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Ya know, I don’t recall seeing any stringent pre-bidder authentication by Overstock.com in the auction for the Barry Bonds ball at all. $800k seems way overpriced, as it’s not a record breaking ball at all, but then again there are rich weirdos out there, no? I still say it’s bogus and that the bid was a fake bid, something News.com doesn’t address at all. Overstock being new to this online auction thingy, I wouldn’t be surprised if they made a goof, and if they did, it’ll be an embarassingly big one… The dude shoulda left it up to Sotheby’s or something, then again he did get the best deal at Overstock, I’m sure.
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Major League Baseball may hand out Gold Glove awards to the league’s finest fielders each season, but the $804,129 that fan Steve Williams landed in an online auction of Barry Bonds’ 700th home run ball still looks pretty lustrous in comparison.

Williams’ online auction of the leather orb on Overstock.com ended Wednesday, after 242 bids were made on the historical piece of playing equipment over the last 10 days. The winning bidder, an individual using the screen name “bomasterj,” must now submit his or her payment to an escrow account controlled by Williams’ lawyers, who will deliver the ball to the winning bidder. In hitting the blast, Bonds joined baseball legends Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron as the only players in Major League Baseball to ever crest the 700 homer plateau.

News.com Link

Congrats to the New York Yankees, who have just blown a 3-0 series lead to the Boston Red Sox tonight, and lost 4 in a row, getting themselves eliminated from the 2004 Playoffs. Incredible series, they really choked in the 9th inning of Game 4, but Boston just kept up that momentum for an incredible final 4 game winning streak. And thus, the Curse of A-Rod begins…

Maybe it was when Alex Rodriguez decided not to go to the Boston Red Sox, but instead go to the New York Yankees. Maybe it was when he decided to don the number 13, which for most superstituous folks, is unlucky. But if the Yankees lose Game 7, perhaps it’s due to the curse of A-Rod. Much like the often mentioned Curse of the Bambino, where the Red Sox sold George Herman “Babe” Ruth to the Yankees for $125k and a $300k loan in 1920. The Yanks went on to win their first championship just three years later, and many, many more after that, while the Red Sox have never won a championship since they sold the Babe.

So Alex Rodriguez shunned the Red Sox before the 2004 baseball season, instead going to the most hated team in baseball, the Yankees. Of course the Yankees are good, but their payroll is a zillion times higher than any other team. A real fair playing field. He had to give up his position of shortstop as well, going to third base, as Derek Jeter refused to move anywhere. So A-Rod produces decent numbers during his first season in the Bronx, batting .286, 36 HR, and 106 RBI, but it wasn’t exactly jawdropping to Yankees fans, especially considering his $252 million contract, the richest in baseball. A-Rod has never been on a championship team, from the Mariners to the Rangers. So maybe winning is just not in his tarot cards.

Tonight, in Game 6 in the American League Championship Series, A-Rod purposely chops the pitcher’s hand while running to first base, trying to avoid the tag. Initially, he was called safe and it led to Derek Jeter scoring, but the umpires actually confered and ruled that A-Rod’s swipe was illegal (which replays showed clearly was) and called him out, sending Jeter back to first. See A-Rod whine after he doesn’t get his way is what happened after that.

I see it as the beginning of the A-Rod curse. Hey, it gives me a team to root against, seeing as I don’t care about any of the teams left in this playoffs.

You’re a great role model A-Rod, pulling a Razor Ramon and spitting your gum out and swatting it towards the ump after the inning was over. Fox caught you on tape doing it. Did you forget you were on camera?

So remember, when 70 years down the line the NY Yankees still haven’t won a championship, where you heard first about the Curse of A-Rod… The again, the Yankees could win the World Series this year and a certain lowmazda won’t shut up about it for another year.

WTF! Just now, Fox aired a pregame segment of of some Seattle Seahawks talking before their game against the St. Louis Rams. And the first line was, “Let’s make some motherfuckin’ history!” Now, I don’t mind hearing some swear words at all myself, but this is network TV, where U2’s Bono gets ripped on for using ‘fucking’ as an adjective, where Janet Jackson’s breast overshadows the Super Bowl, and where Dale Earnhardt Jr. gets in trouble for saying ‘shit’. Basically, you don’t want any swear words getting through your network TV network if you know what’s good for you. And this was loud too, and clearly spoken, not a random fan shouting a swear word.

I was totally surprised hearing it initially, but a friend with a Tivo confirmed that “Let’s make some motherfuckin’ history!” was what was said. I don’t know about you, but Fox must have been on crack to let a taped segment such as this get on the air, without any beeping at all. I’m pretty sure I heard ‘fuck’ being spoken during a college football game yesterday, too. Sure, most likely nothing will happen, as people that complain about hearing this type of profanity on TV won’t complain to the FCC about it because they probably don’t watch football at all. But I just had to share Fox’s stupidity with y’all… Or maybe I should complain to the FCC and see what would actually happen.
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How to Contact the FCC

To Contact the Commissioners via E-mail

Chairman Michael K. Powell: Michael.Powell@fcc.gov
Commissioner Kathleen Q. Abernathy: Kathleen.Abernathy@fcc.gov
Commissioner Michael J. Copps: Michael.Copps@fcc.gov
Commissioner Kevin J. Martin: KJMWEB@fcc.gov
Commissioner Jonathan S. Adelstein: Jonathan.Adelstein@fcc.gov

To Obtain Information via E-mail

General information, inquiries & complaints: fccinfo@fcc.gov
Freedom of Information Act requests: FOIA@fcc.gov
Comments on FCC Internet services: webmaster@fcc.gov
Elections & political candidate matters: campaignlaw@fcc.gov

To Obtain Information via Telephone

1-888-225-5322 (1-888-CALL FCC) Voice: toll-free
1-888-835-5322 (1-888-TELL FCC) TTY: toll-free

And yet Barry Bonds wonders why people don’t like him? From the sounds of it, he’s got some serious issues with control and having to ‘one-up’ everyone else. I’d tend to believe Gary Sheffield over something like this, it makes you wonder if the BALCO drugs had any effect on Bonds’ personality or not. And how his wife could put up with him…
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“The only thing Greg Anderson does is what Barry tells him to do,” Sheffield says. “Barry ran everything. If I’m training and if he sees Greg making me do one curl too many, it’s an argument: ‘I told you, don’t have him do no more than he needs!’ So I knew Greg was a puppet. All these guys around [Bonds] were puppets.

“They used to confide in me about how they hated it. I told them, ‘You knew what you were getting into. You accept his money. You accept the status when you’re around him. But you don’t want to deal with the backlash of what comes out of his mouth, and you want to complain to me.’”

Sports Illustrated Link

Wow, did they get ripped off, for one, I thought it was Monster.com, not Monster Cable that bought the rights to the former Candlestick Park for $6M over 4 years. So every time people mention Monster Park now, Monster.com gets a free plug and Monster Cable, well, they don’t really get their voice heard. And then, there’s the use of the stadium. As far as any sports fans know, it’s only used 8 times a year in the NFL regular season, not many dates to get your name out. And at 0-3 this year, the 49ers don’t look like they’re gonna make the playoffs. SBC got a way better deal ($50 million for 24 years) for the SBC Park, where the SF Giants play. They’ve got 81 home games there each season.

Of course, their audio/video cables are overpriced plenty, so there’s nothing wrong with the city of San Francisco getting Monster Cable to overpay for some naming rights (bad ones at that!) At least Monster Park sounds cool and makes me think of a horror-movie theme park.
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Candlestick Park, home of the San Francisco 49ers (news) NFL team, was renamed “Monster Park” on Tuesday in a $6 million deal with an electronics cable company.

“It’s a only-in-San Francisco-name and San Francisco prides itself on being different and this is just another example of us standing out in a crowd,” said Sam Singer, spokesman for the 49ers. The name comes from its new sponsor, Monster Cable Products, a San Francisco-area company that sells audio cables.

Yahoo Link

Guess when you aren’t Anna Kournikova or Maria Sharapova but you’re still from Russia, you gotta have other avenues to make money. (Only 2 hot women tennis players per country please, okay, so Anna doesn’t play anymore but you know what I mean). So, it seems Dementieva sells her ad space (looks like 2 ads only) on her tennis top to the highest bidder. Yonex (which makes her outfit and tennis rackets) seems like a natural fit to sponsor her. During the US Open Women’s Semifinals, she proudly wore an ad for GEICO, which I thought was a bit odd, cuz nothing says ‘Save Money on your Car Insurance’ like a Russian woman tennis player. Well, she tops it today during the Finals, as Dunkin’ Donuts has replaced the GEICO ad. Yes, when I think donuts I think of thin, fit blondes. What the heck is going on? Dunkin’ Donuts? Just very, very odd marketing in my opinion.

I can’t quite seem to figure out what company the logo on her left shoulder is for. Even in HDTV, I can’t make out the letters on the ad. Whatever marketing company it is, they sure wasted their money… After close eye quinting for an hour on a 65” HDTV screen, my friend was able to make out Gaz de France as the sponsor. Looks like they are some natural gas company.

C’mon, just give it up already. Just wear a sports bra, and have GoldenPalace.com written on your back in big black letters (like they have on boxers).

BOO to NBC! First the HDTV coverage ain’t even close to being live… That said, at least put up some Web clips or something, heck even half window of ads, other half of coverage is okay, but c’mon now, if the Brits are doing live Web streams, NBC should at least have something to counter it with. I wonder if there’s going to be ways to get around this territorial Web restrictions… Hmm… I don’t see any streams on BBC’s site, but then again, I’m not trying to get there through an open proxy.

Sad in our day and age, I wonder how much of an effect BitTorrent and other P2P sharing will have on the Olympics. I don’t even dare imagine what the South Koreans are able to do, probably live HDTV streaming over their 30Mbps connections?
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The Summer Olympics, which began Friday in Athens, is the first Olympic Games to be broadcast from a collection of websites. The BBC and other European networks are offering live, on-demand Internet video streaming of Olympic events to broadband viewers. But the BBC and fellow members of the European Broadcasting Union are required by their Olympic broadcast contracts to block U.S. Internet users and others from outside their home counties.

Despite its contractual lock on Olympic footage, NBCOlympics.com is offering only highlights of selected events after they have been broadcast on one of the network’s TV channels. U.S. customers of AT&T Wireless’ mMode information service will also get video clips. By contrast, those online in the United Kingdom can watch live simulcast coverage from BBC TV’s five video streams.

http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,64562,00.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/olympics_2004/default.stm

Aww, no Keith Olbermann! Heh, guess he and ESPN didn’t exactly part on speaking terms. Dan Patrick and Craig Kilborn should be a good duo to watch, though…
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As ESPN continues celebrating its 25th anniversary, some of the people who helped make “SportsCenter” into the monster it is—“a good monster,” as former anchor Gayle Gardner puts it—are returning to the network this week to host editions of the show. “Old School Week,” as ESPN calls it, kicks off Sunday night (Aug. , when Craig Kilborn returns to “SportsCenter” to anchor with Dan Patrick.

http://tv.zap2it.com/tveditorial/tve_main/1,1002,271|89861|1|,00.html

You know you’re career is over when you lose to someone that no one has ever heard of… Sad way to go out, though perhaps his career wouldn’t have been so screwed if he hadn’t gotten convicted of rape in the early 90s…

So long Iron Mike, you still made one of the best video games ever…
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LOUISVILLE, Ky.—Mike Tyson was knocked out in the fourth round Friday night in a shocking end to the latest comeback of the fighter who once was the most feared heavyweight of his era.

Unheralded British heavyweight Danny Williams landed a flurry of punches that sent Tyson sprawling into the ropes, perhaps ending his career with the same kind of fury that Tyson once unleashed on other fighters.

http://sports.espn.go.com/sports/boxing/news/story?id=1849705