NY POST - Tiger Woods is now prowling the Big Apple.

Just days after finalizing his divorce, Woods moved into a downtown Manhattan apartment during the weekend, when he also was playing in a tournament just across the Hudson River in Paramus, NJ.

It seems that Tiger Woods is better fit to be single. Last weekend at Barclay’s, in his first appearance since his official divorce, Tiger Woods shot a 65, his best round of the year. He finished in 12^th, his best finish since June. [Read more →]

Tags: advice, sports
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At virtually any point during my childhood, if you had asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have told you I wanted to be a professional baseball player. I was okay as a player…nothing special. I got to pitch in little league, but that was mostly because my father was the coach. I never had any illusions that being paid to play was in my future, but it certainly would have been my choice if all it took was wanting to do it. In this desire, I was certainly not alone. If you watch professional athletes, though, it is clear that it is not all one big party. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports
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My lead story of the week could be categorized as both Good Sports and Bad Sports. Kyle Busch became the first NASCAR driver to ever sweep all three events at the same track on the same weekend when he won the truck race, the Nationwide race, and the Sprint Cup race at Bristol this week. Busch is a very talented driver, and he put it all together at Bristol, where he has always been strong. The media have grabbed onto this story, extolling the abilities and endurance of Busch and taking the public to task for its constant booing of him. I have a different take on all of that, though. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports
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A friend brought me to the inaugural game at New Meadowlands Stadium, where the New York Jets inducted six greats into their Ring of Honor at halftime and, as if to pay tribute to so much of the franchise’s colorful-yet-utterly-embarrassing history, promptly imploded in the third quarter to christen the stadium with a frustrating loss to their co-tenants, the New York Giants (really should have seen that coming). The defeat hardly mattered though because the big perk was having my first chance to look at the recently completed stadium and I think I speak for many fellow attendees when I say that as I wandered through I couldn’t help wondering: how the hell did this thing cost so much? [Read more →]

Tags: sports
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The Toronto Maple Leafs are going to be this year’s most improved team. There, I said it. And no, I’m not a Leafs fan. [Read more →]

Tags: sports
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I am on vacation this week, and am currently in Sandusky, Ohio, at an amusement park called Cedar Point. It’s a very cool place with a LOT of roller coasters (17, I believe). What it doesn’t have, at least in our hotel, which is called Castaway Bay, is WIFI in the guest rooms. As I am unwilling to subject myself to dial-up, at outrageous rates, mind you, and I am also uninterested in spending much time in this lobby, I will not be providing you with any of my usual brilliant commentary this week. I know, I know…how will you ever make it through your Monday morning without any of my keen insight into the world of sports? You’ll have to muddle through. As I am not a total slacker, I will provide you with some links to some bad sports that happened this week. You’ll need to provide the commentary yourselves. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports
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Last season, Major League Baseball instituted instant replay, but only for review of homerun calls. On the one hand, if you know anything about baseball umpires, it is an amazing thing that they allowed any amount of questioning of their decision-making to be factored into the game. This is a group that is famous for its arrogance and belligerence. At the same time, it was at least a small measure of progress that a few messed up calls could conceivably be reversed. It seems clear, though, that there is a far greater opportunity for review than just homerun calls. Thursday night’s game between the Philadelphia Phillies and the Florida Marlins demonstrated this very well. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports
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I’ve just discovered that the third-string quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles is named Mike Kafka. It’s a tale that cannot end well. While most NFL players simply have to succeed on the field, Kafka has larger problems. 

Try as Kafka might, he cannot learn what plays the Eagles want him to run — the playbook is kept from him by mysterious authorities; despite his many inquiries he cannot find the stadium — even though he always seems about to arrive, it remains just beyond his reach; he is accused of breaking league rules, but no one will tell him what crime he has committed or how he might defend himself against the unspoken charges; Kafka is tortured by feelings of unworthiness and knows he can never measure up to his father; and despite devoting himself to his family and working himself to exhaustion to provide them with his hefty NFL paycheck, in the moment of his greatest need his own family, even his beloved sister, will wish he were dead and leave him to starve to death as he gives up on life.

(Photo from philadelphiaeagles.com)

Tags: books & writing, sports
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I am often amazed at the regularity with which the world reminds me that many other cultures are not at all like ours. It is easy to believe that those differences make others uncivilized or backward, and much harder to see them as simply different. I am sure there are many people out there who have a greater ability to see the beauty and value in variety than I do. Even those people, though, might have a little bit of trouble understanding what happened with the North Korean national soccer team this week. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports
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Athletes make loads of money. Most of the rest of us do not. These are basic facts. It is natural to envy what we don’t have, and even to resent those who seem more fortunate than ourselves. Despite this, most sports fans are okay with the fact that many of the athletes for whom we root are millionaires many times over. We take so much enjoyment from sports, we have not only made peace with this inequity, but we often actually support it, advocating that the teams we love spend even more than they already spend. There is an assumed contract with the fans, though, that goes along with the gigantic contracts the players sign. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports
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I admit it: I miss the World Cup. Partly this is because it enabled me to go to a bar at 10am on a weekday without it being seen as proof I have a problem. In part it’s the absence of commercials and timeouts — once a half starts, it goes on for at least 45 minutes — which is not the case with any American sport, with the worst offender being an NBA game in the 4th quarter (new Popes are elected in less time). And finally, I genuinely came to enjoy watching it. Here are the things I came to cherish most about the beautiful game: [Read more →]

Tags: sports
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Professional baseball players are generally great athletes. Sure, there have been a few major league players that look less than athletic. Fernando Valenzuela, from way back in the Eighties, comes to mind, although he was actually a much better athlete than his appearance suggested. Most of them, though, look the part. They play a difficult game at the highest level, and are generally pretty fit. Sure, injuries are part of the game, as these guys are exerting themselves, running, diving, sliding, throwing, and swinging with great abandon. We expect these players to be supermen. This week, several players proved to be  much less than extraordinary, injuring themselves in a variety of unusual and somewhat comical ways. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports
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10. Your locker mate in the Minors was Ty Cobb.

9. Your seeing-eye dog won’t stop barking at the catcher.

8. Instead of using pine tar on your bat, you’re using Super Poligrip.

7. You ask the hot dog vendor if he’s got any prunes.

6. You’re older than the hot dogs he’s selling.

5. Instead of a stretch, you opt for the Seventh Inning Nap.

4. After you slide into third, you can’t get up again.

3. When you get to first, you ask the first baseman, “Which way’s second?”

2. You get winded standing up for The National Anthem.

1. After several practice swings in the on-deck circle, you realize what you’re actually swinging is your cane.
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

Tags: Bob Sullivan's top ten everything, sports
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I am a contrarian. I have no problem admitting that. I have often found myself disliking something simply because most people like it. This trait has shown itself most often in my dislike of many major sports stars. If you think back to many of the huge athletes of the past 40 years or so, you will find many on my list of athletes I just don’t like. I am not talking about the trouble-making, law-breaker types. I am talking about the international superstars. From Michael Jordan to Cal Ripken to Mario Lemieux, if most people love the guy, I feel the opposite. Despite that, until very recently, I had nothing against Lebron James. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports
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I personally didn’t think signing with the Miami Heat indicated a man was evil incarnate — Signing with the Dallas Cowboys? Maybe. — but that was before I heard from Dan Gilbert. Gilbert is the majority owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers (aka “the team King James used to play for”), and he posted an open letter to fans on the team website, in which he thanked LeBron for seven years of service that saw the Cavs fail to win a title but during which they still experienced far more success than they had at any other point in the history of the franchise. I kid, he ripped LeBron a new one as he dealt with the grief from his loss by skipping straight to anger and staying there. [Read more →]

Tags: sports
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He has started 53 percent of his team’s games through July 5th.

He has less RBI than Roger Bernadina, Jeff Keppinger, and Chris Snyder.

He has fewer home runs than Ross Gload, Dane Sardinha, and Jeff Baker.

He is Omar Infante, 2010 All-Star. [Read more →]

Tags: sports
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I became a football fan at an early age. As much as I like baseball, basketball, and hockey, nothing could ever match the excitement of a football game. College or pro, football has something the other games do not have, even if I could not tell you exactly what that is. One of the things that contributed to my love of football was the quarterback for the Eagles during my teenage and college years. Randall Cunningham could do things no other quarterback could do. He could throw the ball the length of the field, run with incredible speed and agility, and avoid tacklers like no one I had ever seen. He was Michael Vick with a brain and a lack of criminal tendencies and cruelty. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports
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Rumor has it that Kobayashi will not be competing in this year’s Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest because of some sort of contract dispute. For those of you who don’t know who Kobayashi is, just reference the When Falls All-Coliseum Awards FD2K. Without Kobayashi, Joey Chestnut — last year’s champion and the only person who can come close to Kobayashi’s eating greatness – will undoubtedly run away with the title. Ratings will surely suffer for tomorrow’s noon (EST) showdown on ESPN.

I have a few questions to express my disappointment. The first is, they have contract disputes in competitive eating? Don’t they just pay them in Robitussin? The second question is, what is Major League Eating thinking? Pay Koby whatever he wants. He and Chestnut are the Tiger and Phil of the 4th of July. Their Independence Day showdowns inspire millions of Americans to take it to the grill later in the day. No Koby, no interest in the sport. And my last and most important question is, what is Kobayashi thinking? Sitting out the 4th of July in competitive eating is like holding out of the Tour De France in cycling. Where else can he make a name for himself? Just sad.

Tags: sports
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I realized something today: I don’t care about Chris Bosh. Bosh is a power forward who is rumored to be teaming up with fellow free agent LeBron James to form a “superteam”; it may also include shooting guard Joe Johnson. And it dawned on me: if the NBA has reached a point where playing with Chris Bosh and Joe Johnson makes you part of a superteam, the league has officially gone the way of hockey. [Read more →]

Tags: sports
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Something is wrong with the NBA. There was a time when I really enjoyed watching professional basketball. The Sixers last won the NBA championship when I was a teenager, and they have had many bad teams over the years since then, but that didn’t stop me from watching. At some point in time, though, the league lost its way. The best evidence I can give you of this is a trade that occurred on Tuesday between the Miami Heat and the Oklahoma City Thunder, just before the NBA Draft. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports
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Sometimes you need to see something to grasp its scale — simply stating its dimensions fails to do it justice, no matter how accurately you describe it. That’s the case with the empire of Pablo Escobar. Jeff and Michael Zimbalist’s documentary The Two Escobars offers extensive footage of the late Colombian drug kingpin once ranked among Forbes’ richest men and it’s extraordinary, not only in terms of the toys his money lets him acquire (though those are impressive, with his race cars and helicopters and the like), but the prominence it affords him, as when he stands beaming and seemingly his entire community applauds his opening of a new playing field. The flip side of this is it also lets us appreciate the carnage Pablo helped create: this is a man who took down planes and once blew up an entire city block to make a point, devastation on a level that sounds almost unreal until you see the bodies and the survivors stumbling around the destruction. He was both a generous and extremely dangerous man and, as this doc makes clear, he really liked soccer. [Read more →]

Tags: sports
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My columns are often full of bad people. Athletes who break the law are everywhere, it seems. Yet the law-breaking athlete does not always seem to be the lowest form of scum in the eyes of sports fans. Instead, the selfish, prima-donna types are often seen as worse than any others. It defies logic, but I know that I feel that way as well. Consider the case of Albert Haynesworth. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports
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Earlier this week, WFTC contributor Jessica Alfreds offered this post, suggesting some great places for dining in Philly. I made some notes, planning to visit the City of Brotherly Love myself, later this month. Now, thanks to A LOT of local enthusiasm for soccer in that area, I’m asking, “can anyone recommend a good sports bar in town?”

[Read more →]

Tags: sports
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Earlier today, regular WFTC contributor Alan Spoll offered this latest “Bad sports, good sports” post, which included his view on scoring - or lack thereof - in soccer matches.

Alan and I will will have to agree to disagree on this one … though I must admit, right from the start, that mine is hardly an impartial view.
[Read more →]

Tags: sports
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I will start this column out by stating that I am not much of a soccer fan. I am a sports fan, and I can watch anything competitive, but soccer is not something for which I have any kind of real appreciation. Still, it’s World Cup time, and I would not be doing my job as a sports columnist if I completely ignored this event that is dominating the sports news and likely will for the next month or so. No, I won’t be watching Ghana play Serbia, but I can certainly follow the U.S. team and see if they can make a splash at this level. On Saturday, I sat down to watch the American team play England, a country for whom soccer is a national obsession. Watching this match revealed a number of things to me, and very few of them were positive. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports
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Last night the UFC’s Chuck “The Iceman” Liddell was knocked out in the first round. Which wouldn’t be so striking — you fight long enough, you lose on occasion — except it’s the third straight fight this has happened and this time it was to a guy in his mid-30s with a broken arm. Now there’s talk that Liddell should retire, as he’s 40 and has lost five of his last six bouts (including another first round knockout)…but I say keep reaching for that rainbow. [Read more →]

Tags: sports
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As much as I love sports, I understand very clearly that professional sports are big business. It feels like I read as many stories about contracts, unions, and endorsements as I do about actual athletic accomplishments. This is more of an observation than it is a complaint, of course. I would not have the incredible access I have to a huge array of sports and sports information right from my couch if there wasn’t an amazing amount of money involved. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports
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As everyone knows and has been addressed on this site already, pitcher Armando Galarraga recently lost a perfect game when the umpire missed a call, a fact he quickly and regretfully admitted. Hearing of this injustice, Commissioner Bud Selig exploded into action and did what he does best: add Wild Card teams to the playoffs. I kid, instead he declined to act while issuing a vague statement about possible future actions (it’s a lot like baseball’s steroid policy for most of his reign). Seeing as Bud forbids addressing the past and everyone’s still upset about the lost perfect game, it seems there’s only one thing to do: schedule a new one. [Read more →]

Tags: sports
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On Wednesday night, Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga threw a perfect game. Only he didn’t. At least, he won’t get credited with having thrown one. With two outs in the ninth inning, Cleveland infielder Jason Donald hit a bouncer that first baseman Miguel Cabrera had to range to his right to field. Field it he did, and he tossed to Galarraga, who was covering first. The throw beat the runner by a step and the game should have been over and the perfect game complete. It was not to be. Umpire Jim Joyce, stationed at first base for the evening, inexplicably called Donald safe. [Read more →]

Tags: sports
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It’s a moment that every baseball player dreams about. Tenth inning, game tied at one, bases loaded, two outs. Hero time, right? Kendry Morales, a young first baseman for the Los Angeles Angels, found himself in this exact situation on Saturday. Morales is a promising player who is in only his second full major league season. He stepped to the plate to face Brandon League, a reliever for the Seattle Mariners. What happened next boggles the mind. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports
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