Ichiro wants to wear jeans

A cool little story from the All Star game about Japanese star Ichiro Suzuki, his link to hall of fame player George Sisler and, yes, meeting Barack Obama (Obama threw out the first pitch of the All Star game).

Obama, visiting the clubhouses, stopped and signed a ball for Ichiro, who gave a slight bow upon meeting the President and appeared as giddy and excited as a kid.

"My idea, when I saw him, was to say, 'What's up?' to him," Ichiro said. "But I got nervous. You know, he has that kind of aura about him. So I got nervous and I didn't say that to him. I was a little disappointed about that.

"But I realized after seeing him today that presidents wear jeans, too. So my hope is that our skipper, [Don] Wakamatsu, was watching that and we can wear jeans on our flights, as well."

Batting Stance Guy

Still cool.

An amazing story

From ESPN The Magazine:

[Eric Frimpong] left his native Ghana in 2005 to play soccer for UC Santa Barbara; a year later he became a campus hero while leading the Gauchos to their first-ever national championship. If the immigrant experience can have a sound, Frimpong's sound was a raucous stadium. But in 2007, just weeks after being selected by the Kansas City Wizards in the MLS draft, he was accused of raping another student on the beach near his house. Now he's a convicted felon.

Read the story.

Deep thought

Journalists have been trained for many years to take their own voice out of their stories. But in blogging, it is a definite advantage to keep your voice in your posts, as it helps create a connection (when there were just newspapers, there was no need for a connection -- their authority as being Journalists in a newspaper).

This could be one reason why there are still some journalists who moan about 'those damned bloggers.'

Many popular web stories start with traditional media, move to blogs

From the New York Times:

For the most part, the traditional news outlets lead and the blogs follow, typically by 2.5 hours, according to a new computer analysis of news articles and commentary on the Web during the last three months of the 2008 presidential campaign.

I wouldn't be surprised if that time between the traditional media reporting on the story and the time it appears on blogs has gone down since Twitter made such huge gains in popularity; nearly every successful blogger and many journalists that I can think of use Twitter to learn about new stories and promote their own stories.

UFC's Fedor problem

Tonight's Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) pay-per-view event (UFC 100) is already being called the biggest mixed martial arts event in history so far. Former pro wrestler Brock Lesnar is taking on Brazilian jiu jitsu specialist and MMA veteran Frank Mir for the heavyweight title.

The co-main event is a welterweight battle between Georges St. Pierre (who is arguably the best pound for pound fighter in the world) and Thiago Alves. The middleweight bout between Dan Henderson and Michael Bisping could have possibly been a headliner or a co-main event on a different card.

But there is one glaring omission -- not only from tonight's card, but from the UFC as a hwole. And to MMA fans that omission goes by just one name -- Fedor. Fedor Emelianenko is probably the best heavyweight MMA fighter in the world. He's 30-1 and a lot of people will argue that the one loss was a mistake, a poor judges decision during a fight in Japan.

Time magazine took a look at UFC's Fedor problem:

He has won 30 fights in his career and lost just one, a controversial referee's decision in Japan nine years ago. Fedor has already beaten five former UFC champions, two of them twice. He has finished four of them off in the first round.

"He's the best," says Freddie Roach, a famed fight trainer who has worked with boxing greats Mike Tyson, Oscar de la Hoya, Manny Pacquiao and Fedor's last opponent, Andrei Arlovski, whom Fedor knocked out in three minutes in January. "He's so calm. He sees things happening. If you make a mistake, he'll knock you out. That's the mark of a great fighter."

So why does this great fighter, who is fighting against a bunch of heavyweights who no longer fight for the UFC, still fight for second-rate MMA promoters?

Because UFC wants exclusive rights to Fedor:

Fedor says White demanded that he fight exclusively with the UFC. Given his stake in his own promotion company, M-1 Global, that would have been a significant sacrifice. Fedor also insists the UFC would have virtually owned him if he won and would have been able to dump him if he lost. "If I was the UFC champion, I would never be able to leave the UFC," Fedor says. "The contract would just keep extending and extending. But if I lost, they could just kick me out of the UFC."

Further complicating matters, Fedor also specializes in another form of martial arts called sambo. This judo-like sport was developed for the Red Army after World War I and is now a Russian pastime. Under White's dictates, says Fedor, he'd have to stay away from sambo. "That's something I do for the pride of my country and is very important to me," says Fedor.

Still, no one should be crying for the UFC. Tonight's pay-per-view event could possibly be the biggest non-boxing pay-per-view ever, with some analysts saying it will reach 1.3 million buys.

Of course, Dana White, the head of the UFC, said the same thing about UFC 94. But that was headlined by St. Pierre against B.J. Penn -- this time St. Pierre is relegated to a co-main event instead of headlining the card.

"On the last night of the best fishing trip of our lives, Brownie juggled fire"

I'm not much of a fishing fan, but stories like this makes me wish that my friends and I would go on trips like this.

Boxer Arturo Gatti reportedly found dead in Brazilian hotel room

Arturo Gatti will never be considered one of the greatest boxers of all time. Gatti was just 49-9, but he will be remembered for being a warrior.

He was found dead in a Brazilian hotel room. He was with his wife and son, and there were no bullet or knife wounds.

Gatti fought in an epic trilogy against Mickey Ward, two of the fights which were named "Fight of the Year" by Ring Magazine. He had multiple other fights that were Fight of the Year nominees -- usually because the final rounds of a Gatti fight resembled a fight from a Rocky movie.

Blood always seemed to be flowing down Gatti's face in the 12th round, but Gatti continued to stand toe to toe with his opponent, giving as good as he got.

As I said before, he will never be in the same league as the Oscar de la Hoyas for Floyd Mayweathers of the world (two boxers who he lost to), but he was always one of my favorite boxers to watch.

Dead Like Me on Hulu!

I hadn't noticed this before, but the complete series (so far) of Dead Like Me is now on Hulu. I never watched the show when it was on Showtime (we had HBO so we could watch The Wire instead of Showtime) but started watching the show's reruns on SciFi and HD Net.

But if you haven't seen this show, then you need to -- now.

The show follows around George Lass, a dead woman. She died and became a grim reaper. It's more complicated than that, but that's the basic idea -- watch the first couple of episodes and you'll be hooked.

Here's the pilot:

Drudge still rules their world

Who would have thought to actually look at the video?