May 2013
3 posts
7 tags
Toronto redux
When the thousands of fans who had packed Maple Leaf Square on Monday night woke up from their nightmare on Tuesday, the baseball season had finally started in Toronto just two city blocks away at the Rogers Centre.
The night before, the city witnessed their tormented hockey team suffer a heartbreaking and almost unimaginable exit from the playoffs.
Up 4-1 in the third period in Game 7 of...
7 tags
Los nuevos Warriors con nuevos trucos
The Golden State Warriors turned over a new page in Game 2 of their second round playoff series against the San Antonio Spurs on Wednesday.
And the Warriors superstar marksman Stephen Curry marked the occasion by creating a new shot.
Curry’s one-legged three-pointer early in the opening quarter extended the crafty old ‘runner’ that we know and love, into a new long-range...
3 tags
Mean Vato del Mes: Justin Upton
Joined by his big brother B.J. in Atlanta this season, so far Justin Upton has been the real ‘Bossman Junior’ through April.
What’s made Justin a genuine boss is that all 12 of his booming home runs in the opening month of the season flew over 400 feet off his bat according to hittracker.com.
His initial blast on opening day against the Phillies’ Cole Hamels was crushed...
April 2013
4 posts
4 tags
Dinerobola reciclado
These aren’t your father’s A’s; they were juiced.
These aren’t even the Moneyball A’s; they had Miguel Tejada and Eric Chavez on the left side of the infield, who were good for 68 home runs, 140 RBI and the 2002 MVP award.
Heck, the Moneyball A’s might have been juiced too?
Those old A’s are long forgotten, Hiroyuki Nakajima wears Chavez’s...
10 tags
Mirando hacia atrás en la lesión de Aquiles
Por Asa Schuster 14 Abril 2013
As the news broke about Kobe Bryant’s broke Achilles tendon, several reports cited that NBA greats such as Charles Barkley and Shaquille O’Neal saw their careers ended by similar injuries.
In Dave McMenamin’s initial story for ESPN, he mentioned that Barkley and O’Neal’s careers came to an end due to similar Achilles injuries to...
8 tags
Reina sin la corona
Notre Dame’s Skylar Diggins was never a Cinderella, and now the two-time bridesmaid at the Big Dance exits the college game as a queen without a crown.
Her path to the title had seemingly been cleared once defending champs Baylor led by the formidable Brittney Griner had been eliminated by Louisville on the opposite side of the bracket in the Elite Eight.
Riding a 30-game winning streak,...
7 tags
Dulce melocotón, agrio puck
The Chicago Blackhawks’ streak was impressive (apples).
The Miami Heat’s streak was also impressive (oranges).
Now that both streaks have ended, the pundits can comprehensively compare the contents of both punnets to their delight.
But, what do you get if you radically combine these apples and oranges?
You get the present Pittsburgh Penguins, or rather something similar to a...
March 2013
4 posts
6 tags
La Liga de Béisbol California MMXIII
Back In 1876, eight teams comprised the National League of Professional Baseball Clubs, two of those teams would later become the modern day Chicago Cubs and Atlanta Braves, while two other teams bore the names of future MLB teams; the Reds and Athletics.
Along came the American League and the Yanks and Sox and for as long as we can remember the heart of Major League Baseball was deeply rooted...
9 tags
Más Cinderella (Dos)
Since 1980, when Bill Murray’s ‘Carl Spackler’ helped popularize the concept of the Cinderella sports story, the NCAA tournament has become the ideal stage for unheralded teams to shine. Three years after Caddyshack was released, the tourney featured its first Cinderella team of the ESPN-era, Jimmy V’s North Carolina State Wolfpack, who claimed the title as a sixth-seed. Since then, every...
8 tags
El 'Unirse, o Morir' serpiente de Los Ángeles
Hobbling on one ankle against the Indiana Pacers on Friday, Kobe Bryant looked like a generic NBA player straight out of central casting.
And without Kobe Bryant, the Los Angeles Lakers looked like the 2009 Orlando Magic.
Dwight Howard laid the foundation with 20 points, 12 boards and four blocks as the Lakers handled the Pacers 99-93 to improve to 35-32.
Howard’s line was just about on...
7 tags
Un nuevo Papa de la organización de los Cardenales...
So it turns out Joey Ratzinger lacked the moxy to hold down the top spot amongst the Cardinals organization.
The former Hitler Youth little leaguer recently became the first Cards skipper to resign in 598 years.
The unrivalled privilege and honor of becoming Pope is a life commitment, not something one simply turns their back on and walks away from when so much time, effort, lobbying and...
February 2013
4 posts
4 tags
La nueva AL Este
It was a seemingly insignificant inside fastball in spring training, it made a crack and the reverberation echoed loudly as an unintentional exclamation point for the revamped Toronto Blue Jays and the refreshed state of the grand old American League East.
The New York Yankees were already staring down the barrel of a long season even before Curtis Granderson had his forearm broken on that...
9 tags
No hay línea para cruzar
Brittney Griner is a woman.
She is a basketballer.
She is unparalleled, unrivalled and virtually unstoppable, all while turning a blind eye and deaf ear to endless ridicule about her femininity.
She leads the number one ranked and defending national champion Baylor Bears (25-1) in points, rebounds and blocks, and she’s also known to throw down the occasional in-game dunk!
It’s...
8 tags
Una doble cita con la historia
In what could have been Game One of the 2013 NBA Finals, LeBron James and Kevin Durant ushered the league into the All-Star break for an intermission of incredible individual campaigns being put together by the superstar pair.
James came out on top on this occasion, falling just two shooting percentage points from extending his record run of 30 or more points on 60 percent shooting to seven...
7 tags
Super Bowl XLVII: ¿qué mierda pasó?
Something special happened in Baltimore, either they know something the rest of the NFL teams don’t know or deer antler extract may actually work?
Ray Lewis was seemingly scratched for the season when he suffered a torn tricep against the Cowboys in Week 6.
The next week, Terrell Suggs miraculous returned to the lineup for his first game of season to help plug the gap left by Lewis.
It...
January 2013
5 posts
7 tags
Sin-gluten Grand Slam (Abierto de Australia 2013)
Tied 2-2 in the second set tie-breaker at the 2013 Australian Open Final, a small fluffy innocuous white feather fell from the heavens and paused Andy Murray en route to his second serve attempt.
The feather probably didn’t fall from the ‘heavens’, more likely off a nearby mangy seagull; they tend to hover around Melbourne Park on summer nights.
Once Murray had collected and...
9 tags
Desbloquear el misterio de Russell Westbrook
Striving for a balanced, healthy, happy and fulfilling lifestyle is a challenge for most people, even for professional athletes, who appear on the surface to have every facet of their lives operating in smooth and harmonious order.
In the NBA, nobody seems to have it better than Russell Westbrook, who’s healthy and happy approach to life is setting him apart from his peers in many ways.
...
4 tags
Tiempo para un nuevo NHL
While it’s great to have the NHL back in action and preventing Canada from erupting in social upheaval, it’s obvious that the current state of the league could use a radical restructure to recapture the passion and imagination of fans across North America.
The fans were the biggest losers of the lockout and in particular the traditional hotbeds where hockey has thrived, while in...
5 tags
Estamos es Warne fuera
No, ‘F*ck you!’ Warnie.
Get off the field, get off TV, get out of our life, it’s over, you’re done.
You’ve accomplished everything possible on the pitch, you’re rich and you’re ‘mates’ with Elizabeth Hurley, go and enjoy all of that.
Save the limelight for the next generation, go away, we’ve had enough.
Congratulations, you’ve...
6 tags
El decatlón atlético/académico de Robert & Russell
Ordinarily, a playoff matchup between two red-hot teams and a pair electrifying rookie quarterbacks would serve as a pretty big deal.
In the case of Robert Griffin III versus Russell Wilson, this NFC Wild-Card game could easily just be the first event in a series of mental and physical challenges between the two gentlemen.
These guys are not just regular football players, they’re not...
December 2012
3 posts
6 tags
Más Linsanity + Tebowmania antes del Armagedón
With the world set to end in a few days, we were treated to a sports flashback of sorts as the waning star’s of Jeremy Lin and Tim Tebow flickered once again on the same night for the first time in a long-time.
Lin returned to the spiritual birthplace of Linsanity, playing his first game in Madison Square Garden since joining the Houston Rockets in the off-season.
Prior to the game, Lin...
5 tags
Por último, legen ... esperar a que se ... dario
Joel Parkinson won his long-awaited maiden World Surfing Championship on Friday, without having won any event during the 2012 ASP Tour.
Parkinson was crowned on the beach at Pipeline, after Kelly Slater was unable to manufacture any meaningful scores in scrappy conditions.
Slater was denied when Aussie Josh Kerr, did his countryman a solid by pulling off a 9.20 on his first wave in the Semi...
5 tags
NBA vida es como una lata de Pringles
Mike D’Antoni really does resemble the Pringles guy.
They both share that old-time Americana moustached look, and right now a canister of potato chips might as well be coaching the Lakers.
The golden boys have slipped to 3-5 under the guidance of D’Antoni, and it seems they could easily have the same record with Julius Pringles at the helm.
Is it better to have no coach at all,...
November 2012
3 posts
8 tags
Un centenar de tonos de Grey
99 Grey Cups of Molson Canadian beer on the wall, 99 Grey Cups of Molson Canadian beer.
Add one more for the Toronto Argonauts and Calgary Stampeders to fight over and you’ve got the 100th Grey Cup of Molson Canadian beer.
Those Canadians sure are humble and modest.
There’s no need for grandiose Bowl games, a simple and understated Grey Cup will suffice for crowning the champions...
6 tags
El sándwich de reemplazo
Steelers backup quarterback Byron Leftwich has probably devoured his fair share of Primanti Brothers stuffed sandwiches during his stint in Pittsburgh.
We’re not saying he’s fat or anything; that’s just what you do in Pittsburgh and especially when your job predominantly consists of watching Steelers games from the sidelines.
Heck, you can even get Primanti sandwiches from...
4 tags
¿A quién odias ahora?
Remember back in June when the Miami Heat became champions of the NBA.
When LeBron James finally led a team to a title, something happened, that giant cumulus cloud of hatred hovering above him suddenly dissipated.
James steadily accumulated that hate in the latter years of his career in Cleveland, it snowballed once he defected to South Beach and boasted about his impending greatness before...
October 2012
8 posts
4 tags
Serie Mundial Juegos 3 y 4: ¿qué mierda pasó?
The Detroit Tigers had their scoreless run extended to 18 innings as the San Francisco Giants claimed Game 3 and moved one victory closer to being World Series Champions for the second time in three seasons.
San Francisco rode the arms of Ryan Vogelsong, Tim Lincecum and Sergio Romo, escaping threats in the first and third digs with a pair of double-plays.
Gregor Blanco once again stared with...
4 tags
Serie Mundial Juego 2: ¿qué mierda pasó?
After going big with the long ball in the Series opener, the San Francisco Giants managed to squeeze out a win with small ball in Game 2.
In a game of inches, the ball continued to bounce, ricochet and roll in San Francisco’s favor.
The Tigers came within inches of scoring, when Prince Fielder chugged towards home, only to be gunned down by the relay of Gregor Blanco and Marco Scutaro.
...
5 tags
Serie Mundial Juego 1: ¿qué mierda pasó?
On three mighty swings Pablo Sandoval became a legend of October.
Only in San Francisco could a Kung Fu Panda star in a World Series opener for the ages.
On a night that flowed perfectly for the Giants, it was Sandoval that got the party started, blasting a high fastball from Justin Verlander to dead center.
The first home run Verlander allowed all season on an 0-2 count.
Sandoval then did...
3 tags
Un campeón de los locos
Let’s be real, cycling is a clown sport bro.
Even at the highest level cycling is still just a monotonous, unspectacular, intense cardiovascular training exercise.
Riding around 2000 miles of the French countryside for 21 days up and down the Alps and Pyrenees is one of the most physically grueling feats in the world.
Participating in such a ride as part of a competition is even crazier...
5 tags
No hockey, no problema
For those of us of the non-Canadian persuasion and living outside the Kingdom of Canadia, life should maintain a relatively even keel in the upcoming weeks.
Most of us won’t even notice as the first two weeks of what was supposed to be the start of the National Hockey League pass by, but in Canada this could be the start of a slippery slope to despair.
Life in Canada is governed by a...
3 tags
Mean Vato del Mes: Miguel Cabrera
Miguel Cabrera crafted a month for the ages, his masterpiece performance earning him a spot in the upper echelon of the history books.
Not the regular exercise books crammed with records, but the fancy leather-bound and gold trimmed limited editions where the most exquisite accomplishments are carefully scribed in beautiful calligraphy.
As the Tigers chased a playoff berth down the stretch,...
12 tags
NBL vista previa 2012/13
They just finished playing multiple versions of football Down Under, and now those crazy Aussie’s are about to embark on their summer sports season. When you think about summer in Australia, you instantly think indoor basketball right? The United States has a professional indoor basketball competition that runs during the Australian summer, we call it the D-League and Down Under they have...
7 tags
Tony Romo es una teta
The NFL’s support of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month kicked off on Monday Night Football, and what better way to open up proceedings than squeezing together two of the biggest boobs in the League for a Boobie Bowl game between Tony Romo and Jay Cutler.
Romo and Cutler are both enormous boobs, these big talkin’, gun slinging’, ego trippin’ quarterbacks faced off in...
September 2012
4 posts
5 tags
El padrino de veinte20 de cricket
As the 2012 ICC World Twenty20 tournament gets underway in Pakistan this week, we take a moment to look back at the watershed moment when this abbreviated form of one-day cricket was truly born.
The interwebs and cricket geeks will tell you the first ‘official’ T20 matches were played by English county teams in 2003; hogwash!
One-day cricket was officially bastardised on January...
6 tags
Un campeón en el momento adecuado
Fresh from a gold medal winning performance at the London Olympics, a Scotsman rode to Flushing Meadows, Queens with the sole purpose of becoming a King of the sport.
He reached his second Grand Slam Final of the year and met a familiar foe in his fifth tilt at a major title decider.
Novak Djokovic stood in the Scot’s way, the man who erased him from the Australian Open during a...
4 tags
El pequeño hombre con la más larga fuera de...
Soon after the ball and championship slipped through his fingers and Eli Manning triumphantly hoisted the Vince Lombardi Trophy, Wes Welker embarked on a rather peculiar journey.
Amongst the NFL fraternity, little Wesley Carter Welker endured the longest off-season of all.
Peyton Manning hasn’t played a regular season game since January 2011, had two vertebrae surgically fused together,...
3 tags
Mean Vato del Mes: Chase Headley
Chase Headley was a big giant head during August.
Hamilton and Beltré hammered and belted, Prince and Cabrera mashed, Buster got busy and Hanley was handy, but the Padres’ third baseman was the Headley of the class.
At the start of August, Chase had 12 home runs on the season and his Padres wallowed 17 games below .500.
When August ended, Chase had pumped up his long-ball tally to 22,...
August 2012
4 posts
4 tags
Canseco's droga arbol sigue creciendo
It all goes back to that boob José Canseco.
While many folks immediately pointed a finger of suspicion towards BALCO in light of Bay Area baseball players Melky Cabrera and Bartolo Colon both failing tests for performance-enhancing drugs within a week of each other, this is bigger than BALCO.
This is almost as big as Canseco’s biceps, because this is just the latest branch to sprout from...
4 tags
Deportes auténtica medalla de recuento
After reducing the 2012 London Olympics to 91 events of deportes auténtica, we present our final medal tally of the games.
The top 20 nations were as follows;
As you can see, China obtained the most gold thanks to domination of the goodminton and ping pong, where they swept the competition with nine from nine gold medals.
USA, who were without the 25 gold medals they collected for swimming...
3 tags
Deportes auténtica Olímpicos
Of the 302 events spread across 26 supposed ‘sports’ at the London 2012 Olympics, it turns out only 30.13% are devoted to real sports, or what we call deportes auténtica.
Since the total number of ‘sports’ or ‘disciplines’ on offer is confusing, let’s just call them the 302 ‘activities’ that make up the Olympics.
While 30.13% of these...
5 tags
Mean Vato del Mes: Andrew McCutchen
With his long dreads, skull cap and swashbuckling style, Andrew McCutchen is not only a Pirate, he’s the Pirate.
McCutchen fuels the Pirates of Pittsburgh, much like Primanti Brothers fuels the hard working people of the Steel City.
Like the famous stuffed sandwich, the five-tool star is hearty, balanced, complete, action-packed with goodness and fast becoming ‘A Pittsburgh...
July 2012
4 posts
5 tags
Espadachín a Salaryman
Mr. Suzuki-san is now finally a Salaryman.
After being traded from the Seattle Mariners to the New York Yankees, the Hit Manufacturing Machine fronted the media at Safeco Field as a new man.
His Seattle grunge-friendly whispy beard was gone, its been designated as a former component of his identity.
He’s now just a number belonging to a larger corporation, he appeared as we’ve...
5 tags
Cambiar el juego: Usain Bolt & Yohan Blake -...
Like most boys growing up in the Caribbean, Usain Bolt and Yohan Blake dreamed about representing the West Indies on the cricket pitch.
Unfortunately for their generation, they were witnesses to a national cricket team in steep decline and as the Windies on-field performance faded, so did the dreams of Bolt and Blake pursing a future in the sport.
Instead, the pair of speedsters went on to...
4 tags
Una última de fondue
Roger Federer isn’t quite done making fondue yet.
The Swiss master was able to secure one more fancy silver cup to serve delicious warm liquid cheese from the All England Lawn Tennis Club in 2012.
It had been more than a two year wait between major wins for Federer, a period that saw Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal account for all nine Grand Slams.
Luckily for Federer, he was pitted...
3 tags
Mean Vato del Mes: R.A. Dickey
Having pitched in excess of 900 innings over a ten-year span in the majors, R.A. Dickey has finally achieved spiritual enlightenment with his knuckleball.
The secret to harnessing baseball’s most mysterious pitch must lie at the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro, either that or there’s been some kind of freakish meteorological phenomenon during June aiding Dickey’s delivery.
For...
June 2012
9 posts
4 tags
El costo de ganar en Filadelfia
Times have been tough for the Philadelphia Phillies in 2012.
Now four years removed from being Word Series Champions, wins have been hard to come by with the absences of Ryan Howard, Chase Utley and Roy Halladay.
The Phillies have been pasted towards the bottom of the National League East with little sign of resurgence, until their closing pitcher Jonathan Papelbon finally hit on a new bounty...
5 tags
Finales de la NBA Juego 5: ¿qué mierda pasó?
LeBron James became a champion.
James scored 26 points, shared the ball for 13 assists, secured 11 rebounds, blocked two shots and added a steal to close the deal.
His enriching year-long journey of self-discovering, mastery and accountability can only be measured by a single piece of jewellery.
Add to that the Finals MVP trophy, and the once self-proclaimed King is finally deserving of his...
6 tags
Finales de la NBA Juego 4: ¿qué mierda pasó?
Miami’s whipping boy relieved the pressure off his Big Three ‘superiors’ and himself with a game-changing performance in Game 4 of the 2012 NBA Finals.
LeBron James tried to steal the attention back his way as he dramatically suffered through what must have been the most severe case of in-game cramping in the history of sports, but on this night the game would be decided from...
5 tags
Finales de la NBA Juego 3: ¿qué mierda pasó?
Russell Westbrook was zigging when Thabo Sefolosha thought he was zagging, as a result the ball and pivotal Game 3 of the Finals landed in the hands of the Miami Heat.
Game 3 is always pivotal and once the see-saw eventually swung in favor of the Heat, we also gained a revealing insight into the schematics of both teams.
The Heat, who are fuelled by the pain and continual reminders of losing...
