To recap: Nooses just aren’t funny, people. [Soup Cans]

Filed under: Cincinnati, High School

This is Hillsboro High School wrestler Dustin Carter, who has a 41-2 record this season:

The 18-year-old Carter, who had both arms and both legs amputated at age 5, has reached the Ohio state quarterfinals in the 103-pound weight class. Dustin seems to see himself as a fairly ordinary high school athlete, but the adults around him don’t agree:

“He’s our miracle,” said his mother, Lori Carter. “He’s my hero. He’s my son, but he’s also my hero. …

“His perseverance speaks for itself,” said Scott Goodpaster, Carter’s trainer. “He wants to win. He wakes up every day wanting to win. This is his passion, and he bleeds for it. He works so hard to get by in life.”

Carter says, “I wrestle like anybody else. I go to school like anybody else. I can live on my own like anybody else. I can do anything anybody else can do. I don’t like people feeling sorry for me. Some people do.”

People who watch him wrestle know he doesn’t need anyone to feel sorry for him. Another video is after the jump.

Continue reading High School Wrestler Dustin Carter’s Simple Philosophy: ‘I Wrestle Like Anybody Else’

Permalink | Email this | Comments

• Trev Alberts muses on Deadspin’s Media Approval Ratings. Enjoy. [YouTube]
• More on Tony Kornheiser’s rant on bloggers [The LAist]
• Analyzing those big EliteXC, MMA and UFC agreements. [Welcome To Jarry Park]
• “I live in San Francisco and I’ve never seen a car this festive.” Ha. [100 Percent Injury Rate]
• Sad to report that the paralyzed Texas high school football player who inspired the Jason Street character in Friday Night Lights passed away on Wednesday. [The Houston Chronicle, via The Big Lead]
• Time for Gay and Wang headlines. OK, time’s up. [Joe Sports Fan]
• More St. Louis Cardinals bashing. Enjoy it while you can. [Grateful Blue]
• An interesting story about the 1941 all-black New York Renaissance pro basketball team. [The Black Fives Blog]
• Meanwhile, in the NBA D League … [Hardwood Paroxyism]
• Comparing Starburys and the latest Kobe sneakers. And the winner is … [ID]

Filed under: Lakers, NBA Videos, NBA Last Night, Los Angeles

“Inside the NBA” showed this replay roughly 167 times last night, but in case you went to bed early and avoided basketblogs, the television, and Penny Marshall’s drunk dialing this morning … enjoy.

That would be Kobe Bryant to Luke Walton to Lamar Odom. Just be glad Bill Walton was not calling the game; his pituitary gland may have exploded, and that is Hell to clean up, let me tell you.

(Lakers have won 10 straight and sit only a game behind Detroit for the second best record in the NBA.)

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Eagles, Patriots, Boston, Philadelphia, NFL Free Agency, The Word

The NFL free agency sweepstakes is less than 12 hours old, but Comcast SportsNet’s Derrick Gunn is reporting that the Eagles already have a deal in place with Patriots free-agent cornerback Asante Samuel.

No formal announcement has been made, but the Eagles’ official web site has shut down because it was overloaded with traffic from running a photo of Samuel and an announcement that he will meet with the Philadelphia media this afternoon.

Samuel is one of the best cornerbacks in the NFL, and he is expected to get a contract somewhere in the neighborhood of the seven-year, $64 million deal that Nate Clements received with the 49ers last year. Giving a free agent that much money would run counter to the way the Eagles usually do things, but Samuel might be too good a player to pass up.

Other teams that might be interested in Samuel include the Jets, whose coach, Eric Mangini, previously worked with Samuel in New England; the Saints, who have a desperate need for cornerbacks; and the Buccaneers, who have a ton of cap room available.

UPDATE: Eagles Guarantee Asante Samuel $20 Million on Six-Year, $57 Million Contract

Permalink | Email this | Comments

For the third consecutive season, we are proud to introduce the Deadspin Baseball Season Previews. Yes, baseball is awfully close now; it’s spring training, after all.

Mark T.R. Donohue is a freelance writer, serial blogger, and member in good standing of the Baseball Toaster cartel. He lives in Boulder, Col. His words are after the jump.

——————-

How do you top 2007, if you’re the Colorado Rockies? It can’t be done! At the end of the season last year, Colorado ran off an utterly ludicrous fourteen wins in fifteen games, including a thirteen-inning 9-8 win over the Padres in a one-game wild card tiebreaker, to make the playoffs for the first time since the strike-shortened 1995 season and only the second time ever. The otherworldly hot streak continued through the National League playoffs, in which Colorado dropped nary a game to Philadelphia nor Arizona, and stopped only when the Rockies met reality — and a much, much better team — on a grand stage in the franchise’s first World Series appearance. That didn’t go as well.

The good news for 2008 is that the Rockies weren’t a .500 team that got lucky last year. Up until mid-September they had gotten some bad breaks; we few true believers chose to view their white-hot finish as an overdue correction. Even supposing that the
Rockies’ opponents down the stretch were laying over for them and the stats don’t mean what they think we do, the Rockies’ pitching rotation turned over 60% of its players in quick succession shortly after the All-Star break. Ubaldo Jimenez and Franklin Morales, the two call-ups that made up the bulk of those innings lost due to injuries to Rodrigo Lopez, Jason Hirsh and Aaron Cook, still have less than a year of major-league experience between them. They should be better this year.

Everyone but second baseman Kazuo Matsui returns to a lineup that’s long on pre-peak players; second-year shortstop Troy Tulowitzki is poised to bring his hitting numbers up to the level of his already unparalleled defense. The one nasty storm cloud on the Rockies’ horizon, the impending free agency of outfielder and offensive linchpin Matt Holliday, has been at the very least pushed further away by the two-year deal Holliday signed this winter.
Besides Holliday, there are hardly any key Rockies players that won’t be around for at least three more seasons, including Tulowitzki, ace Jeff Francis, closer Manny Corpas and outfielder Brad Hawpe. One of the few positions that GM Dan O’Dowd hasn’t found a solution for in the draft is catcher; the Rockies caught a break when the Mets backed away from a deal they’d worked out with incumbent Colorado catcher Yorvit Torrealba. O’Dowd managed to get Torrealba back at the right price; that was the highlight of a very quiet offseason that also brought in some bullpen help (Luis Vizcaino, Jose Capellan), a few guys to compete for the second base job (Matt Kata and Marcus Giles, though rookie Jayson Nix will get some looks too), and a bunch of veteran starters to provide insurance for the boatload of injuries the oxygen-deprived Rockies rotation seems to suffer every year (including but not limited to Josh Towers, Kip Wells and Victor Zambrano).

Colorado is probably going to be a stronger team than they were last season, and yet they will likely win fewer games. Los Angeles and Arizona have improved, and the Rockies more than likely won’t have the same luck they had in interleague play ‘07 (10-8, the only team in the NL with double-digit wins and the only one more than a game over .500). The hope here is that even if a whole season hanging around in contention ends in disappointment, the Rockies and the city of Denver get the one thing they didn’t get last year — being taken seriously. The magical September ‘07 run did a lot to shake Denver out of the indifferent attitude it’s had towards baseball and the Rockies since the late 90’s, but it takes more than one postseason to build a baseball fan. Baseball is about the long haul and until fans in the mountains are checking box scores with the same vigilance in May as they were last September, the Colorado Rockies remain just another ill-justified expansion team with ugly uniform colors.

Filed under: New York, Washington, DC, Mets, Nationals, NL East, MLB Gossip

Earlier this week, Lastings Milledge told Sports Illustrated that he’s happy to be with the Nationals after a rocky rookie season with the Mets, “I can’t go through anything worse than I went through in New York. It only gets better from here. A lot of veterans didn’t like the way I play the game. They thought I didn’t respect it.”

Honestly, it’s hard to fault him: he was put through the wringer with the Mets, with teammates chastising him in the press and the locker room for offenses as slight as showing too much enthusiasm after his first home run and appearing in a rap song that included (gasp!) profanity.

Milledge was hardly the only one who rubbed teammates the wrong way — Jose Reyes has promised to succumb to the peer pressure and tone down his act as well this year — but I can’t blame Milledge for being happy he’s now in a clubhouse that’s a little more accepting of free spirits. Not surprisingly, some of Milledge former teammates still aren’t amused to hear him talk.

Continue reading Mets Still Taking Offense at Milledge

Permalink | Email this | Comments

I’m picturing the scene from Meet The Parents where a dejected Ben Stiller stands in an empty terminal and must wait his turn to board the airplane, thanks to the by-the-book airline employee who has yet to call his row. “Please step aside, sir.”

Maybe Derek Anderson was advised not to sign anything until he became a free agent; ergo, he rejected the Cleveland Browns’ contract, and it became a story. Once midnight finally struck, Anderson looked at the offer and became overcome with emotion. “Oh, wow, a multi-year deal!” And that was the next story.

See folks, ESPN’s on top of this story, from beginning to end. And you thought they were just conflicting headlines on their front page, which were seen in unison this morning perhaps as early as 10:45 a.m. when twoeightnine pointed it out to me, and as late as 11:25 a.m. Sheesh, give them a little credit, people.

Report: Anderson Gets Multiyear Deal From Browns [ESPN]

Aside: After I typed this up, I soon realized I was wearing a fleece emblazoned with the ESPN logo. While I’m not too worried, I am beginning to feel some tingling in my chest area. Probably just temporary.

Predicting what will happen on Bob Knight’s first day on the job at ESPN [Scott Van Pelt Style]

ESPN scoured its message boards this morning to find its cleverest, boldest, most enlightening comment, and chose this one above all others …

• “I think Drayton will end up “misrembering” this interview after the FBI investigation.” — die_hard_stlfan

(Re: Astros owner plans to honor Clemens deal)

Previous ESPN Featured Comment of the Day, plus a Featured Deadspin Response or two …

• “LeBron youngest to 10,000 points and KG 11,000 rebounds — a good game history-wise.” — redsox6585

• Wilt youngest to bed 10,000 women — a good game player-wise.-loveyawilt — tater

• The ring is destroyed and Sauron, defeated — a good day, Sam-wise. –FBaggins6585 — Sir Hotbod Handsomeface