About Last Weekend: Tiger Roars Past the Bear

In case you were out living a life of leisure, here’s what you missed in sports over the weekend.

  • Tiger Woods moved into second place on the all-time PGA tour wins list behind Sam Snead by out-dueling Bo Van Pelt to win the AT&T National golf tournament at Congressional. “Operation Kill Tiger must now enter the next phase,” said a member of the Sam Snead Legacy Foundation on a clandestine phone call. “Also, we should think about changing the name. Not very subtle, Gene. Son of a gun, I did it again. No names on the phone. Always forgetting that. Always forgetting that.”
  • Spain won its third-straight major soccer title with a 4-0 victory over Italy in Euro 2012. The Spaniards won using their traditional “tiki taka” passing game, a style whose name literally translates to “f— Italy.”
  • Americans Mardy Fish and Brian Baker joined the usual suspects — Djokovic, Federer, Murray — in the round of 16 at Wimbledon, while Serena Williams survived a scare against Zheng Jie. Unfortunately for Williams, the scare was so severe that she now suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and starts shaking whenever she sees a tennis racket.
  • The American League and National League All-Stars were announced, with Josh Hamilton and Joey Votto receiving the most fan votes for their respective teams. The voting process was pretty smooth overall, except for a group of loud, annoying a-holes who kept insisting that Ron Paul would make the best shortstop.
  • In their final head-to-head duels at the U.S. Olympic Trials, Michael Phelps edged Ryan Lochte by .09 seconds in the 200-meter individual medley and booked another eight-event program in London by winning the 100-meter butterfly. Lochte put himself at a critical disadvantage in the latter race when he fell for Phelps’s story that all eight competitors would be wearing actual butterfly costumes for the finals to honor Celine Dion for Canada Day. “Wait, that doesn’t make sense,” Lochte thought, as he struggled to stay afloat while thrashing in his cumbersome butterfly wings on the final lap. “What does Celine Dion have to do with butterflies?”
  • Good news: The NBA offseason is heating up in a hurry, with the Toronto Raptors offering Steve Nash a three-year, $36 million deal, and Dwight Howard requesting a trade to the Brooklyn Nets. Bad news: The NBA offseason is cooling down in a hurry, with both Steve Nash and the Orlando Magic saying “hell no” and going back to bed. (Different beds.)
  • R.A. Dickey (8 IP, 10 K) and Johan Santana (8 IP, 3 K) shut out the Dodgers on consecutive days, and the Mets won the series despite falling 8-3 on Sunday night. For this joke, I turn things over to Terrence the Grantland Robot, who is training to take my job but who has not yet learned to write in lowercase letters: THE NEW YORK METS ARE NOW 3.5 GAMES BEHIND THE WASHINGTON NATIONALS IN THE NATIONAL LEAGUE EAST AFTER WINNING THREE OF FOUR GAMES AGAINST THE LOS ANGELES DODGERS. (Ha ha. Thanks, Terrence. You’re killing it!)
  • San Diego’s Yasmani Grandal became the first major leaguer to homer from both sides of the plate for his first two career hits in an 8-4 Padres win over the Rockies. Meanwhile, Kevin Youkilis remains the only player to shit from both sides of the plate just to prove he’ll take any dare, even though he’s not a switch hitter and, far from daring him, his teammates begged him to please not do that.
  • Aaron Cook used just 81 pitches to throw a complete-game, two-hit shutout as the Red Sox beat the Mariners 5-0. And while it’s not true that Cook struck out all 27 Mariner batters on three straight pitches while they stood petrified at the plate, for a total of 81, it’s true enough to get the point across, which is that the Mariners hit like scared little leaguers. Sorry folks, but I tell it like it is! [Flicks cigar out the driver’s side window, swerves wildly, honks for no reason, continues to write every joke in a moving car.]
  • Aaron Hill became the second player in the live-ball era to hit for the cycle twice in the same season when he accomplished the feat in a 9-3 Diamondbacks win over the Brewers. When Babe Herman did it in 1931, it was called a “bi-cycle,” but that was before the invention of the actual bicycle in 1954, so it still worked. Obviously we can’t call it a bi-cycle now, and the really bad news is that if Hill does it again, we also can’t call it a tri-cycle. Same reason. And this is why when people say, “oh, you write about sports? That must be a lot of fun,” I just want to punch them right in their slobbering mouths, because they have no idea how hard it gets.

Filed Under: About Last Weekend, Arizona Diamondbacks, Boston Red Sox, Dwight Howard, Euro 2012, New York Mets, New York Yankees, R.A. Dickey, Ryan Lochte, San Diego Padres, Seattle Mariners, Steve Nash, Texas Rangers, Tiger Woods