Another Step

Redeem Team takes another step

BEIJING (AP) The U.S. Olympic team stopped the pick-and-rolls - and just about everything else Greece tried.

These Americans that looked so lost two years at the world championship when this team was being formed appear to have found their Olympic defensive way.

Batting away balls or swatting shots on seemingly every possession late in the second quarter, the Americans broke open a close game and went on to a 92-69 victory Thursday night to clinch a spot in the medal round.

Their offense wasn't too shabby either as the Americans were able to find the range on jump shots when the Greeks went to a zone defense to slow them down.

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Rangers are toast

BOSTON – The playoff race is now just a faint memory, like a sleep-away camp from a summer long ago. It allows the Rangers to refocus on the original and more tangible goal for this season: developing young players, particularly young pitchers.

And after another night when the ERA shot up and another young pitcher (Luis Mendoza) had to hand the ball to manager Ron Washington before the game was even halfway over, and an 8-4 loss in Boston dropped them to just one game above .500, the Rangers are forced to consider the season's most important questions:

Are the young pitchers gaining the kind of experience from which they will grow or are they simply getting hammered?

"The question isn't whether they are making progress," assistant general manager Thad Levine said, choosing his words delicately, "it's whether they are making enough progress."

For the seventh time in 11 starts this year, Mendoza failed to make it through five innings. Washington came to get him after he allowed the first four batters of the fifth to reach base. The last batter he faced, rookie Jed Lowrie, lined a two-run double to give Boston an 8-0 lead.

It also pushed the starting rotation ERA to 5.69. The ERA has pushed higher on each day of the current road trip, during which the Rangers have won just once in five games and have seen their deficit in the wild-card standings bulge to nine games back of Boston

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Federer shocker

BEIJING -- Roger Federer's bid for his first Olympic singles medal ended Thursday night when he lost to American James Blake.

With the sort of lackluster performance once unthinkable for Federer, he was eliminated in the quarterfinals 6-4, 7-6 (2).

The upset was a stunner in that Blake had won only a single set in their previous eight matches. But the top-seeded Federer is battling a year-long slump that has left him stalled at 12 major titles, two shy of Pete Sampras' record.

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Julia Child the female James Bond?

Famed chef Julia Child shared a secret with Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg and Chicago White Sox catcher Moe Berg at a time when the Nazis threatened the world.

While Julia Child was cooking pheasants, she was also part of an international spy ring during World War II.

They served in an international spy ring managed by the Office of Strategic Services, an early version of the CIA created in World War II by President Franklin Roosevelt.

The full secret comes out Thursday, all of the names and previously classified files identifying nearly 24,000 spies who formed the first centralized intelligence effort by the United States. The National Archives, which this week released a list of the names found in the records, will make available for the first time all 750,000 pages identifying the vast spy network of military and civilian operatives.

Among the more than 35,000 OSS personnel files are applications, commendations and handwritten notes identifying young recruits who, like Child, Goldberg and Berg, earned greater acclaim in other fields -- Arthur Schlesinger Jr., a historian and special assistant to President Kennedy; Sterling Hayden, a film and television actor whose work included a role in "The Godfather"; and Thomas Braden, an author whose "Eight Is Enough" book inspired the 1970s television series.

Other notables identified in the files include John Hemingway, son of author Ernest Hemingway; Quentin and Kermit Roosevelt, sons of President Theodore Roosevelt, and Miles Copeland, father of Stewart Copeland, drummer for the band The Police.

Brett Favre wants to play, at least for now. He has flip-flopped more times than a pancake at IHOP. What is the team suppose to do? If he returns, there will be a divided locker room, second guessing all over the place, and Green Bay might end up losing their successor to Favre.

The Packers should not give him his outright release. Favre retires, the Pack moves on with Rodgers, all is well. Favre wants a meeting in March to say he wants to unretire, then cancels. The organization seemed willing at that point to let him return. Now, almost 4 months later, he wants to play?

What is he gets into training camp and decides it is just too much and he really doesn't want to play. This is selfishness at the utmost degree. If the team tries to trade him, what will they get? Probably not much. Forget the other divisional teams and maybe most in the NFC (maybe Tampa is a possibility). You think Favre wants to go to Baltimore or Oakland? Surely, he wants to go south. Carolina would fit but are the Packers willing and able to make a respectable deal with other teams knowing that he has to be traded? He has put this organization is a terrible spot.

What a mess

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This is not a good thing. Packer is synonymous with the NCAA tournament.

Packer out (no, not Brett Favre)
Billy Packer's streak of Final Fours is over after 34 years.

Billy Packer will reportedly be replaced by CBS studio analyst Clark Kellogg.
Packer, a color commentator, will be replaced in CBS' coverage by studio analyst Clark Kellogg, according to media reports Monday.

Jim Nantz will continue in his Final Four play-by-play role.

Packer, 68, will leave CBS after 28 years to pursue "other projects in basketball," according to The Miami Herald.

Speculation of Packer's exit was fueled amid widespread criticism during this year's tournament.

Early in the 2008 semifinal between Kansas and North Carolina, with the Jayhawks up 38-12, Packer declared, "The game is over."

North Carolina cut the lead to 54-50 with 11 minutes left in the second half before Kansas pulled away, winning 84-66.

The Jayhawks beat Memphis 75-68 to claim the national title.

Packer, who began his Final Four run at NBC, later defended the comment to USA Today.

"My job is to say what I see, not have some kind of subconscious feelings about offending anybody. ... It probably annoyed some people, but I don't concern myself with having some agenda that's contrary to what I'm seeing," he said.

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Ian Kinsler is doing things few people predicted. He still has glove issues but this guy can play the game. I was fortunate to be able to meet him about 1 1/2 years ago and speak with him. He was confident, bordering on cocky, but still a pretty nice guy.
Kinsler hits 25

Kinsler extended his majors-best hitting streak to 25 games with three hits and drove in three runs, and Young and Bradley also had key hits, leading the Texas Rangers to a wild 12-11 victory over the AL Central-leading Chicago White Sox that clinched another series win.

"We're showing a lot of character, clawing our way through games," said Young, who has a 15-game hitting streak. "We're playing as a team. ... The momentum we've built up over the last couple of months, hopefully we can carry that over into the second half.

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The Beatles are still a little bit popular
The hand-painted drum skin that appeared on the sleeve of the Beatles' ground-breaking 1967 album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" sold for $1.1 million at auction on Thursday in London, four times its estimate.

Billed as the "world's most famous drum skin," it was the star lot of Christie's rock and pop memorabilia sale in London, and eclipsed the other highlight, John Lennon's handwritten lyrics for hit song "Give Peace a Chance."

The manuscript still fetched $834,000, well above pre-sale expectations of around $500,000.

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Dit ontluikt voor u (that's Dutch for "This Bud's for you")

Belgian brewer InBev has announced it will buy its U.S. rival Anheuser-Busch for $52 billion to create the world's largest brewer.

The deal would create the world's largest brewer and put the U.S. beer-maker in the hands of Belgian-based InBev.

The acquisition means control over America's largest brewer, the No. 2 worldwide, moves overseas. Based in St. Louis, Missouri, Anheuser-Busch has more than 48 percent of American market share with brands that include Bud Light.

InBev is the world's second largest beer maker, with brands that include Stella Artois and Becks.

The deal must be approved by shareholders and European and U.S. antitrust regulators. The merger will produce the fourth-largest consumer product company worldwide

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Rush does exist!

Ok, for most people out there, this is not the biggest story....or even a big story. BUT, for me, this is a neat thing. As much as I cant stand Rolling Stone, they finally acknowledged Rush for the first time since May of 1981. in retrospect, that is really hard to believe. This magazine does not like this group and for whatever reason, has basically refused to even mention Rush in their publication.

Rush never sleeps
Under bright houselights, the 17,000-capacity venue is quickly filling with fans of the Canadian rock trio Rush — many resembling the two young men I find sitting 10 rows from the stage: brow-fringing hair, utilitarian glasses, sprouts of chin whisker. They look straight out of an '82 yearbook photo of the after-school D&D club — a suggestion neither finds insulting.

I've never thought of us as particularly cool," says Lifeson, now 54 but still in possession of much of his thick blond hair. Within Rush, Lifeson is known as "Lerxst" — a band in-joke from years ago, when the three members entertained themselves by inserting extra syllables and accents into proper nouns. But, "We were filling these places, and I noticed everybody knew all the lyrics, knew the drum fills and had that mentality like, 'This is my band. I found these guys,' " says Lifeson.

What follows is difficult to describe. It involves hysteria. It involves tears. It involves air-drumming of a brio rarely witnessed — not just the standard cymbal-snare pantomime, mind you, but a dizzying recital of tom, bell, cymbal, wind chime, all in perfect sync with the onstage movements of Peart, Rush's drum god and lyricist. It's a kinetic genuflection, variations of it occurring all around me. To my right an unaccompanied woman in camp shorts raises a thumbs-up sign every eight bars. A few rows up, a man is air-drumming, guitaring and bass-playing simultaneously (a spectacle resembling full-contact hacky sack). From behind, a fortysomething man yanks my shoulder during a solo to yell, "That's an ES-355 guitar he's got there!" And for the next three hours, during songs about religion, suburbia, tidal pools and trees, most of this crowd will sing along with every word.

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Complete album guide

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Have a Ham Slamwich
On-deck hitter David Murphy tossed his bat and helmet into the air. Ron Washington leaped onto the back of coach Art Howe, almost knocking him to the ground. Ian Kinsler tried to hurdle the dugout railing and instead ended up eating dirt.

And they could not have looked more graceful doing it.

Such are scenes from a pennant race. Whether they remain in the hunt all summer or not even until the end of July, the Rangers, with a most improbable 5-4 win over AL-West leading Los Angeles on Wednesday night, served notice they aren't going anywhere for now.

Josh Hamilton clinched the win with the first walk-off homer of his career. It came off primo closer Francisco Rodriguez with two outs in the ninth of a game in which the Rangers started reliever Warner Madrigal and a game they never led until the final pitch.

The Rangers have won two of the first three games of the series to inch within 6½ games of Los Angeles. A series-clinching win tonight would put them 5½ games out heading into the final weekend before the All-Star break

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The Mavs make a huge splash by signing Diop and JJ. Wow, thank goodness those two are locked up for the next few years. The Mavs paid Diop 2x what he is worth...and for 5 years. Positively insane.

Why?

Diop's contract will start at $5,585,000. With the maximum eight percent raises, The five-year deal will be worth $32.393 million.

"It's great signing a five-year deal," Diop said. "Knowing you're back where you want to be is important to me. There were three or four teams that offered me the mid-level. But it wasn't a hard decision. The only way I would have ended up somewhere else is if it was for a lot more money, not a little."

Barea, meanwhile, signed for $1.5 million next season. Two years of the three-year contract are guaranteed, with the third at the team's option.

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The Onion takes on Mark Cuban

Billionaire Mark Cuban, tired of the opposition he has encountered from NBA management in his role as owner of the Dallas Mavericks and frustrated with opposition from the MLB owners' association in his attempt to buy the Chicago Cubs, liquidated almost all his personal wealth and holdings and purchased the entirety of sports for an undisclosed but undoubtedly large sum on Monday.

"I'm pleased and excited to announce to fans of—well, of everything, really—that a new era has begun in the game, activity, contest, race, national pastime, world championship tournament, sport, or sports that you love so much," a cheerful Cuban said Tuesday morning in a press conference held to announce his acquisition. "So many of the things that have frustrated me about sports—the officiating, the ivory-tower attitude of the powers-that-be, the fact that I am not in control of every single aspect of them—all of that is about to change."

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Another reason why Dallas is failing

F***

Carlin (May 12, 1937 – June 22, 2008)
Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television. Some People Are Stupid. Stuff. People I Can Do Without. George Carlin, who died of heart failure Sunday at 71, leaves behind not only a series of memorable routines, but a legal legacy: His most celebrated monologue, a frantic, informed riff on those infamous seven words, led to a Supreme Court decision on broadcasting offensive language.

The counterculture hero's jokes also targeted things such as misplaced shame, religious hypocrisy and linguistic quirks — why, he once asked, do we drive on a parkway and park on a driveway?

Carlin, who had a history of heart trouble, went into St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica on Sunday afternoon complaining of chest pain and died later that evening, said his publicist, Jeff Abraham. He had performed as recently as last weekend at the Orleans Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas.

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All-Star game starter?


Rangers climb above .500 once again
On the way to a 5-3 win Sunday, Vicente Padilla fed the aggressive – almost undisciplined – Washington Nationals a steady dose of hard stuff for seven innings to earn his 10th win of the season and legitimately make himself a contender for a spot on the American League All-Star team. He is tied for second in the AL in wins and has won eight of his last nine decisions.

Closer C.J. Wilson followed suit in the ninth for his most efficient save in more than two months. It came at a time when Wilson's job was in peril after consecutive poor outings earlier in the week.

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I am getting a little jazzed for the Olympics

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A song worth half-a-billion dollars
In the big, bad game of rock and roll, “Stairway to Heaven” is undeniably a winner. Released by Led Zeppelin in 1971, the eight-minute song is considered a musical masterpiece and is one of the most-played rock tunes of all time. Proving its longevity, “Stairway” hit the U.K. charts again last fall and was a top download in the U.S., after Zeppelin’s first downloadable album launched on iTunes. But because the band is notoriously protective of its work, “Stairway” hasn’t met its full moneymaking potential.

THE BOTTOM LINE
Nearly 37 years after the release of “Stairway,” there seems to be no end to its ­revenue stream. But Zeppelin could up the total if it wants to go commercial.

VALUE OF "STAIRWAY" EARNINGS: $562 million
VALUE OF POTENTIAL LICENSING DEALS: $10 million and up


TOTAL VALUE OF "STAIRWAY": $572 million or more

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