. . . at least if you’re a Pittsburgh Pirates fan.

They call it the Sid Bream Game.

That’s because after trailing Van Slyke’s Pittsburgh Pirates 2-0 in the bottom of the ninth inning during Game 7 of that National League Championship Series, Bream’s Atlanta Braves completed the impossible before the home crowd. They got a single to left by pinch-hitter Francisco Cabrera, followed by Bream leaving second, rounding third and sliding home with the pennant-winning run. . . . 

 

There was another scene for the ages involving Van Slyke that night (or shall I say during the early morning) at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, but let’s return to the present for the moment. Van Slyke just said the most fascinating thing about the Sid Bream Game to MLB Network as part of its series on MLB’s 20 Greatest Games.

According to Van Slyke, he asked Bonds to move in a few steps for the light-hitting Cabrera.

Bonds reportedly refused.

Boy, did he. Said Van Slyke to the MLB Network, “He turned and looked at me and gave me the international peace sign. So I said, ‘Fine, you play where you want.’ “

Van Slyke wasn’t just any center fielder, by the way. He was on the verge of capturing the last of his five consecutive Gold Gloves. Not only that, he was playing a position whose occupants are generally allowed to bark orders to the other outfielders.

And, generally, those other outfielders listen. But, generally, they aren’t as famously strong-minded and talented as the guy who was in the midst of snatching eight consecutive Gold Gloves.

So Bonds didn’t listen.

Soon afterward, Cabrera dropped a single to the left of Bonds that required the left-handed outfielder to race toward the ball and throw home across his body. The throw was off slightly in the direction of the first base, but Pirates catcher Mike LaValliere made the grab and then whirled with his glove toward the plate for the tag.

It’s just that Bream and his knees that required five surgeries through the years reached home about a millisecond earlier.

WOW! Double WOW!

Somewhere along the way, the San Antonio Spurs lost their edge.

It may have been last year, where a lackluster season (by ultra-competitive Western Conference standards) earned them a seven seed. It may have been 2009, when they got upset in the first round by a hungry Dallas team. It may have been when the Lakers acquired Pau Gasol, dividing the West for the foreseeable future into the categories of “Los Angeles” and “Everyone Else.”

Gregg Popovich-Tim Duncan has been the NBA’s equivalent of Bill Belichick-Tom Brady. For a decade, the Spurs have been a synergy of coach and star player that gave the team a robotic, quiet dominance.

This year, the Spurs were one of the most ignored, disrespected 1-seeds in recent NBA playoffs memory. Memphis came into their first-round series with the Spurs with confidence, with swagger, and with just enough game to back it up. After last night’s blowout win, the Grizzlies are up 3-1 on the Spurs. Memphis was stronger, faster, more disciplined, and more ferocious on defense. After a relatively even first half, they just flat-out dominated the Spurs to put the game away.

I don’t want to pre-emptively write an obituary for this dynastic Spurs team, but it just feels like something’s changed. When word leaked that Memphis may have tanked to get a matchup with the Spurs over the Lakers, it wasn’t surprising. It made sense. But there was a time when the steely gaze of Gregg Popovich and the blank stare of Tim Duncan kept opponents up at night. The young, brash Grizzlies don’t remember the mechanical juggernaut. When they look at the Spurs, they just see a bunch of guys who haven’t summoned up the necessary emotion to put up a good fight.

New York Times:

Ever since Congress passed the federal gender-equity law known as Title IX, universities have opened their gyms and athletic fields to millions of women who previously did not have chances to play. But as women have surged into a majority on campus in recent years, many institutions have resorted to subterfuge to make it look as if they are offering more spots to women.

At the University of South Florida, more than half of the 71 women on the cross-country roster failed to run a race in 2009. Asked about it, a few laughed and said they did not know they were on the team.

At Marshall University, the women’s tennis coach recently invited three freshmen onto the team even though he knew they were not good enough to practice against his scholarship athletes, let alone compete. They could come to practice whenever they liked, he told them, and would not have to travel with the team.

At Cornell, only when the 34 fencers on the women’s team take off their protective masks at practice does it become clear that 15 of them are men. Texas A&M and Duke are among the elite women’s basketball teams that also take advantage of a federal loophole that allows them to report male practice players as female participants.

Maybe the Cornell male fencers fight like girls? Does that count? Continuing from the piece. . .

Title IX, passed in 1972 at the height of the women’s rights movement, banned sex discrimination in any federally financed education program. It threw into sharp relief the unequal treatment of male and female athletes on college campuses.

Over the next 40 years, the law spawned a cultural transformation: the number of women competing in college sports has soared by more than 500 percent — to 186,000 a year from fewer than 30,000 in 1972.

But as women have grown to 57 percent of American colleges’ enrollment, athletic programs have increasingly struggled to field a proportional number of female athletes. And instead of pouring money into new women’s teams or trimming the rosters of prized football teams, many colleges are turning to a sleight of hand known as roster management. According to a review of public records from more than 20 colleges and universities by The New York Times, and an analysis of federal participation statistics from all 345 institutions in N.C.A.A. Division I — the highest level of college sports — many are padding women’s team rosters with underqualified, even unwitting, athletes. They are counting male practice players as women. And they are trimming the rosters of men’s teams.

“Those of us in the business know that universities have been end-running Title IX for a long time, and they do it until they get caught,” said Donna E. Shalala, the president of the University of Miami.

Each year, institutions must report their male and female participation numbers to the Department of Education. And even though the numbers would not be used in a formal investigation, many colleges manipulate them to avoid bringing about one. The embarrassment that comes with a public inquiry or a lawsuit can motivate them to do what it takes to stay under the radar.

Shrinking budgets also spur universities to use these tactics, said Jake Crouthamel, a former Syracuse athletic director. “It’s easier to add more people on a roster than it is to start a new sport,” he said.

Yet football, the pride of many universities and a draw for alumni, rarely faces cuts. The average Division I football team went from 95 players 30 years ago to 111 players in 2009-10.

“Football is the elephant in the whole thing,” Mr. Crouthamel said. “That’s the monster.”

Advocates for men’s teams say roster management hurts their cause as well, because colleges tend to eliminate men’s sports rather than increase women’s sports to reach parity. Officials have also cut the size of men’s teams, compromising their competitiveness.

The rest here.

There is an obvious solution, however: increase the size of women’s sand volleyball teams. Problem solved!

His daughter is now a Raiderette.

We’ll assume there will be a football season and allow ourselves to get excited.

Later this week, we’ll preview teams’ draft needs and possible picks, for mockery’s sake.

As an appetizer, here’s an ESPN mock draft.

In what became the Year of Derrick Rose, New Orleans’ superstar point guard has beenan afterthought. Languishing on a small-market team devoid of other All-Stars, Chris Paul is grabbing attention back this postseason by keeping his seventh-seeded team incontention with the juggernaut Lakers.

Paul put up a triple-double last night in a win that leveled New Orleans series with Los Angeles at two games apiece. The game was close, but it really could have been a blowout. Paul time and again found wide-open teammates who proceeded to miss jumpers. Marco Belinelli went 3-for-11 from the field. Jarrett Jack hit only one of his six shot attempts. New Orleans shot under 30 percent from the three-point line. The Hornets still won.

Should the Lakers be legitimately worried? Probably not. Last night’s game had the feel of the Hornets just trying their best to fight off the Lakers’ tidal wave of size and interior scoring as the clock wore down. There continue to be moments when L.A. is simply unstoppable on offense when Pau Gasol gets it going in the paint. But through the first four games of this series, Chris Paul has proven to be the worst kind of matchup for Los Angeles — who have proven vulnerable to quick, penetrating point guards. And for all that Derrick Rose has accomplished this year in Chicago, Chris Paul may still stand head and shoulders above his competition.

Enjoy in what he does best.

Jason, what I’d like to see hard numbers on is, anecdotally, the explosion of “mud run” events such as Warrior Dash, Spartan Race, or the one I recently completed, Tough Mudder. Folks pay good money to jump into cold water, crawl through muddy sections of pipe and yes, be electrocuted. It even sounded insane to the great minds at Harvard Business School:

Dean had $8,200 for advertising and he blew it on a flurry of Facebook ads. It worked. The event sold 4,500 spots in five weeks. Two other events last year and two earlier this year also sold out.

This time around, the Tough Mudder at Bear Creek booked 10,000 spots months in advance.

“I was told in no uncertain terms that I would never get more than 500 people to do one of these things,” Dean said of feedback he received during a business plan competition while at Harvard. “I’m not going to pretend for one moment that I expected this sort of result.”

What an a$*#@!e:

Lakers rookie forward Derrick Caracter was arrested and jailed in New Orleans on Sunday morning for allegedly hitting a pregnant waitress at an IHOP while intoxicated.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune reports that Caracter started “grabbing and pulling” at the waitress, and was charged with one count of battery and one count each for public intoxication and resisting arrest.

The Lakers were in New Orleans playing the Hornets in their first-round playoff series, which the Hornets evened up at two games apiece after beating LA on Sunday night. The incident happened near the Lakers’ hotel on a night there was no game.

Rajon Rondo left behind his late-season blues and returned to glorious form, pushing the Celtics to their first playoff sweep of an opponent since the early Nineties. His average stat line for the series: 42 minutes, 19 points, 7.3 rebounds, and 12 assists — numbers worthy of Magic Johnson.

Mike D’Antoni’s speedball will never win a playoff series, since a good defensive team like the Celtics will always shut it down, just like San Antonio did when they faced D’Antoni’s Phoenix Suns a few years ago. And his coaching in this series was just terrible. The Knicks did little defensively to adjust to Boston’s screens, or anything else Boston ran offensively. The Knicks defensive breakdowns were embarrassingly frequent; the Celtics scored on easy layups time and time again. D’antoni’s offensive advice in the fourth quarter of game four was basically: “quickly chuck up threes.” And how many turnovers did the Knicks have to end that game? The Knicks should look for a coach better suited to Amar’e and Carmelo’s formidable half-court skills.

Here is another reason to enjoy keeping tabs on the Rays replacement for the departed Carl Crawford:

[Sam] Fuld is fascinated by what the numbers tell him about the concept of clutch hitters.

“Most of the numbers out there show that there’s no such thing,” Fuld said. “And it’s crazy to think that, because I swear I’ve played with guys who just tend to come through in the clutch. And others that don’t.

“But that’s the beauty of numbers is that our minds don’t necessarily capture the whole picture accurately. Our emotions remember certain things for whatever reason, and there are certain things you don’t remember. So I think that’s the beauty of numbers. It’s fact. There’s no way around it.”

I await your comments accusing the Stanford stat geek of sucking the fun out of the game from the safety of his mother’s basement left field at Tropicana Field. ;-)

Good morning, campers!

If you are playing catch-up, here are topics we discussed in Right Field over the past seven days:

• Are the Dodgers’ finances indicative of a greater problem throughout professional sports?
• Why do fans sometimes cheer when their team’s batter grounds into a force play?
• Might players on the 1918 Cubs have thrown the World Series?
• How might one convert a friend to Catholicism … and Red Sox Nation?
• What explains the early-season, Troy Tulowtizki power surge?
• Did that radar gun really read “106″ miles per hour?
• What, if anything, does history tell us about the fast starts of the Indians and Royals?

And here is some other interesting stuff that transpired:

• Remember the panic that had invaded New England after the Red Sox had lost their first six games? Remember how the Rays were similarly dead in the water? Yeah, neither do I.
• Have home plate umpires been hosing left-handed batters by calling low and outside pitches strikes?
• Count Giants pitcher Tim Lincecum as not overly impressed with Commissioner Bud Selig’s decision to allow for an additional wildcard team per league starting next season.
• What accounts for the Cardinals’ recent success at the plate? The answer may be Batting Average in Balls in Play (BABIP), thanks in part to more line drives being hit.
• Does baseball really have an attendance problem?
• Selig’s decision to assume control of the Dodgers might make one recall the plight of the 1936 Boston Bees (Braves).
• While the Mets were in Atlanta, third baseman David Wright played catch with youngsters sitting behind the visitors’ dugout, thereby expanding his fanbase in Georgia.
• Weighted on-base average (wOBA) enjoys a far greater correlation to runs scored than does batting average.
• Retired first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz is still fielding questions about the World Series clinching ball that he held onto after the 2004 Red Sox championship.

Thanks to CNBC’s Darren Rovell, we learn that the Sporting Goods Manufacturing Association has put out its annual sport-by-sport participation list.

Among the findings:

An amazing 1.9 million people participated in triathlons in 2010, up 63.7 percent from the year before. 

The treadmill is being used by 42.5% more Americans than it was in 2000, while the amount of people that use the cross country ski machine is down 52.9 percent.

Despite the growth of the NFL, tackle football participation is down 16.1 percent over the last decade.

In the oddball category, there are 3.2 million cheerleaders in this country, up 22.7% in 2000 and 19.4 million people now play ping pong, up a whopping 53 percent in the last decade.

Things aren’t good if it has wheels. All down over the last decade? Roller skating (63.6 percent), roller hockey (down 65.3 percent) and skateboarding (30.9 percent).

The SGMA press release announcing the survey may be accessed here.

A report on MLB commissioner Bud Selig’s decision to take over the day-to-day operations of the Los Angeles Dodgers:

Joe Torre, who retired as manager of the Dodgers last fall, said Thursday he hopes Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig’s decision to take over the team from embattled owner Frank McCourt produces a healthier franchise.

“It’s obvious the organization needed to be tended to, paid attention to, and I know it wasn’t easy for the commissioner to come up with the decision that he did,” Torre said.

McCourt had already burdened the franchise with more than $457 million of debt, according to a lawyer familiar with the Dodgers’ finances, and he was having trouble securing more loans to meet the team’s expenses.

Baseball officials were said to be worried that money coming in from a potential front-loaded TV deal with Fox would be redirected to McCourt and not used for the team. Dodgers Vice Chairman Steve Soboroff, hired Tuesday, said baseball’s concerns were unjustified and Selig’s decision “irresponsible.”

The rest here.

I do wonder how many other pro teams are in a similar situation to the Dodgers. The Dodgers have an advantage that they consistently draw fans, but there are many teams around the pro leagues that struggle to put fans in the seats every night. You can’t put more debt on these teams if ticket, food and media revenues are maxed out.

Toomer has since apologized for his remark, but, for me, it’s just another reason why I really don’t care if the NFL has a season this year. Move half of the college games to Sunday and let’s move on.

Looks like the Dodgers will join the Expos, the Boston Bees and (briefly) the Texas Rangers as teams taken over by Major League Baseball. This whole mess with the Dodgers is bizarre, from owner Frank McCourt’s messy divorce to his more recent “secret” loan to make payroll. The Dodger faithful should have little to fear beyond this brief hiccup. They’re one of the best sports franchises in baseball with a great ballpark and a loyal fan base. I’m rooting for Mark Cuban to get a shot at them.

Oops:

MADRID — Real Madrid waited 18 years to win back the Copa del Rey trophy – only to drop the cup and watch it get crushed under the wheels of a bus.

The 33-pound cup slipped from the hands of Madrid defender Sergio Ramos while atop the team bus during celebrations Thursday morning in the capital. Only hours before, the club defeated rival Barcelona in the domestic cup final in Valencia.

The front right wheel of the bus rolled over the trophy before the driver stopped.

Emergency service members gathered up the broken pieces and returned them to the bus. The trophy did not reappear at the club’s traditional celebration spot at the Plaza de Cibeles in central Madrid.

Video here. . .

The scene is every professional baseball stadium. The home team has a runner on first base and there is one man out. The batter hits a slow, bouncing ball to the second baseman, who flips the ball to the shortstop for the force out at second base. Two outs. In turn, the shortstop guns the ball to first base. The play is close, but the batter manages to beat the throw. Up to half of the home team fans cheer. 

Huh?!?

From 1993 to 2010, the inning run expectancy index of a runner on first and one man out has been 0.555 runs, whereas the index of a runner on first and two men out is only 0.240 runs, a greater than 50% drop. In other words, the batter did nothing to help his teammates win.

Put it another way: if the batter had hit an infield fly that the second baseman caught, the result would have been the same — a runner on first with two outs — but none of those fans would have clapped.

So what’s the story?

Are these folks appreciative that the batter hustled down the line? Is the cheering just a knee-jerk reaction to seeing an umpire give the safe call?

Your thoughts are most welcome.

Did Cubs players receive cash payments in exchange for purposely losing the 1918 World Series?

If Chicago has been willing to believe that a cow caused the Great Chicago Fire, maybe it will buy this one: The White Sox got the idea to throw the 1919 World Series after the Cubs did the same thing one year earlier.

That’s the suggestion — more of a hint, really — from Eddie Cicotte, one of the infamous Black Sox banned from baseball after their tainted World Series against Cincinnati.

In a 1920 court deposition the Chicago History Museum recently put on its website, Cicotte said “the boys on the club” talked about how a Cub or a number of Cubs were offered $10,000 to throw the 1918 Series they lost 4-2 to the Boston Red Sox.

Of particular interest is the suspicious play of outfielder Max Flack:

In the fourth game, Flack was picked off not once, but twice. Flack turned a catchable fly ball in the sixth and final game into an error that allowed two runs to score in the Red Sox’s 2-1 win.

And there was the time Babe Ruth came to the plate for the Red Sox — a pitcher at the time, but emerging as one of the game’s best hitters — and the Cubs’ pitcher, Lefty Tyler, saw that Flack was not playing deep enough in right field.

“He waved him back and Flack just stood there,” Deveney said. “Sure enough, Babe hit one over his head” for a triple that scored two runs.

The entire Chicago History Museum post, “Court Confession of a Banished Ball Player,” may be found here.