Morning Link Dump - 08/27/10
Obligatory Sports Babe
Inspired by a With Leather post on a Reebok campaign she's in, let's go with a completely unrelated picture of model Kelly Brook.
Quote of the Day
"The trouble in the actual game was that I had a poor view of that particular incident. I was looking through the back of Alonso and though I could see the foot was high, I could not be certain of the extent of the contact. It wasn't that I didn't want to send anyone off because it was a World Cup final, though I was mindful of the fact that the game was the pinnacle of the players' careers as well as of mine. I just wasn't prepared to take a guess 25 minutes into the game." - English referree Howard Webb on the Nigel de Jong drop kick from the World Cup final, according to the Guardian.
The Pittsburgh Paradox
"How can a bad baseball team make money? According to a set of confidential documents published on Deadspin this week, Major League Baseball's most hapless team—the Pittsburgh Pirates—had a net income of close to $30 million in 2007 and 2008 despite fielding teams that lost 54 more games than they won. As the AP reported on Sunday, 'Losing has been profitable' for Pittsburgh," begins an excellent Slate piece that tries to sort out the fallout from Deadspin's "MLB Confidential" reports this week, which opened the books on certain MLB teams.
A's Ballboy Gets A Date
"When Oakland A's ball boy Kevin Fennell showed up to his stool along the third baseline at the Coliseum, he had one thing on his mind: Get the digits of the beautiful redhead in the second row. And after sharing foul ball after foul ball with the lovely Jacki Lynch, he finally got what he was looking for," explains Total Pro Sports in a follow-up to a video that went viral earlier in the week. "Only a few weeks after witnessing Bo 'the Bailer' and Sara Saco break up over a foul ball, Kevin and Jacki have been brought together by one (or should we say five)."
Could It Finally Happen?
In news that will interest no one but me, I may finally, after over a decade of flirtation, be ready to join the Arsenal bandwagon-- but only if this report from Caught Offside bears out: "Arsenal continue to be linked with Dutch international midfielder Rafael Van Der Vaart," they say. "The 27-year-old Real Madrid star has been heavily linked with an exit from the Santiago Bernabeu following the arrival of 'Special One' Jose Mourinho, and Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger is one manager thought to be monitoring the situation."
Speaking Of... A Comment:
Really would have liked to see Ajax drawn into a Champions League group where they had a little more than exactly zero chance of advancing. Really would have liked that.
Quote of the Day II
"Trying to avoid the gridiron for one year." - The tagline for a blog called A Year Without Football, which aims to provide a daily chronicle of a man who is attempt to, you guessed it, go year without football.
Quickly
Out of Bounds makes fun of Bryce Harper's mullet.
I haven't actually read this thing, which is from Ungentlemanly Conduct, but I DID skim it, and it seemed like it might be kind of interesting.
I know this is old, but someone put the call of David Tyree's Super Bowl catch on Reddit with the heading "Worst call ever? Great job Joe Buck...," and they're completely bang on. Has a moment this big ever been called this blandly?
Midwest Sports Fans list their 33 most underrated workout songs and, um... I risk being a snob here, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I'm pretty sure these are some of the worst songs ever recorded.
And Now, This Month's Larissa Riquelme News
Via Deadspin, here's the Paraguayan World Cup star shilling for Nokia. Um... sure.
