Hit and Run: Time Flies Edition

Since the Cardinals played the Opening Night game on ESPN this year, on actual Opening Day I had my pick of games on MLB.tv.  By the time I got home from work, the Indians and Blue Jays were tied in the 9th inning. “Oh, I’ll just watch this quick dramatic conclusion,” I thought.  Then it turned out to be the longest Opening Day game ever played.  It went on so long, in fact, that the benches for both teams saw a lot of work.  Which brought in Omar Vizquel. Who yesterday turned 45.

A longtime Indian now with Toronto, Vizquel got a warm round of applause from the Cleveland fans both when he was first inserted as a defensive replacement, and later when the game went on long enough to give him an at bat.  In an MLB where players my age are now considered on the far side of their prime, and where many of his contemporaries are now mangers, Vizquel’s longevity is both remarkable and jarring.  (Related: Chipper Jones turned 40 the same day. Chipper. Jones. is 40.)

Other sports news properly introduced with “it seems like only yesterday….”

Tweets from ‘letes

I’ll admit that I’m not very big in to Twitter – I’m not sure why, but it either feels like homework, or I end up feeling like I’m a little too self absorbed to really believe that my 61 followers truly care how I felt about that pizza sliceor what the weather is like in Manhattan from the window near my cubicle.  After being reminded a few dozen times that today was apparently the 5th birthday of the little blue bird who started it all, I decided to pay closer attention to what’s out there and who’s tweeting.  Newsflash, did you know that nearly everyone tweets? Jeez! Even if I did follow it, how do you sift through the crap  and find some damn information?

I did, however, find a few nuggets of gold in this river of 140-character-or-less overflow, and do you know where I found them coming from? Athletes! Not only are athletes on Twitter, but they’re often freaking hilarious! This gave me an idea for something new that I’d like to try, and I definitely need reader feedback. Introducing the first ever edition of the Ladies…Tweets from ‘letes!

Hit and Run: 3 Useless Things

Having a little trouble catching up from the holiday week, so I decided to do a bit of a Hit and Run filled with useless, yet very interesting facts (at least I found them to be).  More after the jump – hope everyone had a delightful football-filled turkey day!

Your Monday Morning Nightmare

NHL Hotness Preview Numero Trois will be along later this evening. In the meantime…did you catch Sunday Night Football last night? I had my head down working on my NHL post, so I assume they were doing a segment on Favre (well, OBVIOUSLY!) when they started flashing Photoshopped stills of sports legends wearing unis of their respective team’s arch rivals. Bird. Jordan. Elway.

Derek Jeter.

There is not enough wine in the world to erase this horrible, horrible image from my memory.

(via @bubbaprog via @amandarykoff. Really, you guys. You shouldn’t have.)

Twitter Theater: Mets-Cardinals, April 17, 2010

Cards' beat writer Derrick Goold snapped this picture of his scorecard after the game. (Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch)

I’m sort of new to Twitter (I don’t actually have an account, I just follow people through Feedly), and the handful of people I follow right now are a)Cardinals fans or b)Ladies.  Which made a glance at my selected Twitter feeds during Saturday’s Mets-Cardinals marathon most entertaining. And now, without further interruption, Ladies…Twitter Theater presents: The Twenty Inning Game

It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

This moment is the reason I live for deadlines. Feds GWG against the Rangers in Game 7.

If you read this site, you know that I’m a hockey addict.  That is why today is one of my favorite days of the year: NHL Trade Deadline Day!  With all the new technology available, Deadline Days have become even more fun.  Text message alerts? Check.  Twitter updates? Check. Live Blogs? Check.  Trade Trackers? Check.

If you, like me, enjoy a fun day of speculation and mind-blowing trades, then take a trip with me down the rabbit hole…

Trash Talking With Twitter

It’s no secret that athletes love Twitter. And fans love that so many athletes are a part of Twitter. I’m sure for many people Ochocinco’s Twitter is a daily source of entertainment. Athletes use Twitter for anything and everything; most of the time it is all in good fun. But it seems that some are using their Twitter account to rant and do a little trash talk. Now, I’m not uptight and have no problem with a little bit of trash talk before a game. However, I do have a problem when it is so incredibly corny or just straight up wrong. I think that if any athlete is going to use their Twitter to talk a little smack about their opponent, they should really do a better job than these people.

Child Pleeez! Athletes and the Interwebs

While this photo is quite cheezy, I'm not gonna lie - it was my wallpaper for a hot minute!

Three things led me to this week’s post topic.

 1)      My favorite athlete, Mike Green, launched his own website.

2)      I had a chance encounter with the New York Yankees.

3)      The NFL’s ruling on Twitter & Facebook.

 Since we are living in the Internet Age, it’s only natural to go to the ‘net for everything we need.  Athletes are no different.  We are all guilty of googling our favorite athletes at one time or another, and I’m sure we weren’t just looking for stats.  We were looking for personal information.  Think about how much of your personal info is available to anyone online. Now double, triple or quadruple that, and that’s about how much info you could possibly find on any given athlete or celebrity. And sometimes, those same people are putting that info out there for us to find.

Follow me after the jump where we talk about Twitter, Facebook, and blogs. Oh, and I’m sure you all want to hear about my run-in with the boys in pinstripes. ;-)

IAAF World Championships in Athletics: Oh, Stop Being Snooty and call it Track and Field

In one of my earliest posts here at Ladies…, I confessed my deep and abiding love for track and field.  (Also, holy crap — that was a year ago?)  Well, I have once again proven my track nerd bonafides by not only watching last weekend’s coverage of the World Championships in Berlin (such as it was, since I don’t get Versus and had to make do with the two hours a day NBC could tear away from the “Dew Tour”) but getting into a giddy text message exchange with my brother immediately after watching Usain Bolt’s smashing of his own 100m world record.  (My brother, by the way, believes Usain can break 9.4 before he retires.)

Someone call the waaaaambulance.

We here at Ladies…love Twitter. There’s something kind of twisted and voyeuristic and slightly stalkerish about it that we just adore. (There’s also something to be said about the ability to roll our eyes at Ashton Kutcher in real time. Oh, admit it. You follow him, too. There are two million of us.)

Of course,there’s a downside to being a celebrity on Twitter. For one thing, everything you say can be turned around and announced in the mainstream media. (Newt Gingrich’s Tweet calling Judge Sonia Sotomayor a racist went from ill-advised tweet to conservative nutjob talking point almost immediately. Gossip sites ran with the announcement that John Mayer had *gasp* announced his breakup with Jennifer Aniston on Twitter.) There’s no privacy.

But then, there are the impostors. Ohhhhhh, there are impostors. For some ungodly reason, people amuse themselves by making up fake Twitter accounts and pretending to be celebrities. We don’t quite understand it, but some people will do anything for attention. (Just look at Spencer Pratt. Don’t worry, we hate ourselves for making that joke, and for knowing who he is in the first place.) Usually, a celebrity will catch wind of one of these accounts, sign up with their own account and declare that the impostors are fake. No harm done, takes about five minutes, everyone moves on, right?

Tony LaRussa? Not so much.