Happy Tuesday everyone, here's my Top 5 for May 29, 2012 from Len Berman at www.ThatsSports.com.
1. Quick Hits
- Miami wins game one of the Eastern Conference Finals beating the Celtics 93-79.
- An American revolution? U.S. women are 10 for 10 in their matches through play on Monday at the French Open. Very impressive.
- The Dodgers have Magic will the Padres have Lefty? Phil Mickelson has joined a group that hopes to buy the San Diego Padres.
- Hot and cold. The Angels have now won seven straight after beating the Yankees. The Braves have lost eight in a row and are tied for last with the Phillies.
- What does the loss of Peyton Manning and a 2-14 record add up to? According to the Sports Business Journal a 7 per cent drop in season ticket renewals for Indianapolis Colts games.
2. A Day at the Park
Barry Bonds has come out of the cold. He showed up at the Giants game yesterday and said he wants to work for the San Francisco Giants in some capacity. He now refers to himself as a convicted felon, but he's quick to point out it was for obstruction of justice which he is appealing, not steroids. Interesting that Bonds is free to work in baseball even though everyone assumes that he cheated. He could even make the Hall of Fame which he said yesterday he doesn't worry about. Then there's Pete Rose, who was a clean player, one of the best of all-time. You don't have to respond. You can't convince me that he doesn't belong in Cooperstown.
3. Memorabilia
October 8 will mark the 56th anniversary of Don Larsen's perfect game for the Yankees in the World Series against Brooklyn. Larsen is now 82 years old and he wants to insure that his grandsons have enough money for college, so on October 8 Steiner Sports will begin an online auction for the jersey he wore that day. He'll probably earn enough for the grandkids. The uniform that Yogi Berra wore that day fetched over half a million, but Yogi didn't see any of it. His uniform got reused and three years later a kid getting a tryout got it and kept it. And on the subject of sports auctions, the word was that Charlie Sheen was the guy who bought Lawrence Taylor's Super Bowl ring that LT's son put on the block. Sheen says "not true." I would have been surprised if Sheen had bought it, he already owns the sports ring he told me he considers the "Holy Grail," Babe Ruth's 1927 Championship ring. So who did buy LT's ring? And what piece of sports memorabilia would you consider to be the best you could possibly own?
4. Fore!
So you're teeing off on a golf course which is adjacent to a major highway. The results can be mixed. The other day in Murfreesboro, Tennessee a woman on a motorcycle, Susan Westerfield, took a golf ball right in the kisser. She lost some teeth, cut her lip, but didn't crash. She was treated at the hospital and then released. The golfer wasn't charged. In 1998, a guy was playing golf in Haydenville, Massachusetts when his tee shot smashed off a Toyota. It caromed back onto the golf course onto the green and into the cup for a hole in one! The Toyota got dented, but the driver appeared on the Tonight Show and Jay Leno paid for the damage. Maybe Jay can take care of Susan's dental bills?
5. Oops
Hey, I'm not trying to dump on some of my newscasting brethren, but there were a couple of doozies over the weekend. One New York anchorwoman called the suspect in the Etan Patz case "Pedro Martinez." OK, it wasn't the former pitcher it was actually someone named Pedro Hernandez. And in Miami, an anchorwoman referred to the Philadelphia NBA team as the 69ers. Too bad it isn't football season. We could have found out what the San Francisco 56ers are up to.
Happy Birthday: The Knicks Carmelo Anthony. 28.
Bonus Birthdays: JFK was born on this date in 1917, Bob Hope in 1903.
Today in Sports: Larry Bird wins the NBA Rookie of the Year award beating out Magic Johnson. 1980.
Bonus Event: Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay become the first people to reach the top of Mount Everest. 1953.