- Solid famous baseball player sighting. Former @redsox 3B Mike Lowell at Newark Airport. 2013-05-08
- At Syracuse, a Coach Waits and Watches for Boeheim to take off. I'm surprised Jimmy B is going with SU to the ACC http://t.co/she4XZ2DU5 2013-05-07
- Amazing post of some fantastic life hacks. 99 Life Hacks to make your life easier! – Imeimei – http://t.co/jFVyq6rdCo 2013-05-06
- World's Largest #Bath Tub – http://t.co/gRTzSxFjRv #Bathing #Harbor #HongKong #RubberDuck via http://t.co/vUsSrozmjg 2013-05-06
- Broken #Glass – http://t.co/X6hQ8eeBtV #Comedy #Funny #Google via http://t.co/vUsSrozmjg 2013-05-05
- Some flat Apple products for your next mockups http://t.co/LUy3iEXTpm 2013-05-05
- Now this is a really useful feature @google https://t.co/V3hRTdnpPA 2013-05-03
World’s Largest Bath Tub
A giant rubber duck was spotted in Hong Kong harbor this past week. For the safety of all Hong Kong residents, Mr. Bubble was not used during the duck’s tour of the harbor and there were no sightings of Ernie (or Bert) singing “Rubber Duckie, You’re the One”.
Broken Glass
Saturday Night Live had some great fun at the expense of Google Glass.
Nailed it.
WTF Is Psy
The Korean “star” Psy showed up at Dodger Stadium last night and took the place over for a few minutes. Check out former Dodger manager Tommy Lasorda’s reaction and facial expressions as Psy starts doing his thing on the concourse, right next to Lasorda’s VIP seat. Only in LA.
It’s Been A While
After a whopping 51 years in England’s lower football (soccer) division, Cardiff City has finally been promoted to England’s Premier League. Cardiff was a team that had deep financial issues not too long ago.
It is a remarkable accomplishment because the club was nearly bankrupt more than a year ago. In three of the last four seasons, Cardiff got tantalizingly close to promotion from the League Championship, only to fall short in the promotion playoffs. Those failures were called “doing the Cardiff.” With Tuesday’s result, a point from a scoreless draw with Charlton Athletic, the club can bury the phrase and look forward to resuming the fierce Welsh derby with Swansea, which was promoted two years ago.
They are kind of like the Red Sox of the EPL.
This Week’s Tweets
- Louisville Saved Their Asses – http://t.co/W7R3lNf6km #Espn #Experts #FinalFour #Predictions via http://t.co/vUsSrozmjg 2013-04-11
- SU G MCW – if I go to pre-draft camp and kill it, can work way to #1 pick. Showing up vs UM in Final 4 woulda helped http://t.co/SbjVA4wLAs 2013-04-11
- Not concerned. SU will be fine. –> Syracuse guard MCW declares for the NBA Draft. http://t.co/yhTlZODhyY 2013-04-10
- I use @hover to register my domains and I think you should too! Try them out: https://t.co/uWhdXpFqb8 #hoverlove 2013-04-10
- Great video of @anildash 's speech at Harvard as a follow on to his article How We Lost the Web http://t.co/g8j3iWF06N 2013-04-08
- Merry Christmas, bitch 2013-04-06
- RT @MBorkowski: I'm going to find other programming during halftime or I may hurl. 2013-04-06
- Whatever happens tonight, I'm s till proud if the Orange 2013-04-06
- Orange in the house. Lets go Orange!! #finalfour 2013-04-06
- RT @MatthewBerryTMR: LET'S GO OR-ANGE! LET'S GO OR-ANGE! #CUSE 2013-04-06
- RT @kristalberg: The uniform differences between a Nike school & an adidas school. THAT'S the Shocker in this game. WIchita State fo … 2013-04-06
- RT @parislemon: Refs absolutely just gave the game to Louisville. 2013-04-06
- RT @rjsauter44: Whoa 3rd foul on Russ Smith. HUGE for Wichita State. 2013-04-06
- Shock the world. #shockers #wsu 2013-04-06
- Lets go Shockers!! 2013-04-06
- This Week's Tweets – http://t.co/9LrKJw9twI #Social #Twitter #WeeklyTweets via http://t.co/vUsSrozmjg 2013-04-05
- - http://t.co/rPQivOYAZ0 #CurseSiCoverJinx #FinalFour #Gonzaga #Louisville #Michigan #SiCoverCurse #Sportsillustrated #Syracuse … 2013-04-05
Louisville Saved Their Asses
I love how all these talking heads at ESPN or wherever fashion themselves as experts and pundits on who’s going to cut down the nets every year at the NCAA tournament. Let’s take a look at this graphic from ESPN that detailed all the picks from 13 of their “experts” who cover College Basketball regularly. And we’re talking big name College Hoops names – Dick Vitale, Digger Phelps, Jay Bilas, and on and on.
A total of 13 “experts” each selected their picks for the Final Four – so that’s 52 total slots (13 x 4) across all of them. Eleven of the 13 picked Louisville to make the Final Four, which really didn’t take much hoops knowledge to pick. However, if we removed that pretty obvious Louisville region/pick from the equation, a grand total of one Final Four slot across the remaining 39 was accurately predicted by these ‘experts’ – Dickie V picking Michigan. That’s a 2.5% accuracy rate for those of your scoring at home (or for those of you who are alone).
Yeah, yeah…it’s parody in college basketball. The talent is distributed to all the different teams out there. I know, I know…that’s the cover. But really, these guys are supposed to be experts and cover this sport daily so I would expect them to have a better take on who is really going to go deep into the Tournament and make the Final Four. But the reality is that I could have showed up in Bristol and sat in front of a camera and predicted the Final Four just as well as they could.
Wait, I did…I had Syracuse AND Louisville in my Final Four bracket.
This Week’s Tweets
- @google can't b happy about FB hijacking Android. RT Facebook’s New “Home” Puts Focus On Messaging http://t.co/u8ZilkhtWr via @techcrunch 2013-04-04
- Ebbets Field Should Be 100 Today – http://t.co/zQsq3ZrRzB #Baseball #Birthday #Brooklyn #Dodgers #EbettsField via http://t.co/vUsSrozmjg 2013-04-04
- Surprise and Delight – http://t.co/aohJlRNgRG #Bmw #Free #HarmanKardon #Headphones #NyCarShow via http://t.co/vUsSrozmjg 2013-04-01
- Awesome! RT “@jimmyfallon: Congrats to @R_Xmas25 and Syracuse!! #AprilMadness #FinalFour” #cuse #FINALFOUR 2013-03-31
- #Syracuse Final Four #Desktop #Background – http://t.co/NPXkSRR9Bp #FinalFour #Orange via http://t.co/vUsSrozmjg 2013-03-31
- #Syracuse Is Final Four Bound – http://t.co/E2TLZtddDs #Basketball #FinalFour #Ncaa…via http://t.co/vUsSrozmjg 2013-03-30
- RT @Cuse: How's this for a starting five — Derrick Coleman, Billy Owens, John Wallace, Leo Rautins and Sherman Douglas. All in the hous … 2013-03-30
- Suck it Gottleib. How you like them Oranges? @gottleibshow #eliteeight 2013-03-29
The SI Cover Curse And the Final Four
Through the course of the sports year, and ahead of big sports events like the Super Bowl or the World Series or the NCAA Tournament, I sometimes take a cursory glance at the recent covers of Sports Illustrated and specifically those that feature said upcoming sporting event, mostly to see if the “SI Cover Jinx” still has it’s mojo intact. This is made exceedingly easier via their iPad app since there is a library of past issues that go back a few years to when they started offering digital versions of the magazine.
For those of you who don’t know, the “SI Cover Curse” is an urban legend where those athletes or teams featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated are cursed and/or jinxed to suffer loss, injury or both within a reasonable time frame after the cover story/feature. As you will see in examples listed at the above linked Wikipedia page, this is not a passing fad and it goes back years.
With Final Four weekend upon us, I thought it would be interesting to look at the SI covers and see if the “SI Cover Curse” could be a pseudo predictor of who may cut down the nets this weekend at the Final Four down in Atlanta.

Cody Zeller and Indiana – gone.
To start, let’s go to the SI College Hoops Preview back in November. Cody Zeller and Indiana are on the cover. As we know, they were sent home in the Sweet 16 round by my Syracuse Orange. And wow, did Zeller look really really bad in that loss.
Next, let’s look at the SI issue from March 25. They had a regional split of covers that included Indiana (Victor Oladipo), Gonzaga (Kelly Olynyk), Kansas (Ben McLemore) and Syracuse (Michael Carter-Williams). Indiana fell in the Round of 16. Gonzaga lost to Wichita State in the round of 32. Kansas choked lost to Michigan in the Elite 8. Only Syracuse is still standing.

Indiana – Gone

Kansas – Gone

Gonzaga – Gone

Syracuse – Still Alive.
And this week, SI has another regional cover split that includes Wichita State and Louisville (along with Tiger Woods and we won’t get into his, ahem, transgressions).

Louisville – Still alive

Wichita St. – Still alive
So if we cross reference all of these recent College Basketball focused covers this against the Final Four teams of Syracuse, Michigan, Wichita State, and Louisville, we see that the only team which has not been featured on the cover is Michigan.
And in this case, I fear that the Michigan Wolverines may have the advantage of the “SI Cover Curse” in their favor, since they have NOT been featured to date on the magazine’s cover.
Now, another factor to be considered here is the fact that “magazines” as we have known them are not nearly as influential in the media world as they once were. However, for some strange, outer body reason, the influence of the “SI Cover Curse” seems to be pretty alive and well.
Based on the above details, and I want to be clear that this is not my prediction or how I want things to play out, it appears that the “covers” are telling us that Louisville will beat Wichita State, Michigan will beat Syracuse, and Michigan will beat Louisville in the Finals on Monday night.
Damn, it hurts to write that.
Ebbets Field Should Be 100 Today

For the Brooklyn generation who grew up in the 1940s and 1950s, Ebbets Field was the centerpiece of the borough. It was the baseball shrine that their fathers took them to so they could see “Dem Bums”. It was where they headed when they played hooky from school on an early summer afternoon, maybe even sneaking into the stadium to catch a game.
In 2012, Fenway Park celebrated it’s 100th birthday and this year, Wrigley Field is doing the same – the last two baseball shrines standing from that era of baseball. And if Mr. O’Malley did not move the Dodgers to Los Angeles, we may have been celebrating the same birthday for Ebetts Field in Brooklyn today.
On April 9, 1913, a cold, windy afternoon limited the attendance to about 10,000 as the Dodgers lost their season opener to the Philadelphia Phillies, 1-0, the run scoring when outfielder Benny Meyer dropped a fly ball in the first inning.
Four days earlier, in the stadium’s initial game, an exhibition against the Yankees in warmer weather, about 25,000 enjoyed a 3-2 victory as Casey Stengel, a young outfielder who later managed the Dodgers and the Yankees, hit the first home run in Ebbets Field. On March 4, 1912, when Charles Ebbets dug a shovel into frosty dirt to break ground in a Flatbush neighborhood known as Pigtown, the plan was to name it Washington Park, after the team’s old wooden home closer to downtown. But a reporter for one of the Brooklyn newspapers spoke up.
“Call it Ebbets Field, Charlie,” he said. “You put yourself in hock to build it, and it’s your monument.
But alas, all we can do today is stare at a vapid apartment building on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn and wonder ‘what if’?
Besides the article linked above, here is a nice gallery of pictures from Ebetts Field Then and now via the NY Times.


