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Her condition has been upgraded from critical to serious.
SEATTLE – Washington State women’s basketball coach June Daugherty was upgraded from critical to serious condition Wednesday, a day after going into cardiac arrest while at a medical clinic for a checkup.
The 50-year-old Daugherty was “doing as well as can be expected,” said Mike Daugherty, her husband and the team’s associate head coach.
The Daughertys are the parents of 13-year-old twins.
Fired by Washington, Daugherty was hired last month at Washington State. She took over a program that has not had a winning season since 1995-96. She replaced Sherri Murrell, who resigned April 5 after a 27-114 record in her five years as coach.
Daugherty coached Washington to the NCAA tournament the past two seasons and in six of her 11 years with the Huskies. She was dismissed by Washington on March 18, one day after the Huskies lost their first-round game in the NCAA tournament to Iowa State.
At Washington, Daugherty compiled a 191-139 overall record and a 113-85 Pac-10 mark. Daugherty coached from 1989-96 at Boise State, where she had a 123-74 overall record.
Only last year Army women’s basketball coach Maggie Dixon passed away at age 28. Please say a prayer for June Daugherty and her family.
It is odd to think that Dale Jr. will not be driving for Dale Earnhardt Inc. (DEI) next season, but looking past that will the infamous company built by legend Dale Earnhardt be competitive next season?
Morale is solid at DEI, the company Dale Earnhardt and his wife, Teresa, formed in February 1980. Some there believe that once the smoke clears, once things get settled, a more powerful company very well could emerge.
After all, this is a company that remained strong after Earnhardt’s death at the 2001 Daytona 500.
“It’s good, it’s good,” said Steve Hmiel, technical director at DEI, when asked about the morale at DEI since Dale Jr. made his announcement. “It’s frustrating because … I have to be careful, because I’m going to say something wrong.
“There’s a company there that has fed people’s families and bought ‘em cars and given a real nice place to work and gave them insurance and what have you for a long time. That thing made it through February of 2001, and it’s going to make it through all the rest of Februaries that Teresa wants it to make it through. And Teresa wants it to go on forever, as Dale Sr. did.
It seems that the company is making a major step to be competitive by join up with Richard Childress Racing to build engines. The question though many want answered is will #8 be given to Dale Jr. or will another person fill the #8 car.
He was doing as second stint with the NBA team.
Magic General Manager Otis Smith fired Brian Hill as coach on Wednesday because he didn’t believe Hill would get the most out of the team with his style and strategy if he returned.
Some of the issues in deciding Hill’s fate, according to those close to the situation, were Hill’s inability to adjust during the Magic’s midseason slump; his lack of offensive imagination; and whether he was developing young players Dwight Howard, Darko Milicic, Jameer Nelson, Trevor Ariza and rookie J.J. Redick to their potential.
*****
Hill’s second dismissal in Orlando was not a complete surprise even though he led the Magic to their first playoff appearance since 2003 this past season. They were swept in four games by the Detroit Pistons.
Team President Bob Vander Weide three weeks ago initially injected doubt into Hill’s job status with his comments to the Sentinel.
But in the end, it was Smith who made the call, ultimately frustrated by developments during a 40-42 season and eyeing a coach who could take the club to the next level.
With Vander Weide residing in Grand Rapids, Mich., Smith — in his first year as a full-time general manager — was with the Magic nearly every day and kept Vander Weide informed.
Last Friday, Hill had a pivotal meeting with Smith and Vander Weide (Vander Weide attended via a conference call) at RDV Sportsplex.
Vander Weide, son-in-law of Magic owner Rich DeVos, had said that the “process” of evaluating Hill and the basketball operations could take “two to three weeks.” It stretched to the full three weeks largely because Hill went on a short vacation, Smith was out of a town for a period and Vander Weide was busy with the club’s arena issues and other projects.
Hill, 59, was unavailable for comment. He had two years remaining on his contract, although the club held the option for a fourth season. Smith was calling players to inform them of the decision.
Hill’s coaching staff was still in place as of late Wednesday. A news conference is expected today. The Magic are looking for their fourth coach since Doc Rivers was fired in the 2004 season.
*****
Hill was hired for the second time by the Magic on May 24, 2005, taking over for interim coach Chris Jent. Jent had replaced Johnny Davis, who was fired as head coach.
In his first season back with the team in 2005-06, Hill led the Magic to a 36-46 record — the same record they compiled under Davis and Jent the previous season.
This past season, the Magic jumped to a 13-4 start but faded badly before making a furious run to barely reach the playoffs as a No.8 seed.
To me, it sounds like management has a case of ‘thinking the grass is greener elsewhere’. Two years to turn around this mediocre NBA franchise isn’t a great deal of time in my opinion. Then I’m not a impatient owner of a sports franchise. Results are always expected today if not sooner.
I’ll get to Pettitte, but the Yanks offense finally put on a show. It wasn’t the normal big inning that won the game but spreading the offense around, never giving Boston a chance to catch up. They scored in six different innings. The big blow came in the first inning with a Matsui two-run homer just over the right field wall. He had crushed a fastball foul on the previous pitch, and for some reason, Schilling threw another fastball only out over the plate – Matsui didn’t miss the second one.
But the real hero was, once again, Andy Pettitte. A brilliant performance by the lefty, going seven stellar innings allowing just one run.
This brings me to the home plate umpire: one of the worst umpired games I’ve ever seen, specifically balls and strikes. From the first inning, CB Bucknor had one of the smallest strike zones I’ve ever seen. Pettitte could have legitimately struck out David Ortiz on consecutive pitches, both called balls (fortunately he induced a swinging strike on the next pitch). I recall several curveballs that came in waist high that have been (by every other ump this year) called strikes. The same went for Schilling, who had to groove pitches just to get strikes. He’s a guy that won’t give in and walk a guy – he’d rather give up a HR than a walk, which happened twice tonight: Matsui’s and DMint’s HRs were on full counts. Considering the ump and the lineup, Pettitte’s outing was perhaps his best of the year.
Jeter had three hits tonight and passed Joe DiMaggio for fifth on the Yanks all-time hit list. He will certainly pass Lou Gehrig (2721 hits) to overtake the top spot, then become the first Yankee to ever surpass 3000 hits, and even has a legitimate shot at 4000 hits (Jeter’s average of 208 per season means 8.6 more years to reach that milestone), something only two other players (Cobb, Rose) have ever done.
Great to go into the off day with a win, especially a series win against Boston. A sweep would have been nice, but I won’t complain about two out of three. Ty Clippard goes for his second win against Anaheim on Friday. I’m looking forward to see if he can reproduce his success from Sunday night. His changeup, his best pitch, wasn’t even working well against the Mets, and he still pitched superbly.
- Roger Clemens pitched for Double-A Trenton tonight, and labored (102 pitches) through 5.1 innings, giving up three earned runs. His next start may be next week in Toronto for the big club. He didn’t seem that ready tonight, so I wouldn’t mind him getting another minor league start (maybe for Scranton) before hitting the Bronx.
- Bad news: Carla Pavano will have Tommy John surgery and miss the rest of the season (this is the first time I’ve ever referred to him as ‘Carla,’ but it’s now warranted). Good news: we will never have to concern ourselves with him again. The biggest free agent bust ever? Probably not. The biggest Yankee free agent bust ever? Quite possibly.
The overall #1 pick of the 1996 Draft has called it quits.
LOS ANGELES – Keyshawn Johnson has caught the damn ball in the NFL for the last time. Johnson, who played a great game and talked one as well during an 11-year career, retired Wednesday despite several offers to continue playing.
He’ll soon be expressing his strong opinions on ESPN.
Johnson has agreed to a multiyear contract, and will appear on several ESPN telecasts, including pre-game shows on Sundays and Monday nights, and do some radio work as well.
Johnson, who turns 35 in July, was released three weeks ago by the Carolina Panthers. He said at least a half-dozen teams offered him a new job.
Johnson became the 16th player in NFL history to reach 800 career receptions and the 26th with 10,000 receiving yards last season, when he caught 70 passes for 815 yards and four touchdowns for the Carolina Panthers.
He finishes with 814 receptions for 10,571 yards and 64 touchdowns in 167 games.
“I wavered time and time again,” Johnson said. “I’ve lived my dream. Now, I’m going to live another dream. I think today is not as emotional as the last two weeks, thinking about it. There were times there were sleepless nights, wondering if this was the right thing to do.”
Parcells became Johnson’s coach with the Jets in 1997 — a year after Johnson caught 63 passes as a rookie for a team that went 1-15. Following that season, he wrote a book: “Just Give Me The Damn Ball,” which proved popular with fans if not his teammates.
Johnson eventually earned the nickname “Me-shawn” for that, but his coaches, particularly Parcells, considered him a hard worker and versatile player. Parcells once called Johnson one of the best he’d coached.
But Johnson did have a feud with Jets receiver Wayne Chrebet when they played together and, less than a year after helping Tampa Bay win the 2003 Super Bowl, Johnson’s spat with Buccaneers coach Jon Gruden got him suspended for the final six games of the season.
He then joined Parcells and the Cowboys, where he had two productive seasons, with 141 catches and 12 touchdowns.
The Panthers signed Johnson last year after he was released by Dallas in a salary cap move so the Cowboys could sign Terrell Owens. While Owens had 85 catches for 1,180 yards and 13 TDs last year as the focal point of the passing game in Dallas, Johnson performed well as the No. 2 receiver behind Steve Smith in Carolina.
Johnson worked the NFL draft last month for ESPN, which was impressed enough to offer him a job. He was released by Carolina three days after the Panthers took former USC star wide receiver Dwayne Jarrett in the second round.
Johnson’s release by Carolina came as a surprise as did his retirement. Keyshawn was a good player, but considered a disappointment by many. When you go #1 in an NFL draft, rightly or wrongly a superstar career is expected not just a good and productive career. Too bad Keyshawn didn’t stick around a little longer. A few teams, including my Dolphins, could have used him.
The wife of Tampa Bay Devil Rays rookie outfielder Elijah Dukes filed for a restraining order against her husband and said she fears for her life, The St. Petersburg Times reported Wednesday.
NiShea Gilbert, a middle-school teacher, said that Dukes allegedly burst into her classroom at lunchtime in April. A frightened Gilbert then ran to the principal and got a deputy, who banished Dukes from the school.
Gilbert told a Florida court that Dukes threatened to kill her and sent her a photo of a handgun to her cell phone.
Gilbert played a voice mail allegedly from Dukes for the newspaper. “You dead, dawg. I ain’t even [expletive]. Your kids, too.”
Gilbert has filed requests for protection twice in the last month, according to the newspaper. A hearing on her latest request is scheduled for May 30.
“I just don’t think I should live in fear,” Gilbert told the newspaper. “When [the Rays] go out of town, I come home. When they’re at home, I go stay with my mother. I shouldn’t have to live like that because he’s a baseball player.”
When approached by the newspaper before Tuesday night’s game, Dukes declined to comment on Gilbert’s allegations.
“I’m just going to play ball, that’s it,” Dukes told the newspaper. “I’ve got to go. I’ve got a video game to finish.”
Dukes is batting .231 in his first major league season with eight home runs and 13 RBIs.
Usually when you hear something like this you say “I can’t believe it”. Not this time. Sadly many people could’ve seen this coming.
Dukes, 22, has been arrested 6 times in the last 9 years. He has also been suspended multiple times by the Rays organization, including a season ending 35 game suspension 2 years ago.
Dukes needs help and he needs help fast. The Rays should’ve traded him (like I said) for some pitching help before he blew up again. The Rays have been way too passive about Dukes and a suspension should come out of this, showing the players in this organization that character should matter. This could hurt the Rays right now but it’s the right move to make.
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| Tuesday, May 22, 2007 |
Jerry Jones is finally getting a new stadium and it’ll soon host its first Super Bowl.
The new Dallas Cowboys stadium in Arlington will host the 2011 Super Bowl, the National Football League announced Tuesday. NFL owners, in a secret ballot, chose North Texas over bids from Arizona and Indianapolis. The game is not only expected to turn the world’s attention to the Dallas area – nearly 140 million people watched all or part of this year’s Super Bowl, played in Miami – but also to generate hundreds of millions of dollars in economic benefits to North Texas cities and businesses.
“This is going to be a wonderful, wonderful event,” Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said following the announcement. “The Super Bowl asked us to do what we could do to take it to another level. When you’re talking about a Super Bowl, that’s a pretty challenging commitment.”
The new Cowboys stadium will hold almost 100,000 people, and far more visitors than that will flock to North Texas for Super Bowl XLV and the week of lavish events that will precede it.
In Arlington, Mayor Robert Cluck rushed into City Council Chambers to take a call from Mr. Jones on the speaker phone.
“We’re going to have the Super Bowl,” Mr. Jones said from Nashville. “You’re my first call. We just walked out. We got the vote.”
“I knew we’d do that,” Dr. Cluck said.
“I’m glad you did,” Mr. Jones laughed.
And with that, the celebration in Arlington began. Out came the blue, white and silver balloons. Out came a huge banner saying “Arlington Welcomes Super Bowl XLV in 2011.” And out came caps with similar sentiments for all the council members.
“This is a remarkable development,” Dr. Cluck said. “It’s a big day for Arlington and a big day for North Texas. It shows what can happen when we all work together.”
Dallas, Fort Worth, Irving and other area cities also expect to share in the largesse. “I’m extremely pleased for North Texas that we have been chosen to host the Super Bowl,” Dallas Mayor Laura Miller said in a statement, “It will bring enormous economic benefits to our region — not to mention be a point of pride and a whole lot of fun.”
Bill Blaydes, chairman of the Dallas City Council’s Economic Development and Housing Committee, said he’s uncertain what the game’s overall economic effect will be, “but having your city on TV screens for 30 straight days leading up — you can’t pay for that kind of advertisement.” But landing the Super Bowl is somewhat bittersweet, since Dallas’ Fair Park — not Arlington — should have played home to the Cowboys’ new stadium, Mr. Blaydes said. In 2004, public financing negotiations among Mr. Jones and Dallas county and city leaders failed, prompting the Cowboys to approach Arlington’s city government.
[...]
Securing a Super Bowl was a priority for Mr. Jones when he announced plans to build a retractable-roof stadium in Arlington. Neither Texas Stadium in Irving, the Cowboys’ current home, nor the Cotton Bowl in Fair Park is suitable for the game, because neither has a roof that closes – an NFL requirement for cities where the weather is likely to be inclement in January and February.
Mr. Jones and his advisers wisely chose Roger Staubach – an immensely popular Hall of Fame quarterback whose name is synonymous with the Cowboys’ glory days — as the public face of the North Texas Super Bowl bid. Mr. Staubach led the closed-door presentation to NFL owners this morning.
Arizona was considered a long shot to win the 2011 game, since it’s already hosting next year’s Super Bowl. In Indianapolis, a new, domed stadium is being built downtown for the Indianapolis Colts. North Texas has never hosted a Super Bowl. Houston has hosted two – Super Bowl VII in 1974, which was played at Rice University Stadium, and Super Bowl XXXVIII in 2004, at Reliant Stadium, home of the Houston Texans.
Now, if only the Cowboys can make it a home game!
A few weeks ago, Colossus of Rhodey.Hube reported on a recent study that finds that NBA referees are – prejudiced. Not in any conscious way mind you. He even proposes a solution to the problem.
Hey, let’s apply an education “solution” to the NBA problem here: Multicultural training for all NBA referees. [White] refs need to realize that what may be a foul in white culture isn’t necessarily a foul in black culture. After all, since blacks tend to play more “street ball” when growing up, that kind of play tends to be more “freelance,” hence a bit “rougher.” Fouls aren’t called as often. Therefore, white refs need to consider this before blowing the whistle against a [black] player.
Kidding aside, one question is how the league will deal with the problem? How will those diverse front offices deal with the challenge before them? That’s right, on the heels of the study showing that the league’s refs are (unconsciously) biased came another study showing that the league front offices are the most diverse in all of sports. As Richard Lapchik an author of that study writes:
We correctly laud the progress made by the NFL with its recent head coaching hires. However, 40 percent of the head coaches in the NBA are African-American, and that’s more than double the percentage of any other league. At the end of last season, the New York Giants hired Jerry Reese, giving the NFL a total of five African-Americans in positions the NFL says are the equivalent to general managers (some teams use titles like VP for player personnel). By contrast, there were eight African-American general managers in the NBA when the regular season ended last month.Many celebrate the fact that two African-American head coaches faced each other in the 2007 Super Bowl — the Colts’ Tony Dungy and the Bears’ Lovie Smith. That happened in the NBA’s counterpart to the Super Bowl — the NBA Finals — all the way back in 1975 when K.C. Jones and the Washington Bullets met Al Attles and the San Francisco Warriors for the league championship. To date, four African-American head coaches have won NBA titles: Attles, Jones, Russell and Lenny Wilkens. Through the end of this season, the league has had 53 African-American head coaches. Major League Baseball is a distant second with a history that includes 25 managers of color, including African-Americans and Latinos.
So Lapchik plays down the referee issue:
So in that big-picture context, the possibility of an officiating bias based on race seems less consequential. Thirty-six percent of the referees in the NBA this season were either Latino or African-American, which puts the NBA far ahead of any other sport in that area. Is it possible that white referees make more calls against African-American players? Wolfers says it is more than a possibility. If he is right, his study tells us as much about society as it does about the NBA because there are so many other areas where this sort of “taste-based discrimination” happens, such as corporate executives making hiring and promotion decisions, or police officers, prosecutors and judges making decisions in which preconceived images may play a role in their “calls.”
To Lapchik, it’s not an NBA problem; it’s society’s problem.
In his post on the study of officiating bias, Colossus of Rhodey.Hube joked about the paucity of white players in the NBA. That’s because the way players are hired is based on merit even though the result is that a disproportionate number of of African Americans are hired to play the game. (Believe it or not, once upon a time, the NBA was a very Jewish league.)
But perhaps one of the reasons race relations are still an issue in society is not the subtle unconscious discriminations but that fact that we have people whose job it is to study diversity. Given that it’s their field of study, they need to validate their existence and maintain that problems still exist. Once gains in diversity are accepted unconsciously instead of being heralded self-consciously race will be much less of a contentious issue.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
Considering the lineup, tonight may have been Wang’s best outing of the year. He definitely had the best slurve I’ve ever seen from him. That’s the pitch he was working on this offseason to increase his strikeouts and it served him well tonight, as he totaled a season high five k’s (hey, that’s a lot for him). His sinker was moving hard inside while his slurve curved softly away (from righties), a deadly combination. And his sinker wasn’t even that great tonight, but fortunately the slurve made up for it. If he ever has both of those pitches working well, we’ll witness utter domination (which he did against Seattle a few weeks ago without his good slurve (Boston has the much better lineup though)). Even his changeup looked good, garnering a few swings and misses. He looks to be settling into a groove, having two great starts in a row after being very up and down.
Even though Julian Tavarez is going for Boston tomorrow, I don’t feel good about the game due to Mussina. He’s been extremely hot and cold this year and against Boston’s lineup, I fear he won’t fare well. His fastball has lost a lot since last year, and his command isn’t the pinpoint precision it normally is.
But for the time being, the Yanks are victorious. Enjoy it! 
Elsewhere, good news: Phil Hughes threw 25 pitches off a half-mound and did some running drills. He’s expected to return as the fifth starter in mid-June.
And Ty Clippard will start Friday night against Anaheim after a great debut last night.
This makes me feel very, very old.
To understand just how young Tyler Clippard is, consider this: Sometime yesterday before he made his major-league debut for the Yankees against the Mets at Shea, he passed his free time by logging into his myspace page.
Now, just to be clear, we didn’t witness this actually happen. But we are fairly sure it’s true because that’s what his myspace page tells us, right in the spot where it says “Last Login.” It’s up there in the top left corner of his myspace page for everyone with Internet access to see.
First there’s a picture of young Tyler enjoying a beer with two other guys, and then on the right of the photo is his personal info, which as you can see now needs some updating.
by Jim Baumbach
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