Huh??? OH SH*T !!!

That's what everyone's favorite seven- time Cy Young award winner must have said when he read this one.

What the hell happened while I was enjoying a little baseball?

Well, it's the off season for football. So, that means some calamity has to strike the Browns. It has.
Ryan Tucker broke his hip and will miss two months, or so SI reports.

Two months is probably the estimate some deluded physician gave, but that's the
normal projected recovery from a break. I'll bet those two months don't include any time for the all-but-certain staph infection that Berea seems to guarantee each year.

It's good that Savage kept Kevin Shaffer around and picked up Rex Hadnot. It looks like the Brownies will need 'em.

Speed Racer

Speed Racer is a pretty cool movie. My kids, who are 8 and 5, loved it and wanted to stick around and see it again. We didn't.

Here are a few of my thoughts:

Christina Ricci looks great as Trixie. I can see why Speed's nuts about her. She's makes a great comic book heroine.

John Goodman looks a lot like Pops, and better yet, he flashes some of the wrestling moves Pops Racer used when surrounded by bad guys.

If you liked the cartoon, you'll love the movie. If not, you'd better have liked playing with Hot Wheels when you were young. Otherwise, you'll probably hate it.

There were more adults than kids, and they loved it. Lots of them were singing the theme song on the way out.

Here he comes, here comes Speed Racer
He's a demon on wheels
He's a demon and he's gonna be chasing after someone
He's gaining on you so you better look alive
He's busy revving up the powerful Mach Five
And when the odds are against him and there's daaangerous work to do
You bet your life Speed Racer's gonna see it through

Go Speed Racer
Go Speed Racer
Go Speed Racer go

He's off and flying as he guns the car around the track
He's jamming down the pedal like he's never coming back
Adventure's waiting just aheeeeeeeeaaaaad

Go Speed Racer
Go Speed Racer
Go Speed Racer Go!

How about that...

I saw a little baseball history last night at the Prog. With runners on first and second and the Blue Jays trying a hit and run, Asdrubal Cabrera snagged a line drive, stepped on second, and then tagged a runner, who'd rounded second and had been heading to third. When the dust cleared, Dru was hanging on to the ball and the inning was over---an unassisted triple play!

That was only the 14th one in the history of Major League Baseball. I was there. It was very cool.


Here's a quick bit of trivia: The Cleveland Indians lead all teams with 3 unassisted triple plays.

CAVS get bounced out of the playoffs.

A few loyal readers have written and pointed out that the Rhino and I haven't been posting as frequently as we had. Guilty. We've both been busy.

But, yesterday, a colleague at work and I had a disagreement about the Cavs. He talked all day about his "good feeling" about the playoffs and the Cavs advancing. Well, they won't. That's why I want to publish the inevitable news of the Cavs' playoff demise while I have a few moments. Let's just say that they'll play better than they did in last year's championship round---Celtics win in five. You can read now or sometime next week. It doesn't matter. The result will be the same.

This team just isn't built to win. It utterly lacks any consistent outside scoring threat, and as great of an individual player as King James is, he hasn't really shown the ability to elevate very average NBA players to a championship level. He's still too much of a one-man gang. Z's a decent complement to LBJ (and he's an above average center due to position talent scarcity), but he does nothing on the outside to spread the floor and create movement. Everyone else on the team is NBA average or worse.

While Mike Brown has done an admirable job teaching and preaching defense, he's done nothing to help create shots for the team when they're desperately needed. There's no real movement to the offense, and as a result, very few open shots are created. That's a big problem because all of the guys other than LeBron need open shots or created scoring opportunities.

Boston doesn't have those flaws. In fact, it has the most valuable player in the NBA, Kevin Garnett. I know Kobe Bryant took home the hardware, but Garnett's been a stud for Boston since he arrived. His supporting cast is strong and versatile. The CAVS just don't match up with Boston's weapons.

Oh, and there's more cheery news for the wine and gold. Here's another story about the clock ticking on LeBron's tenure in Cleveland.

It's not all bad news though. If you were on your toes yesterday, you could have had a Papa John's pizza for 23 cents.