Morning Link Dump - 05/03/11

Obligatory Sports Babe

SportsGrid noticed that ESPN's Erin Andrews was at the White House Correspondents' Dinner over the weekend, along with SI Swimsuit models Brooklyn Decker, Chrissy Teigen and Kate Upton, who all posed for a few pictures with each other. So, this morning we'll go with one of them... and I've randomly selected Upton. I can't imagine there being much disagreement with this choice...

Quote of the Day

"What kind of person celebrates death? It's amazing how people can HATE a man they've never even heard speak. We've only heard one side..." - Pittsburgh Steelers RB Rashard Mendenhall on Twitter, via Goal Line Stand, speaking on the death of Osama bin Laden. And, um, I'm no jingoist, but... wow, that's dumb.

Barca: The World's Greatest Whiners?

"Even if you can't tell one European soccer club from another, it's not difficult to see what's exceptional about FC Barcelona. This team plays with a dizzying combination of talent and artistry that you don't have to be a soccer snob to recognize," begins a curious piece from the Wall Street Journal.

"But on Tuesday, as Barca takes on Madrid in the second leg of its UEFA Champions League semifinal, this superclub seems to be doing some serious and possibly lasting damage to its reputation. The problem stems from the comportment of its players lately, which falls into three distinct subcategories:

"1) The sort of crying, whining and petulant foot-stomping one might expect from a toddler.

"2) Frequent appeals to a righteous God to be spared persecution by infidel referees.

"3) A tendency to react to any impact with opposing players by writhing around like Desdemona on her deathbed in the final act of Verdi's Otello.

"This crescendo of complaining, which dominated headlines across Europe last week after Barca's 2-0 win over Madrid, seems to be part of a calculated campaign to get better calls—or to speed the process of getting opposing players tossed. Some observers say it has conveniently come at a time when Barca's potent offense has slowed a bit and the team has become increasingly dependent on scoring from free kicks and set plays."

Athlete Tweets on Osama

People truly are going a bit nuts about this whole Osama bin Laden is dead thing, and while I hesitate to bring it up too much, it has entered the realm of sports quite often, as with Deadspin's "essay" on the subject, comprised entirely of athlete tweets, which begins:

"SOURCES: OSAMA BIN LADEN IS DEAD!!! WATCHING CNN NOW... THE PRESIDENT TO ADDRESS THE NATION SHORTLY... I got off the plane,went in my hotel rm, turned on TV, saw all those people outside the WH and thought "did the Skins win another SB?" LOL. Osama Bin Laden dead????? Whoa!!!! Osama Bin Laden Dead. Got him. We got his ASS. Osama Bin Laden is DEAD...........wow Obama that's impressive. So, would now be an appropriate time to go streaking across the white house lawn? God bless America.

"#WoW!! Obama words are earth moving and inspiring. Obama's swag is thru the roof! #PresidentialSwag. OK...OBAMA!!! #USAWINNING. USA USA USA!! Freedom is the only way YEAH, Terrorists your game is through cause now you have to answer to Team America F*CK YEAH!! Trump you didnt have a shot be4 you def dont have a shot now..."

The Improbable Story of Tom Wilhelmsen

"He didn’t want to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. That’s the thing about baseball: If you can throw 95 mph, the velocity and radar guns and the all-consuming nature of the sport come to define you. Tom Wilhelmsen  laughed at that. He wanted to write his own definition. He wanted to live," begins a great story from Jeff Passan of Yahoo! Sports.

"So he did. Wilhelmsen sits in the Seattle Mariners clubhouse these days recounting stories not of youthful indiscretion – of quitting baseball as a teenager, spending half a decade behind a bar, traveling the world, coming back on a whim and, within one season, finding himself in the major leagues after seven years away from the game – but of a life that turned out to be rather charmed.

"On one of those fanciful trips, Wilhelmsen and his wife, Cassie, roamed about the Southwest with a carful of supplies and a compass pointed toward adventure. They’d work for a few months bartending, pool their money and ship out to points unknown. They ended up in the Chiricahua mountains in Arizona, and when a brutal snowstorm hit, they plopped a bottle of vodka in the ground to keep it cold, blasted music from the car and rode a sled down a hill. The car battery died. They hadn’t seen anyone for miles. Cell phone reception was nonexistent. They were stranded.

"Wilhelmsen started throwing a Frisbee.

“'We had food and water and beer,' he reasoned.

"Eventually, an old man with Texas plates drove by and gave them a jump. And off they went on another adventure, everything leading back to right here, where perhaps the most improbable major leaguer in 2011 is doing his best to stretch this particular adventure for a while longer."

Quote of the Day II

"A lot of NFL people are skeptical about Nigerian players like Amukarma [sic]. “And it’s not just white men,” one executive said. 'It’s whites and blacks.' It’s still a subtle form of racism. The word on Nigerians: they are soft, not tough enough and too educated." - Dan Pompeii of National Football Post on Prince Amukamara's fall in the NFL Draft, which... wait, seriously???

Quickly

Fangraphs continues to love Peter Gammons' pocket tweets.

This Dirk Kuyt animated GIF from Who Ate All The Pies is rather, um, smashing.

And Pies has another awesome animated GIF, this time of Leo Messi's message to all the haters.

With a 28 game hitting streak on the go, you might think Andre Ethier of the Dodgers would be the last guy to be frustrated with his performance lately. Not so according to what the mics at a recent game picked up after he struck out, according to SportsGrid.

Sharapova's Thigh has spotted the greatest Larry Walker hat in the history of ever.

"A group of female Indonesian golf caddies at a resort in Kulai, Malaysia, are doing more than just carrying golfers' bags and giving golfing tips to players," says a report from Yahoo. "They also provide sexual services." Wait, what:?

Jack Edwards Gets Animated

Last week we posted NESN's Boston Bruins announcer giving some weird Tea Party-ish post-game speech after a B's win over Montreal. Here it is again, only with Tauntr providing some outstanding animations...