What Gage Is Thinking About Today

Here comes another fast paced, quit hitting post, because you know you want it. Here's what's on my mind.

- The Heat lose by 42 to the Bulls. Ok this is why the NBA is a total wasteland. No team in the league is forty points better than another team. The recurring problem is that the players just barely seem to care. Usually teams take turns completely not giving a shit. Team A plays hard for a quarter and builds a big lead. Then they get bored and start thinking about paying those alimony checks to their babies' mamas and how it sucks being famous because you can't get away with being a deadbeat dad, etc. Team B suddenly goes on a streak and so on. Most games wind up close at the end. Last night we just ran into a situation where team H started thinking about the post-game meal before tipoff. Dreadful.

- Liverpool (and soccer in general). The Reds had been playing at the middle of the pack all season and I was starting to think it was just to spite me, but this past weekend they got their shit together. I managed to get up and watch them stick it to Aston Villa 3-1 on Saturday with three beautiful goals, particularly one by Dirk Kuyt. Then, yesterday they played Bordeaux at home in the Champions League group round and basically controlled the entire game winning 3-nil. Steven Gerrard got his first goal of the season, the Reds move on to the knockout round and all is well at Anfield today. In other Champions League news, Chelsea played at Barcelona last night and somehow managed to score a tying goal (friggin Drogba) in the 90th minute. Crazy. But the really wild thing about this game was that Chelsea got five yellow cards. Five in one game?? Miami players, take note.

- Scrabble. That's right, not a sport, I know. But, I read Word Freak after a Simmons reccomendation last year and it's really an engaging, interesting read. Well the author of that book, Stefan Fatsis, wrote this article about a player scoring 830 points in one game, an all time record. I've heard speculation that there was some cheating going on, but I don't feel that way, at least not from this article. Somebody was probably just wearing their lucky rainbow suspenders. The interesting thing here is that this record only came about because neither player in the game was very good. Two better players would have never scored as high. What's a good sports equivalent to this? A free-swinging minor league baseball player hitting 80 home runs?

- MotoGP and Americans actually being good at something. Due to the suggestions of a co-worker I sat down and watch a motorcycle race this weekend. It was the final race of the Motorcycle Grand Prix (MotoGP) circuit which, as I understand, is quite popular in Europe. Without being too long winded about it, going in the five-time defending champ Valentino Rossi (Italian) had a slim lead over the American Nicky Hayden. Anyway, Rossi crashed out of the race in a stunningly unpredictable mistake and Hayden won the points title. This is particularly exciting to me because Hayden is from Kentucky and really had to work his way up to this level. It's nice to see Americans thriving overseas after our basketball/baseball/soccer debacles. This is a big deal to lots of motorcycle racing fans, way to go Nicky.