TheScore.com Blog

Cut-Prone MMA Fighters Turning To Plastic Surgery

Andrew Stoeten — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 12:31:34 PDT

With UFC 100, and it’s sickeningly good card, slated for tomorrow, night, some serious bouts of MMA fever are being contracted all over—even in the most unlikely of places, like the New York Times.

RM Schneiderman of the Times examines the case of Marcus Davis, who says he has received stitches above his right eye 77 times over his 16 year career, and has now gone to great lengths to—quite literally—stop the bleeding. He went to a plastic surgeon.

The surgeon, Dr. Frank Stile, burred down the bones around Davis’s eye sockets. He also removed scar tissue around his eyes and replaced it with collagen made from the skin of cadavers. Now, at least in theory, when Davis takes a blow to the face, he will be less likely to bleed.

Davis swears by the procedure, as does the other man to have, so far, undergone Stile’s procedure, Nick Diaz.

Since the surgery, Diaz has won his last five fights. He has sparred countless times in the gym and has not had a “serious cut,” Cesar Gracie, Diaz’s coach and manager, said.

“When you’re worrying about a cut stopping a fight, you’re not able to fight normally,” Gracie said.

Of course, not everybody is thrilled with the idea of fighters using this kind of surgery to prolong their careers.

For some doctors, that prospect has prompted ethical questions about the potential advantages of plastic surgery. For others, it has served as a call to address the reasons fighters develop unstable scar tissue in the first place.

The issue, Dr. Stile said, “is not the fact that they cut. It’s that after they cut, their wounds are not treated appropriately.”

Not only that, but “where do you stop?” asked Dr. Sherry Wulkan, a ringside physician who works for the New York and New Jersey state athletic control boards.

How To Win A Game Without Ever Throwing A Pitch

Andrew Stoeten — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 11:22:42 PDT

Missed by a lot of folks, myself included, back on Wednesday with the curious result of Tuesday’s game between the Colorado Rockies and the Washington Nationals. On the surface it seems like an easy-enough ballgame to ignore—a not-particularly-notable matchup that finished well after most people in the east—except there was an interesting fact about winning pitcher Alan Embree’s performance: he didn’t throw a pitch.

Embree came into the game with two outs in the top of the eighth, and before throwing a pitch, picked off Austin Kearns at first base to end the inning. The Rockies took the lead in the bottom of the inning, and Huston Street came on for the save in the ninth, meaning that Embree was credited with the win.

"I've never seen anything like that," Embree said of the fortunate win. "So when it happened, it was a weird feeling. [The pickoff] was a big play. It allowed [us] to keep the game tied, we scored a run and won."

Are Defensive Statistics in Baseball About to be Revolutionized?

Andrew Stoeten — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 10:42:58 PDT

To answer the question posed by the title of this post in a word: yes.

Allan Schwarz of The New York Times writes:

A new camera and software system in its final testing phases will record the exact speed and location of the ball and every player on the field, allowing the most digitized of sports to be overrun anew by hundreds of innovative statistics that will rate players more accurately, almost certainly affect their compensation and perhaps alter how the game itself is played.

The system, to be unveiled on Saturday “to a group of baseball executives, statisticians and academics, knowing it will probably become the largest single advance in baseball science since the development of the box score,” was developed by Sportvision—the same company that developed the yellow first-down line for football telecasts. It will eventually be installed in every stadium.

The system is already in place in San Francisco, near where Sportvision is headquartered, where they’ve already been experimenting with it. “Four high-resolution cameras sit on light towers 162 feet up, capturing everything that happens on the field in three dimensions and wiring it to a control room below,” the Times explains. “Software tools determine which movements are the ball, which are fielders and runners, and which are passing seagulls. More than two million meaningful location points are recorded per game.”

It sounds more than a little awesome—though inevitably, not everybody is going to agree.

“I don’t believe that baseball is a game that can be encapsulated that way,” said the Blue Jays’ incredible defensive third baseman, Scott Rolen. “That’s the beauty of the whole game.”

Morning Link Dump - Marilkym, Bayern, Mayfield, Coyotes

Andrew Stoeten — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 23:09:00 PDT

Obligatory Sports Babe

Today we have Marikym Hervieux, who is supposedly Russell Martin’s ladyfriend—meaning, of course, that Russell doesn’t have any problem with nailing girls with funny names. Which… well… I guess in this case is OK.

Van Gaal

“In his first attempt to impose some authority on his newly inherited Bayern Munich squad, Louis van Gaal has insisted that his players cut sexy disco visits out of their routines,” says the Spoiler. “According to Bild, the disciplinarian Dutchman will be monitoring his players’ extra-curricular activities, presumably through a network of “disco detectives”.”

Comment

You know what's extra awesome about what Bryan Colangelo did on Thursday? Signing Turkoglu, coupled with Bargnani's development, is only going to take away touches from Bosh-- which, I'm sorry to say, is going to make him look less and less like a max-contract player. With those guys in the offence, he's going to have to earn that money at the other end.

Mayfield

“Asked if he had ever taken illegal drugs,” writes ESPN about Jeremy Mayfield, the no-longer-suspended NASCAR driver who supposedly tested positive for meth, “Mayfield responded, ‘What are you calling illegal? I've drank beer. I don't drink beer at all anymore. I don't drink. Don't do anything.’” Um… Jer… I think they’re talking about drugs that are, y’know, actually illegal.

Coyotes

This should probably be its own post, unfortunately I’m way too drunk to fully wrap my head around it, but according to an Associated Press report “The NHL is accusing Phoenix Coyotes owner Jerry Moyes of trying to derail the sale of the team to a group headed by Jerry Reinsdorf by filing a flurry of requests for depositions before the July 24 deadline for formal submission of the bid.”

Short Al

"Short Al from Brooklyn was a Mets devotee who, having been a regular at Ebbets Field since boyhood, provided an old-timer’s perspective. He called in the predawn hours nearly every day since WFAN went on the air in 1987,” writes the New York Times, but “Short Al suddenly disappeared from WFAN’s airwaves last year, leading some listeners to worry that he had joined the great lineup of FANdroids who have died.”

Bruno

I can’t remember which website I read that was saying it, but I completely agree it’s ridiculous that Sacha Baron Cohen has to lower himself to appearing on talk shows in character as Borat or Bruno when, as this Letterman interview shows, the guy is damn hilarious and affable when he’s just being himself. (And yes, I know this has nothing to do with sports.)

Canseco vs. El Wingador

Andrew Stoeten — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 14:59:01 PDT

Undeterred by his pummelling at the hands of Korean giant Hong-Man Choi during a Japanese MMA event in May, the Philadelphia Daily News informs us that, in his latest publicity stunt, ex-slugger Jose Canseco is slated for a celebrity boxing match on July 24th with Bill Simmons at the Ice Works Skating Complex in Aston, PA. The fight will be the evening’s co-main event, along with a bout featuring Ray Leonard Jr. and local fighter Derek Macintosh.

And no, it’s not that Bill Simmons—though, yes, Leonard is Sugar Ray’s kid.

The Simmons involved here is Bill “El Wingador” Simmons.

Who’s El Wingador, you ask? He’s a five time Wing Bowl champion.

What’s the Wing Bowl, you ask? It’s the massive annual Philadelphia-based chicken wing eating contest.

Um… thanks to The Sporting Blog, who also have the story, we’ve been led to believe it’s this:

Oh, and what’s dignity, you ask? Why, I believe that’s the answer to a riddle that neither Jose nor participants in the Wing Bowl will ever solve.

You Must Not Be Seen Dunking On LeBron! - UPDATED (Crawford Speaks)

Andrew Stoeten — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 10:34:00 PDT

Just as many suspected, the bizarre Nike/LeBron decision to confiscate any videotape of Xavier University player Jordan Crawford dunking spectacularly on the head of King James at the LeBron James Skills Academy, which is going on this week in Akron, is backfiring.

People are still talking about it, right? Fan IQ points out that there are even T-Shirts that you can buy, and now Nike has backpedalled, trying to legitimize their actions.

"Nike has been operating basketball camps for the benefit of young athletes for decades and has longstanding policies in place regarding what events are open and closed to media coverage," said Nike spokesperson KeJuan Wilkins to the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “Unfortunately, for the first time in four years, two journalists did not respect our 'no videotaping' policy at an after-hours pick-up game Monday evening following the LeBron James Skills Academy.”

Of course, that’s entirely different from what freelance photographer Ryan Miller, whose tape was confiscated, had to say about it.

Miller spoke to Rochester, NY’s Sportsradio WHTK about the incident—you can listen to the audio here. When they confiscated the tape, he says, “they claimed you weren’t supposed to be shooting the college and the pro guys working out, but I was told earlier in the day that you could, and there was no media policy saying you couldn’t.”

“The guy told me, ‘I’ve seen you filming for fifteen or twenty minutes’, but I’d only got four minutes of tape from that game. So I just asked him, you know, ‘If you saw me filming the whole time, why didn’t you just come up to me in the beginning?’”

The Sporting Blog points out that there’s at least one Crawford dunk that we’re allowed to see, so I guess we might as well go ahead and watch that…

UPDATE: Crawford speaks to Dime Magazine about his mythical, spectacular, greatest-ever dunk on the head of LeBron.

Kenny Powers Rules, Has Contest

Andrew Stoeten — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 09:18:50 PDT

If you haven’t yet got yourself in front of a TV to watch the HBO show Eastbound and Down, do it. Seriously. What are you waiting for?

I mean really, do you need further proof of its awesomeness than this Twitpic contest announcement from Kenny Powers himself? (@KFuckingP)

If you answered no, I don’t think we can be friends anymore.

Morning Link Dump – Elena, Dykstra, Halladay, Yankees

Andrew Stoeten — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 23:32:52 PDT

Obligatory Sports Babe

Today, and again for no reason, we have former Filippo Inzaghi squeeze Elena Bartolo, who… wait did I already say that Pippo Inzaghi nailed her? Alright, well as far as I know that’s pretty much it.

Everybody Else Is Doing It…

On here I don’t usually link to stuff that I’ve already posted over at Drunk Jays Fans, but since it feels like the whole world is talking about the Jays trading Roy Halladay, and that, on the subject, I’m one of the very few who are actually making any sense, I guess I might as well enlighten you. Also, I’m really lazy.

Speaking of the Jays…

Toronto first baseman Kevin Millar went on Sirius XM Radio Tuesday, and according to the Newark Star-Ledger, he didn’t exactly have anything good to say about the new Yankee Stadium. “The old stadium, you walked in, you knew this was where Mantle played and DiMaggio,” he said. “It was just that old school. I got booed a lot louder. They didn't boo me as loud here. I like to get booed. They were too nice to me here. They're too nice to me. I don't know if it's all corporate, but they're too nice.”

Speaking of the Yanks…

They’re totally awesome. No, really. Sports By Brooks explains how the Yankees are the first team in baseball to allow streaming video of their games to be available to local residents (who subscribe to the appropriate cable package), finally taking the first step to breaking the ridiculous MLB.TV blackout policy.

Lenny Dykstra

“Ending his major league playing days in 1996,” said Forbes a year ago of the former Mets and Phillies star, “Dykstra says he handed his savings to a Wall Street broker who lost half of it when the market melted down a few years later. Dykstra was determined to start making his own investment calls and dove into the pursuit the same aggressive way he played baseball, following 30 investment newsletters at a time. In 2003 he began e-mailing CNBC money mouth Jim Cramer, who added Dykstra to TheStreet.com's stock-picking roster. Soon Dykstra was a financial talking head on Fox News and other channels.” Uh… yeah, he just filed for bankruptcy.

Comment

Two tableaus from Dufferin and Dupont this evening: first, I hear music as this tall, young black dude wearing a headband is walking past me. And then I realize, it’s coming from what appears to be a cell phone, which is literally strapped to his head under the headband. And then I couldn’t decide if that thinking that was the most fucked thing I’d seen in a while made me really white or just really old. But it was all OK, because not two minutes later I saw a guy in a little red sports car with the windows down, and he was—I shit you not—blaring kd lang’s Constant Craving, which really made me feel a whole lot better about my place in the world.

Quickly

Joe Posnanski asks, who is more dominant: Tiger Woods or Roger Federer? And even though the obvious answer is ~~Federer~~ ~~Tiger~~ Federer, it still makes for some interesting discussion.

The world’s strongest vagina, if for some reason you want to read about it, just got stronger says Total Pro Sports.

Slate brings us the most wonderfully absurd escapes from mortal danger in the original G.I. Joe cartoon.

Manofest has the 50 most bizarre images on Google Earth. Half them I don’t get, but the rest… yeah, kind of fucked up.

Estradafest!

Earlier in the week I wrote a post about CHiPs star Erik Estrada’s awkward (read: he bright up kiddie porn) interview after he butchered Take Me Out To The Ballgame at Wrigley Field in Chicago. Now, thanks to Deuce of Davenport, we have the butchering.

TheScore.com Blog’s 8th Photoshop Contest (no NBA content)

Scott Herkes — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 13:37:00 PDT

Just as we promised, here is the newest Photoshop contest and it comes before the end of the week without any NBA content. If you want to see the results to the 7th contest and are wondering why we didn’t post the winners photo, you can go have a read in the last Photoshop Contest post. That should answer all your questions, or at least all the ones about the Photoshop contest.

Moving on. This contests photo is none other than the great Tiger Woods.

And a quick green background for your easy extraction:

So there you go. Your job is to mash the hell out of it and make us laugh. We don’t care what skill level you have with Photoshop. We don’t care if you use Microsoft Paint to do it. We don’t even care if you only take 5 minutes to try. Just take the picture above and incorporate them into anything you want. Go sift through Google images and find stuff to mash them with, go in and edit the pictures, do anything.

The contest is going to stay open for a full month this time. This one finishes on Friday July 31st at 12:00pm ET and after this one is done we’ll start a new one. Irene (our Marketing & Promotions Coordinator) was kind enough to give us a few of these really nice Parrot Digital Photo Frames.They’re pretty cool. They also come with a bluetooth feature, where you can take a picture on your phone/blackberry and then send it right to the frame. Wow. One of the graphics guys went around the office and took pictures of everyone and loaded them into his frame. There are about 40 or so pictures of score employees on a continuous slideshow above his computer. Kind of awesome if you ask me.

Send your best work to my email address: scott.herkes@thescore.com (keep the images a reasonable size). You can include the original photo along with your version if you’d like but you don’t have to. You can also submit as many times as you’d like.

One last thing, please keep it tasteful. I love big huge, round, awesome boobs as much as the next guy but this isn’t the place for porn, dildos, nipples, dongs, nudity and all that other stuff, so if you submit anything along those lines I can assure you that it won’t win (although we might get a good laugh from it). You can submit stuff that has sexual references or implies sexual humour, but no nudity

Good luck and if anyone has any questions then just post them in the comments section and I’ll do my best to answer them quickly.

You Must Not Be Seen Dunking On LeBron!

Andrew Stoeten — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 09:45:10 PDT

Interesting story coming from Gary Parrish at CBS Sports about a seemingly-innocuous incident that took place in Akron the other day at the LeBron James Skills Academy, which is a basketball camp for elite high school players. When he first arrived, he wrote about having missed the highlight play of the camp:

The word when I arrived at the LeBron James Skills Academy was that Monday's best highlight came in a pick-up game featuring the college players and James himself. According to the collection of NBA scouts and other folks here, Xavier's Jordan Crawford dunked on James pretty good. So I had to find out whether it was true.

"It happened, and it was bad," said Michael Gilchrist, the top player in the Class of 2011. "That was something to see."

Sorry I missed it.

Parrish isn’t the only one who’ll miss it, though, because even though getting dunked on is just a part of playing basketball, and even though there were two cameras rolling when the play was made, LeBron and Nike—or perhaps the other way around—don’t want you to see them. “It was a two-handed jam, the kind that would've circulated quickly on YouTube,” says Parrish in his updated report, “but Nike officials eliminated that possibility shortly after the dunk happened by allegedly confiscating tapes from various cameramen.”

Parrish spoke to freelance photographer Ryan Miller, who said that Nike Basketball Senior Director Lynne Merritt took the tape.

Worth noting is that there is no policy against filming at the LeBron James Skills Academy, and Miller said he had been filming all day without incident. Nobody ever told him to stop. Nobody ever said there was a problem ... until after Crawford dunked on James.

"LeBron called Lynn over and told him something," Miller said. "That's how I knew his name was Lynn. LeBron said, 'Hey, Lynn. Come here.'"

Minutes later, Miller said Merritt demanded his tape.

It’s quite the Palin-esque strategy—taking a miniscule problem, wildly overreacting to it, dousing the original fire with gasoline—and, therefore, probably a ridiculously horrible one. Rivals.com speculates much the same:

The Crawford dunk would have been a temporary embarrassment for LeBron. Let's say the video was put on YouTube. It blows up for a bit, dominates blogs for 36 hours, everyone has a good chuckle and then it's forgotten about.

But by censoring the tape, LeBron turns the dunk into a legend. On video, it's just a dunk. Without video, the jam can reach mythic proportions. Because nobody can see it, the story of the dunk will grow in stature with each telling.

I’m not quite sure how mythic this could possibly get, but if it did follow that path, it would sure look good on him. I mean, come on… confiscating tapes because you got dunked on? You’re LeBron! I don’t think you need to be so worried about being embarrassed on the court this one little time.

Yet Another Reason To Get The Nationals An Editor

Andrew Stoeten — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 23:54:26 PDT

This one comes from the fantastic Walk Off Walk, via the DC Sports Bog, who noticed the Nats letting their fans know that voting for the last spot on the All-Star ballot will run until Tursday. (Ehhh! Tanks for da tip!)

Teddy Rossevelt must be turning over in his grave at this latest spelling gaffe from the Natinals.

Morning Link Dump – Federica, Ocho Cinco, Ovechkin, Sakic

Andrew Stoeten — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 23:42:00 PDT

Obligatory Sports Babe

Today, for no particular reason—well, besides the obvious—we’ll go with WAG Federica Ridolfi, who is apparently engaged to Livorno’s Giuliano Giannichedda. I dunno, works for me.

Ocho Cinco

“I have my own application coming out where people will be able to interact and follow me,” said Bengals receiver Chad Ocho Cinco to a Houston radio station of his plans for Twitter. “You know more than through just the keyboard and reading my messages - you’ll actually be able to follow me and when the season starts, it’s going to get even worse. I’m going to really make it fun. I’m using Twitter during games, during halftime, after the games. I’m going to be taking it to the next level.”

The Diplomacy of Ovechkin

"As a resident of Washington, D.C.,” said President Barack Obama to students at Moscow’s New Economic School, according to the Washington Post’s DC Sports Bog. “I continue to benefit from the contributions of Russians -- specifically, from Alexander Ovechkin. We are very pleased to have him in Washington, D.C." Of course, he’s never actually been to a Caps game, but who’s to nitpick?

Alexei Kovalev: Team Builder

“Each player and each person and team acts for himself, what he wants in life. I can’t answer questions for somebody else, but if I have a chance, I’ll speak to him [about staying],” said the newest Ottawa Senator, Alexei Kovalev, of disgruntled forward Dany Heatley, according to the Ottawa Sun. Yeah, that should work.

The Last Of the Nordiques

“A quick Luke Richardson story,” wrote Steve Simmons in the Toronto Sun back in 2006. “Floyd Smith, the Leafs chief scout at the time, didn't want to draft Richardson in 1987. John Brophy, the Leafs coach, did. Brophy won the argument, fighting for a tough defenceman. The player Smith wanted: Joe Sakic.” (But don’t be too upset, Leafs fans, it’s not like they wouldn’t have just traded him and a first round pick for some aging once-useful Ontario-born plug.)

Here’s a list that RDS put together a year or two ago of what they felt were Sakic’s ten best goals.

The Greatest Golf Shot by a Hot Girl Ever This Week

Andrew Stoeten — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 12:44:51 PDT

I’d be lying if I said that I would refuse to let this girl try to knock one of those stupid-looking American beer bottles out of my hand with a drive, but I could watch her do this fifteen more times and still not be scared shitless once I was actually standing there waiting for a golf ball to cave my face in—not to mention ridiculously turned on. Golf… who knew?

Hat tip to Devil Ball, via With Leather, for the extremely impressive video—you know, provided it’s not fake. Of course, if it is, massive points to the pranksters for using a hot, presumably drunk girl as the subject of their fake video, instead of some dorky grade school kid or something.

Kenny Rogers Takes the Court with Michael Jordan

Andrew Stoeten — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 09:53:00 PDT

The Gambler! Playing basketball! With Michael Jordan!

I wouldn’t have believed it if I didn’t write it myself—and, y’know, if I hadn’t already watched the video below, which is from You Been Blinded (via the Hoop Doctors)—but here we have highlights from the 1988 Kenny Rogers Classic Weekend basketball game, and we can see that the Gambler actually has some skills.

No, seriously. I mean, he’s not good, but I’d still say he’s good for a 50-year-old country superstar on the same court as Jordan, Wilkins and Bird. You really think Waylon Jennings got game?

The Gambler! (Yes, it's really him, and not just one of the many Men Who Look Like Kenny Rogers.)

Five Questions With John McDonald

Scott Herkes — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 08:34:00 PDT

Just before the Jays went on their most recent road trip, Dustin Parkes and I decided to hit up the Blue Jays clubhouse one last time for a quick round of Five Questions. If I remember correctly, it was the day after Michael Jackson had passed away and all the jays in the clubhouse were listening to MJ fairly loud over the speakers in there. Millar, Vernon and Hill were sitting in the far back corner when out of nowhere comes Johnny Mac and starts busting moves that would make Usher jealous. He was tearing some serious carpet. It was pretty impressive. You thought the guy had fancy footwork at shortstop, you should see him with Billie Jean playing over the PA.

Anyways, we had written up some questions for Millar to answer but I have a problem with asking a stranger in his underwear for an interview so I asked Johnny Mac instead. He said yes.

When McDonald came out for our Five Question Parkes let his fanboi out big time. Claiming that he "is the best Blue Jay and he was the only reason to go see a ball game last year". I hit record on the camera once I heard the John-love coming out of Parkes but after watching it back here at the office I decided I should keep the video off the page and leave it saved on my computer incase I need to blackmail Parkes. You never know.

It probably goes without saying but McDonald is an amazingly classy guy. We were about to shoot the piece when Pat Tabler comes walking by. John holds us up for a second because he needs to speak with him. Turns out John is on a mission to meet this kid who’s coming to the game that night and is throwing out the first pitch the following day. This kid has cancer and wrote a letter to John. Now I’m not one to get all soft but here’s Johnny Mac doing everything he possibly can to meet this kid who idolizes him (maybe even more than Parkes) and asks Tabler to bring the boy down to meet him when he gets the chance. Awesome.

Without further ado, here are Five Questions With John McDonald

As always, if you thought the video was shit, here is my attempt to save face and give you some kick-ass links to visit. You’re welcome.

http://www.prisonbitchname.com/, http://www.leekspin.com/, http://www.blackpeopleloveus.com/index.html