was the best," says Dymon, his younger sister. Rondo's Connect Four prowess has since become legendary and has made for heartwarming-yet-awkward community outreach moments. The day he was traded to Dallas in December, he spent his final hours as a Celtic at Boston Children's Hospital, crushing all comers in the game, repeatedly telling kids, ‘No mercy.’”
But Rondo does have a lot of miles on him, so we have our doubts about his ability to go deep into the playoffs for Twister, Mouse Trap, Uno or Operation.
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Rondo is also good at Lumosity, which apparently is a skill that has evaded Atlanta Hawk Thabo Sefolosha, who managed to break his right ankle Wednesday while allegedly resisting arrest for obstructing police and disorderly conduct after Indiana’s Chris Copeland and his wife were was stabbed at a New York City nightclub early Wednesday morning.
I mean, it’s not like he has anything important to do in the next month or so.
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The new cool thing in college basketball (other than everyone in the world hating the game) is the resuscitation of old hated Duke players.
Thus, your new Arizona State coach, Bobby Hurley. If he hires Christian Laettner and Antonio Lang as part of his staff, we are fully back into the future.
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Tiger Woods said “dumbass” on TV. Many people who cover and pay attention to golf thought it was noteworthy. It wasn’t. Golf is dead.
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Bert Blyleven also took to the air to tell people how little he thought of Detroit. The Hall of Famer who does TV analysis for the Minnesota Twins, tweeted about the essential unattractiveness of Detroit (a fact Detroiters have only known for decades), and later had to apologize because, well, who the hell asked him what he thought of Detroit?
General rule: If you think a town is ugly, don’t live there. Once you’ve managed that minimal achievement, you don’t really need to say anything else. You spoke with your feet, and you should just let it go at that.
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And finally, the Biloxi Shuckers (there is no evidence that Blyleven has an opinion one way or another) would like to take this opportunity to tell you that your road trip is nothing. Nothing whatsoever. So shut up about it.
The Milwaukee Brewers’ AA farm team, which moved from Huntsville last year because Biloxi got all flirty and new ballpark-y, is beginning a 55-game, 60-day roadie because said new park isn’t ready yet. And because this is the Southern League, it’s all bus rides -– from Pensacola to Mobile to Jacksonville to Pensacola to Huntsville to Jackson, Mississippi to Jackson, Tennessee to Huntsville to Chattanooga to Birmingham.
When the Shuckers finish this trip, they will well and truly bonded. Unless, of course, they kill each other going from Jackson to Jackson.
