Articles about Sports
Leading Off (4/16/12)
Money Flowing To New Congressional District Race: The competition for the new District 33 congressional seat is thick, and it is being cast by some (paywall) as a showdown between African-American and Hispanic voters for greater minority representation in Washington. Gromer Jeffers sifts through the early fundraising reports, and Dallas Dentist David Alameel leads the pack, thanks to a $2.2 million personal loan, the candidate already spending $600,000 on his campaign. That’s double what the next wealthiest candidate, Domingo Garcia, loaned his campaign. Garcia has spent $121,000 of his $300,000, and Rep. Marc Veasey has fundraised over $127,000 without relying on personal loans.
Project Pegasus Is Dead. Where Does That Leave the Trinity Parkway? Dallas Morning News editorial writer Rodger Jones lends a bit of context to last week’s release of the NTTA report on the proposed alignment of the Trinity Parkway. As of 2007, the levee road was sold as part of the larger Project Pegasus, which was planned to relieve congestion in the Mixmaster. But now that Pegasus has been scrapped by the Regional Transportation Council, the Trinity Parkway needs to be justified as an efficacious transportation project in and of itself. Tall order.
Mud Run Claims Runner: The body of a thirty-year-old Tony Weathers was discovered Sunday in the Trinity River after he disappeared after Saturday’s military-style obstacle course race in Fort Worth.
Want to Go to the Texas Rangers Game Tomorrow?
The game is at 1:05 p.m. Thursday against the Seattle Mariners. We will select TWO winners. Three tickets and a parking pass to each.
To win, provide the correct answer to the trivia question via the form below. The winners will be selected at random from among all the correct answers received, and they must be able to pick up the tickets at the D Magazine offices in downtown Dallas. We’re open until 5:30 p.m. today, and in the morning at 8:30 a.m.
Since this is short notice, we’ll accept entries until 4:30 today. Now, go:
UPDATE: Wow. Who knew so many people were available to attend a Thursday afternoon game? The giveaway has been given away. The winners have been notified via email.
A Defense of Lamar Odom
Before it all went pear-shaped for Lamar Odom in Dallas, I recall having a conversation about him, and how it was important to not think of him as your typical athlete. The gist was, the things that motivate most athletes — money, glory, or some combination — are not important to him, or at least not as important. What Odom wants is a home. He wants to be wanted, to be needed. While the Mavericks’ trade for him was a no-brainer, since they essentially got the reigning Sixth Man of the Year for free, I was a bit hesitant.
No player’s off-court life has more impact on what he does during a game, and I’m not talking about the Kardashians or his reality show. This goes way back.
Yu Darvish Will Throw Balls Tonight
To get you psyched up for Yu Darvish’s debut tonight, here’s a cartoon we ran in the April issue. In it, we take a look at Yu’s struggles to acculturate (click to enlarge).
Dallas Mavericks, Lamar Odom Part Ways
So says ESPN. The Dallas Mavericks are just paying him to go away and pout about having been let go by the Lakers somewhere other than on the floor of the AAC.
But what does this mean for Mix 102.9 and Khloe Kardashian?
Khloe and Lamar’s Twitter feeds remain strangely silent.
Leading Off (4/9/12)
Trinity Parkway: Still Crazy After All These Years: The Federal Highway Administration has released a report commissioned in 2009 that analyzes various alignments of the Trinity Parkway, and you can see all four volumes of the report in this blog post, which circumvents the pay-walled DMN story here and this rundown of the details. The takeaway: the report favors the city’s favorite alignment, to stick the parkway in between the river and the east levee. Still unknown, however, is how to pay for the $1.76 billion road; whether or not the Corps of Engineers will actually allow a road to be built in a floodway; or, most importantly, whether the traffic relief or development-spurring potential of the parkway is worth the astronomical cost or squandering the full potential of transforming Dallas’ largest natural asset in a usable public space. There will be a public hearing on May 6, but you know what you will hear then: The citizens of Dallas voted for a park. We now have a bridge and a plan for a road. Same as it ever was.
UTD Researchers Build Robotic Jellyfish: You know what is cooler than building a parkway in your park space? Building a robotic jellyfish (paywall). That’s what researchers at UT Dallas and Virginia Tech have done, and the hope is that the hydrogen-powered RoboJelly, as they are calling it, will be able to generate its own energy while being deployed to perform underwater surveillance. Here’s a video of the robo-beast in action.
Excited About The Return of Rangers Baseball? Yu Betcha! The Rangers took the season’s opening series last night. Tonight’s the night Yu Darvish throws his first major league pitch. Napoli will catch. The Rangers are expecting a near-sellout, with just 6,000 tickets left for tonight’s game.
Texas Rangers Opening Day: 5 Fearless Predictions
Manager Ron Washington shares a slice of the real American experience with new pitcher Yu Darvish. (For the illustrated tale of Yu's first wacky days in Dallas, read the April issue of D Magazine.) Illustration by Roman Muradov
The Texas Rangers season is set to begin against the Chicago White Sox at 1:05 p.m. today at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington.
Now to my rank speculation about the 2012 campaign of your defending American League champions.
1. The Rangers will set an attendance record. They did last season, following their first World Series appearance. Expect even more fans at the Ballpark this summer. In 2012, they’ll pass the 3 million total season mark for the first time in franchise history, thanks to the excitement following their second straight AL pennant and (hopefully, fingers crossed) a summer that isn’t (unlike 2011) the hottest in Texas ever.
Joe Avezzano, R.I.P.
WFAA just reported that former Dallas Cowboys special teams coach Joe Avezzano died earlier today of a heart attack, while working out on a treadmill in Italy.
Texas Rangers Unveil New Food Items for 2012 Season
Executive Chef Cris "No H" Vasquez holds a Champion Dog. D.J. Pridemore eats the whole thing. (Photography by Micah Nunley)
The Rangers will win the World Series and perhaps a James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant (s). All the news that’s fit to eat is right here.
Convicted Child Murderer Shouts “Go Cowboys!” During Execution
I can’t even… There’s just no… Ugh. This.
Which Dallasites Belong to Augusta National?
A co-worker and I were just discussing the fun story about whether Augusta National will finally be forced to allow a woman to join (don’t hold your breath). Got me wondering how many Dallasites belong. Here are the three I can think of: T. Boone Pickens, Tom Hicks, Harold Simmons. I’m sure the FrontBurner Nation has a name or two to add. Go!
Larry Brown Wants to Coach SMU Basketball
The only coach in history to win both an NBA championship and an NCAA championship has at least expressed interest in the open SMU job. At least that’s according to this DMN blog. According to ESPN, Brown did contact the school, but insists he isn’t “politicking for a job right now.”
Spring Training Report: The 2012 Texas Rangers Will be Good. No, Make That Great.
The 2012 Texas Rangers take the field in Surprise, Arizona. (Photo by N.N.)
I just returned from five glorious days of roaming around the Texas Rangers camp at Billy Parker Field in Surprise, Arizona. The first thing I learned: five days in not long enough. There are 15 Major League teams that train in the Cactus League’s ten venues, and they are spread out all over the Phoenix area. The second and third things I learned: renting a car at the airport in Phoenix is a ripoff and traffic between stadiums is horrible.
During my short stay, I managed to see three games, one of which was an intrasquad game pitched by Yu “Y’all” Darvish. (He is a tall drink of water.) After talking with several players, observing batting practices, and eavesdropping on the conversations of myriad scouts sitting around me, I’ve prepared a list of 12 reasons the Texas Rangers will win the World Series in 2012.
Jump for the truth. (more…)
Leading Off (3/26/12)
Did Dallas ISD Cheat on Standardized Tests? Report Suggests It’s Possible. An investigation of 70,000 public school district test results by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution doesn’t prove that Dallas ISD, as well as 196 of the nation’s largest 3,125 school districts, have cheated on tests. But the results’ patterns were similar to those that indicated cheating in Atlanta:
“In nine districts [including Dallas] scores careened so unpredictably that the odds of such dramatic shifts occurring without an intervention such as tampering were virtually zero.”
Was Dick Cheney Too Old For Heart Transplant? Alternate headline: Is this report on WFAA a non-story? It compares a Plano resident’s father’s inability to secure a heart transplant because he was deemed too old for the procedure to former Vice President Dick Cheney’s recent transplant at the age of 71. A spokesperson for the Southwest Transplant Alliance claims preferential treatment is impossible. But the story doesn’t mention what seems to me the key bit of information: are there younger transplant candidates on the list that were matches for the heart Cheney received?
C.J. Wilson: ‘The Rangers Didn’t Really Want Me.’ That’s what the former Ranger ace tells Gil Lebreton. Unlike Cliff Lee, Wilson says, he didn’t spurn a substantial offer from the Rangers. That offer never came. “They hate me in Texas,” Wilson says.
Sean Salisbury Wants to Make a Comeback
A few years ago, Sean Salisbury was living in Dallas, working as an analyst for ESPN. Then some other stuff happened. Now, after years of battling depression and paranoia, he tells the New York Daily News and sports writer Jeff Pearlman that he’s ready for a comeback. Salisbury will do TV, radio, anything you want. He says he’s hit rock bottom and he promises he learned from his mistakes. (Translation: give him a job and he won’t show anyone his junk.) He also says he has a journal full of dirt he could spill on his former colleagues in the sports media, if he wanted do. But he doesn’t, because he says he’s “not into getting guys suspended and taking their careers away.”
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