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Nuts For Brazil

If you're a betting man and if they have betting lines on hosting the 2014 World Cup you'd be wise to put a bundle on Brazil. Sure they have some issues with poverty, crime and substandard stadia but they have one big thing in their favor. FIFA has said they intend to hold the tournament in South America and Brazil is the only country bidding to play host. 

The actual presentation of the bid had little of the flair that the country's known for. Instead of a conga line led by a thong-clad beachcomber snaking through the meeting and delivering the documents, the soccer federation opted for a more Germanic approach.

With little pomp and fanfare, lone candidate Brazil submitted its bid Tuesday to host the 2014 World Cup. The Brazil delegation showcased its plans in a 30-minute presentation before handing over a 900-page bid document to FIFA president Sepp Blatter. The delegation included Brazilian soccer federation president Ricardo Teixeira, former Brazil player Romario and author Paulo Coelho.

Bid organizers refused to publicly reveal details, including budget estimates.

FIFA can still reject Brazil's bid which would open the floor to countries outside of South America, including the United States. Something tells me that if the Brazil delegation had tabbed Gisele Bundchen, Adriana Lima and Alessandra Ambrosio instead of Teixeira, Romario and Coelho questions about the bid would have fallen by the wayside. When faced with the fitness of those three foxes who is going to care about the fitness of the country's infrastructure?

Bollocks!

Everyone knows that there was more than soccer behind David Beckham's decision to take his act from Europe to the US. There's the money, off-field opportunities for him and his wife and the chance to turn a whole country onto the world's game. That last one probably won't happen and probably wasn't all that big a factor in his decision. It was, however, one of the reasons the Los Angeles Galaxy agreed to furnish him with a, er, galaxy of lucre. The team is hoping to become a national item because of their association with Becks. If they do it will only be because of that association because they aren't all that good at the soccer thing.

They lost an exhibition match to Tigres of Mexico on Tuesday by a 3-0 count which wasn't exactly the introduction they hoped to give Beckham to their style of play. The team President Alexei Lalas realized that it was a bad showing.

“That was a miserable performance which was totally unacceptable and not something we will ever be proud of. If I could figure it out, I would have done something about it. It doesn’t matter if you’re playing in front of five people or the entire world, that’s a poor performance. There has been a euphoric attitude round this city and this was not a great way to continue that."

Winston Churchill he isn't but as we've already established, we're not in London anymore. The actual number of people watching was somewhere between the two figures that Lalas quoted. There were 2,000 hardy souls watching the action on the pitch but it's hard to imagine any of them were as dismayed by the result. The British tabloids aren't offering the team a free pass. The Sun describes Beckham as looking like he already regretted his move to L.A. and compared the team, unfavorably, to a bunch of drunks cobbled together from a pub. And to top it all off Beckham isn't a sure bet to play in what was scheduled to be his first game with the club against British power Chelsea this weekend. Good times.

Getting Drunk On Athletes, Remembering Larry Doby And Kei Igawa's Losing It

It's Friday so let's all head out and enjoy a few Doc Goodens, the sunshine and good friends. (Deuce of Davenport)

Major League Baseball is angry with ESPN. Get in line, Bud. (Can't Stop The Bleeding)

Everything you (n)ever needed to know about that odd hill in centerfield at Minute Maid Park. (The 700 Level)

Jeremy Roenick retired from hockey this week. Still going strong is the NHL '94 Roenick, a.k.a. the Bo Jackson of video game hockey. (The Sports Hernia)

Improving baseball's All-Star Game. (All on the Field)

Coco Crisp kept finding himself in good situations last night. (One More Dying Quail)

David Beckham hits the United States and ESPN discovers soccer. Coincidence? (Lion in Oil)

Kei Igawa is almost as frustrated with Kei Igawa as Yankee fans. (NY Post)

Whither QuesTec? (Doberman On The Diamond)

It was 60 years ago yesterday that Larry Doby broke the AL color line for the Cleveland Indians. Isn't that enough time for them to come up with a less offensive mascot? (Bugs & Cranks)

C'mon Cheeks Hold Together!

Excuses in American sports tend to be either bland (I lost the ball in the sun) or overly extravagant (I'm a chimera which accounts for why I tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs) but rarely are they embarassing to the team or player making them. Not so in Uganda. The Mbale Heroes, a team in the Ugandan soccer league, failed to show up for a match against URA this week. Why? Because the entire team had diarrhea. They faxed their regrets to national football league secretary Moses Magogo and asked if the game could be rescheduled when their stomachs had settled.

"They sent a fax last Saturday which I saw on Monday but I turned down their request because they hadn't attached supporting medical documents," Magogo revealed.

"They later sent some medical documents very late which I could not readily interpret. I am waiting for Dr. Ronald Kisolo to look at their documents."

Their documents? What Dr. Kisolo needs to do is look at something that you can't put down on paper. Any doctor worth his salt is going to dig deep into this matter and see what runs out. The hope here is that Magogo and Kisolo forfeit the match to URA. What kind of team named Heroes is going to let a little looseness in the stool keep them from their appointed rounds?

(Via Fark)

Mickey Mouse Hates Black People But Miguel Cabrera Loves Quarter Pounders

The Florida State Seminoles can sit on top of the world just as long as they don't sit in Disney World 'cause there's no black men allowed in there! (SportsbyBrooks)

Haven't the people of Blacksburg suffered enough? (Awful Announcing)

A ranking of the personnel men of the NBA. There's a lot of bad in those ranks if Isiah Thomas only ranks 25th. (SI.com)

It's never too early for a NFL mock draft. Except it's much too early for a NFL mock draft. At least the Jets are picking 24th, which means they had a heck of a mock season. (Walters Football Site)

Don't fuck with Norweigian soccer moms. (The Offside)

It's no surprise that the greasy teen moustache Greg Maddux used to wear won him the Rookie Card Challenge. (Babes Love Baseball)

Miguel Cabrera cares not for your petty concerns about his obesity. (Bugs & Cranks)

Gilbert Arenas wants to be just like Marvin Brando. We assume he means Marlon Brando which we assume means he wants to spread VD across Tahiti the way Brando spread butter on that chick in Last Tango in Paris. (DC Sports Bog)

A new basketball court for Indiana University. (Rumors and Rants)

Who would have ever thought racing sausages would create so many copycats? (Home Run Derby)

You Don't Make Friends With Salad And Other Lessons Learned From Injured Athletes

Ian Snell will have more time on his hands to kiss random blonds at bars in Seattle since he won't be making his scheduled start Tuesday night. It's not a sore elbow or tendonitis that will keep Snell from his appointed rounds but a chicken breast. Snell, the Pirates ERA leader, will be out of the lineup after burning his finger while preparing some poultry to top a salad. It's not that serious, he'll start Saturday in Anaheim instead, and the biggest casualty seems to have been Snell's dinner. "I'm all right, but the salad wasn't too good," he reported.

Strangely Snell isn't the first NL Central hurler to run into trouble with a salad. Matt Wise, a reliever with the Brewers, cut his finger on a pair of salad tongs last year and was forced to miss a few games while he recovered. Of course Wise also slammed his head into a dugout overhang this weekend after leaving a game so maybe he's just a klutz and we shouldn't go around blaming salad for keeping our nation's fine athletes from doing their jobs.

Snell's injury got us thinking about some of the stranger injuries that have cost pro athletes time on the field. Our personal favorites are Glenallen Hill's nightmarish nightmare and Charlie Hudson's firearm mishap. Hill suffers from arachnophobia and had a nightmare about spiders that landed him on the DL while he was with Toronto. He sleepwalked his way into a glass table and down a flight of stairs causing lacerations all over his body and, we're assuming, a difficult time when he returned to the clubhouse to face his teammates.

Hudson's might be even stranger. A lefty knuckleballer with the Texas Rangers in their infancy, once shot himself in the finger while cleaning a .38 revolver. Mike Shropshire's excellent Seasons In Hell about those teams has the story.

"It's just one of those accidents that hunters and gun enthusiasts have from time to time," Charlie explained while showing off his bandage. "I was cleaning my .38 revolver and the thing went off." Nobody bothered to ask Charlie exactly what type creatures he liked to hunt with a .38 revolver just as nobody questioned the wisdom, whether intentional or not, of his accident.

They aren't alone on the list, though.

• Brewers pitcher Steve Sparks dislocated his shoulder while trying to tear a telephone book in half.
• Cecil Upshaw ruined a promising career with the Braves in the late 60's when he tore up the nerves in his ring finger while demonstrating dunks on the awning outside a restaurant.
• Clint Barmes of the Rockies ruined an excellent start to his career when he fell and broke his collarbone while trying to carry deer meat up the stairs to his apartment. 
• Vince Coleman got rolled up by a tarp during the 1985 NLCS and missed the World Series which St. Louis lost to Kansas City in seven games.
• Wade Boggs proved that only cowboys should wear cowboy boots when he strained his back pulling them on and missed a week of play.
• Adam Eaton may have been channeling Hudson when he stabbed himself in the stomach while trying to open a DVD package.
• Marty Cordova let vanity get the best of him when he fell asleep in a tanning bed and was forced to miss time with a bad sunburn.
• Rick Honeycutt didn't miss time because he slashed his head with a tack taped to his finger while pitching but he did get suspended for having the tack there in the first place.

Baseball players seem to dominate this list but they aren't the only athletes to injure themselves in goofy ways.

• Darren Barnard, a English footballer, slipped on a puddle of dog piss and injured knee ligaments badly enough to cost him five months.
• The Wikipedia entry for Lionel Simmons says that his career was shortened "due to chronic injuries". What it doesn't say is that one of those injuries was wrist tendonitis brought on by excessive use of a Gameboy.
• Swiss soccer player Paulo Diogo was engaged in a typically overwrought goal celebration when he jumped up on a metal fence in 2004. He didn't notice that his wedding ring snagged the fence and when he jumped down his finger remained attached to the barrier. It couldn't be reattached and Diogo picked up a yellow card for excessive exuberance.
• Redskins quarterback Gus Frerotte didn't lose his head when he butted it against a wall in celebration of a touchdown. He did concuss himself, however, and had to take a trip to the hospital.
• Jaguar coach Jack Del Rio thought that a tree stump with axe was the perfect way to illustrate his motto of "keep chopping wood" during a losing streak in 2003. It backfired when punter Chris Hanson drove the axe into his leg during some locker room tomfoolery. That makes Hanson a two-time loser as he also suffered first and second degree burns after a fondue party got out of control in 2002.
• Former hockey goaltender Glenn Healy is also an accomplished bagpiper. He's not an accomplished bagpipe technician, however, and once suffered a deep gash on his hand while changing the bag on his pipes.
• Few athletes spend their downtime playing the bagpipes, even fewer spend that time playing Scrabble. Lionel Letizi, a French soccer player, proved that it wasn't a good idea when he threw his back out while reaching for a dropped tile.
• LaRon Landry was a recent addition to this list when he missed the Redskins minicamp after he took a paintball to the groin.
• And perhaps the only person on this list who will give you pause before having a laugh at their bad luck is Mistar. An Indonesian soccer star, Mistar was killed by a stampede of pigs who rampaged across his team's training session in 1995.

(Picture courtesy of On The DL)

Losing Bags You Expect But Losing Midfielders Is A New One

There are lots of things to remember when you're travelling. You've got to make sure you have your passport, ticket confirmation numbers, medication, those plastic bags for any liquids and if you're with kids you usually have to keep an eye on them as well. Someone needs to let a couple of soccer teams passing through the New York area in on that last travel tip. Haiti's national junior team landed at JFK yesterday en route to Seoul for the Under-17 World Cup but before they could board the second flight they noticed something was missing.

Thirteen players on Haiti's national junior soccer squad deserted the team during a brief layover at Kennedy Airport early yesterday, just hours before a trip to South Korea to prepare for a major world tournament, authorities said.

The players abandoned the team sometime between Tuesday night and yesterday morning, said Felix Augustin, Haiti's consul general in New York.

11 of the players have been rounded up, including two who had found their way to another state, and the Haitian Consulate believes that adults not associated with the team may have helped the players with their flight from JFK. The Port Authority and other local officials don't believe there was any "nefarious intent" involved with the disappearance. That might not be the case with another soccer player who absconded from Newark Airport.

Lester More, a forward with Cuba's national team, slipped away from the team before they flew to Houston for a match against Honduras in the continuing Gold Cup soccer tournament. Another player, Osvaldo Alonso, did not return from a team shopping outing in Houston.

"We know what you know," said a Cuba team trainer, who declined to give his name. "We don't know anything more. These two players left. They did not come back."

"No one here is keeping them from leaving," he said in a brief interview at the team hotel. "If they leave, that's their business. We don't know where they are now. We don't know who's helping them. We don't know if they're coming back."

We'll handle that last part. They aren't.

Whatever Happened To Michael Cage?

If that's a question you've found yourself asking a lot recently you are either a graduate of San Diego State, a die-hard fan of the early 90's Seattle Supersonics or blessed with ample amounts of free time. The former power forward, known as John Shaft by some because of his tight afro and menacing personality, led the league in rebounding during the 1987-88 season and didn't miss a game between 1990 and 1997. He retired after the 2000 season and is now the color commentator for the Memphis Grizzlies. But when the basketball season comes to an end he returns home to Newport in California and a different pursuit fills his days.

Cage is a referee for youth soccer games, and the Daily Pilot caught up with him after he'd worked the girls' fifth-and sixth-grade Gold Division final of the Daily Pilot Cup tournament.

Question: How in the world did you start officiating youth soccer games?

Answer: In my spare time, this is what I do. I love youth soccer. I love youth sports, basketball, football, baseball, and I have three kids who are playing club soccer and also participating in the Pilot Cup this weekend.

I got involved in soccer because of my wife [Jodi]. She was a tremendous soccer player. She played for 17 years. She has such a love for it and passion for it. When I met her, during my pro career, she always talked about soccer, so I started playing soccer with her in the off-season. It just took off from there, and I've stayed an active participant ever since.

There's no better way to keep arguing to a minimum than having a 6'9" referee who used to tangle with Charles Oakley and Karl Malone. You ain't getting away with shit when this guy is the one with the whistle. He's seen it and heard it all before and probably did it to Terry Cummings when the ref was looking the other way.

Wish You Were Here

A great question's been posed by The Big Picture this morning: If you could attend any fictional sporting event, what would it be? There are so many worthy contenders. The All-Valley 18-and-Under karate tournament, Kevin Costner's perfecto in For Love of the Game, Kumite, Thornton Mellon's successful Triple Lindy, The Natural...there are many, many worthy choices.

In these parts, though, the choice came down to two movies which didn't take place in the United States. In one corner we have the prisoner vs. Nazi soccer game in Victory and in the other corner is the Rocky Balboa-Ivan Drago Christmas Day fight in Moscow. Both events have some of the same draws. Rooting for the underdog in hostile surroundings, crowds that turn against evil lackeys into supporters of the little guy and stunning endings that would burn into your memory for the rest of your life. And, obviously, both events feature Sylvester Stallone in major roles, as does another member of my near-miss list Over the Top.

The drawback of Victory is that you'd probably have to be either a Nazi or a Frenchman to be at the game. It's a pretty hefty drawback although it's mitigated by getting to play a role in helping the prisoners escape at the end of the game. Sitting in that Paris stadium and cheering for the Allies in open defiance of their Teutonic overlords would be pretty great as well.  "Victoire, victoire, victoire," indeed. Suspending disbelief long enough to believe that Michael Caine is one of Europe's finest footballers would be like a non-narcotic acid trip for the ages. Finally, Pele shrugging off injury to nail that bicycle kick would have to rank against The Dunk among singular moments of athletic brillance witnessed with these two eyes. It would probably even rank a bit higher as Starks wasn't in a POW camp 24 hours before the matchup with the Bulls.

But in the end the vote goes to Rocky's unexpected triumph over Drago. The announcers are American so you have to imagine that being a party apparatchnick isn't a must for attendance at the bout. It would be pretty incredible to sit down close during those first few rounds when Drago is just unloading on Rocky. The blood and sweat spraying from Rocky's body, the sound of each punch connecting with bone and the sheer thrill of a championship fight would outweigh, for a while anyway, the fact that the guy you want to win is getting his ass kicked. And then when Rocky comes back,  it must have been that way in 1985 when Villanova chopped down Georgetown or when Buster Douglas knocked out Tyson, you can smell the upset in the air. Once the fans start cheering for him, I don't know how you'd keep your eyes dry in such a situation. And the waterworks would certainly open up when Balboa takes the mike after the match and addresses the once-hostile crowd with his message of love.

Not a dry eye in the house. Even without being able to see the training sequence, Rocky IV is the king of the fictional sporting events.

Oh No He Has Healt' Problems

Is Diego Maradona getting in shape for one last shot at a comeback? Uh, no.

Diego Maradona is in the news again and unfortunately it's not good news. The Argentine soccer hero was taken by an ambulance to a hospital on Thursday where is he is being treated and held against his will for alcoholism, excessive eating and smoking.

The 47-year-old is being sedated while his body fights the withdrawal symptoms brought on by the star's alcoholism.

He looks like a fatter, less healthy Nate Newton.