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SPORTS LEGEND: A Thailand player intentionally scored on his own goal to give his team a better match-up in a tournament. Read the rest of this entry »

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SPORTS LEGEND: A professional golfer protested a missed putt during a playoff match due to duck dung being on the green. Read the rest of this entry »

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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about baseball and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the baseball urban legends featured so far.

BASEBALL URBAN LEGEND: Frank Thomas’ agents dropped him for skipping team workouts.

Scott Sanderson always had a strong sense of morals. Whether you think his morals are misguided or not, you would still have to admit that when the man takes a stand on an issue, he really took a stand.

When he was a Major League pitcher, Sanderson actually refused to talk to female reporters in the locker room. As the pitcher noted in 1991, when he continued the practice even though he was now playing in New York and it was, you know, 1991 and not 1951:

It’s simple. I don’t believe women should be in a place where men are getting dressed. At the same time, I recognize they have a job to do and I don’t want to compromise their jobs. It’s a moral issue to me, not a constitutional one. I have to stand up for what I think is morally right.

Sanderson took that same sense of morals with him to the world of sports agency, where Sanderson partnered up with Mike Moye to run Moye Sports Associates.

In late 2000, Moye and Sanderson began representing Frank Thomas after his longtime agent, Robert Fraley, died in the same plane crash that killed Payne Stewart.

In early 2001, Frank Thomas had some issues with White Sox President Jerry Reinsdorf. Specifically, Thomas was irked at a “diminished skills” clause in the contract extension that Thomas had signed in 1997. When he signed his deal in 1997, Thomas was coming off an extraordinary run from 1991-1997 that put him at among the best hitters in baseball for every year, including winning him two MVPs in 1993 and 1994. After two down years in 1998 and 1999 (for Thomas they were down years, at least), Thomas rebounded to come in second in the 2000 American League MVP voting.

So the following season, Thomas wanted the White Sox to waive the “diminished skills” clause in his contract that was built around the following: the White Sox could defer part of his salary if he failed to be an AllStar, win the Silver Slugger award, or finish in the top ten for the MVP. If they invoked it, they would still own him the money (a little under $10 million), they could just defer all but $250,000 of it.

In 1998 and 1999, Thomas failed to do any of those three, but in 2000, he won the Silver Slugger and came in second, so he wanted the White Sox to waive the clause. They were unwilling to do so.

So, as a form of protest, Thomas sat out a few weeks of mandatory workouts. What happened next was quite surprising.
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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about baseball and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the baseball urban legends featured so far.

BASEBALL URBAN LEGEND: The White Sox once accidentally traded for the wrong player.

James Baldwin broke in with the Chicago White Sox in 1995, coming in second in the Rooke of the Year balloting to Derek Jeter in 1996.

Baldwin was a decent pitcher for the White Sox. He was a prototypical “keeps his team in the game” pitcher, a guy who, while not dominant, does well enough to give his team a good chance of winning the game most times around. He usually stayed roughly around the league average for earned runs allowed. His best season was in 2000, when he won 14 games and lost 7, with an earned run average of 4.65, a little better than league average that season. He made the All Star Team in 2000, as the White Sox made the playoffs.

Baldwin was going to be a free agent after the 2001 season, and in 2001, the White Sox had an off year after making the playoffs in 2000. So they decided to trade Baldwin at the trade deadline in 2001 to a team (the Los Angeles Dodgers) who had a better chance of making the playoffs in exchange for a few low level prospects, rather than lose Baldwin as a free agent after the season and get nothing in return for him.

The prospects were nothing too notable: Jeff Barry, Gary Majewski and Onan Masaoka. Majewski, actually, was drafted by the White Sox and sent to the Dodgers earlier in 2001, so they were just getting him back.

Barry had played in the big leagues for a little bit in the late 90s, mostly for the Rockies…

Here’s the kicker, though.

The White Sox did not MEAN to acquire Barry!!!!
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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about the Olympics and Olympians and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the Olympic urban legends featured so far.

OLYMPIC URBAN LEGEND: The idea of running a four minute mile was considered impossible before Roger Bannister did it in 1954.

On May 6, 1954, Roger Bannister amazed and delighted the world when he became the first person to run a mile in less than four minutes, with a time of 3 minutes and 59.4 seconds.

The former Olympic competitor (1952 Olympics, where he failed to medal) Bannister instantly became one of the most famous athletes in the world, and even today, his name is one of the more recognizable ones in sports history.

One of the most standout aspects of his success was the idea that was being passed around at the time that what he did was “impossible.”

If you do a quick search for the 4 minute mile and “impossible,” you get quotes like:

“Before 1954, it seemed to be a physical barrier that humans could not cross. It was impossible.”

“Runners were told by scientists that it was physically impossible to run a mile under 4 minutes.”

“It was believed that the 4 minute mile was physically impossible. And it was commonly accepted. It was a fact.”

“Many philosophers and physiologists supposed that it was impossible for anybody to run that fast.”

“Before the 1950’s, running the mile in under four minutes was considered impossible.”

I think you get the gist of it.

This particular brand of thought is being brought about a lot lately due to the fact that it works well for a certain brand of philosophy, or, more specifically, a certain brand of “self-help” – to wit, everyone thought it was impossible, but then Bannister did it, and within FIFTY DAYS (forty-six, to be precise), Bannister’s record was broken, and THAT record was broken and so on and so forth (the current record in the mile is a shocking 3 minutes and 43.13 seconds, set by Moroccan Hicham El Guerrouj in 1999). So the theory is that if you BELIEVE something is impossible, it is, so you only need to believe in yourself and your ability to achieve a goal, and you will be able to. Yadda yadda yadda.

So, at the heart of the matter, WAS the Four Minute Mile considered impossible?

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Here are quick descriptions of each of the previous editions of Hockey Legends Revealed.

To see if they are true or false, you have to click on the link!

1. ADIDAS stands for “All Day I Dream About Soccer”?

2. William Dean’s nickname “Dixie” came from his dark skin.

3. Stephen Ireland faked a death of a grandmother to get out of his international duties with Team Ireland.

4. Benito Mussolini Threatened the Italian National Team With Death if They Lost the 1938 World Cup?

5. A dog discovered the missing World Cup trophy for the 1966 World Cup.

6. Tens of thousands of prostitutes came to South Africa and Germany for the 2006 and 2010 World Cups

7. Johan Cruyff sat out the 1978 FIFA World Cup as a political protest.

8. British World Cup Fever led to the election of a new Prime Minister in 1966

9. The Queen of England gave a Golden Whistle to a Linesman who made a controversial call in favor of England in the World Cup Final.

10. Pele was paid to tie his shoelaces in the 1970 World Cup.

11. India withdrew from the 1950 World Cup because they were not allowed to play barefoot.

12. FIFA changed the rules of a contest after Diego Maradone was voted Player of the Century

Ta da!

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SPORTS LEGEND: The NCAA has a rule against Division 1 teams having turf colored anything but green, but Boise State was grandfathered in. Read the rest of this entry »

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Here are quick descriptions of each of the previous editions of Hockey Legends Revealed.

To see if they are true or false, you have to click on the link!

1. The H on the Canadien’s jerseys stands for “Habitants”

2. A team once traded a player twice on the same night!

3. Patrick Roy once decided to just take the puck and skate up at the opposing team’s net.

4. There was a remarkable act of almost instant karma in a 2001 Chicago Blackhawks/Colorado Avalanche game.

5. The Detroit Red Wings used to lend their trainer to other teams if they needed a goalie for a game.

6. A Superior Court Judge allowed a suspended coach to coach a playoff game.

7. A Hall of Fame goalie used to vomit before each game.

8. Wayne Gretzky coined the phrase “Skate to where the puck is going, not to where it is.”

9. A father of an NHL player held up a local CBC station to get them to air his son’s game.

10. Ed Olczyk took his time with the Stanley Cup in 1994 to let the winning horse of the 1994 Kentucky Derby use the Cup as a feedbag.

11. Six weeks after having Last Rites performed for him, a hockey player was playing in the Stanley Cup Finals!

12. A professional wrestling promoter ended up securing the Montreal Canadiens’ place in professional hockey history.

13. Bruce Gamble died during an Old Timer’s Game.

Ta da!

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Here are quick descriptions of each of the previous editions of Olympic Legends Revealed.

To see if they are true or false, you have to click on the link!

1. Dan O’Brien missed out on competing in the 1992 Olympics due to an act of pride.

2. Olympic skiier Picabo Street was named after the game “Peek-a-boo.”

3. The idea of running a four minute mile was considered impossible before Roger Bannister did it in 1954.

4. The Olympic Torch Relay was started by the Nazis.

5. Tara Lipinski stood on Tupperware as a 2-year-old to imitate the Gold Medal winners at the Olympic Games.

6. The Olympics led to a watch company becoming one of the largest printer manufacturers in the world.

7. Athletes during the Ancient Greek Olympic Games were amateurs.

8. The International Olympics Committee created a new rule just to make a certain participant ineligible for future Olympics.

9. The Jamaican bobsled team carried their sled to the finish line after a crash.

10. An Olympic rower paused during a race to let a family of ducks pass in front of his scull.

11. Five years before winning a Gold medal, an Olympic athlete was declared dead at the scene of a plane crash.

12. Joe Frazier qualified for the Olympics due to Buster Mathis suffering an injury – an injury Mathis suffered when he defeated Frazier in the qualifying rounds!!

13. The Chinese Table Tennis team cut four players for “falling in love.”

14. A gymnast won six medals at an Olympics…with only one leg!

15. A British athlete had to make a quick (and strange) move to find a country to compete for in the Olympics.

16. A 17 year old took up the decathlon a few months before he won the Gold Medal in the event.

17. A song was re-named years after it first came out because it was used in a clip package for an Olympic athlete.

18. An Olympian who stole the Olympic flag in 1920 returned the flag…eighty years later!!!

19. A billion people watched the opening ceremony for the 2012 London Olympics.

20. Johnny “Tarzan” Weissmuller took on a fake identity so he could represent the United States in the 1924 Olympics.

21. Through strange political circumstances, the very first Chinese delegation to the Summer Olympics was a single athlete.

22. The current distance for the Olympic marathon was based on where Queen Alexandra was sitting at the 1908 Summer Olympics.

Ta da!

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Here are quick descriptions of each of the previous editions of Basketball Legends Revealed.

To see if they are true or false, you have to click on the link!

1. The Celtics were once forced to play a game at midnight due to the Ice Capades!

2. The Harlem Globetrotters began in Chicago.

3. Michael Jordan was cut by his high school basketball team.

4. Future NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue was Georgetown’s career leader in total rebounds and rebounds per game when he graduated.

5. Larry Bird played a game where he shot all of his shots left-handed.

6. The United States voted against sending National Basketball Association players to the 1992 Olympics.

7. Danny Ainge once bit Tree Rollins during a playoff game.

8. Jim Thorpe played professional basketball.

9. Chuck Connors was once punished in a peculiar fashion for his reaction to a tough loss against the St. Louis Bombers.

10. An NCAA basketball game once ended with a team playing 1-on-5!

11. Del Harris once set a pick on Michael Adams during a game!

12. Dave Cowens once took a break from the Celtics during the season to drive a cab.

13. A convicted man asked for his sentence to be INCREASED to honor his favorite basketball player.

14. Wilt Chamberlain had an infamously poor reaction to his coach’s invention of morning shootarounds.

15. Wilt Chamberlain is in the Volleyball Hall of Fame.

16. The “Larry Bird exception” to the NBA salary cap got its name from the Celtics being the first team to go over the salary cap to re-sign one of their players, namely Larry Bird.

17. Michael Jordan bought a fancy team bus for his minor league baseball team to ride around in.

18. An NBA player tried to get a triple double though a somewhat…odd fashion.

19. Anfernee Hardaway was named “Anfernee” by mistake.

20. While in the NBA, Dave Bing went to work for the same bank that denied him a mortgage for a house.

21. NBA guard Eric Gordon played Michael Jordan’s son in the film Space Jam.

22. There was a strange piece of deja vu involved with one the first NBA games ever to be replayed – the so-called “Phantom Buzzer” game.

23. The NBA tried out 12-foot rims to handicap George Mikan.

24. The Knicks participated in a special lottery where they nearly drafted Bob Cousy!

25. Red Holzman got his start in professional basketball due to the fact that he was Jewish.

26. A 2001 game between Michigan State and the University of Virginia was canceled due to a bizarre situation with the floor of the court.

27. The Philadelphia Warriors drafted Wilt Chamberlain while he was still in high school.

Ta da!