THE WEEKEND RECAP

It was quite a weekend in sports, and last night’s Hall of Fame game in Canton had me marveling in disbelief that the NFL was already back and rolling. While I only caught a little bit of the 4th quarter and some highlights, it’s amazing that we’ve already burned through summer and the NFL and college football are now upon us. Here are a few random thoughts I collected over the weekend.

TIGER GETS IT ROLLING

While the 16th hole took a lot of intrigue out of the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational, Tiger Woods served notice that he is in a very good place right now. While most of the talking heads will continue their mantra that it’s Tiger against the field, this week, there is actually good reason to believe it.

Tiger is on the prowl…

On a very difficult golf course, Tiger Woods was attacking. His 180-yard 8-iron to 14-inches on 16 was another shot that he’ll add to his highlight reel, and showed that Woods is back in complete control of his golf ball. His ability to get off the tee and put himself into good position was the biggest reason why I think he’ll make it three straight wins, 15 career majors, and 71 tournaments come Sunday at Hazeltine. Watching Woods close a 3-stroke lead on Padraig Harrington and actually lead by one after five holes without Paddy dropping a shot was vintage Tiger. And while it amounted to garbage time, Tiger throwing a dart into the 18th green and knocking in a birdie was important, especially since Woods has started to leak oil down the stretch on Sunday in some very big tournaments of late.

Reading today that a PGA rules official put Woods and Harrington on the clock at the 16th hole helps explain why Harrington looked to be just chopping the ball around on that fateful hole that saw him make a snowman and drop out of contention. Tiger’s lack of celebration after sinking his birdie on 18 shows that he too was let down by Paddy’s disaster and was relishing the battle. I’m all for quick play, but the rules official who decided to put two of the worlds best on the clock with three holes to go needs to give his head a shake.

BIG PAPI AND THE PLAYERS UNION MESS

I can explain how I went from being released by the Twins to hitting 40 HRs… GNC supplements!

It was a pretty sad day watching David Ortiz and new MLBPA head Michael Weiner spin their way through Ortiz’s press conference at Yankee stadium. It was most baseball fans first introduction to Weiner, and he looked every bit the part of Donald Fehr’s successor. While Papi decided to wear a Sgt. Pepper jacket and bob and weave his way through every media question, Weiner did his best to establish a second gunman on the grassy knoll. Weiner clung to the false positive theory, espousing that Ortiz very well could have been one of the many alleged false positives that were recorded during those fateful confidential drug tests.

Watching the press conference live, you could feel the elephant in the room as the media poked and prodded, knowing that they’d get nothing of substance out of either man, but knowing it still had to to its job and ask the questions. The situation just screamed for someone to stand up and finally just say something.

“You know what you all did. How long are we supposed to believe that everyone exposed was one of the freakishly small minority that just happened to by a tainted product? How long are we going to listen to you talk in circles, when you really should just apologize to us and more importantly, the members of your union for not protecting them from the temptation and evils of performance enhancing drugs? Can I blame a player for taking steroids? Can I blame Jason Giambi for getting a $120 million contract? Not really. But I sure can blame the people that were hired to protect the players, even if it happened to be from themselves.”

PATRICK KANE IS AN IDIOT

Former #1 pick Patrick Kane, a 20-year-old forward for the Chicago Blackhawks, was charged with robbery and assault after allegedly punching a 62-year-old cab driver over 20 cents in change. Kane was back in his hometown drinking with his cousin in downtown Buffalo, and was lit up enough to think it was smart to get in a fight over a $15 cab fare.

A few people who are a position to know these things tell me that they’ve heard whispers that Kane is a boozebag, which isn’t a good thing to be when you are a 20-year-old millionaire. They’ve seen the underage Kane out and about drinking illegally at clubs in Chicago during the season, and I’ve got to believe that alcohol was a large part of the decision making process when dropping the gloves over two dimes.

From most reports, it sounds like Kane’s cousin James is the real idiot. When the fare finished up at $13.80, the guys asked for change, and the cabbie gave them a dollar back, claiming he didn’t have the 20 cents.

“They broke my glasses, they ripped my clothes… all over 20 cents,” cabbie Jan Radecki said in the police report.

According to the cabbie, after shorting the guys the 20 cents, James Kane ripped the money back from him and “sucker punched” him. Then Patrick Kane, who made a base salary of $875,000 last season, and just over $3.25 million with bonuses, started joining in.

“The other one [Patrick] punched me in the head. He says, ‘You don’t know who you’re f#@king with! You don’t know who you’re F#@king with! And he kept pounding and pounding on me.”

I’m not usually one to just believe the cabbie’s story, especially after getting taken to the cleaners by one just last weekend, but apparently witnesses called the attack in. While I’m sure the truth lies somewhere between the driver’s story and the one Kane’s lawyers will surely be telling, here’s hoping that Kane gives his head a shake and gets it together. He’s dangerously close to joining that group of elite athletes that seem to be gigantic weenies…

DEADSPIN AND JOSH HAMILTON

This weekend I stumbled upon the pictures that Deadspin posted of Josh Hamilton. If you didn’t hear, Hamilton, who is one of my favorite baseball players and a recovering addict, fell off the wagon in January and had one hell of a bender in Tempe, Arizona.

I’ve actually been to the bar (Maloney’s — which apparently is now closed) that all of this went down at in Tempe, and this entire story just makes me sad. I feel terrible for Hamilton, who is probably going through the torment and disappointment of letting down a whole slew of people that stuck by him the past few years as he cleaned himself up. It’s no shock to me that this took place in Tempe, a place I’ve talked about multiple times as having no soul. Congratulations, Sun Devils! You’ve taken the best American sports comeback of the past few years and turned him into a body shot taking derelict. According to the report, a bartender recognized Hamilton as being “the home run derby guy.” After Hamilton acknowledged that was him, the bartender said, “Just for that, lemme buy you a beer.”

I can see the argument for posting photos like these, but this is the kind of story that makes me really dislike Deadspin. I enjoy much of what they do, read them on a very regular basis, and would love to have 1/10th of their web traffic, but if it means posting photos like this, I’m happy staying on the sidelines.

John Hamilton is just a guy, and he’s a guy that has come back from pretty dark depths. Sure, he may turn people off with his religious convictions, but put me in the group of people that wish things like this never found their way to the internet.

JUST BECAUSE WE CAN’T END ON THAT…

John Wall looks like he’s going to be a pretty sweet basketball player. Here’s hoping he hasn’t taken illegal payments from an agent… yet. I wonder if Jerry Stackhouse’s people are trying to get this tape confiscated.