2012年7月16日星期一

Reds 1B Votto needs knee surgery, out 3-4 weeks

By JOE KAY (AP Sports Writer) | The Associated Press
CINCINNATI (AP) -- Reds first baseman Joey Votto will have surgery to repair torn cartilage in his left knee, leaving the NL Central leaders without their best hitter for the next three to four weeks.
The 2010 National League MVP hurt the knee while sliding into third base on June 29 in San Francisco, but has continued playing. Votto started for the National League in the All-Star game last Tuesday.
A medical exam on Monday evening detected the tear. Votto will have arthroscopic surgery on Tuesday.
''It is in my best interest and in the best interest of the team to do it now so that I can be healthy during the last two months of the pennant race,'' Votto said in a statement.
Votto is batting .342 with 14 homers and 49 RBIs. He leads the National League in doubles, walks, on-base percentage and extra-base hits.
He went hitless in his first two games back from the All-Star game, then had a single and an RBI double during a 4-2 win over St. Louis on Sunday night that moved the Reds into sole possession of first place.
The Reds didn't immediately make a move to replace him on the roster.
Cincinnati has been in first place for 45 days because of its pitching and the NL's top defense. The Reds have used only five starters, a modern franchise record this deep into the season, and their bullpen is the best in the league.
The offense has struggled, ranking in the middle of the league. The loss of Votto costs the team its most consistent hitter.
Manager Dusty Baker gave Votto a day off on Monday because of his busy All-Star week, providing a little time to rest.
''His leg's a little sore, too, so it's two-fold,'' Baker said before Votto had the knee exam. ''Sometimes you don't like it (a day off), you don't want to do it, but you have to do it.''

Sports Briefs: Brewers’ Greinke to get extended rest

MILWAUKEE — After Zack Greinke’s three straight starts apparently left him feeling fatigued and out of his routine, the Milwaukee Brewers are skipping his scheduled start Wednesday and will sit him down until next week.
Greinke, a potential trade target for contending teams with the deadline approaching at the end of this month, was ejected in the first inning of a July 7 start in Houston. He pitched again the next day, then started Milwaukee’s first game after the All-Star break. He gave up 10 runs in eight-plus innings during those three starts.
The 2009 American League Cy Young Award winner has been the subject of trade speculation for weeks, and Roenicke acknowledged that he and general manager Doug Melvin did consider Greinke’s potential trade value before deciding to sit him down.
Red Sox’s Crawford returns to lineup
BOSTON — Red Sox outfielder Carl Crawford made his season debut Monday night, starting in left against the Chicago White Sox after being sidelinedwith left wrist and elbow injuries.
The Red Sox activated Crawford off the 60-day disabled list before the game and designated utility player Brent Lillibridge for assignment.
Signed to a $142 million, seven-year contract before last season, Crawford, 30, had a disappointing 2011. He hit a career-worst .255 with 11 homers and 56 RBI, and finished with just 18 stolen bases after swiping 47 in 2010 and 60 the year before that.
• The Cincinnati Reds expect right-hander Johnny Cueto to start Tuesday against the Arizona Diamondbacks despite a blister on the index finger of his pitching hand.Cueto developed the blister during his bullpen session last week and had to skip his scheduled start Sunday night. Homer Bailey filled in and threw eight innings in a 4-2 win over St. Louis
PRO BASKETBALL
Stackhouse signs one-year contract with Brooklyn
NEW YORK — The Brooklyn Nets signed veteran swingman Jerry Stackhouse to a one-year, $1.4 million deal on Monday. Stackhouse provided the terms after general manager Billy King announced the deal.
Stackhouse appeared in 30 games with the Hawks last season, averaging 3.6 points and 9.1 minutes.
The 17-year NBA veteran did not appear in any of Atlanta’s six playoff games.
Selected third overall by Philadelphia in 1995, the North Carolina product has career averages of 17.4 points, 3.3 rebounds and 3.4 assists in 31.8 minutes.
• The Atlanta Hawks requested waivers on guard Jordan Farmar, one of five players acquired from the Brooklyn Nets in the deal for All-Star Joe Johnson. Farmar played in Israel during the NBA lockout last summer and has indicated he may return to Europe.

Chinese league digest

By Tang Zhe (China Daily)

Drogba to make his debut in CFA Cup

Chinese league digest

Cote d'Ivoire international Didier Drogba is expected to make his China debut in a CFA Cup game between Shanghai Shenhua and Changchun Yatai on Wednesday.
The 34-year-old striker headed to the northeast city of Changchun, Jilin province with the club on Monday. Drogba will play in the game, though the coaches have yet to decide if he will start.
Drogba arrived in Shanghai on Saturday morning. He said at a news conference that he came to China to win a title, not as a last step before he retires.
Shenhua boss Zhu Jun vowed at the beginning of the season to qualify for next year's AFC Champions League. The team is instead hovering around the drop zone, sitting in 12th in the Chinese Super League after defeating Beijing Guo'an 3-1 at home on Saturday. The club has its sights set on the CFA Cup, the winner of which will earn a berth in the Champions League.
Shenhua defeated Shenzhen Ruby in its first CFA Cup match on June 27. The two sides kept a clean sheet for 90 minutes, and Shenhua won 5-4 in a penalty shoot.
Changchun Yatai, currently sixth in the league, defeated Shenhua 2-0 at home in the CSL on June 16, though star striker Nicolas Anelka didn't play.
Changchun signed Brazilian-born Bulgarian international Marquinhos and Colombian international Edixon Perea on Friday. The two might debut with the club in the CFA Cup on Wednesday.
Aerbin slides down into the drop zone

Chinese league digest

Dalian Aerbin's investment isn't paying off.
The club, which has spent more than 200 million yuan ($31.4 million) in an attempt to be competitive in the first division after it won the second division last year, is sitting at 14th in the Chinese Super League after losing to Dalian Shide 3-2 in the city derby on Saturday. The club hasn't earned a win in four games and is only two points ahead of last-place Henan Jianye, which has played one less game.
Aerbin moved swiftly into the Chinese Super League, winning the third and second division championships in consecutive years. It has only won three matches this year, and has lost 28 balls in 17 games, the second-most of the 16 teams.
The good news is Aerbin's latest signing, Seydou Keita (pictured), will arrive on Wednesday and meet the fans during a CFA Cup match against Shenyang Shenbei that evening.
The 32-year-old can operate as both a central and defensive midfielder, and is expected to revitalize the team's performance in the midfield.
"Our players on defense are very young - for this match especially, it was a new combination," Li Ming, the club's general manager, said after the derby.
"This is a problem with the whole team. The pressure on the defense derived from our players' inability to press the opponents in the midfield. Therefore we need to improve the team as a whole to solve this problem."
(China Daily 07/17/2012 page24)

For Fans of Knicks, Conflict Over Lin



Richard Perry/The New York Times
Jeremy Lin sparked interest in the New York Knicks, but some fans question his future value.
The Knicks have until Tuesday night to match a three-year, $25.1 million offer to Lin, the 23-year-old point guard sensation, or lose him to the Houston Rockets. The contract devised by Houston contains a $14.98 million balloon payment in the final year: a provision that could cost the Knicks three times that amount in luxury-tax penalties under the N.B.A.’s restrictive new system.
So the debate now rages: to pay or not to pay. To invest in Lin’s enticing potential and popularity, or to let him leave.
Suddenly, everyone is a salary-cap expert, an economist, a scout and a chief executive.
“Got to let him go,” said Joe Anthony, a 38-year-old Brooklyn resident, speaking outside a sporting-goods store at 42nd Street and Seventh Avenue. “While he has all of the potential in the world, I think there’s a lot of question marks.”
Lin electrified Madison Square Garden and became a global star in February when he seized the Knicks’ point guard job and sparked a seven-game winning streak, saving their season. His made-for-Broadway story was irresistible: Harvard-educated. Undrafted. Overlooked. Waived twice. The son of Taiwanese immigrants. An Asian-American in a league with no others.
Lin’s No. 17 jersey became a top seller in days. “Linsanity” T-shirts flew off the racks at local sporting-good stores. Sports Illustrated put him on back-to-back covers. “Saturday Night Live” devoted skits to him. Restaurants named sandwiches and shakes after him. Creating Lin puns became a sport unto itself.
But Knicks fans are a tormented, anxious lot, scarred by years of bad basketball, bloated payrolls and underachieving players. The thought of devoting $25 million to a virtual rookie with a 26-game résumé strikes some fans as less than sane. Others cannot bear to see Lin leave, no matter the cost.
“I think for the last 10 years, people have had nothing to get excited about for the Knicks,” Nelson Park, 29, said while taking a smoking break outside a Midtown office building. “And finally, after one year, we have something. I mean, how many millions of dollars have they spent on other players?”
Outrage and despair filled blogs, message boards and Twitter timelines over the weekend, when word circulated that the Knicks were likely to let Lin go. Fans threatened to stop watching games, to cancel their season tickets, even to — gasp — switch allegiances to the Brooklyn Nets.
When the Knicks struck a deal Saturday night to acquire Raymond Felton, a veteran point guard, the prospect of losing Lin seemed more real than ever. A person briefed on the team’s thinking said it was highly unlikely the Knicks would match.
Two petitions aimed at reversing that fate were begun Sunday. One referred to Lin as “the best thing that has happened to New York Knicks basketball in the last 20 years.” It had 7,000 signatures as of Monday afternoon.
The emotions may be even stronger in Chinatown, where Lin-watching parties flourished in February. Wilson Tang, the 33-year-old owner of Nom Wah Tea Parlor, hosted some of those gatherings.
“The whole Linsanity thing was great,” Tang said. “It was great for New York. It was great for the Knicks. It was great for sales. It was great for Asian-Americans like myself, to see someone like that make it.”
Although Tang said it would pain him to see Lin go, he said his loyalty to the Knicks would not change, “because I’m a New York Knicks fan, not a Jeremy Lin fan.”
Another fan, Jeffrey Wong, said in an e-mail that he was “probably a little more caught up than most fans” when Linsanity erupted. He called the contractual debate “a little confusing and frustrating.”
“But I think in the end, if the Knicks don’t re-sign Jeremy, and even if they do, they come off looking like bumbling idiots,” Wong wrote.
Of course, Knicks fans are sadly accustomed to bumbling, ill-fated decisions.
The franchise spent the last decade chasing fading stars and overhyped talent with huge salaries, like Stephon Marbury, Jalen Rose and Steve Francis. The Knicks led the league in payroll and luxury-tax payments for years. All it got them was a permanent seat at the N.B.A.’s draft lottery — except in the years when the Knicks had no first-round pick because they had traded them away.
That scars of that legacy are evident on all sides of the Lin debate. Some fans see an albatross contract and shudder at the thought of a smaller, speedier Jerome James. Others see a cruel twist: that after years of fiscal recklessness, the Knicks have suddenly gone conservative.
“The problem the Knicks have faced for the last 10 years is just cap issues and maneuverability,” said Anthony, the fan who favors letting Lin go. He added, “If this guy turns out to be a bust, then they’re going to be caught with another lame duck that they’re not going to be able to move.”
Park, who wants the Knicks to match the contract, said it was worth the risk.
“It’s a lot of money, but compared to what they’ve spent in the past, it’s not that much,” he said. “Again, players like Marbury and Eddy Curry, they’ve gotten nothing out of it.”
Still others say the issue is not the money, but the résumé. Lin averaged 18.6 points and 7.6 assists in his 26 games as an everyday player. But he hardly played as a rookie, and his ultimate value is unclear.
“They’re paying him $1 million for every game that he’s actually started in his career,” said Connor Loughlin, a 26-year-old fan who was heading to work in Midtown.
Even Lin’s teammates have become engulfed in the debate. Carmelo Anthony, when asked if the Knicks should keep Lin, referred to the contract as “ridiculous.” J. R. Smith, in an interview with Sports Illustrated, said the contract could stir jealousy in the locker room.
At one Midtown restaurant, Lin’s probable departure will not only hurt some patrons’ feelings, but their stomachs. At the height of Linsanity, the chef at Feile, on West 33rd Street, created the LIN-burger -- “a five-spice pork burger,” said Mark Collins, the restaurant’s manager. “Had some ginger on it. Some pineapple. A really interesting burger.”
“At the time of Linsanity, when it was at its height, they couldn’t get enough of it,” Collins, a Knicks fan, said of the burger. “It was very popular.”
Collins, 37, said the dish was discontinued when the season ended but would return if Lin did. Now he figures it is gone for good.
The LIN-burger was priced at $11 which, when you think about it, is a lot to pay for an entree with such a short track record.

Ken Belson and Tim Rohan contributed reporting.

Pickups of the Week

For the Worst Scandal, the Worst Punishment

Jessica Danielle is the creator of the Player Perspective sports blog.
July 16, 2012
One of the ugliest marks on the N.C.A.A. is its eagerness to deliver harsh punishments to student athletes while ignoring egregious offenses committed by the adults in charge. In fact, the adults who run the N.C.A.A. have made a habit of either ignoring their own rules, hiding behind civil and criminal cases as reasons not to hand down harsh penalties, or enforcing rules unevenly and only when convenient.
It’s too late for the N.C.A.A. to stop Jerry Sandusky and his enablers at Penn State University. But it’s not too late for it to set a new standard for how it enforces its rules and determines who gets to participate in collegiate sports.
Over the years, student athletes have been dismissed or suspended from programs for such dastardly deeds as accepting too much money for a summer job or selling their own jerseys. Schools have engaged in violations like providing perks or committing academic fraud. Penalties have varied.
In the 80s, the N.C.A.A. shut down Southern Methodist University’s football program for a year because the school helped pay under the table.
But Penn State’s abetting of a sexual predator case is more serious than any previous college offense and consequently deserves the harshest penalty in N.C.A.A. history.
Some argue that a suspension of the football program would be unfair because those who concealed the crimes are gone and the repercussions could eliminate Penn State football and harm other sports there.
But, unfortunately, any penalty the N.C.A.A. levies at any school harms folks who played no role in the violations. So that fact should not preclude the N.C.A.A. from handing out a penalty that fits — a suspension of at least 2 to 5 years.

Cubs' Dempster, Garza enhance their trade value

By The Sports Xchange | The SportsXchange
It was showcase central all weekend at Wrigley Field.

On Saturday, Chicago Cubs right-handed pitcher Ryan Dempster showed off his wares for the scouts in attendance by picking up the win in a 4-1 win over the Arizona Diamondbacks. It was Matt Garza's turn Sunday, and he worked seven scoreless innings in a 3-1 Chicago victory.

The Cubs are in full "seller" mode as the July 31 non-waiver trading deadline fast approaches, and the names of Dempster and Garza will be front and center in all of the talks, real and imagined.

Dempster, the elder statesman of the Cubs, said he tries not to let the talk bother him. He can refuse a trade because he's played at least 10 years in the majors, at least the past five with the same club, but he has indicated he'd go in the right deal.

"I'm well aware of things going on and rumors and things like that," the 35-year-old veteran said. "But I'm a member of the Chicago Cubs, and I'm trying to do my best job for this team and for my teammates and to go out there and be ready every fifth day to give them my best effort."

Garza has been traded twice before, and he has not let past rumors bother him. He reiterated Sunday that he and his family like Chicago but that whether he's traded is out of his control.

General manager Jed Hoyer met with reporters over the weekend and said the phones have been ringing more since the All-Star break ended. Although the Cubs figure to get back a haul of good prospects if they move Dempster and/or Garza, Hoyer said he doesn't enjoy being a seller.

"It's not a position you want to be in," Hoyer said. "Certainly there are ways you can improve the organization by being in that situation, but it's frustrating because that means your record isn't that good. It also means the players that are being asked about are good players, and neither one is a positive. When you are in this situation, you think you have to do the best thing you can for the organization, and you hope you aren't in this position very often."

Breaking Bad Returns: What Does Walter White Deserve?

Frank Ockenfels/AMC
Frank Ockenfels/AMC
Walter White (Bryan Cranston)
Breaking Bad‘s fourth season, last year, had Walter White declaring “I am the one who knocks,” but it wasn’t until the final episode, as Walt engineered the death of Gus Fring, that he actually became that guy. Season five quickly makes clear that Walt’s troubles are not exactly over: he’s still a target of the law (including his brother-in-law) as the crystal-meth kingpin Heisenberg, and he’s still a non-natural-born killer in a deadly profession. But he’s also confident, victorious, imperious, almost serenely cocky.
I don’t know how this will all end. (It won’t, in any event, until the second half of the season next year.) It’s no spoiler, however, to assume that it will not end well–if for no other reason that any form of “ending well” for the morally depraved Walt would not exactly be ending well on the cosmic scale.
But how badly should it end?
This will be the biggest endgame for a TV antihero/villain since The Sopranos and The Shield in 2007, and back then, fans debated like members of a jury what would be the proper just deserts for Tony Soprano and Vic Mackey. (Then, in Tony’s case, disputed exactly what happened to him.)
Mackey’s fate–he wriggled out of jail one last time, but in a way that left him disgraced, alone and pushing papers in anonymity forever—was in its way as controversial as Tony’s. Many fans wanted him in prison, or dead, or killed in prison. Creator Shawn Ryan argued that it was a dire punishment for Vic to have to live with the aftermath of his corrupt choices for the rest of a pathetic, diminished life.
What would be justice for Walter White? You could make an even stronger case that death would be a kind of undeservedly heroic exit for him, a redemption, a return to the status quo ante—after all, we met him as an innocent man, a dying man, before he beat lung cancer. At one low point—season three’s “the Fly,” he not only wished for death but pinpointed the precise moment that it would have been right, with his nest egg secure, his family provided for, having seen his baby daughter come into the world.
Walt has always been about his family—at least his justifications have always been—so I have to think that his ultimate punishment would be losing them. Not for them all to die (I’m not that callous; then again, I don’t know what’s coming, so never say never). But to be caught out by Hank, say—or to be responsible for Hank’s death and then caught out?—to have his son and someday his daughter know what he actually was, would mean losing the very core of his identity.
Breaking Bad, after all, has been the process of Walt taking on one identity as a man after another: Mr. White, Heisenberg, The One Who Knocks and now The King. One of those identities has been The Provider—as Gus once told him in a defining conversation, Walt needs above all to be a man, and “a man provides.” To know that he hasn’t provided, that he has in fact taken away his family’s belief in his goodness forever, to know that he is The Depriver: that seems to be to me the worst kind of punishment for Walt, and if I have to guess where this show is going, that would be it.
But as I said, I don’t know any better than you do, and I’ll be watching eagerly to find out. I’ll be in this space Monday morning, reviewing Sunday night’s return episode. In the meantime, what sentence would you pass on Walter White?
 

Not going for gold: Britain's non-Olympic sports

Published: Monday July 16, 2012 MYT 2:16:00 PM


LONDON - At the same time as athletes from around the world are taking part in the London Olympics, millions of Britons will be indulging in popular summer sports that you won't see at the Games.
Cheese-rolling, caber-tossing, bowls, golf and cricket have little in common except for their origins in Britain's parks and village greens - and the fact that they are excluded from Olympian glory.
On a typical rainy British summer afternoon members of the Finchley Bowls Club in north London emerge from the clubhouse, around five miles from the park where the Olympic Games will be held.
"We play in all weathers, including rain," says Ron Raymond, the club president. "We play if there's a cloudburst. We only stop if the grass is waterlogged, and that's because we don't want to damage the green."
Just down the road in this leafy enclave, which former premier Margaret Thatcher once represented in parliament, is the Finchley Cricket Club. Finchley Golf Club is a similar distance in the other direction.
Bowls, cricket and golf are just three of a wide array of non-Olympic sports that are popular here.
In London there are more than a dozen places for playing croquet - the deceptively genteel but in reality viciously competitive game in which players knock balls through hoops with a mallet.
Then there's polo, which also involves hitting a ball with a mallet, except on horseback. The rules of the game and its original headquarters in Britain, where it was imported from India, were in Hurlingham, southwest London.
Across town from Hurlingham is Lord's, the spiritual home of cricket.
On a summer weekend in most English country villages, the type with thatched cottages and with handpumped ale in the pub, the thwack of leather on willow from a cricket match can be heard somewhere nearby.
Cricket last made a brief Olympic appearance 112 years ago - and the closest it will get in 2012 is when Lord's hosts the Olympic archery competition.
Earlier this year the International Cricket Council, the sport's world governing body, said it was considering a bid to have cricket's shorter Twenty20 form return to the Olympics.
"We have never had a format that would lend itself to playing in the Olympics until Twenty20 came to the fore," ICC chief executive Haroon Lorgat said.
The ICC was officially recognised as a federation by the International Olympic Committee in 2010, meaning the ICC can bid to join the 2020 Games.
Bowls, meanwhile, is played at the Commonwealth Games, where Rob Weale of Wales and Natalie Melmore of England won the men's and women's singles titles respectively in New Delhi in 2010.
In Scotland, dozens of Highland Games meetings from May to August feature specialities such as caber tossing - the throwing of a huge wooden log - and tug of war.
Highland Games meetings share a similarity to the Olympics in that they are multi-sports events, although they also feature dancing and classes for playing the bagpipes.
"Highland Games have a long history and there's still a lot of interest all over the world," said Ian Grieve, secretary of the Scottish Highland Games association which represents 60 events in towns and villages across Scotland.
"I would like to think that holding the Olympic Games in Britain might have a positive impact for Highland Games though so far I haven't seen any evidence of it," he told AFP.
"We definitely get a positive spin off when the Open Golf is held in Scotland. Overall, I can't say we have seen a positive or negative effect."
English regions have their own local sports too, often big enough to run their own leagues. Quoits, which involves throwing hoops over posts sticking up from the ground, is especially popular in northeastern England.
Even more curious events include cheese rolling in Gloucestershire, southwest England, in which competitors chase a giant round of Double Gloucester cheese down a steep hill, risking injury.
The Wall Game, meanwhile, is played only at Prime Minister David Cameron's old boarding school, the elite Eton College.
And when it's raining, Britons can step up to the oche for a game of darts, play snooker or they take on the players from the pub's dominoes team.
Back in Finchley, none of the bowlers are bitter about their sport's non-Olympic status, adding that they are looking forward to the Games.
"I'll certainly be watching, selectively," says Ron Raymond. "I like basketball and then there's the gymnastics, especially the floor exercises. You have to admire the hours of work they put in to be able to do it so well." - AFP