THE MALOOFS ARE BACK!
Kind of, anyway. According to Josh Kosman and Larry Brooks of the New York Post, the National Hockey League has chosen the team of William Foley and the Maloof family as the owners of a potential Las Vegas expansion team. You remember the boys from their faded history as the owners of the Sacramento Kings, and how they made about $600 million selling the team to Vivek Ranadive and a bunch of other investors.
So they turn about a third of that into a piece of the Doubledowns, Split Sixes, Fightin’ Showgirls or whatever the team would be called, and they’re back in business.
Sacramento, Las Vegas would like a word with you.
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BARRY ZITO IS BACK!
At least that’s what his agent, Scott Boras, said Wednesday. Well, that Zito wants to come back, anyway. That’s a long way from coming back, of course, but here’s an ironic note: What if he gets a minor league contract from his old team and has to go head-to-head for the fifth starter job with T. Leroy Lincecum?
Oh, come on. You know it would be kinky as hell, especially when you hear that Boras said that Zito served as a hen that sat on the Giants eggs (Lincecum, Matt Cain, Madison Bumgarner, et. al.). That's a vision I'm simply unprepared to mentally pursue.
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DERRICK ROSE IS BACK!
But he’s being careful about it, which some people are bent about. First, Rose, from Tuesday:
“I feel I've been managing myself pretty good. I know a lot of people get mad when they see me sit out. But I think a lot of people don't understand that when I sit out, it's not because of this year. I'm thinking about long term. I'm thinking about after I'm done with basketball, having graduations to go to, having meetings to go to. I don't want to be in my meetings all sore or be at my son's graduation all sore just because of something I did in the past. Just learning and being smart.”
Then, the Chicago Tribune’s Steve Rosenbloom:
“I don't know if that's his brother or agent putting that garbage in his head, but it's one of the most embarrassing things a player can say. Thing is, it's not just that the statement is idiotic, it's that he apparently believes it. It's galling and stupid, and Rose doesn't seem smart enough to understand why. The Bulls are trying to win a title and gave him a $95 million contract toward that end. And they get that horsebleep?”
And then this tweet from @realskipbayless, who is as it says, the real Skip Bayless:
“DRose, who made 34 mil for playing 10 games last 2 yrs, now more interested in protecting legs for after-basketball life. Just sickening.”
This won’t blow up at all.
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TONY GWYNN IS BACK!
In beer form, anyway. AleSmith is releasing a San Diego Pale Ale 394, named after Gwynn’s 1994 batting average of .394. More intriguing, Gwynn worked with the brewery itself to formulate the recipe. You can only get it in San Diego, for the moment.
Interestingly, Bumgarner will be working with a brewery soon on MadBum 0.25, after his World Series ERA, but you can only drink it six at a time. As in the same time.
The Bumgarner part is a lie, but you’d like to think he would want the opportunity.
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AND WATERED DOWN BEER IS BACK!
At least at CenturyLink Field, according to KOMO's "Problem Solvers." The Seattle news station purchased multiple beers at Seahawks and Sounders games, had them tested, and discovered that in every case, the samples' alcohol by volume numbers were below the advertised numbers, in some cases illegally.
That's anywhere from 0.2 to 0.6 less ABV than promised, with four offering a disparity of more than 0.3 percentage points—a threshold that, according to KOMO, violates federal law.
Anheuser-Busch, which makes five of the six tested beers, denied it had done so, but CenturyLink Field refused a request from KOMO to share its concessions contracts, so this story isn’t going away any time soon. But the sales aren’t going to drop, either.
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A Cleveland Scene story on Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert includes a tale that makes us feel a little better about our sporting entrepreneurs. Gilbert apparently took some umbrage at some remarks Cleveland Plain Dealer columnist Bill Livingston made on a Washington D.C. radio show, and forced the newspaper to force Livingston to write an apology to Gilbert.
My bosses are so much cooler.
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And finally, St. Louis Cardinal outfielder Oscar Taveras was allegedly at five times the legal limit for drunkenness when he crashed in the Dominican Republic and died with his girlfriend. A spokesman for the attorney general’s office apparently made the claim.
We’d call it a cautionary tale, but cautionary tales never seem to work, at least not well enough. But the tragedy here is not just their deaths, but if you don’t take it as a directive.
But now I’ve just made it cautionary tale, which means . . . oh hell, just be smart.
