From the Weekend That Was

Did I say lean sports world last week? Because I really meant emaciated. It almost makes me yearn for a Baseball Tonight personality doing a three-minute segment in which he writes off the Toronto Blue Jays in the AL East race because of their lack of starting pitching. Almost. On to what happened over the weekend…

Yet another reason to banish girls basketball into a deep, dark place never to be seen again. You may have heard the story last week about The Covenant School (TX) defeating Dallas Academy 100-0 in a high school girls basketball game. Covenant School administrators felt badly about such a thrashing and issued an apology to Dallas Academy, but the head coach of the girls team, Micah Grimes, did not think such an apology was necessary.

Grimes, on his personal web site, said he did not agree with the apology and that no member of his team should feel “embarrassed” or “ashamed” for winning the game. Covenant administrators did not agree with his reasoning and did the logical thing by FIRING HIM FOR WINNING A BASKETBALL GAME.

Only in girls basketball where feelings and emotional psyches take precedent over everything else. God forbid someone finds out they’re really not good at something because we all know that never happens in life. Everyone is really good at everything. And what a great message for Covenant to send to its players. We’d like you to try, but not too hard. Doing things half-assed is the way to succeed in life. It’s science.

The Atlanta Braves consider Andruw Jones’ .196 batting average and Don Sutton’s perm. The Braves have reportedly had talks with the portly outfielder, who was recently released by the Dodgers, to bring him back to Atlanta. Any deal struck would most likely have a low base salary and be loaded with incentives since Andruw’s baseball skills now consist of being able to walk from the dugout to homeplate and returning to the dugout after three pitches.

The Braves are also trying to secure the return of former broadcaster and Hall of Fame pitcher Don Sutton. Sutton, 63, spent the last year working with the Washington Nationals broadcast team. Now the real question is, between the two (Sutton and Jones), who, at this moment, is a more capable major league player?

The Sports Gods were not amused at Ole Miss’ football success while they were napping. So, in retaliation, they’ve decided to amuse themselves with how many knee injuries one basketball team can receive. The latest victim, Terrico White, twisted his knee Saturday in the loss to South Carolina. If White can’t play against Kentucky on Tuesday, it leaves Ole Miss with eight scholarship players and three scholarship guards in David Huertas, Will Bogan (Brian Smith 2.0) and Zach Graham (who also has a knee injury).

If you’re scoring at home, here’s the tally:

Chris Warren (torn ACL)
Trevor Gaskins (torn ACL)
Eniel Polynice (surgeon was an idiot and made it worse)
Zach Graham (partially torn patella tendon)
Terrico White (bone bruise is the official diagnosis)
Malcolm White (actually, not injured, just naturally terrible)

University of Houston basketball in the news for the first time since Phi Slama Jama. Unfortunately, it involves one of its players stepping on someone else’s face. Even though it’s not even close to as horrifying (or even horrifying at all) as the curbing scene in American History X, it’s the first thing I thought of. I just don’t do well when it comes to people getting smashed in the face outside of boxing and MMA.