Archive for October, 2010

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Random notes: October 4, 2010.

Monday, October 4th, 2010

Slate has an interesting article on the bizarre saga of Togo’s national soccer team, which apparently did not play in Bahrain last month, and did not lose 3-0.

I know that previous sentence probably doesn’t make any sense. It will once you read the article. Trust me.

I got a little distracted on Friday, and didn’t get a chance to note the passing of Stephen J. Cannell. Both Lee Goldberg and his brother Tod Goldberg have nice appreciations up at their respective blogs, though, and I did want to call attention to those. One thing stood out to me from Tod’s appreciation:

Every time I did a panel with him — and I must have done a dozen panels with him in the last five years alone — afterward he bought copies of every single other person’s book on the panel. This might seem like an insignificant thing in the larger scheme of life, but to see the looks on people’s faces when he walked up with their books afterward to get them signed confirmed for me the same thing I felt time and time again: he was just a class act.

Posted in Clippings, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Blood in the streets!

Monday, October 4th, 2010

And now the Mets have fired executive vice president and general manager Omar Minaya, and officially announced that Jerry Manuel is not returning in 2011.

NYT coverage here.

Posted in Clippings, Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Arrrrrrrrr!

Monday, October 4th, 2010

The Pittsburgh Pirates, who, as you may recall, went 57-105 this season, have fired manager John Russell.

Not since the mid-1950s have the Pirates been as bad as they were under Russell, who had records of 67-95 in 2008, 62-99 in 2009 and 57-105 this season. Only the 1952 Pirates, who went 42-112, lost more games in baseball’s modern era than Russell’s final team, which was the National League’s worst in batting, pitching and defense.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette coverage here.

Posted in Clippings, Firings, Loser, Sports | Comments Closed

Your loser update: week 4.

Sunday, October 3rd, 2010

NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:

Buffalo
Detroit
Carolina
San Francisco

Final MLB loser update:

Houston finishes 76-86, with a .469 winning percentage. Not quite Lawrence’s 61-101, but not quite the Chron‘s 81-81 either.

Baltimore, our early favorite, finished 66-96, with a .407 winning percentage.

Arizona finished 65-97, with a .401 winning percentage.

Seattle sort of snuck up on us, finishing 61-101 with a .377 winning percentage.

And Pittsburgh missed grabbing the 110 loss brass ring, but still finished 57-105, with a .352 winning percentage.

Posted in Loser, NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

People try to put us down..

Sunday, October 3rd, 2010

..and they succeed, admirably.

“My Generation”, a show I’d never heard of until last night, and which was apparently on ABC, is the second cancellation of the season.

Posted in Clippings, TV | Comments Closed

TMQ watch: October 1, 2010.

Friday, October 1st, 2010

A little bird alerted me to a strange and curious fact: the September 21, 2010 “Tuesday Morning Quarterback” column is missing from ESPN’s web site. The columns from the 14th and 28th are there, along with all the other ones from this season (as far as I can tell).

This is particularly interesting since that was the concussion column. I’m not willing to suggest that there’s anything nefarious going on here yet; it could just be a glitch with ESPN’s website. But it is odd and worthy of note.

Edited to add: Actually, the column is still on ESPN’s website; it just doesn’t show up in the Easterbrook archives, or the Page 2 listing for September 21st, but you can still get to it by clicking on the direct link. That lends more credence to the theory that it’s a website glitch.

Posted in TMQ watch | Comments Closed

Friday loser update note.

Friday, October 1st, 2010

Since baseball’s regular season ends Sunday, I’m going to hold off on doing a Friday loser update this week, and plan to do a combined MLB/NFL loser update either Sunday night or early Monday morning.

Posted in Loser, Sports | Comments Closed

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