The Dude abides

Jim Caple, writing about Lebowski Fest taught us that real "The Dude" didn't bowl, only drank White Russians for too long and never met up with nihilists.

"They called me up and said they were doing this movie and had cast it with Jeff Bridges and John Goodman. And I'm like 'Uh oh,' worried because I'm on the cusp, and it could go either way, with Jeff Bridges or Goodman [playing me]," Jeff (The Dude) Dowd told Caple.

If you like the movie, it's worth reading.

MLB player tests positive for swine flu

Yeah, swine flu is still around.

Texas Rangers starting pitcher (or "staring pitcher" as the typo in the caption to his photograph says) Vicente Padilla has contracted the H1N1 flu, though his symptoms are subsiding.

Several Rangers players have been hit with the flu this week, including Eddie Guardado, Omar Vizquel and David Murphy. Catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia was scratched from Friday night's game against Kansas City due to the flu.
[...]
"Without speculating, I think it is reasonable to expect that we may find some of our other guys have it," Levine said. "We've been medicating our players. We would use the same medication and the same kind program to rehabilitate them and they've all shown improvement. Those are the positive signs."

The Rangers played the Kansas City Royals... let's see if any Royals come down with the swine flu.

Worker at plant that builds iPhones commits suicide after losing iPhone prototype

From The New Yorker:

Interesting details are emerging in the Chinese press about the case of Sun Danyong, the twenty-five-year-old employee of Foxconn who committed suicide in Shenzhen last week after being interrogated about a missing prototype for a new iPhone.

The second part is here.

A sickening story.

How great was that Dwayne Wise catch?

From Baseball Prospectus (Subscription required):

Had Nyjer Morgan made the catch in the eighth inning of a dreary Nationals blowout loss, it would have been the play of the day. Wise made it to convert the 25th out of a perfect game for a team in contention. We hype things to the moon these days, and we become jaded because of it, but this catch is worth every bit of hype you can crank up. It was sublime.

If you didn't see it, you can see watch it (and some other great clutch catches) below, courtesy of ESPN.

What happened to the perfect game ball?

So what happened to the last game ball of Mark Buehrle's perfect game after first baseman Josh Fields made the final out? ESPN is on the case:

"I found out later I screwed up," Fields said Friday morning on the "Waddle and Silvy" show on ESPN 1000. "I held on to it as long as I possibly could during the celebration after the game, and I think one of the MLB authenticity guys came out and was mugging me down pretty hard and saying 'give me the ball.' And I didn't know that I could say 'no don't take it.'

"So I ended up giving it to him, thinking he was going to put his little authenticity sticker on it and give it back to Buehrle. So as of right now, I guess the MLB has it."

They should give it to Buehrle?

Best correction ever

I don't think this was a very well-reported article, based on the correction that was necessary:

Correction: July 22, 2009
An appraisal on Saturday about Walter Cronkite’s career included a number of errors. In some copies, it misstated the date that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed and referred incorrectly to Mr. Cronkite’s coverage of D-Day. Dr. King was killed on April 4, 1968, not April 30. Mr. Cronkite covered the D-Day landing from a warplane; he did not storm the beaches. In addition, Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon on July 20, 1969, not July 26. “The CBS Evening News” overtook “The Huntley-Brinkley Report” on NBC in the ratings during the 1967-68 television season, not after Chet Huntley retired in 1970. A communications satellite used to relay correspondents’ reports from around the world was Telstar, not Telestar. Howard K. Smith was not one of the CBS correspondents Mr. Cronkite would turn to for reports from the field after he became anchor of “The CBS Evening News” in 1962; he left CBS before Mr. Cronkite was the anchor. Because of an editing error, the appraisal also misstated the name of the news agency for which Mr. Cronkite was Moscow bureau chief after World War II. At that time it was United Press, not United Press International.

That's from the New York Times. Allessandra Stanley should be ashamed.

Mark Cuban doesn't like the AP

I think that Mark Cuban has a beef with the Associated Press, judging by what he said on Twitter moments ago.

Why do people believe that AP stories are factual ? Their fact checking is horrid, their balance non existent. They are worthless IMHO

@TheOnion bought by the Chinese

This week, The Onion has been sold to the Chinese. Or so goes the joke.

I'm not sure if it's funny yet, though I did get a chuckle from today's front page story, Yao Ming!:

EARTH--The entire world population confirmed Friday that Houston Rockets center Yao Ming is the greatest athlete in the history of sports and a glowing symbol of what hardworking citizens may become if they remain loyal to their government.

Yao Ming officially averages 84 points per basketball game and has a shooting percentage of .9999998, Chinese basketball officials said. Furthermore, Yao Ming is perfectly healthy and, in fact, cannot be injured. Yao Ming is also a universally acknowledged beacon of humility and respect, and on the exceedingly rare occasion when he does miss a shot, he no doubt does so on purpose, selflessly ensuring that his lesser American teammates feel better about their own lackluster shooting percentages.

I'm still talking about the perfect game...

An ESPN story about the scout who discovered Buehrle (and also scouted a guy by the name of Albert Pujols) had this nugget:

Kazanas passed along a recommendation to scouting supervisor Nathan Durst and scouting director Duane Shaffer. Doug Laumann and Kenny Stauffer of the White Sox's staff also took a look, and they all agreed that the kid was worth a shot. Chicago selected Buehrle in the 38th round as a "draft and follow,'' and signed him for a $150,000 bonus the following May.

Buehrle made it to the majors by age 21, posted a 19-12 record at age 23 and pitched a no-hitter at age 28. Buehrle is extremely durable, relies on guile and control rather than velocity and has 133 career victories at age 30, so he might be as legitimate a candidate to win 300 games as any pitcher out there.

Buehrle is good. Maybe not as good as Halladay, CC Sabathia or Zach Greinke, but he's up there.

Will he get to 300 wins? Maybe -- but he's never had a 20 win season. Then again, he has never made less than 30 starts in a full season as a starter.

At his rate of wins from 2001 to 2008 (14.75 wins per season, and he will be a little higher than that this year), he would need to play about 20 seasons to reach 300. It's conceivable.

More perfect game facts

From Ken, this time via Twitter:

Only 5 beside Buehrle have thrown perfect game and other no-hitter. Cy Young, Addie Joss, Jim Bunning, Sandy Koufax, Randy Johnson.

That's some pretty good company.

And yes, Jim Bunning is the U.S. Senator from Kentucky, in case you were wondering.

From before Buehrle's perfect game, but still true:

9. Jim "Catfish" Hunter of the Oakland A's had the most productive offensive game of any perfect game pitcher. He had three hits and three RBI.