Archive for the ‘Sports’ Category

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Obit watch: July 29, 2025.

Tuesday, July 29th, 2025

Might as well start off my 16th year of “looking at obituaries and which coaches got fired“.

Ryne Sandberg. 65 seems a lot younger to me these days than it did in the past. MLB. Baseball Reference.

This amused me: the context is that Mr. Sandberg signed a contract in 1992 that paid him $28.4 million over four years, which was a lot of money at the time.

As Sports Illustrated put it at the time: “Sandberg is a shy, unassuming guy who is a lock for the Hall of Fame. He doesn’t drink, test positive, ram his wife’s car, kick the dog, walk out of camp or say dumb things to the press. The most controversial thing he does is boot a grounder every 25 games or so.”
On signing the extension, Sandberg remarked, “My face will be sore today from the smile.”
But other club owners weren’t grinning. “I’ve said for years that we’re headed for Armageddon,” Al Rosen, the general manager of the San Francisco Giants, told Sports Illustrated. “But now we’re past the gates. To the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse — Famine, Pestilence, Death and War — we have added a fifth: Unmitigated Greed. It’s going to do us all in. I can’t see baseball surviving this.”

Posted in Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: July 25, 2025.

Friday, July 25th, 2025

Hulk Hogan. THR. NYT. WWE. Legal Insurrection. McThag has a nice obit up which I can’t link to directly: search for “Another One”. IMDB.

Lawrence was trying to convince me yesterday that we should watch “Gremlins 2: The New Batch”. I countered with “Thunder In Paradise”, which appears to be available on DVD as three movies cut together from episodes of the TV show. (See also: “The Master“.)

Lawrence: That’s the one that’s “Airwolf, on a boat, except stupid”?

And “Suburban Commando” is, arguably, a genre film.

Chuck Mangione. THR.

Posted in Music, Obits, Sports | 2 Comments »

Today in fraud.

Friday, July 18th, 2025

Well, technically, Wednesday in fraud, but let us not quibble.

Brett Lemieux killed himself on Wednesday. He was 45.

Mr. Lemieux founded “MisterManCave”, a sports memorabilia site. I believe this is the site.

Before he killed himself, he made a post to Facebook claiming he’d sold “more than four million counterfeit items and surpassed $350 million in sales”. The Facebook account is down now, but the NYPost has an image of the post.

Lemieux was able to pull off the alleged large-scale counterfeit scheme by faking holograms, authentication stickers for sports collectibles, of some of the most prominent companies in sports memorabilia: Panini, Fanatics, Tri-Star, James Spence Authentics, Mill Creek Sports and GT Marketing, among others.
Lemieux would use the fake holograms to sell counterfeit memorabilia at a far lower price than the market, and he profited handsomely from that tactic.
In the Facebook post, Lemieux said he released 80,000 pieces of memorabilia into the market when Kobe Bryant died in 2020.

I care even less about sports memorabilia than I do about sports, but I am a connoisseur of fraud. And this is big fraud. I actually think this story is being underplayed right now: if Mr. Lemieux put four million counterfeit items out there on the memorabilia market with forged holograms, I think this is going to have a massive impact on the market.

“People have known about this guy. They’ve known his work. They know what he’s been up to,” well-known sports memorabilia expert Steve Grad told WRTV Indianapolis
“He has been at it for years and years. And he’s driven down the price of things. You know, you look at a Tom Brady autograph and Tom Brady’s value is affected drastically by this individual.”

But has anybody asked Ja Morant Guy for his opinion?

(“Ja Morant signed basketballs” on MisterManCave.)

Sightly more seriously, FotB RoadRich and I have been discussing the rules for crooks. It looks like Mr. Lemieux followed Rule 1: if you’re going to steal, steal big.

But it doesn’t look like he figured out Rule 2: have an exit plan. Steal enough money so you can live out the rest of your life comfortably in a country with no extradition treaty with the United States.

On a somewhat related to fraud note: Lloyd Howell resigned as executive director of the NFL Players Association on Thursday.

Howell’s tenure had come under scrutiny after several recent reports from ESPN and the “Pablo Torre Finds Out” podcast.
In May, ESPN reported that the FBI was investigating the financial dealings of the NFLPA and the MLB Players Association related to a multibillion-dollar group-licensing firm, OneTeam Partners. According to sources, the report triggered the NFLPA to hire Ronald C. Machen of law firm Wilmer Hale to review Howell’s activities as executive director. The FBI investigation, which is being conducted in conjunction with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn, New York, is continuing, sources said.

Even better, Mr. Howell’s expenses are being examined. In particular…the strippers. Always with the strippers.

…Howell charged the union for two visits to strip clubs, including a $738.82 car service that took him from the airport to one of the clubs.

…

One receipt, obtained by ESPN, shows Howell was picked up in a sedan by a car service at Fort Lauderdale International Airport on Thursday, Nov. 2, 2023, at 10:26 p.m. The car’s first stop was at a nearby Miami Gardens address. The receipt shows only one other stop, nearly eight hours later.
At 6 a.m., the car dropped off Howell at his luxury condominium in Sunny Isles Beach, the receipt shows.
Later, a union finance worker noticed the car service’s exorbitant cost. The employee searched online for the Miami Gardens address, discovering it was Tootsie’s Cabaret.
The 76,000-square-foot venue bills itself as the world’s largest strip club — “full nude No. 1 rated.”

…

During this year’s NFLPA summit on Feb. 21, Howell accompanied the employees to the Magic City strip club for an outing that incurred $2,426 in charges including cash withdrawals, ranging from $200 to $525, from a club ATM, sources and documents show. They used two “VIP rooms.”
According to the expense report, the purpose of the strip club outing: “Player Engagement Event to support & grow our Union.”

…

The employee noted on a March 23 expense report: “$736 = This was the final amount I was charged to close the tab for both secluded sections for our Player Members. This included Food, Alcoholic Drinks, fees, taxes, and gratuity.” No players’ names are listed on receipts or the reports.

Posted in Law, NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: July 17, 2025.

Thursday, July 17th, 2025

Connie Francis. NYT.

She made her stage debut at 4, singing “Anchors Aweigh” and accompanying herself on the accordion at Olympic Park in Irvington, N.J.
At 11, she was a regular on “Marie Moser’s Starlets,” a local television variety show. After she appeared on Ted Mack’s “Original Amateur Hour” and “Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts,” Mr. Mack advised her to lose the accordion, and Mr. Godfrey advised her to change her last name to Francis.

…

“I often say, I’d like to be remembered not for the highs I’ve reached but for the depths from which I’ve risen,” she told Mr. James. “There were exhilarating highs and abysmal lows. But it was fighting to get out of those lows that I feel most proud of.”

Joanna Bacon, British actress. Other credits include “The Infinite Worlds of H.G. Wells”, “The Bill”, and “EastEnders”.

Bryan Braman, former NFL linebacker. (Hattip: Lawrence.)

Braman was part of the first playoff team in Texans history after signing with Houston as an undrafted free agent out of West Texas A&M. He was a regular on Houston’s special teams, with his most memorable moment coming in a helmet-less tackle of a Tennessee Titans kick returner in the 2011 regular-season finale. Braman was also a 2012 Pro Bowl alternate with Houston, and he finished his career with four years with the Philadelphia Eagles.

This is just in, and should be considered breaking news: Felix Baumgartner, noted skydiver and daredevil.

In 1999, he set the world record for the highest parachute jump from a building when he took a leap from the 1,483-foot Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
That same year, he set a record for the lowest BASE jump ever, hurtling himself from the 85-foot arm of the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro.
Then in 2003, Baumgartner became the first person to skydive across the English Channel with the help of a custom-designed carbon fiber wing, leaping from the craft at a height of more than six miles over Dover, England before landing safely in Cap Blanc-Nez in France.
His most famous jump was in 2012, when Baumgartner jumped 24 miles from a helium balloon, reaching a top speed of Mach 1.25 (843.6 mph) and becoming the first person to ever break the sound barrier without a vehicle.
He descended from the stratosphere in full free-fall for four minutes and 19 seconds before deploying his parachute.

This broke Joe Kittinger’s old record. (Col. Kittinger assisted with planning the jump.)

The 56-year-old Austrian extreme sports enthusiast reportedly fell ill while flying a motorized paraglider in the Italian coastal town of Porto Sant’Elpidio, crashing the craft into a hotel swimming pool.
He reportedly died instantly during the freak accident, according to media reports. A hotel employee was also injured after being struck by the glider and taken to the hospital with neck injuries.

Posted in Music, NFL, Obits, Sports, Theatre, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: July 16, 2025.

Wednesday, July 16th, 2025

NYT obit for Martin Cruz Smith.

Mr. Smith’s initial evocation of Russia was all the more remarkable in that he had spent exactly two weeks in the Soviet Union, as a tourist, in 1973 and did not speak Russian. But he made up for it by frequenting libraries in the United States and talking to Soviet émigrés, who filled in the gaps in his knowledge. “A number of the Russians who helped me would in fact come and live with me and my family,” Mr. Smith told the reference guide Contemporary Authors in 1986.
With the character of Renko, he was also making moral and historical claims, ambitions he sometimes admitted to in interviews.
“He’s the truth-teller, the honest man in a dishonest system,” Mr. Smith said in an interview with CBS in 2009. At the same time, he discounted American fears of the Soviet Union. “It was an illusion that it was a threat to Americans,” he said. “The system was far more dangerous to its own people.”

Fauja Singh, runner. His age is unknown.

Mr. Singh gave his birth date as April 1, 1911, and said he was born in Beas Pind. The country was ruled by Britain at the time, and birth certificates were not regularly issued in villages. His parents were farmers.

…

On Oct. 13 [2011 – DB], at a meet in Toronto, he set eight world records for the 95-plus age group in events ranging from 100 meters to 5,000 meters, or 3.1 miles. Doug Smith, the co-chair of Ontario Masters Athletics, called it the “most astonishing achievement” he had ever witnessed.
“He rested between the events by sitting down and having a few sips of tea,” Mr. Smith said in an interview for this obituary in 2017. “He was actually running — both feet off the ground. He was amazing.”
Three days after the track meet, Mr. Singh performed yet another rousing feat. He became the first reputed centenarian to complete a race of 26.2 miles by finishing the Toronto Waterfront Marathon in 8 hours 25 minutes 16 seconds. His actual running time was 8:11:05, but in the throng of runners, it took him 14 minutes to reach the start.

…

Dr. Thomas Perls, director of the New England Centenarian Study at Boston University, said in an interview in 2016 that it was possible that a centenarian could run 26.2 miles. Stressing that he had not examined Mr. Singh, Dr. Perls said: “I’m not saying he’s that age. All I’m saying is it’s conceivable to see a 100-year-old running a marathon.”

…

He was hit by a car while on his daily walk in his home village of Beas Pind in the Punjab region of India and died in a hospital, his former coach, Harmander Singh (no relation), said in a phone interview from London. He had returned to India to live during the pandemic.

Posted in Books, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Your loser update: July 15, 2025.

Tuesday, July 15th, 2025

The All-Star game is tonight, so it seems like a good time for another loser update.

As discussed previously, it seems like there are two teams worth focusing on:

The Chicago White Sox are 32-65, for a .330 winning percentage. That projects out to about 108 projected losses, if my math is right.

The Colorado Rockies are 22-74, for a .229 winning percentage. My projections say that works out to nearly 125 losses. That’s in “historically bad” territory. (Remember, the record is 121 losses, set by the White Sox last year.)

Posted in Loser, Sports | 1 Comment »

Back to back to back.

Tuesday, July 1st, 2025

Holidays, that is. This is one of those times of the year when we have a whole string of them in a short time.

Happy Bobby Bonilla Day, everyone!

Here’s your obligatory yearly article from the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network explaining Bobby Bonilla Day.

Posted in Sports | Comments Closed

Loser update: June 27, 2025.

Friday, June 27th, 2025

We are exactly at the halfway point of the baseball season, though the All-Star Game doesn’t take place until July 15th.

Seems like a good time to do a loser update.

I think we’ve narrowed it down to two teams of significant interest.

The Chicago White Sox are at 26-55, for a .321 winning percentage. By my projections, that works out to 110 losses. Better than last year, and not record setting, but still pretty awful.

The Colorado Rockies are at 18-63, for a .222 winning percentage. As a caliber, .222 isn’t bad, but .224 is better. As a record, that works out to a projected 126 losses, which would be record setting. .222 would also be the lowest winning percentage in the modern (1901 and later) era, beating out the 1916 Philadelphia Athletics.

Posted in Loser, Sports | Comments Closed

Zero Stars.

Friday, June 6th, 2025

Pete DeBoer out as head coach of the Dallas Stars.

Dallas joined the 1975-77 Islanders as the only teams in the expansion era to lose in the round before the Stanley Cup Final for three straight seasons.

(Sorry for the straight-up ESPN link, but the Dallas papers are pretty much unlinkable.)

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: June 3, 2025.

Tuesday, June 3rd, 2025

Shigeo Nagashima, one of the great Japanese baseball players.

Along with his teammate Sadaharu Oh, Japan’s home run king, Nagashima was the centerpiece of the country’s most enduring sports dynasty. He hit 444 home runs, had a lifetime batting average of .305, won six batting titles and five times led the league in runs batted in. He was a five-time most valuable player and was chosen as the league’s top third baseman in each of his 17 seasons. He was inducted into Japan’s Baseball Hall of Fame in 1988.
In his first season, 1958, he led the league in home runs and was second in stolen bases and batting average, earning him rookie of the year honors. And then, early in his second season, he made history in the first game attended by a Japanese emperor, Hirohito, and an empress, Nagako. In the bottom of the ninth inning, Nagashima hit a 2-2 pitch into the left field stands for a game-winning home run, considered one of the most dramatic sports events in Japanese history.
One of Nagashima’s trademarks was his work ethic, a character trait that was particularly celebrated during Japan’s postwar rise. Under the guidance of manager Tetsuharu Kawakami, Nagashima practiced from dawn to dusk, enduring an infamous 1,000-fungo drill that required him to field ground ball after ground ball. In the off-season, he trained in the mountains, running and swinging the bat to the point of exhaustion. He bought a house by the Tama River in Tokyo so he could run there, and he added a room to his home where he could practice swinging.

Baseball Reference.

Jim Marshall, defensive end for the Minnesota Vikings.

Marshall joined the Vikings in their inaugural season in 1961 and played in every game thereafter. His record of 282 consecutive games played (270 with the Vikings), which he established upon retiring in 1979, stood until quarterback Brett Favre broke it — while also in a Vikings uniform — in 2009.

…

Marshall gained a permanent place in NFL Films lore in 1964 when he returned a fumble the wrong way in a game against the San Francisco 49ers, celebrating what he thought was a touchdown but instead was scored a safety. But his career accomplishments far outweighed that gaffe.
He was a Vikings captain for 14 seasons and appeared in four Super Bowls as part of the franchise’s famed Purple People Eaters defense. Although sacks did not become an official statistic until 1982, a research project coordinated by Pro Football Reference credited him with 130.5, which would tie him for No. 22 in NFL history.

Posted in NFL, Obits, Sports | 1 Comment »

Knick knack paddy whack…

Tuesday, June 3rd, 2025

This is still breaking news, but: The New York Knickerbockers just fired head coach Tom Thibodeau.

In five seasons with the Knicks, Thibodeau led them to a 226-174 regular-season record, and they made the playoffs in four of his five seasons at the helm.
When it came to the postseason, however, a 24-23 mark with the Knicks didn’t cut it.

ESPN.

Posted in Firings, Sports | 2 Comments »

Norts spews.

Saturday, May 24th, 2025

McThag has posted video of the Wienie 500. Instead of copying him here, I’m going to suggest that you go over to his blog and give him some love. The video is about 27 minutes long: I didn’t watch the whole thing, but I did fast-forward to the end.

I will say that I think it’s nice they have someone with a British accent doing the race coverage, but I’m an old man and remember Jackie Stewart from when I was young and watching the Indy 500.

(Huh. Did not know this:

At the age of 13, Stewart won a clay pigeon shooting competition and then went on to become a prize-winning member of the Scottish shooting team, competing in the United Kingdom and abroad. He won the British, Irish, Welsh and Scottish skeet shooting championships and twice won the “Coupe de Nations” European championship. He competed for a place in the British trap shooting team for the 1960 Summer Olympics, but finished third behind Joe Wheater and Brett Huthart.

)

In other news, El Hijo del Santo is retiring.

He is the son of El Santo, perhaps Mexico’s most iconic “lucha libre” wrestler who also made a name for himself in movies and television.

Not to worry, though:

El Hijo del Santo said he now plans on focusing on projects outside the ring while enjoying things he couldn’t experience due to the rigors of his wrestling career.

I was going to say “please, let there be some El Hijo del Santo movies” but it looks like there already are. Many of them look like wrestling videos, but I am interested in the short “¡Esta máscara es mía! o Santo contra los burócratas” (“This Mask Is Mine! or Santo Versus the Bureaucrats”). Also:

The third generation wrestler, El Santo Jr. will carry on with the family’s tradition in the ring.
“As an athlete and wrestler, he is very well-prepared and is schooled in other disciplines such as olympic wrestling, taekwondo, jiu jitsu and muay thai,” he said. “So far, fans have received him well, he’ll have to find his own style and break down barriers, the name is not enough, it takes a lot to succeed in the ring.”

Posted in Cars, Guns, Sports | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: May 22, 2025.

Thursday, May 22nd, 2025

Jim Irsay. NYT. ESPN.

A lover of rock and roll, Irsay spent millions of dollars collecting rare and significant guitars like Les Paul’s 1954 Gibson Black Beauty, Prince’s Yellow Cloud and David Gilmour’s famed Black Strat. Irsay also owned the manuscript of Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” and the original manuscript of Alcoholics Anonymous, the text that spawned the rehabilitation group. Irsay’s twin passions of music and rare collections culminated in the Jim Irsay Collection, an exhibit of Irsay’s rare items that has traveled the country, and The Jim Irsay Band, a collection of musicians who’ve traveled and played together since 2021, sometimes in conjunction with a display of The Jim Irsay Collection and sometimes in its own concert. For the past two seasons, Irsay and his band have opened the season by playing a free Colts Kickoff Concert at Lucas Oil Stadium, along with a display of the Jim Irsay Collection for Colts fans to enjoy.

George Coulam, also known as “King George”. He founded the Texas Renaissance Festival.

In 2024, the HBO docuseries “Ren Faire” focused on the festival’s succession and Coulam’s eventual retirement, highlighting the tension between his desire to find a romantic partner and his need to choose a successor. It also highlighted Coulam’s strict leadership style.
There have been ongoing legal disputes and potential sales of the festival, with a recent judge’s order in early May mandating the sale of Coulam’s properties, including the festival.

Michael McStay, British actor. Other credits include “EastEnders”, “The Persuaders!”, and “The Sweeney”.

Posted in NFL, Obits, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

The greatest spectacle in auto racing.

Wednesday, May 21st, 2025

Team Penske has fired president Tim Cindric, “IndyCar managing director”, Ron Ruzewski, and “IndyCar general manager” Kyle Moyer.

This is fallout from a cheating scandal:

The trouble for Team Penske began before the fast 12 shootout on Sunday, when rival team owner Chip Ganassi was among a chorus of competitors who accused it of cheating. They noticed unapproved changes had been made to the rear attenuator, a safety device designed to absorb and reduce the force of impacts, and the assumption was the modifications would have given the two Team Penske cars an aerodynamic advantage in their four-lap qualifying runs.
Further investigation showed Newgarden’s winning car from last year that is displayed in the Indianapolis Motor Speedway museum has the same illegal modification, as did the car Team Penske brought to the White House last month. Rivals claim to have photos indicating the modification has been in place for some time.

This is the second Team Penske scandal in a year:

…the team was caught in a push-to-pass manipulation in which Newgarden was found to have access to an additional boost of horsepower when he should not have while winning the season-opener. He was stripped of his win and Penske suspended Cindric for two races, including the Indy 500.

By the way, the greatest spectacle in racing is not the Indy 500. At least, not this year.

The Wienie 500 will also mark the first “meat-up” of all six Wienermobiles in over a decade and the first competitive race for the fleet, each sporting an all-new look. Each Wienermobile will represent a different regional dog, including the Chi Dog (Midwest), New York Dog (East), Slaw Dog (Southeast), Sonoran Dog (Southwest), Chili Dog (South) and Seattle Dog (Northwest). From custom Hotdogger racing suits to a trophy presentation in the ‘Wiener’s Circle’, complete with a condiment spray and hot dog for the wiener’s enjoyment, every moment of the race is designed to spark smiles, serving up a delightful racing event only Oscar Mayer can.

This will be streaming live on Friday, but, sadly, while I’m at work. I’m hoping that someone will try to drift a Wienermobile, and highlights show up…somewhere.

Posted in Cars, Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

It’s Baltimore, gentlemen.

Saturday, May 17th, 2025

Brandon Hyde out as manager of the Baltimore Orioles.

15-28 so far this season.

ESPN:

With an underperforming offense, one of baseball’s worst pitching staffs and middling defense, the Orioles have regressed in every facet of the game this season. Hyde, 51, entered the season with questions about his long-term future after Baltimore was swept out of a wild-card series against Kansas City last year. In 2023, following a season in which they won an AL-best 101 games, the Orioles were swept by the Texas Rangers in the division series.

Posted in Firings, Sports | 2 Comments »

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