Sports Then and Now

Based solely on his play on the field, it is hard to justify Dick LeBeau as a Hall of Famer.

I’m sure this article will not further endear me to members of the Steeler Nation, but the recent announcement by the Pro Football Hall of Fame Senior Committee of Dick LeBeau as one of their two “senior finalists” for 2010 further emphasizes why significant changes need to be made to the Pro Football Hall of Fame selection process.

Earlier this month I completed a two-month series that ran both on  Sports Then and Now and on Bleacher Report in which I looked at the Best Players Not in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

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A Glove of Their Own is a story of the joy of baseball and the joy of giving.

While players with multi-million dollar contracts playing in billion dollar stadiums have become the public face of baseball, at its core the game remains a cherished pastime for children playing on empty lots or little league fields across America.

An inspirational children’s book, A Glove of Their Own, is helping focus minds and memories away from the big-time nature of America’s Pastime and back where it belongs, on the game and the kids who grow up playing for the shear love of the game.

“It’s about the joy of baseball and the joy of giving,” said Bob Salomon, the man behind the movement to turn this award winning children’s book into a national crusade.
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A four-time champion at the U.S. Nationals, Pauline Betz-Addie claimed the 1942 title while still attending Rollins College.

Teenage girls patrolling the courts at Grand Slam tennis tournaments is nothing new for the sport of women’s tennis. However, unlike the players of today, some of the stars from the past didn’t just juggle tennis schedules, they also often juggled their college course schedules.

Greats of the game including Doris Hart, Helen Wills Moody, Althea Gibson, Billie Jean King and Helen Hull Jacobs all competed in Grand Slam tournaments while also balancing their academic calendar.

Surprisingly, the college with the grandest tradition as home to women’s tennis greats of the past is a tiny school located just outside of Orlando, Florida.

With less than 2,000 students, Rollins College is a small liberal arts college popular with students from the northeast and known for producing champion water skiers, golfers, tennis players and occasionally even a movie star (most notably Buddy Ebsen and Anthony Perkins).

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Roger Federer will be looking for his third Grand Slam title of the year at the U.S. Open.

When the latest ATP rankings came out on Aug. 24, 2009, there was a new world number two player who was not named Rafael Nadal or Roger Federer.  Scotland’s own Andy Murray was the first man to break the iron grip on the top rankings since Nadal took over the number two spot on July 25, 2005 – over four years ago.

Nadal held that number two spot for 160 weeks before he finally seized the number one ranking from Roger Federer.  From Aug. 18, 2008 through July 5, 2009 the Spaniard held the crown of number one – eventually handing it back again to Federer, currently ranked in the top spot.

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The new video screen at Cowboys Stadium was hit by a punt during the first preseason game at the new facility.

It didn’t take long for Jerry Jones and his new Cowboys Stadium to create a buzz around the NFL. However, it wasn’t the kind of buzz that Jones could have wanted or anticipated for the $1.2 billion facility.

For the first half, everything went as scripted during the first game at the new stadium. The national television audience was treated to tours of special areas while the Cowboys and Tennessee Titans played a typical NFL preseason game.

Then, in the third quarter, things suddenly got interesting when Titans’ backup punter A.J. Trapasso bounced a punt off the giant video screen hanging above the field.

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OchoCinco knows twitter.

All I have to say is WOW! T.O. tweeting about the Buffalo Bills draft pick signing before Adam Schefter from ESPN reported it. Chad OchoCinco tweeting about his FG kick and kick off against New England and doing it literally within seconds of the game ending (who knows, he may have had a waterproof IPhone in the shower).

I had a bad case of insomnia last night, so I tuned into Ocho video streaming from the Bengals team plane! Great content, especially Ocho’s commentary about the Panini he was eating (HBO’s Hard Knocks must love this guy). It’s rubbernecking at its finest, sometimes you just gotta look!

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