A-Rod mum on claims he used steroids in H.S.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gDyhPDBjnfHf9yHdoOLA9DsFnGAAD97T02G81

A-Rod mum on claims he used steroids while in H.S.
4-30-9

NEW YORK (AP) — Alex Rodriguez refused to address allegations that he used steroids when he was a highly touted high school player and with the New York Yankees. Rodriguez admitted in February to using performance-enhancing drugs while with the Texas Rangers but insisted he stopped before he was traded to the Yankees in 2004.

He brushed off a question Thursday about some details from Sports Illustrated writer Selena Roberts' upcoming book "A-Rod" that cast doubt on his earlier statements.

"I'm not going there," he said after homering in an extended spring training intrasquad game in Tampa, Fla. "I'm just so excited about being back on the field and playing baseball. My team has won two games (in a row) up there and hopefully I can come back and help them win some more."

The Daily News reported in Thursday's edition that Roberts' book offers an unflattering portrait of the MVP slugger as a needy personality who wanted his ego stroked constantly.

The paper doesn't say how it obtained a copy of the Harper Collins book, scheduled to be released on Monday.

A high school teammate of A-Rod's told Roberts that the future No. 1 draft pick was on steroids as a prep player and his coach knew it — an allegation the coach, Rich Hofman, denied.

Rodriguez said he wasn't worried that the steroids issue was being brought up again.

"No. Not really," he said. "I'm in a good place. I think more importantly physically I feel like I'm getting better everyday. We've had a great week here. We've worked extremely hard, and I'm just very anxious to do what God put me on this earth to do, to play baseball."

In the book, an unnamed major leaguer is quoted as saying A-Rod and former Yankees pitcher Kevin Brown, who was named in the Mitchell Report, were seen together with human growth hormone — or HGH — in 2004.

The book also goes on to say that two anonymous Yankees said they believed A-Rod was using banned substances based on visual side effects, and that a clubhouse staffer said management had a suspicion that that the third baseman may have been juicing.

Rodriguez, in Florida rehabbing his surgically repaired hip, went 1-for-6 with two walks in the extended spring game. He had a long homer to left center in his sixth plate appearance.

He will play in another extended spring game Friday against Pirates minor leaguers at Pittsburgh's complex in Bradenton, Fla.

Rodriguez said he needs to run the bases at full speed and is still on target to return to the Yankees in May.

"I think the last thing I'm going to do here before I leave is sliding," he said. "I think sliding is probably the thing I have the most reservation about because you have to get on your hip and bounce on it a little bit. Everything else seems so far on schedule."

US tent cities highlight new realities

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/26/tent-city-california-recession-economy

US tent cities highlight new realities as recession wears on
Oliver Burkeman in Washington
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 26 March 2009

For years, Joan Burke has had to battle the fact that homelessness, for most Americans, is an invisible scourge. Recently, however, invisibility hasn't exactly been the problem.

Ten minutes' walk from where she works, at the homelessness charity Loaves and Fishes, in Sacramento, California, lies an all-too-visible "tent city" - a shanty town, built on wasteground beside railway tracks, that has become one of the most prominent symbols of the recession.

Tent cities reminiscent of the "Hoovervilles" of the Great Depression have been springing up in cities across the United States - from Reno in Nevada to Tampa in Florida - as foreclosures and redundancies force middle-class families from their homes.

"Where the tent city is now is literally a toxic waste dump, it's unsafe, but these people are very resourceful," Burke said. "Some people are living in squalor, with just a tarp tied to a chainlink fence. But then you'll see someone with several tents: The tent they live in, plus some outbuilding tents. And they couldn't be more neat and more tidy. They're working hard to create a sense of home."

Many of the 200 residents of Sacramento's Tent City, as with those around the country, are not recent victims of the downturn: They are the chronically homeless, some of them mentally ill. But the encampment seized national attention after Oprah Winfrey featured it on her daytime television show, part of a series of reports she has been running on the "new faces" of homelessness.

Embarrassed by an influx of television crews, Arnold Schwarzenegger this week announced plans to house the tent-dwellers in a nearby convention centre until a $1m (£690,000) plan for more permanent shelter can be implemented.

The California governor told reporters he had "personally delivered a letter to President Barack Obama last week, to request that economic stimulus funds for the homeless be fast-tracked".

Obama grappled with the phenomenon on Tuesday, when a reporter at his primetime news conference asked him about the "tent cities sprouting up across the country". The president said he was "heartbroken that any child in America is homeless", adding: "The most important thing I can do on their behalf is to make sure their parents have a job."

In both the number and types of inhabitants, the new tent cities do not equate to the homelessness of the 1930s. But the symbolism is powerful, and may have significant political consequences. It was not all that far from Sacramento, or from Fresno - home to another Californian tent city - that the celebrated Depression-era photographer Dorothea Lange took her haunting photos of families living in makeshift camps, forced west by the collapsed economy and the Dust Bowl further east.

"We all take care of each other," Michelle Holbrook, a 34-year-old resident of the Sacramento camp who lost her job as a carer, told the San Jose Mercury News. "I've become the camp mother: I do most of the cooking, and make hot water for coffee." A resident of Reno's tent city, Tammy, said: "We eat things that other people throw out, or whatever ... It's really embarrassing to say, but that's the way it sometimes is out here." Another Reno tent-dweller, Jim, told one of Oprah's reporters it was "like learning how to live all over again".

Obama's stimulus package includes $1.5bn for emergency shelters, and, if passed, his budget should significantly expand funding for affordable housing. Philip Mangano, director of the US Interagency Council on Homelessness, has called the stimulus funds "manna from heaven", saying they would boost his two-pronged strategy of preventing homelessness while rapidly re-housing those who fall victim to it. Last year, the US government reported that homelessness in America had declined by 30% between 2005 and 2007.

Burke, whose organisation provides food and shower facilities for Sacramento's Tent City residents, has mixed feelings about the national media exposure. It may help build support for addressing the problem, she said, but also threatens to reinforce a distinction between the "deserving" victims of the recession and those who have been homeless for longer, and for other reasons.

"It's an oddity of human nature that we are more about people who have suffered for a short time, rather than people who have suffered for a long time," she said. "When we can identify with somebody's situation, obviously, our empathy is engaged quickly: You can look at someone and say, 'You know, goodness, they owned their own home, they look like I do.' But if someone's been homeless for a while, they no longer look like we think we look. If you're living in a tent, it doesn't take long before you're somewhat unkempt and dirty, because you're living in the dirt."

The changing economy has, accordingly, thrown very different kinds of people into close quarters with one another. In Fresno, freelance electricians and truck drivers, employed until months ago, rub shoulders with crack addicts and those with serious psychological problems. There have been reports of violence in one part of Fresno's encampment, known as New Jack City, but Burke said what really impressed her in Sacramento was the degree of cooperation.

"There is a sort of very pure democracy and self-governance at play. People are making up the rules of their cluster of tents, deciding what's permitted, just as in any sort of community," she said. "You don't want to romanticise this - it isn't camping - but there is a community, and there is a sense of helping others. We've had a series of storms here recently, and if there's somebody new who doesn't have a tent, people will take them in. It's that understanding that, you know, there's somebody worse off than I am."

Hall of Shame: Detroit sets dubious mark

http://www.sportsnetwork.com/merge/tsnform.aspx?c=sportsnetwork&page=nfl/news/newstest.aspx?id=4199839

Hall of Shame: Detroit sets dubious mark
12/28/08

Green Bay, WI (Sports Network) - The Detroit Lions finished their 2008 season the way they finished every week of this season, with a loss, and became the first team in NFL history to finish a campaign 0-16.

Just one season after New England became the first NFL team to go 16-0 in the regular season, Sunday's 31-21 loss for the Lions, at the hands of the Green Bay Packers, handed Detroit the first winless non-strike season since the Tampa Bay Buccaneers went 0-14 in 1976, the expansion club's initial season.

It is appropriate that Detroit ended its lost season at the Packers, as its current run of 17 straight losses began in Green Bay on the last week of last season.

The Lions came into Sunday's contest with hope, given that the team had played the Packers tight during a Week 2 loss at Ford Field. In that game, the Lions took a 25-24 lead with 7:41 to play after Jon Kitna and Calvin Johnson connected on a 47-yard score, but Green Bay scored 24 unanswered points and Jon Kitna was picked off three times on the final three drives, with the last two being returned for touchdowns in a 48-25 loss.

The team had a four-week stretch in which it lost by eight points or less, including a 12-10 loss at Minnesota in Week 6, but was beaten by at least 20 points in five games this season and lost by double-digits in 10 games.

The Lions now join the 1962 New York Mets (40-120), the 1972-73 Philadelphia 76ers (9-73) and the 1974-75 Washington Capitals (8-67-5) as the owner of the worst season in their respective sports. However, the Mets and Capitals were both expansion teams when they set their marks.

Despite Sunday's history, this was not the first time Detroit went winless in a season. The 1942 Lions finished the 1942 campaign at 0-11 in a season that saw the war-depleted Lions outscored by a total of 263-38.

The Achilles' Heel of this team was its defense. Going into Sunday's action, the Lions were last in the league in the following defensive categories: total defense (399.1 yards per game), scoring defense (32.4 points per game), rushing defense (169.5 yards per game), touchdowns allowed (59), rushing touchdowns allowed (30), yards allowed per rush (4.99), rushes allowed of 20 yards or longer (23), and interceptions recorded (4).

The team gave up a total of 517 points on the season, which is the second-most in the history of the league, and just 16 points fewer than the 1981 Baltimore Colts, who gave up 533 points.

The offense hasn't been much better, but the team did have two outstanding players in wide receiver Calvin Johnson (78 receptions, 1,331 yards and 12 touchdowns) and rookie running back Kevin Smith (238 carries, 976 yards and eight touchdowns). In addition, kicker Jason Hanson was his usual effective self as his only missed field goal attempt of the season was a block, and he went 8-for-8 from 50-plus yards. Hanson, who also had an extra-point attempt blocked, finished the season with 88 points.

That being said, one of the biggest problems of the offense was that it used five different quarterbacks during the campaign: Kitna, Dan Orlovsky, Daunte Culpepper, Drew Stanton and Drew Henson.

Rod Marinelli, who could lose his job in the coming days, and his club have not won a game since a home win over the Kansas City Chiefs last Dec. 23rd, and are 1-23 in their past 24 games overall, in addition to a a 12-game losing streak as the visitor since notching a win at Chicago last Oct. 28.

Phillies close out Rays, earn World Series title

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/recap?gameId=281027122

Lidge and the Phillies close out Rays, earn World Series title
10-29-8

PHILADELPHIA -- Save the jokes, the taunts and all those insults about the losingest team in sports.

The Philadelphia Phillies just won themselves a World Series.

If that sounds strange, it was strange.

Nearly 50 hours after Game 5 started but was stopped by rain, Brad Lidge and the Phillies finished off the Tampa Bay Rays 4-3 in a three-inning sprint Wednesday night.

"It was a crazy way to win it with a suspended game, but we did and it's over," 45-year-old Phillies pitcher Jamie Moyer said. "It has been a long wait, but it's worth it."

Left in limbo by a two-day storm, the Phillies seesawed to their first championship since 1980. Pedro Feliz singled home the go-ahead run in the seventh and Lidge closed out his perfect season to deliver the title Philly craved for so long.

Cheesesteaks, on the house.

"Who's the world champion?" manager Charlie Manuel asked the gleeful crowd during a 90-minute postgame ceremony that lasted longer than Wednesday night's action.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said that President Bush talked to David Montgomery, the Phillies' president, on Thursday morning. She said he "offered his congratulations and said how exciting it must be for him, the team, and for all of the fans."

Perino said that Bush also noted that Manuel had brought some of the players by the White House last year, and said he was "really impressed" by them. She said Bush asked Montgomery "to give Charlie and the entire organization his best."

Bundled in parkas and blankets, fans returned in force to Citizens Bank Park and saw the city claim its first major sports championship in 25 years. No more references needed to those sad-sack Phillies teams in the past and their 10,000-plus losses.

"They could taste it just as much as we could," Series MVP Cole Hamels said.

It was among the wackiest endings in baseball history, a best-of-seven series turned into a best-of-3 1/2 showdown when play resumed in the bottom of the sixth inning tied at 2.

Home Sweet Home

The Phillies became the fifth team to come home tied 1-1 and go on to win the World Series by taking three straight in their own park. The Cardinals were the last to do it, in 2006 against the Tigers. Here's a look:
Year Team
2008 Phillies
2006 Cardinals
1984 Tigers
1974 Athletics
1969 Mets

How bizarre? Hamels was a star in Game 5 -- and the ace never stepped on the mound Wednesday night; Two Rays relievers warmed up to start, and there was a pinch-hitter before a single pitch; "God Bless America" was sung rather than the national anthem, and it was quickly followed by the seventh-inning stretch.

All because the game was suspended Monday night after rain made the field into a quagmire, washing out the foul lines, creating a puddle at home plate and turning every ball an adventure. Commissioner Bud Selig eventually called it -- fans booed loudly when he presented the MVP trophy to Hamels.

For Philly, it was more than a World Series win. Got the whole city off the hook, actually.

Finally, long after Julius Erving led the Sixers to the 1983 NBA title, something to celebrate.

How much did Philly fans want a champion to call their own?

Well, the sports hero they point to with the most pride isn't even a real person -- Rocky Balboa.

Yo, Adrian ... the Phillies did it!

"It's over," shortstop Jimmy Rollins said. "It's over, man."

Fast Facts

• The Phillies scored two runs in the resumed portion of Game 5 to clinch their first World Series title since 1980 and second in team history.

• The win gives the city of Philadelphia its first major sports championship since 1983, when the 76ers won the NBA title.

• The Phillies go 7-0 at home in the postseason. Since 1995, only the Phillies and 1999 Yankees have gone unbeaten at home in postseason and won the World Series.

• The Phillies closed the season hot. Including the postseason, they won 24 of 30 to end the year.

Lidge went 48-for-48 on save chances this year, including two this week. He retired two batters with a runner on second, striking out pinch-hitter Eric Hinske to end it.

Lidge jumped in front of the mound, landing on his knees with arms outstretched. Catcher Carlos Ruiz ran out to grab him, and teammates sprinted to the mound to join them as towel-waving fans let loose.

"At first, I couldn't believe it. And then the gravity of what happened hit me," Lidge said.

A generation ago, it was Tug McGraw who went wild when the Phillies won their first title. A few days after country singer Tim McGraw scattered his dad's ashes on the mound, it was Lidge's turn to throw the final pitch.

Popular broadcaster Harry Kalas, in his fourth decade of doing Phillies games, serenaded the festive fans with a chorus of "High Hopes."

Despite low TV ratings and minus the majors' most glamorous teams, fans will always remember how this one wrapped up. And for the first time in a long while, kids saw a World Series champion crowned before bedtime.

"I believe this firmly, our guys are not going to be satisfied without playing in October from now on," Rays manager Joe Maddon said. "And that's a good thing. And that's all because of this group of people this year."

Reliever J.C. Romero got the win, his second of the Series.

Hamels went 4-0 in five postseason starts, beating the Rays in Game 1 and pitching six sharp innings in the rain during Game 5. He was set to be the first batter when the game resumed, and was immediately pulled for a pinch-hitter.

While former NL MVPs Ryan Howard and Rollins drive the Phillies, it was their less-heralded teammates who helped win it on this chilly night. Closing It Out

Phillies closer Brad Lidge was 41-for-41 on save opportunities in the regular season. He stayed perfect in the postseason and equaled the NL record for saves. Here's a look:

Most Saves by NL Pitcher
Single Postseason Year, Player Team Saves

2008, Brad Lidge* Phillies 7
2002, Robb Nen Giants 7
2007, Manny Corpas Rockies 5
1996, Mark Wohlers Braves 5
*Won the World Series

Tied at 3, Pat Burrell led off the seventh with a drive off the center-field wall against J.P. Howell. Chad Bradford relieved and one out later Feliz singled home pinch-runner Eric Bruntlett.

Rocco Baldelli's solo home run off Ryan Madson made it 3-all in the top of the seventh. The Rays almost got more, but All-Star second baseman Chase Utley alertly bluffed a throw to first on a grounder over the bag and instead threw out Jason Bartlett at the plate.

Pinch-hitter Geoff Jenkins, the first batter Wednesday night, doubled and later scored on Jayson Werth's bloop single.

In all, there were six new pitchers, three pinch-hitters and two pinch-runners when play restarted.

Manuel, whose NL East champions clinched a playoff spot in the final week, guided the Phillies' second overall championship in six World Series tries. The Phils helped themselves by going 7-0 at home this postseason, beating Milwaukee and the Dodgers in the NL playoffs and then defeating the Rays.

"I always thought we'd win the World Series. I knew we could beat anyone in the league," Manuel said.

Once known as a city of champions, Philadelphia saw its sports teams fall on hard times after Erving and Moses Malone led the Sixers to that 1983 title.

Since then, the Phillies, Eagles, Sixers and Flyers made it to the championship game or round -- seven times, in total -- and lost all of them.

The city became so starved for a crown that it was ready to throw a parade down Broad Street for a horse. But local colt Smarty Jones lost, too, in his bid for the Triple Crown.

Now, all those people can gather for the celebration Friday -- it's Halloween, and fans can dress up as champions for Halloween.

"People enjoy being associated with winning and a world championship is the ultimate," Mike Schmidt, MVP of the Phillies' other championship, wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press this week. "It unites a town behind one team."

Tampa Bay did itself proud, too, until this final week. Baseball's best success story this season, the worst-to-first Rays played like the downtrodden Devil Rays from the past decade.

Even so, the gap between the Phils and Rays wasn't enormous. Had Evan Longoria's late, long drive off Moyer in Game 3 not been blown back by the wind, the teams might still be playing.

Game notes

The World Series failed to make it to a Game 6 for the fifth straight year, the first time that's happened. ... Burrell went 1-for-14 in the five games. ... Howell put down the first sacrifice bunt of his career.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.

First $1,000 Super Bowl tickets

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iiA0rincFcZASFgTSP_5-fRup7iQD93RO3UO0

First $1,000 Super Bowl tickets
10-16-8

NEW YORK (AP) — The official price of Super Bowl tickets will reach $1,000 for the first time this season.

The NFL confirmed Thursday that 25 percent of the tickets for the Feb. 1 game in Tampa will be priced at $1,000. It also announced it will drop the price of 1,000 tickets at Raymond James Stadium by $200 to $500, the first time the league has cut prices for a Super Bowl.

Tickets for last year's game in Glendale, Ariz., between the New England Patriots and New York Giants were priced at $700 and $900, up from $600 and $700 the year before.

Overall, the official price for 17,000 suite and club seats will be $1,000 each. Another 53,000 tickets will go for $800, with the remaining 1,000 at $500.

At last year's game, the average price of tickets on StubHub, the online resellers, was $4,300.

Ticket prices for the first Super Bowl, played at the Los Angeles Coliseum 43 years ago, were $6, $10 and $12. They went over the $100 mark in 1988 and have increased regularly since.

With the roof closed

http://blogs.tampabay.com/rays/2008/02/with-the-roof-c.html

February 19, 2008
With the roof closed

The Tampa Bay Rays released a new image of their proposed $450-million waterfront ballpark with the roof closed. Critics of the proposal had been pushing a picture with a yellow roof. The Rays response is a translucent white.

-- Aaron Sharockman, Times Staff Writer

Chicago most caffeinated U.S. city

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071106/lf_nm_life/cities_caffeine_dc

Chicago most caffeinated U.S. city: survey
By Kristina Cooke
Tue Nov 6, 2007

The windy city is also the most wired, according to a survey that showed people in Chicago are the most caffeinated in the United States.

Chicagoans eat more chocolate and drink more cola than other U.S. urbanites, and are among the top consumers of energy drinks and coffee.

They are also likely to say caffeine is good for you, according to the poll conducted by Prince Market Research.

Tampa, Miami, Phoenix and Atlanta rounded out the top five most caffeinated cities, while residents of San Francisco, Philadelphia, New York, Detroit and Baltimore consumed the least caffeine.

"It's surprising perhaps that some places you may think have a lot of hustle and bustle like San Francisco, Philadelphia and New York, were the least caffeinated cities," said Todd Smith, a spokesman for HealthSaver, a healthcare discount service that commissioned the poll.

The survey looked at consumption of coffee, tea, chocolate, sodas, energy drinks and caffeine pills in 20 major cities in the United States by interviewing 2,000 people.

Seattle took the top spot in just caffeinated coffee consumption. Nearly 60 percent of residents in the city said coffee would be the most difficult caffeine product to give up.

The growing popularity of "high-end" coffees, energy drinks and green tea has added to more caffeine consumption around the world, according to HealthSaver.

Half of all the people questioned in the poll said they drank coffee every day, followed by 21 percent who drank caffeinated cola.

New Yorkers and San Franciscans were also among people most likely to say caffeine is bad for you. More than 70 percent of people questioned in the poll said they were not addicted to caffeine. The older the age group the more likely they were to say coffee would be the most difficult caffeinated product to give up.