Australian Open Preview

First, I suppose an introduction is in order. I am Fetch, and I am an internet superstar a blogger. To drop in a couple shameless plugs right off the bat, you can find me writing about Kansas athletics at Rock Chalk Talk, the Twins at Twinkie Talk and college hockey at the creatively named The College Hockey Blog. You can also follow me on twitter @fetch9 if you would like.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get to the Australian Open preview. The Aussie Open is the first grand slam on the tennis calendar and probably my favorite. It could be that it comes after a long 5 month layoff after the US Open, or that it is a nice distraction from the cold January weather and the dreary school that goes with it. Or it could be that traditionally it is the one that features the most wide open field.

In any event, I love watching it, and it is one of the four times a year when I get to wear my serious tennis fan hat. Let’s begin the preview with the ladies: (more…)

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Tags: Australian Open, Maria Sharapova, Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, Tennis, WTA
Category Previews |

The Morning After Pill

The Morning After Pill is a daily recap of the previous days events from the sporting world. Certain teams and entire sports are left out due to an extreme lack of caring or crippling hangovers. It’s probably the hangovers though, and they might not even be crippling. That’s how we roll. Send tips to tips@ thegallyblog.com

NFL: The Raiders are once again proving to be incompetent. They’ve filed a grievance against JaMarcus Russell in order to try and reclaim $9.55 million in money paid to him for the next two seasons. The thing is, that was guaranteed money that they owed him as stipulated in his contract. JaMarcus ended up making $36.4 million over three years and is apparently still owed another $3 million.

It's funny because he's fat.

-KSK

NHL: Still no more hockey last night and again, there’s no more tonight. Nice move Gary.

Official Gally Blog NHL Story Picture

MLB: The Mets, who surely are a sign of the apocalypse or as I like to call it the Metspocalypse, shut out the Phillies again. 3-0. Winning a series completely by shutouts is by no means a common feat in this era. The last time the Mets did it was in 1969. Against the Phillies. It has been opined that the Mets didn’t have to face Halladay, but I think being defensive would not have helped the moribund offence. Albert Pujols hit his first homerun and drove in his first runs in 12 games, last night as the Cardinals beat the Padres 8-3. Daisuke Matsuzaka pitched an awesome game last night. Awesome for the schadenfreude it produced. He walked 8 batters, hit another one and threw a wild pitch for good measure. The Red Sox as a result lost 4-3.

NBA: (more…)

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Tags: Albert Pujols, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Gary Bettman, JaMarcus Russell, Lakers, Metspocalypse, Rafael Nadal, Ron Artest
Category Morning After Pill |

Morning After Pill

The Morning After Pill is a recap of the day before in sports. Teams and certain sports are left out at our discretion

MLB: Remember last week? When I was talking about how good the Rockies were, and how many games they had won in a row? Well they dropped their third straight, this one to the Texans by a score of 9-1. Tim Linecum pitched 7 innings and though he gave up 6 hits, he managed to leave 9 stranded on base and got 11K’s. The Rockies still lead the Wild Card race by 4.5 games. In a fine bit of reporting excellence, ESPN released a story done on the AP that makes absolutely no sense at all. This is the first season in the new Yankee Stadium, and therefore all stadium records should be starting anew. Sure the inside dimensions are that of old Yankee Stadium, but it’s a new park. Yet, ESPN and the AP have put out that the Yankee Stadium single season HR record has been broken. Thanks for the awe inspiring reporting.

NFL: The Patriots pulled every single Southie Irish cross out of their asses last night. Down 24-10, they scored two TD’s in the last 2:06 to win 25-24. On the night Tom Brady threw 53 times as the O-Line couldn’t get the run game going. The Pat’s couldn’t seem to do much right last night as Buffalo was able to put the points up, and make most of the stops they needed. But Buffalo being Buffalo, came to bite them in the ass late in the game. Still holding a 5 point lead, with under 2 minutes to go Buffalo kick returner Leodis McKelvin’s fumble on the Kickoff proved to be the deciding play of the game. The Patriots got the ball at the 31 yard line, and took it in to score with 50 seconds left. Trent Edwards who outplayed Brady for most of the game, couldn’t pull off a one minute drill though and the Pats sneak home to bed with the win. Bills LB Paul Pozluszny broke his arm in the game and I imagine is out for the season. The Chargers needed some last minute luck as well last night. They traded the lead 4 times with the Raiders in the 4th quarter. Raider field goal, Charger TD. Raider TD with 2:34 left in the game, Charger TD on a run by Sproles with :18 left on the clock. The Raiders tried a last ditch hail mary, and JaMarcus Russell threw an 900 yard bomb, but Antoine Cason picked the ball of to seal the game. The Chargers looked like they couldn’t quite handle the surprisingly good looking Oakland Defense, and Al Davis doesn’t look quite as crazy as newly acquired Richard Seymour had two sacks and kept the running game in check. In the theme of the day though, the Reffing was arguably quite horrible and Oakland had a controversial TD overturned. Still, Oakland may not be quite the laughing stock that we had all thought they would be this year.
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Tags: Bills, Chargers, del Porto, Giants, Juan Martin del Porto, Patriots, Rafael Nadal, Raiders, Rockies, Roger Federer, Tim Linecum, US Open, Yankee Stadium
Category Morning After Pill, Recap |

Morning After Pill

Here’s what happened in sports last night while you were either sleeping, not paying attention or huffing paint and dreaming of the Nightman.

NFL: The season opened with an OT game between the Steelers and the Titans. Even though both teams put up over 300 yards of offense, it wasn’t an exciting game. The Titans D looked legit as it held the vaunted Steelers ground game to 36yds on 22 carries. They also sacked Big Ben 4 times and had 2 interceptions. The final score was 13-10 for Pittsburgh, but the big story was Troy Polamalu. He suffered what is being called a sprained MCL and is expected to be out 3-6 weeks, though further testing will be done. The Raiders have given Richard Seymour 5 days to report to the team or face being fined/suspended. My math might be a little rusty, but that gives him until after the first game played by Oakland. I’m guessing he wants to see what kind of debacle he’s headed for.

College Football: College Football had a great game last night. Georgia Tech jumped out to a 21-0 lead over Clemson. Clemson rallied to bring it to 24-21, before ultimately succumbing to GT 30-27. They got the ball back with about a minute left, but couldn’t get it done.

MLB: The Rockies are still on fire. Even without star SS Troy Tulowitzky for the third straight game, they won their 7th straight game 5-1 over the Reds to increase their lead for the NL wild card. This is like that year that they went to the playoffs while winning something like 9000 out of 9004 games. Is baseball ever going to be over.

Yeah, why not?

NBA: The Ref’s are negotiating for a new contract. It isn’t going so well. They expect to be locked out when the exhibition games start Oct 1. The Ref’s in the NBA are all phonies anyways. They push for whatever matchups the league wants when playoff time rolls around anyways, so why not just hire some good actors or hot women to be the Refs and relegate the NBA to WWE status. It might even help the ratings out.
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Tags: Clemson, Fernando Gonzalez, Georgia Tech, Hillary Duff, Mike Comrie, President Obama, Rafael Nadal, Rockies, Steelers, Titans
Category Morning After Pill |