Giving up on DirecTV sports packages

I've subscribed to DirecTV's NFL and NBA season passes the past few years, but I won't do it again. The leagues, or the franchise owners, have gotten too greedy. Couldn't watch the Giants-Eagles game yesterday because it was blacked out here -- 3,000 miles away -- due to its being shown on a pay-per-view Fox sports channel. Can't watch the Mavericks-Kings game tonight because it's being shown on a pay-per-view Comcast channel. That never seemed to happen in years past. You subscribe to a league, and you expect to see the games -- without ponying up even more.

A's, 49ers heading to the Valley?

I live on the northern tip of Silicon Valley, which has never had a professional sports team. But now there's a chance the Valley may snag two teams: the San Francisco Giants 49ers are negotiating with Santa Clara, and the Oakland A's are flirting with Fremont, the town to the immediate south.

The lead story in today's San Jose Mercury News was: A's unveil field of tech dreams. 'Ballpark of the Future': Personalized fan experience.  Interesting piece.

Oakland A's owner Lew Wolff on Tuesday unveiled his long-awaited plan to build the baseball park of the future in Fremont, promising high-tech gadgetry for fans and an economic boost for Silicon Valley.

But Wolff kept silent on his plan to finance the $400 million to $500 million price tag for ``Cisco Field'' and his vision for the rest of the adjoining ``ballpark village'' housing and retail development. While the deal hinges largely on a complex private development plan, Wolff didn't rule out asking for some form of public help.

``We're going to make this work,'' Wolff declared at a packed news conference, flanked by Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig and Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers.

The San Jose-based networking giant would pay $4 million annually for the stadium naming rights, and the company would sell a 143-acre Fremont parcel it now controls to the A's for an undisclosed price.

The new ballpark is not likely to open until 2011, at the earliest. Wolff and Chambers promised it would be the most technologically advanced sports facility in the country, filled with Cisco networking equipment that could allow fans to order up everything from concessions to instant replay at their seats. ...

Rutgers wins showdown

13th-ranked Rutgers (my alma mater) is now 9-0 after beating 3rd-ranked Louisville in football tonight. The last time the Scarlet Knights went undefeated was when I attended, many moons ago. (And, no, I didn't play for them.)

Cardinals win, but the celebration will be short

Too bad the Cardinals beat New York tonight in Game 7. They stand no chance against the Tigers in the World Series. Gutsy performance by the Mets. No other team could have lost three starting players and come this far.

Do the math

Once upon a time I was a newspaper slot editor. From the That Does Not Compute Dept. comes this story from Thursday's New York Times:

Reyes came into the game 8 for 35 (.229) in the postseason, but he went 3 for 4 to raise his average to .333. 

11 for 39 would be an average of .282.

The new Amazin' Mets

Wow, it's finally good to be a New York Mets fan again. (Haven't wavered since I was 10.) Sure, there was the brief flirt with glory when they went to the 2000 World Series. But this Mets team -- 6-1 after Pedro's win tonight -- looks formidable. As the Washington Nationals play-by-play announcer said tonight, "They look like they're doing everything right right now. They're hitting better than anybody else [.312 BA], they're pitching better than anybody else [leading the league at 2.95 ERA], they're playing outstanding defense, plus they have that outstanding speed element. I just don't see a chink in their armor."

I haven't seen a Mets team this good since 20 years ago, when the '86 team went 108-54 and won the division by 21½ games (before winning the Bucky Dent World Series by a stroke of fate). They won't win quite that many games this year, but they could come close.

Bonds' steroid use detailed

SFGate: Two San Francisco Chronicle reporters have chronicled what almost all of us pretty much knew all along: Barry Bonds has been using steroids for many years. The report says Bonds began using steroids after the 1998 season.

Podcast: Chronicle reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams talk about their new book. Plus, how Bonds' stats improved.

When Bonds breaks Babe Ruth's 714 home-run mark this year, it will not just warrant an asterisk. It will be irrelevant. He cheated -- big-time. No wonder he's been so surly with the press and with the fans.

Oh, Lindsey!

Oh, Lindsey! (Photo by Getty Images)

The 2006 Olympics so far

I've been an Olympics junkie -- both Summer and Winter Games -- from an early age. Don't quite remember Peggy Fleming, but certainly the names Eric Heiden, Katarina Witt, Bonnie Blair, Alberto Tomba, Ingemar Stenmark, Kristi Yamaguchi, Peekaboo Street, Brian Boitano, Bonnie Blair, Dan Jansen and Mike Eruzione (of the 1980 Miracle on Ice team) roll off the tongue.

I'm getting my fill of the NBC network's 416 or so hours of the 2006 Games, and having a TiVo makes the experience infinitely better. It was only eight years ago that I was still fiddling with stacks of VHS tapes.

So far, it's been a less than stellar Olympics for the Americans, with Bode Miller, Daron Rahlves and Apolo Ohno failing to medal and Michelle Kwan withdrawing. Shaun Miller (photo by Mark Duncan of the AP above) all but made up for it with his personality and incomparable skill on the snowboard. In the end, though, nationality is less important than competitive spirit.

Here's a great photo essay of the snowboarding finals by the LA Times.

I'll be traveling to Italy for the first time this May on a long-delayed vacation -- to Tuscany, not Turin (or Torino). But it will be magical all the same. Now I just have to figure out how to store the hundreds of digital photos I'll no doubt take.

Sports Media Watch

The new blog publication Sports Media Watch covers big media's coverage of the sports world.

Meeting Joe Montana

I got to briefly meet San Francisco 49ers legend Joe Montana -- the only quarterback to win three Super Bowl MVPs -- at a luncheon gathering at the Presidio Golf Course and Club House in San Francisco today. About 40 people gathered for a presentation about personal media put on by Outhink CEO Dave Toole. Joe Montana, who is promoting an upcoming "Winning Spirit" sports ecommerce site, spoke immediately after I gave a presentation about Ourmedia.

I posted three shots of Joe M. on Flickr.

Technorati tags: personal media, joe montana, sports, football, legend

Pathetic!

Pathetic: That's the only word to use to describe the USA Network's programming decision tonight.

In the fifth set of the hugely anticipated Andre Agassi-James Blake tennis match at the U.S. Open, with Agassi leading Blake 2 games to 1, USA Network announced it would be cutting away to regular programming "due to contractual obligations." What was so important? A rerun of "Law & Order: SVU."

Then, after "Law & Order" ended, did USA Network resume where it left off in the fifth set? Of course not. It replayed this morning's earlier matches, with a rerun of the Agassi-Blake match to follow hours later.

This was as bad as the notorious Jets-Raiders Heidi Game on Nov. 17, 1968, when the bozos at NBC made a similar blunder in "the greatest game you never saw."

Well, now we have the greatest tennis match you never saw.

Whoever made this decision, or whoever negotiated that no-exceptions contract, needs to be fired. Seriously.

(By the way, Agassi won in a classic tiebreaker in the fifth set. "Good As It Gets!" ESPN.com headlined. Here's the story.)

When will we have on-demand TV so we can fire these jackass programming execs?

Armstrong begins to pull away

Look at this great photo by Joel Saget/Agence France-Presse at the Tour de France today. Lance Armstrong put a chokehold onto the field in the Pyrenees.

Mets fans' raw deal with DirecTV

I don't usually blog about pet peeves, but let this go out as a warning to anyone thinking of subscribing to DirecTV's MLB Extra Innings (the major league baseball season pass) next year.

When DirecTV signed me up last winter (they do that ... I was a MLB subscriber two years ago, not last year, yet there was the bill on my statement), I called and asked how many of my team's games would be broadcast. (I'm a Mets fan; can't help it.) They said they didn't have that information.

With the season now one-third over, my payments to DirecTV are complete, or nearly so. Meaning, if I cancel now, I get none of my money back and miss the rest of the season.

Here's the problem: I haven't been able to see a Mets game in some time. It's not because I'm in a blackout zone; I'm not (northern California). But DirecTV broadcasts are preempted when other cable companies buy the rights to those games. All four Mets-Marlins games? Not available. All four Mets-Diamondback games? Not available. Unless you pay extra to subscribe to MSG (Madison Square Garden) cable or FSAZ (Arizona cable).

Changing license options on Flickr

After spending some time tooling around Flickr's FAQ pages, I still couldn't figure out how to change the default on my photo galleries from All Rights Reserved to a Creative Commons license (I chose Attribution-Noncommercial-Sharealike).

Well, a helpful Flickr moderator pointed me to the page where you can do such batch changes to your licenses on Flickr.

Now, if I can persuade Flickr to increase the size of the photos displayed on the site, I'll be a happy guy.

'Monday Night Football' leaving ABC for ESPN

AP story: 'Monday Night Football' is leaving ABC for ESPN.

Goodbye, Al Michaels. You won't be missed.

Missing those steroids

Nice line from Tim Kawakami's sports column in the San Jose Merc:

Barry Bonds, out at least until mid-May. He never used to have those troubles. Gee, I wonder what he's not doing now that he used to do?

Did McGwire use steroids?

Sports columnist/editor Bud Geracie in today's San Jose Mercury News reports on misreading the signs of steroid use in baseball in the 1980s-early '90s. He surmises that Mark McGwire likely was on steroids, beginning in 1992. Key passage:

There was one spring in particular when he [McGwire] came to Arizona looking like an NFL tight end, an observation he did not welcome when I innocently shared it with him.

It was the spring after his abysmal 1991 season, the one in which he batted .201 and hit only 22 home runs. In 1992, he hit 42 home runs (he had 28 at the All-Star break) and steadfastly refused to explore his turnaround publicly. Finally, late in the season, McGwire told me for publication that he had been working with a psychologist, a stunning admission at that time for any pro athlete, let alone one who had become so intensely private.

If McGwire were to be judged by the same pre-Balco standards as Barry Bonds -- ridiculously big muscles, ridiculously big numbers -- how is it possible to reach different conclusions? McGwire's history of injuries, his dramatic personality change (from sweet to sour) and the bottle of Androstenedione in his locker would seem to tip the scales further against him. ...

Sox win: Score one for the underdogs

Let me say this about the 2004 Boston Red Sox: Amazing! Their improbable 10-3 win tonight against the Yankees resulted in the biggest comeback in baseball's rich postseason history.

As much as I dislike the Patriots, I've been rooting all year long for the underdog, blue-collar, rebel-proud Red Sox, especially against Team Halliburton, the Yankees.

A story: When I was a kid, my father came home, proud that he had snared three tickets for him, me and my brother to a Yankees game in the Bronx. I started crying. "But I'm a Mets fan!" I stammered. My father gave me a withering look. We wound up going. And, over the years, I've rooted for the Yanks now and again. But I've stuck with my Mets through two World championships and two near misses, even after moving to California. The last time the Sox were in the World Series, of course, they faced the Mets in 1986 in the Bill Buckner Series.

I suspect you'll see plenty of metaphors and parallels drawn over the next 13 days. Written off for dead before overcoming nearly insurmountable odds. Money, power, ruthless arrogance on one side. Beantown grit, grassroots support, never-say-die spirit on the other. Watch out, King George.

The Sox haven't won the Series in 86 years. They'll get a chance to reverse the Curse starting this weekend. I'll be rooting for them.

WiFi spreads to sports stadiums

From today's San Jose Merc: WiFi spreads to sports stadiums. Or, why Marc Cuban doesn't think wifi and sports mix well for the average fan.

I brought my Titanium Powerbook to the Giants-Mets game at SBC Park this summer and, though I got a quizzical look or two, it also helped settle an argument about who was the starting shortstop for the 1986 world champion Mets (took about 5 seconds to find out). Yep, Rafael Santana.

PGA quashes real-time reporting of scores

Here's an interesting Supreme Court ruling involving new digital technologies that received little press attention earlier this week:

The U.S. Supreme Court turned away an appeal Monday by a media company claiming it has a right to publish and sell real-time golf scores from PGA tournaments that its reporters cover.

Without comment, the court let stand a lower ruling allowing the PGA to restrict media outlets from posting or selling the real-time scores to website publishers - unless media outlets purchase a licensing agreement from the PGA first.

The case involves Morris Communication Co., which began distributing scores its reporters obtained from the tournament's media centre. The PGA then imposed new restrictions in 1999 that barred media outlets from publishing the scores immediately; otherwise, their reporters wouldn't be granted access to tournaments. ...

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the PGA in dismissing Morris' antitrust claims. It ruled in March that the PGA's real-time scoring system required a significant devotion of money, staffing and technology that justified the organization's insistence on selling or licensing the information to others.

Several media groups, including the Associated Press Sports Editors, the American Society of Newspaper Editors and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, argued in support of Morris' appeal. They said the PGA should not be given ownership rights to news information at public events.

The case is Morris Communication Co. v. PGA Tour, 04-266.

OK, so it requires "significant ... money, staffing and technology" to add up golfers' scores.

What about if a distributed team of citizen journalists did the same, adding up scores (without the PGA's help) and reporting them to the world in real time? Something tells me the PGA would find a way to try to quash that as well.

Online poker's powerhouse sites

I've been playing poker since I was a kid (with my parents' chips), so I couldn't help but notice that the return of the Travel Channel's World Poker Tour coincided with this article in yesterday's San Jose Merc: Big stakes in online poker. Internet gambling soars as thousands play for cash.

PokerPulse.com, a Vancouver company that tracks Internet wagering, estimates that people drop an estimated $3.2 million per day for 19 leading sites, adding up to an annualized take of $1.2 billion a year for the industry. (No figures on what percentage of people actually come away winners.)

Top poker sites

Here are the top half dozen poker Web sites based on the number of paying players daily, according to PokerPulse.com.

1 PartyPoker.com (the world's leading online poker Web site, based in India)

2 PokerStars.com

3 ParadisePoker.com

4 UltimateBet.com

5 Pacific Poker.com

6 PokerRoom.com

Olympic mistake: Banning blogging

Dan Gillmor has a spot-on item today: Olympic-Sized Arrogance.

AP: Olympians largely barred from blogging. Athletes may be the center of attention at the Olympic Games, but don't expect to hear directly from them online -- or see snapshots or video they've taken.

This is about greed, nothing more and nothing less. It is about the historically corrupt International Olympic Committee's desire to please the giant media organizations to which it has sold "rights" to tell and show the world what is happening.

The irony here is that the olympic officials are inadvertently telling us something about the future of journalism, though I'm certain they don't understand it themselves, in the context of their heavy-handed (and probably illegal) action. Because the more that regular folks -- OK, that's a stretch for the athletes -- put their own work on the Web or send it to each other by other means, the more they are becoming some of tomorrow's journalists.

I'm with Dan. The Olympic Committee -- also guilty of unparalleled commercialism during these Games -- needs to be brought down a few pegs by citizen journalists.

California doing well at Olympics

California is doing well at the Olympic Games so far. Here is the total medal count to date:

France 16
California 15
South Korea 15
Italy 14

Don't know where New Jersey ranks.

By the way, how can anyone stand to watch the Olympics if you don't have a TiVo? The telecasts have got to be 40-45 percent commercials.

Pet peeve: Who the heck is that swim announcer who every night calls the U.S. women swimmers "girls"?

Class act: Michael Phelps giving up a spot on the relay team -- and a guaranteed eighth Olympic medal -- Saturday night by stepping aside for Ian Crocker. What amazing selflessness for a 19-year-old -- and not the sort of thing you see very often in modern sports.

Olympic Bloggers

Here's an Olympic Bloggers aggregation site. Too much material from the lame official AthensBlog site, but otherwise a nice effort.

Lakers trade Shaq

No, it's not an April Fool's Joke in July: The Los Angeles Lakers have apparently traded Shaquille O'Neal to the Miami Heat for Lamar Odom, Caron Butler and Brian Grant. (Wire report and LA Times story.)

Looks like the Lakers, who nearly reached dynasty status, suddenly have one hell of a rebuilding project on their hands. And as a Kings fan, all I can say is: Thank God he's out of harm's way in Miami.

DirecTV's rip

I once signed up for DirecTV's NFL Sunday Ticket, to watch pro football come September. And every June I get a little ticked off that DirecTV is billing me for next fall's season three months before kickoff. Today, the bill came: $44.75, in four payments -- a price hike, to add insult to early-renewal injury. On principle, I'd call to cancel, then call back in September to subscribe, if it weren't such a hassle getting through.

Some NBA officiating facts

Billionaire blogger Mark Cuban has pulled together some interesting NBA officiating factoids.

The ravings of Charles Barkley

Is there a bigger bore in all of professional broadcasting than TNT's Charles Barkley?

Tonight, during halftime of the Wolves-Nuggets game, he said, "Women are gossipy and whiny. Girls do that type of crap."

Last night, it was about "the white man" keeping blacks down. (Yes, he gets a pass on that one.)

A few days ago he averred that anyone who uses a computer is stupid.

Amusing? Hardly. Embarrassing? You bet.

Sacto Kings roll

Sacramento Kings 102, Lakers 85. That's my boys.

March Madness, then and now

If you've ever been to the NCAA Final Four while you were in college, you know it does something to you. You're marked, you're changed, you understand March Madness in a way much more profound than the neophytes rooting from afar.

And so it was for this basketball fan when I lucked into attending Rutgers during the era of Phil "the Thrill" Sellers, Eddie Jordan (now coach of the Washington Wizards), Mike Dabney, Hollis Copeland and freshman James Bailey. During the 1975-76 season, when the Scarlet Knights went 26-0. The regular season climaxed on March 1, 1976, when St. Bonaventure came to The Barn (as we called our humble, deafening gym on College Ave.) and took a 6-point lead with 6 minutes left in the season finale. In the end, Rutgers pulled through, 85-80, to cap a perfect season -- only the 19th team to do so. My buddies and I then followed the team through the tournament, to Providence, R.I., where the Scarlet eked out a victory over Pete Carril's Princeton team in a heart-stopper, 54-53. Rutgers then rolled on to victories against Connecticut and VMI in Greensboro, N.C.

We couldn't get tickets to the Final Four, but it was just as well. Rutgers lost to Michigan. Indiana, another unbeaten team and the eventual champ, defeated UCLA in the other game. Still, the experience stays with you -- the fevered games, the bragging rights, the hoopla and national recognition. (My wife, fortunately, is a basketball fan, and understands the symptoms.) Rutgers hasn't been back to the Final Four since then.

Oh, that photo at top? It was our version of the Fearsome Foursome: Tom Smith, Mike David, me, and Bob Schulz, and the van we took on the road. Forgive the hair, it was the '70s.

This weekend I rooted for the Cinderella teams like Xavier and St. Joe's (I can dream, I'm a Democrat; and OK, St. Joe's was seated No. 1). Instead, most of the favorites prevailed. So next weekend I'll be cheering for Connecticut, Oklahoma State, Georgia Tech and Duke (the evil Yankees, Braves and Lakers all rolled into one), in that order.

Report: Barry Bonds took steroids

Breaking news from the SF Chronicle: San Francisco Giants superstar slugger Barry Bonds, as well as New York Yankees Jason Giambi and Gary Sheffield, received steroids from a Burlingame, Calif., lab via Bond's weight trainer, federal investigators were told. In addition, Bonds was said to have received human growth hormone, a powerful substance that legally cannot be distributed without a prescription, investigators were told.

Bonds, baseball's single-season home-run king, and Giambi and Sheffield have all publicly denied using steroids.

This news will rock the baseball world and surely tarnish the legacy of Bonds, who is two home runs shy of tying his godfather Willie Mays for third on the all-time homers list.

The good guys win one

I moved to Sacramento from New Jersey in 1981 and lived there until '97, when I moved to the San Francisco East Bay. I'm a bit tired of the sophisticates of the world (like Charles Barkley, who considered running for governor of the urbane state of Alabama a few years back) diss Sacramento as a cow town. Los Angelenos are even worse. So it came as sweet justice tonight to lay the book aside and get a bit backlogged on my email in order to watch the best rivalry by far in professional basketball: the Kings taking on the Lakers in LA, and winning 103-101 -- without three of their top five players on the court.

The Kings were the better team two years ago, when the refs gave the championship to the Lakers. They may well have won last year, were it not for Chris Webber going down in the playoffs. Now, finally, it looks like this may be their year. (What's remarkable is that they've built the best record in the league without their best player.) The good people of Sacramento deserve a championship. Still, you knew tonight's game was in El Lay: John Travolta and Uma Thurman were filmed walking around the court during several timeouts in the first half for a scene in the upcoming movie "Be Cool."

The latest media monopoly

The latest media monopoly: Major League Baseball, persnickety owner of all web broadcast rights.

The Brooklyn Nets?

Bruce C. Ratner, the real estate developer who wants to move the New Jersey Nets to an arena in downtown Brooklyn, reached a tentative agreement to acquire the team for $300 million.

The NBA's elite teams

Just watched the Sacramento Kings (still minus Chris Webber) dismantle the Houston Rockets by 29 points, and the LA Lakers put it to the San Antonio Spurs by 16 (it wasn't that close). It's only four weeks into season, but if one of these two teams doesn't win the NBA title come May, I'll be shocked. (Whoever is putting together the ESPN power rankings must be smoking something potent.) No other teams are playing at this level (if the Pacers played out West they'd be a .500 team), and the four upcoming Kings-Lakers games -- the best rivalry in basketball -- will be a treat to watch.

Eye in the sports sky

I've got to tell you, the new ESPN Skycam -- which takes you just above the players on the field -- has got to be the sweetest advancement in televised sports since the invention of the super slo mo. Wow. Looks exactly like a high-end football video game.

NY Times neglects Giants-Jets

I realize that the New York Times on the Web aspires to be a national news site rather than a regional online newspaper, but its front page currently shows the scores of the Colts-Dolphins and Texans-Panthers games, with no mention of the two New York teams playing each other. The game, which ended hours ago, was probably the day's best game.

Message to the Times: There's nothing wrong with covering the home team.

Cubs lose: Empathy from a Mets fan

I like a sympathetic underdog, so you know I've been pulling for the Cubbies and Red Sox in the division playoffs. So I've watched the last two Cubs-Marlins games with a mixture of awe, astonishment and utter sympathy for the nation's Chicago Cubs fans. The past two nights surely must have been the toughest to bear in most Cubs fans' lifetimes.

I'll cop to being a lifelong Mets fan. Back in the late '60s and early '70s, the Mets-Cubs had a nice rivalry going. (I still remember the 1973 World Series when the Mets were ahead of the Oakland A's 3 games to 2 with their two best pitchers scheduled to start. Both Seaver and Matlack lost the next two games.) But tonight, I'm in full empathy mode for the Cub fans across the land. And one Cubs fan in particular.

So much so, in fact, that I've been scouting around looking for weblog or RSS entries on tonight's game and what it means from the POV of a Cubs fan. But I've been utterly unsuccessful, and this strikes me as one of the chief shortcomings of today's blog/RSS technology. I've scoured Daypop, Technorati and some of the other indexes over there at the lower left, and come up empty (spotted a few from yesterday, but mostly from days or weeks ago).

What's your search strategy when seeking out timely blog and RSS entries?

Year of the underdog?

I'm not sure which I like better -- the Cubs winning their first postseason series since 1908, or the Tomahawk-chopping Atlanta Braves doing el-foldo yet again -- but tonight was a good night for the good guys. (Doubly nice to see ex-Met Mike Hampton go down with the loss.) My mom-in-law has been a Cubbies fan her whole life. She was due.

ESPN.com loses a viewer

I can no longer put up with ESPN.com's front page taking 20 to 30 seconds to load, especially since I use its front page not as a destination but as a navigation tool to get elsewhere on the site. So I'm switching my allegiance to CBS Sportsline. If I wanted to watch television, I'd flick on the tube.

Anna Kournikova quits correspondent gig

TE! Online News: Turns out Anna Kournikova has decided she's not cut out to be a sports journalist, saying she was uncomfortable interviewing other players as a reporter for the USA Network during the U.S. Open. Thanks to IWantMedia for the pointer.

Playing chess on the Web

I used to be quite the chess freak. Started playing at age 12, and within a year I was beating my eighth-grade teacher. I've still got a dog-eared copy of Chess Openings, a 300-page tome that I still pull out every other year or so. Alas, my brother and close friends who were fellow chess nuts no longer live close by, so I'm in a chess wilderness these days.

If I want to get back on the wagon, though, the Internet beckons. Today's NY Times carries an article, Tools to Dress Up The Web Browser, that dissects all things chess. Because it will disappear behind a firewall in a week, I'll pluck out the noteworthy links here:

Playing chess on the Web:

• chesscentral.com

• the Chess Rally site (you must own the software)

• the Internet Chess club costs about $49 a year to join, although you can play as a guest or get a free trial membership

• chesscentral.com

• uschess.org (the Web home of the United States Chess Federation)

• Yahoo games

• the Microsoft Network gaming site

Shopping for chess items:

Chesstopia.com, thechessstore.com, chess-shops.com, chessforum.com, chessexpress.com, chesscafe.com and houseofstaunton.com.

Lance nearing tour win

After today, it looks as though Lance Armstrong will win the Tour de France.

Meanwhile, the Times looks at the Wired Tour de France.

Armstrong increases Tour lead

Breaking news: Amazingly, Lance Armstrong survives a crash and increases his Tour de France lead from 15 seconds to 1 minute 7 seconds.

The Tiger Trap

OK, so it's a Web publicity stunt, but it's still better than most: 29 unsuspecting golfers. 4 Buick Rainier SUVs. And Tiger Woods on the prowl. A five-minute mini-movie.

There's a Dallas Morning News story on it all, written by Tom Maurstad, but the site doesn't remember my log-on and won't let me in.

Annika Sorenstam shoots a 71

One minute ago, Annika Sorenstam shot a 71 in her opening round of the Colonial. She played well, but bogeyed the last hole to finish one above par. She said earlier that she hoped to shoot "around par," so this was a good day for her. The announcers on the USA network said she's got a 50-50 chance to make the final cut tomorrow and play through Sunday. I hope she does well.

Stick a stake in the Lakers

Break out the stakes, the silver bullets, the garlic cloves -- and the dancing shoes, for that matter. The vampire-like LA Lakers are dead. No more 40 shots a night from Kobe. No more whimpering from Phil Jackson about fouls being called on Shaq. (Is it a coincidence that O'Neal's not being given deferential treatment by the officials happens to coincide with the two-dimensional Lakers' downfall?) Enjoy the Spurs-Mavs/Kings matchup on TV, Jack Nicholson.

Here in Northern California, we watched the lunar eclipse usher in a new era as we drank a toast to the demise of the most arrogant team in professional sports. And most pampered. As the ESPN sportscasters summed up the loss during a too-lengthy obituary tonight: "You half expected David Stern to run onto the court and say, 'Wait a minute! Best of nine!' "

The false dynasty is no more.

Webber's injury changes everything

I just heard on ESPN that Chris Webber tore cartilage in his knee last night and will miss the rest of the playoffs. Sometimes it's just brutally unfair how thngs go in professional sports. The Kings have had the best team in the NBA the past two years. They should have won the title last year, were it not for (a) the appalling display of officiating in Game 6 of the western finals, a stink-it-up performance that raised suspicion of a fix and calls for an inquiry by no less than Ralph Nader; (b) their untimely display of poor free throwing shooting in Game 7; (c) the freak tip that led to Robert Horry's game-winning 3-pointer in last year's Game 4. Quite a series.

NBA fans were looking for a rematch of perhaps the best rivalry in professional sports. Now that Webber is out, and Bobby Jackson has a fractured cheekbone (though he's able to play), it's hard to think that the Kings can pull off the unprecedented -- winning an NBA player without their star player. Imagine the Lakers without Kobe or Shaq (not hard to imagine ... they wouldn't even make the playoffs). Or the Spurs without Duncan, or the Mavs without Nowitzky.

Shit. The fans of Sacramento deserve that title.

NBA playoff odds

Here are Vegas' odds on the NBA playoffs:

Sacramento Kings 2-1
Los Angeles Lakers 11-5
San Antonio Spurs 3-1
Dallas Mavericks 8-1
New Jersey Nets 20-1
Detroit Pistons 20-1
Indiana Pacers 25-1
Portland Trail Blazers 25-1
Minnesota Timberwolves 35-1
Philadelphia 76ers 35-1
New Orleans Hornets 50-1
Utah Jazz 50-1
Orlando Magic 60-1
Milwaukee Bucks 75-1
Boston Celtics 75-1
Phoenix Suns 75-1

Seems about right, except for the Blazers, who should be about 1,000-1.

I'm a Kings fan -- I was a season ticket holder the first five dreadful years they were in Sacramento -- so gotta like the fact that the big boys in Vegas like 'em best. I don't think the Lakers can fourpeat if they have to win seven-game series on the road in San Antonio and the Big Tomato, as we call Sactown. Any takers?