Top Ten Cloves: Surprises In Todays' NBA Trade Deadline

News Item: NBA Trade Deadline 2016 Tracker: Updates, Reaction and Analysis

10.  NBA Players Union bars any trades to the Detroit Pistons - to close to Flint, and their posion water

9.  Kobe urging Lakers to trade for Dallas Mavericks Dancers - They be hot!

8.  Donald Trump issues call to all NBA teams to trade foreign-born players out of country

7. Kevin Love trade nixed - Injured himself answering telephone

6.  Sticking point with all players traded today: All want new cellphones - Don't trust Apple won't cave to Government

5.  Roger Goodell pressuring NBA, says Boston Celtics using deflated balls

4.  Sixers trade entire team for D-Leaguers, to stay in Draft Lottery for next 5-years

3.  To prevent from being traded, Demarcus Cousins now occupying Oregon wildlife refuge

2.  James threatens Liu and Griffin to make good trade - or else!

1.  Blake Griffin traded to WBC, if immediate match-up with Floyd Mayweather set

Top Ten Cloves: Things Peyton Manning Might Be Doing While He Recovers From Neck Surgery

News Item: Peyton Manning's receiving stem cell therapy thrusts medical procedures back into sports spotlight


10.  "Hmmm ...Maybe since 'Modern Family' won a lot of Emmy Awards, they might have a spot for me ... A broken-down, ex-football-player, uncle-type role ..."


  9.  With all the doctors working on him, see if they can qualify under President Obama's new "Jobs Plan", maybe get some federal funding out of it ...


  8.  Will have time to figure out just what-the-heck Netflix is doing


  7.  Give Lorne Michaels a call, maybe hook again with 'Saturday Night Live'


  6.  See if Google wants a All-Star endorser for their new "Google Wallet"


  5.  Two words - "Fantasy Football!!!"


  4.  Might check out Sarah Palin, see if she's interested in hooking up with a "Legendary Quarterback"


  3.  "Hmmm ... Yahoo has an opening...I can even do some commercials - Yahooooooo ..."


  2.  Actually, having bolts inserted into both sides of neck and will announce shift to WWE as new terror, evil, bad guy, "Peytonstein"


  1.  "Damn everybody, I've always wanted to be... a lumberjack" 


 


Bonus Peyton Manning Riffs


Dan Childs: Peyton Manning’s Stem Cell Hail Mary


Jay Glazer: Manning chooses speedier recovery


Allen Barra: Goodbye to Peyton Manning, Greatest Quarterback of the 21st Century


Top Ten Cloves: Possible Reasons Peyton Manning Threw Six Interceptions Last Evening


It's a "Who Dat" Kind of World Now!

The Madness of March Money

Show Me The Money!



In the article, "CBS Considered Paying ESPN to Take Tourney", the words "college athlete" never appears

Instead of making a deal with ESPN, CBS decided it would be more profitable to share the tournament with Turner Sports and agreed last month to pay $10.8 billion from 2011 to 2024 under that arrangement.

CBS preferred that deal because it enabled the network to maintain its connection to the tournament while carrying fewer games and mitigating the huge losses it was forecasting over the final few years of its previous contract.

Turner’s games will be on TBS, TNT and truTV, and starting in 2016, CBS and TBS will alternate the Final Four and the national championship game, a major coup for a cable network.

They could have, just as easily, been talking about Pork Futures.

With all that money being tossed around, television - and the schools - making millions-to-billions, the sad-sack chatter of kids bolting to the NBA for big bucks sound very, very hollow.

I wonder if this is in an schools' Finance curriculum?


Bonus Riffs

Breaking! ... Obama Takes Action, Siezes AIG's March Madness Office Pools and Brackets

Top Ten Cloves: How It Would Be Different If Alberto Gonzales Was The Head of March Madness

Top Ten Cloves: Signs That March Madness Is Taking Root In The White House

Top Ten Cloves: Ways To Tell It's March Madness

Play of the Day - Circus Slide Into Home Plate

The last time we posted about college baseball, it was about a tear-inducing display of what sportsmanship is all about.

Today, it's about a WOW!

From Yahoo Sports;

Kownacki leaps over the catcher

Courtesy of Fordham Sports Info - Audio is supplied by Gregg Caserta - WFUV From Tuesday night's Fordham-Iona college baseball game. Fordham rallies from 9-1 down to tie game. With score tied at 9 in the bottom of the 8th and bases loaded, Chris Walker (#4) puts Fordham ahead with game-winning hit. The baserunner at first, Brian Kownacki (KAH-nack-ee), scores by leaping over Iona catcher James Beck, and landing on home plate with a handstand, to put Fordham ahead 12-9, which was the final score

Kownacki leaps over the catcher @ Yahoo! Video

Like, we said, WOW!

Get this kid into the big leagues!

Top Ten Cloves: Ways To Pick Out Teabaggers Running In Boston Marathon

News Item: Thrilling Finish - Cheruiyot, Erkessa win 114th Boston Marathon

10. When the starting gun goes off, they don't start running, they pull out their guns

9. They have the directions for the course written on the palm of their hands

8. They're the ones, getting pumped up, watching Rush Limbaugh get down, and boogie with Lady Gaga

7. They're the one's with waivers, if injured, not to treat them with government-run healthcare

6. They're the ones boasting they're "locked and loaded" for Hearthbreak Hill

5. Their supporters are the ones with the misspelled signs

4. Instead of wearing their runners' number, they're the one's wearing "Palin-Bachmann 2012" buttons

3. They're the ones complaining that the marathon qualifying standards are "socialism"

2. They're the only ones running in tri-cornered hats

1. Throughout the race, they keep badgering the Kenyan runners, if they know where President Barack Obama was born


Bonus Teabagger Riffs

Well, It Is Oklahoma, After All

Teabaggers Can't Count, Either

Tea Time, Avec Beignets

A Cement Pond of Trouble

A Picture Worth A Few Million Words

There's a great article today, in the Murdoch Street Journal, from writer Joshua Prager, on the infamous Bobby Thompson homerun ("The Giants win the pennant! ... The Giants win the pennant! ...) that is well-worth reading;

The Man Who Shot 'the Shot Heard 'Round the World'

On Oct. 3, 1951, in the upper deck of the Polo Grounds, a little man with a big camera snapped a portrait of Yankee outfielder Hank Bauer seated nearby. Rudy Mancuso had just one more exposure. And so, as the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants waged their final playoff game in Harlem, the amateur photographer let pass 77 balls and 142 strikes, at last clicking his Busch Pressman at 3:58 p.m., a split second after Giant Bobby Thomson pulled an 0-1 fastball from Dodger Ralph Branca with one out in the bottom of the ninth.

Unbeknownst to him, the 31-year-old Mancuso had just taken what is arguably the most famous photograph in the history of baseball (see nearby). "The Shot Heard 'Round the World" coalesced hours later in a tub of dektol on East 79th Street. Mancuso had stilled a Spalding some 280 feet before it cleared a green wall, won the Giants the pennant (won the Giants the pennant!) and commenced inspiring so much prose as to imperil, wrote Daniel Okrent, "great stretches of Canadian pulpwood forest."

[snip]

Many years passed. Mancuso's pencil moustache turned from black to white as newswires and then vendors and then Web sites hocked an inexhaustible supply of his photo. He made no money from his shot and held no proof that it was he, an embosser and die cutter living in a Lower East Side walk-up, who'd most famously preserved baseball's greatest moment.

"It was one of those family legends," says his nephew Peter Vincent. "You wondered if it was true or not."

Then, in January 2001, I wrote an article for this newspaper describing how the Giants stole the signals of opposing catchers in the months leading up to Thomson's homer. Messrs. Thomson and Branca discussed it with me that fall at the Yogi Berra Museum & Learning Center in Montclair, N.J. Mancuso, 80 years old and pink-faced, approached me and told of his supporting role in their mid-century drama. He had no proof. But Hank Bauer confirmed that he'd sat where Mancuso alleged and I eventually found that Sylvania ad. And so, I put Mancuso in "The Echoing Green," my 2006 book about the home run.

There's a lot more to read here, the arc of a mans', and photos', life ... Of fame lost, then found ... Of a legacy delayed

Go read The Man Who Shot 'the Shot Heard 'Round the World'


Bonus Bonus

The Shot Heard 'Round The World




Special Essay - Play Ball! ... Batter Up! ... Could You Please Tell Me, What Is This Thing Called Baseball?

Putting A Marker Down ... Orlando In Six

Well, we had success last year, in calling the NBA Finals, so, what the heck, why not go for two ...

For one, the Orlando Magic appear to have some momentum going, having beaten the defending NBA Champs Celtics (in seven games), and, then, dethroning the throne-less King James LeGone, and his Cleveland Cadaverliers, in only six games.

Kobe will be Kobe in this series, however, the Lakers will be asking too many others (Fisher, Odom, Bynum) to play at high level, consistently, of up to seven games, when there hasn't been any evidence, this year, that they can ... Casol can be neutralized, and his overall play will depend on who he guards defensively - Howard, Lewis, or Turkoglu ...

And, lets not forget that Orlando hails from the Eastern Division, and can (and will) play physical, while the Lakers showed last year, when they got crushed by the Boston Celtics, that they would prefer not to play physical.

Orlando showed in this years' playoffs, that they can play focused and close the deal.

So, we go with the Orlando Magic, winning the crown, and needing only six (6) games to do it.

And, it will be rather fitting, should he have a monster series, that Dwight Howard win the first Bill Russell MVP-of-the-Finals award...

Let's hope so ...


Bonus Riffs

Top Ten Cloves: Possible Reason LeGone James Blew Off Media After Losing To Orlando Magic

New Bill Russell Book!

Bob Ryan's "Greatest of the green"

Orlando Does It!

Well, you can start calling him "LeGone James ((H/T Barry Crimmins)).

The Orlando Magic, led by Dwight "Superman" Howard, kicked ass and took names this evening, stomping on the Cleveland Cadaverliers (also a Barry Crimmins H/T), 103-90 (and the game wasn't this close - Orlando led by 18 at half-time, and 16 at the end of the third), taking the Eastern Division finals, 4-2, and heading into the NBA Finals, against the LA Lakers, for the first time since 1995

This was especially sweet.

Not so much from James, but the Media, as Cleveland cruised through the first two rounds, tremendously easy, they (the Media) was already building statues of James as THE GREATEST EVER.

They couldn't say it enough times, they couldn't talk about it enough, they couldn't show enough highlight clips, and James' last second (about three-minutes in any other city) shot to win Game 2, only added to this nonsense.

As Orlando then took a 3-1 lead games, all-of-a-sudden, the conversation shifted to the rest of the Cleveland team sucked, and when was someone going to help King James, that King James couldn't be expected (though they suspected he could) do it by himself, and that, with playing so many minutes (hey, it's the playoffs, baby, there's no crying in the playoffs), that King James (gasp), maybe, was tired, fatigued.

With crunch-time on-the-line, a ticket to the finals (or, in the Cadaverliers case, a ticket to Game 7, at home), it was "Superman" who punched the time clock, going for 40-points, with 14 rebounds, seemingly, being unstoppable.

King James went for 27-points, but with zero (yes "0") points in the second quarter, and only 7 (I think) in the final quarter.

And, it got little play, that Orlando slugged it out in the playoffs, and now go to the finals, without their #1 Guard, Jameer Nelson, out injured.

So, now the Lakers, and here's to the Orlando Magic, that they can go in there, and disappoint La-La Land, again, this year, much like they were last year, by the Celtics.

Go Orlando!
Beat LA!

Don't Be A McCain ... Enjoy The All Star Game Tonight!

It's history tonight, the last Major League Baseball All Star game in old Yankee Stadium

Yes, we are performing our tri-annual public service, of assisting you in making your baseball viewing much more enjoyable.

You don't have to sit in front of your television set, like Stumblin' Bumblin' John McCain sits in front of a computer, scratching your head, waiting for someone to tell you what's going on (hopefully, unlike SB John, you do have the ability to turn the thing on).

All you have to do is to take a few minutes and read The Garlic's classic essay "Could You Please Tell Me, What Is This Thing Called Baseball?".

Soon after, you'll be jabbering with the best of them ... You become a veritable Red Barber, or Ring Lardner, tossing out the baseball bon mots like your were born at home plate (and, you'll know from the essay, it's not really a "plate").

Not convinced?

Look at the impact of our "Could You Please Tell Me, What Is This Thing Called Baseball?" has had on governments;

I have to back up the President here. We haven’t closed down the office that is hunting for Osama bin Laden.

After reading your very fine baseball piece (okay, we didn’t exactly read it; It got swept up in our Domestic Surveillance Program), we decided to shift Alec Station to Summer Hours, so they could catch more baseball games.

Sorry for any confusion

General Michael V. Hayden
Director, Central Intelligence Agency


I so much liked your story on American Baseball, I am going have copies printed and make it mandatory for passengers of our new Himalayan train service to read it (sorry I can’t let them go out on the Internet and look it up for themselves)

President Hu Jintao, China


Since I’ve been in a letter-writing mode lately, thought I’d drop you a note to say how much I enjoyed the baseball essay and how much I learned from it. Perhaps, someday, we’ll have the game over here (and with the stadium lights powered by our new nuclear energy!)

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of Iran

Go read "Could You Please Tell Me, What Is This Thing Called Baseball?" ... You'll be a star at the water cooler tomorrow morning ...


Bonus B-Ball Riffs

Weekend At Rogers'; Or The Dead Guy For The Mitchell Report

Top Ten Cloves: Reasons Mitchell Baseball Steroid Investigation Is Unlike CIA Torture Tapes Case

Breaking News! ... Baseball Bombshell Expands Steroid Scandal; Giants’ Bonds Tests Positive For Landis Testosterone; Cyclist Said To Be Kingpin Of Lucrative Doping Ring, Selling His Own DNA

Top Ten Cloves: Possible Reasons Peyton Manning Threw Six Interceptions Last Evening

News Item: A night to forget; Manning hits new lows in Colts' bizarre loss to Bolts

10. Couldn't get a good grip - Worried the footballs were made in China and may have that date-rape drug on them

9. California Senator Diane Feinstein told him before the game, that, along with the Telecom Immunity, she'd vote that any interceptions he threw, he'd get immunity also and they won't count against his record

8. Wanted something really good to post on The Wall, in his Facebook profile

7. With the New England Patriots having a bye week, wanted to be extra sure he would get all the headlines today

6. Still pretty rattled, over martial law being dictated over in Pakistan

5. Misunderstanding - Thought the San Diego Chargers defensive backs were on strike, instead of the screen and television writers

4. Was consistently looking over his shoulder, for the kid with the stolen tank to come rolling into the stadium

3. Brought his politics onto the field - Is going to keep throwing interceptions until Vice President Dick Cheney is impeached

2. Two of the interceptions were because Hillary Clinton's campaign asked him to do it

1. "You mean everyone in America doesn't get a free taco from Taco Bell if I throw six interceptions?"

Bonus NFL Links

More Steroid Hearings - The NFL Goes To Congress; McGwire Surprise Witness; Still Not Talking

Developing Story! Tancredo: Shut Down Super Bowl; Says Two Black Coaches "Amounts To Segregation"; Appeals To NFL Commissioner To Make Big Game "Color-Blind"; Biden Weighs In, Backs Coaches

Flutie Sends "Cease-and-Desist" Letter To Media Over 'Hail Mary' References Regarding Surge; Diminutive QB Longtime Copyright Holder; "It Still Feeds My Family"; Says Open To Negotiate On Usage














Two of the interceptions were because Hillary Clinton's campaign asked him to do it