"One of the Only Female GMs in Baseball"
Last season, Sue Horton ran the Orleans Firebirds. Welcome to the only place in baseball with a storied history of women in positions of power: the Cape Cod League. [via Grantland]
“Here’s video of a ref getting gang-jumped” in Sarasota vs. North Port youth football game! via Deadspin:
What you’re about to see is what happened when things got out of hand when the Sarasota Gators faced the North Port Huskies at Riverview High School. It wasn’t so much the Huskies, though. It was pretty much all Gators.
Who would’ve thought North Port wouldn’t be the aggressors?
Key/helpful note from the Herald-Tribune article:
Attacking an athletic official is a felony in Florida.
This pretty much made my day.
Many Top Women's Basketball Prospects Have Famous Athletes for Dads; a Societal Shift
Social stigmas have dissolved: If fathers—especially fathers who come from the testosterone-laced world of professional sports—were once reluctant to encourage their daughters to practice their jump shots, that no longer seems to be the case. [via WSJ]
Calling Foul on N.B.A.’s Claims of Financial Distress
…the fact that the N.B.A. has released financial data that is so at odds with estimates provided by credible and unbiased organizations like Forbes suggests that the league’s owners are armed to win the public relations battle — a key part of what could be a yearlong war of words with their players. [via NYT]
Boston Sports Championships
-Brian Pinnetti
This is probably the only way the 90’s sucked. Yes, that is my growing-up-in-the-90’s bias coming through. No, I will not dial it back. The 90’s were awesome. Exhibit A.
![“Naturally Simpatico,” sitcom based on the lives of Brady and Belichek. [via Aerogare]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ln4qc43Cdj1qzg3olo1_500.png)
“Naturally Simpatico,” sitcom based on the lives of Brady and Belichek. [via Aerogare]
"From Jackie Robinson to Dead Silence," or another instance of MLB being retrogressive
No American institution owes a greater debt to Latin Americans than baseball. Our national pastime would be nothing today without the likes of Pujols, Bautista and Reyes, and it all started with Almeida and Marsans, who played in their first major league game on — I’m not making this up — July 4, 1911.
So how is baseball honoring their legacy, almost exactly 100 years later? By holding its 2011 All-Star Game in the cradle of America’s new nativism. [via NYT]
Continuing the time-honored American tradition of exploiting the poor, minorities and immigrants! And YET showing no loyalty with this matter, one on which even some in the NFL and NBA have taken a stand—both leagues with much smaller Latin American representations.
Baseball may dismiss the opprobrium of a Latino activist and long-haired guitarist, but what about the Mexican-American slugger Adrian Gonzalez, one of a number of Latino players who have talked about boycotting the game if it isn’t moved out of Arizona?
THIS sounds brilliant/effective to me. The rather sizable Red Sox Nation would blow a heart valve (myself included).
Columbia Pictures has released the first teaser trailer for Moneyball by way of Entertainment Tonight. Brad Pitt stars as Billy Beane, the general manager of Oakland Athletics who helped usher in a statistical revolution to professional baseball. Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Jonah Hill, Robin Wright, Stephen Bishop, Kathryn Morris, and Chris Pratt also star. Bennett Miller (Capote) directed the movie from a script by Aaron Sorkin and Steven Zaillian. Moneyball opens September 23. [via Collider.com]
Skip to 0:48.
Minor League Red Sox vs. Minor League Yankees
Apparently there had been some bad blood from earlier games between the Greenville Drive (Red Sox) and Charleston RiverDogs (Yankees). So when Drive pitcher Miguel Celestino hit Slade Heathcott on the second pitch of the game last night, Heathcott took exception and went after Drive catcher Christian Vazquez.
First of all, Slade Heathcott? Are you kidding me? Second of all, props to the lady for jumping into the middle of the fray 0:18 in. [via Deadspin/Sox&Dawgs]
Hey, that catcher looked good! Maybe we should pull him up to majors.
Manny Ramirez, the High School Legend - NYTimes.com
But perhaps Manny was never more himself than when he was an adolescent, playing for George Washington and Washington Heights. Maybe that was Manny at his most essential, when more than at any other time he could live by what later became his maxim: “See the ball. Hit the ball.” One of the home runs: George Washington was playing Brandeis High School at home. The Brandeis pitcher, Kiki Valdez, was one of Manny’s best friends. His first time at bat, Manny clobbered a home run. The second time he came up, he tapped home plate with his bat, the way you would see him do it later in the majors. He was ready, as perfectly balanced as a ballerina, as Mandl put it. Then he called a timeout, taking his right hand off the bat. But the umpire did not give it to him. Everyone who was there swears Manny did not have time to get his right hand back on the bat, that he swung with one hand. I can’t really say that I saw it. Maybe I was too busy taking notes. The ball went over the left-field fence and all the way to the old handball courts on the street below. It had to be more than 400 feet. His teammates and the fans were screaming: “Oh my God! Oh my God!” Mandl, coaching third base, tried to maintain his cool. He may have muttered an astonished expletive under his breath as he waved home Rafael Gonzalez, who had been on first, followed by Manny. In those days Manny did not indulge in major league theatrics. He simply ducked his head and ran home, into the arms of his teammates.
(via kgtl-deactivated20120630)
