Weekend winners
Roger Federer. In truth, we may need to take ol' Rog off the board. It's who other than Roger Federer won the weekend. Deal? Deal. (Seriously, dude got major title No. 19, became the oldest Wimbledon men's winner - and did it this year without losing a set by the way - and cemented himself as the GOAT and a surefire frontrunner for male athlete of the year. So how was your Sunday.)
The Dodgers. Man, this L.A. bunch is cruising. CAH-ruising. How about this stats? Since June 7, the Dodgers are 22-1 against National League opponents and have a team OPS of .936 and a collective 2.80 ERA in those 23 games.
Your Atlanta Braves. A sweep of Arizona over the weekend pushed the Braves to .500 for the first time after the first month of the season since midway through 2015.
Lonzo Ball. Hey, doubters going to doubt. Haters going to hate. But here are a couple of indisputable facts. One, Lonzo has four games with 10 or more assists in the NBA summer league. No other rookie ever has had more than one such game. Two, the Lakers are in the finals tonight. The Lakers have been terrible for a couple of years now. Finally, can you ever remember the NBA summer league getting this much attention? Nope, neither can we and we do not believe that is a coincidence. Also, the Ball family is now fielding shoe offers. So there's that.
Fans of Georgia recruiting and Press Row listeners. Yes, those who pay attention to stars and position rankings know that Georgia landed the Dominick Blaylock,No. 2 receiver in the 2019 class. Well, because TFP SEC ace David Paschall is, well, David Paschall, Blaylock is scheduled to join us on Press Row today.
Venus Williams of the United States returns to Britain's Johanna Konta, during their Women's Singles semifinal match on day nine at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London Thursday, July 13, 2017. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth) Weekend losers
Venus Williams. You have to wonder how many more shots she's going to get and to let a 5-4, serving 40-15 to take the first set. She lost that game and the next eight that followed to Garbine Muguruza.
Ezekiel Elliott. The Dallas running back who led the NFL in rushing last year was reportedly involved in a late-night incident at a Dallas bar Sunday. Elliott already has a couple of incidents in his recent past, including a domestic violence accusation from 2016 and reports that he pulled a woman's top off at a bar around St. Patrick's day earlier this year.
D'Onta Freeman. Freeman, a former University of Texas star who recently signed a four-year deal with Houston, was arrested in Austin on Sunday for possession of marijuana and an unlawful firearm.
Anyone who doubted that Al Pacino could look like Joe Paterno for the HBO film on the Penn State scandal. Here's betting that puppy will not be on a regular rotation at the Paterno compound.
NASCAR. Hey, we try to not include NASCAR here because, well, it's been an easy target this year. But buckets of Sunoco Racing Fuel, this weekend makes you wonder. OK, first, the NASCAR Sunday race was shuffled off to NBCSN, wherever that may be, for golf coverage. Was it because NBA had the PGA Tour? Nope, that was on CBS. Was it because NBC had the U.S. Women's Open? Nope, that was on Fox. NBC pushed NASCAR to the netherlands of the cable dial in favor of a celebrity golf event won by Mark Mulder and in which we saw wayward shots from Charles Barkley (one-handed skull into the crowd), Justin Timberlake, some dude named Mardy Fish, and Carlton from "Fresh Prince." And just when you think NASCAR's appeal can't go any lower want to guess who the "celebrity" driving the the pace car was on Sunday? New England Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels. Maybe all the other choices were playing golf in Tahoe.
President Donald Trump turns to the clubhouse crowd as he arrives to enter his presidential viewing stand, Sunday, July 16, 2017, during the U.S. Women's Open Golf tournament at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) Speaking of golf
There was a surprising amount of golf news this weekend.
There were the protests at the U.S. Women's Open because it was played at Trump National in New Jersey. Heck, if U.S. women golf fans really wanted to protest something, maybe somewhere on the list should be our national championship in a sport we take seriously because the South Korean Member-Guest. Man, anyone else look at the leaderboard and think of that Rodney Dangerfield scene in Caddyshack?
There was the death of Hootie Johnson, the former Masters chairman who stood toe-to-toe with Martha Burke during her protests a decade or so ago. There was the celebrity event in Tahoe, which we actually watched a fair amount of, believe it or not. There was the European Tour, which witnessed as surefire 72nd hole meltdown for some cat named Callum Shinkwin turned a perfect tee shot on the final hole into a bogey 6 at the par 5 18th to surrendered a one-shot lead. He lost to Rafa Cabrera Bello on the first playoff hole.
There was Bryson DeChambeau, who may the most golfer's name ever in golf, collected his first professional win. (Side note: Luke List, former Baylor School star, played solid over the weekend, finishing tied for 68th and cashing $11,536.00. He has made $1,592,652 this year, which is 50th on the money list. He has 697 Fed Ex Cup points, which is 43rd. And yes, because Luke is Luke, he still leads the PGA Tour in driving distance at 312.1 per drive.)
On the side of crazy, there was this video of a guy hitting a skier with a tee shot. (We are not 100 percent sold that this one is 100 percent on the up-and-up for what it's worth. Thoughts?)
And finally, there's the news, because it is back from popular demand, that we will have a Open Entry for the Open Championship, Accent Optional. You know the drill. Send us five golfers and the top four count.
Good luck.
This and that
* Game of Thrones season 7 started last night. We are fully prepared to discuss it, but we are going to offer a one-day cushion for spoilers and such. Deal? Deal.
* Here's our next update from the summer of TV game shows. This one is from Celebrity Family Feud, and the celebrities are former athletes. Among the puzzling answers are Pedro Martinez's offer to the "Name a word that rhymes with 'Yummy.'" Pedro of course goes with "Miami." Yep. Because he's Pedro.
* The NCAA men's basketball selection committee - those folks who pick the teams and seed those glorious brackets every March and clearly hate Seth Greenberg - last last week, and we are learning they changed a big piece of the selection process. Now the committee will weigh road wins with greater emphasis, a decision that could help mid-majors a) get in the tournament because they get fewer home dates against top-30 programs and b) potentially get more home games against top-tier teams.
* Legendary broadcaster Bob Wolff died over the weekend. He was 96. He was the only sportscaster to call play-by-play for championship events in each of the four major sports.
Also of note this weekend, the Nationals added two big pieces to what may be the worst bullpen in baseball.
Today's question
Weekend winners (other than Roger) and losers. Go.
Also of note, we already have some pretty stout Mailbag hate mail entries. So it goes when you mention the NAACP we suspect.
OK, on this day in 1941, less than five months before America was pulled into World War II, Joe DiMaggio's magical hitting streak ended at 56 games thanks in part to two great plays by Cleveland third baseman Ken Keltner. Here are some mind-boggling numbers from that streak, courtesy ESPN stats:
DiMaggio hit .408 in the streak with 15 homers and 55 RBIs; He raised his batting average 69 points during the streak, from .306 to .375; the Yankees went 41-13-2 during the streak and went from 14-14 and 5.5 games back of Cleveland to 55-27 and six games ahead of Cleveland.
Of course DiMaggio had a 16-game streak after his record streak ended, meaning he hit in 72 of 73 possible games. in those 73 games he had 120 hits, 20 homers and struck out six times. Yes, six times.
And quite possibly the most amazing numbers from that season came at the end. Here's DiMaggio's final numbers: .357, 30 homers, league-leading 125 RBIs, 122 runs scored and a .440 on-base percentage. He won the MVP over some guy named Ted Williams who lead the league in average (.406), on-base percentage (a mind-blowing .553), homers (37), runs (135), and slugging (.735).
Also on this day, David Hasselhoff is 65 today. The Hoff. Red Sovine would have been 100 today, and for those of you who know Red Sovine's talking country anthems, well, if "Roses for Momma" doesn't make you tear up, then you need to go get checked.
Derrick Henry is 23. He's a bad dude, with bad meaning good.
Luke Bryan is 41 today, and he's a bad dude, meaning he's one of the faces of the scourge that has killed country music as most of us knew it. On this day in 1988, Wayne Gretzky married Janet Jones. That turned out pretty good and they produced some fine-looking tots. Ty Cobb died on this day in 1961 and Walter Cronkite died on this day in 2009.
On this day in 1955, Disneyland opened in Anaheim, Ca. On this day in 1979, the NL beat the AL in the All-Star game, a game a lot of us will always remember as the game that Dave Parker made arguably the best throw we've ever seen.
Also on this day, Donald Sutherland turns 82.
Rushmore of Donald Sutherland movies, and it will be more difficult than you think.