Keeping Score

Cam Hutchinson, in the Saskatoon StarPhoenix: “Whenever I see Scott Morrison sitting at the CBC I-Desk during NHL playoff games, I feel like he has been demoted.” . . . Either that or his boxers are two sizes too small. . . . One more from Hutchinson: “The Toronto Maple Leafs are reportedly trying to move up in the NHL draft so they can select Saskatoon’s Brayden Schenn. What do the Leafs have against this fine family?” . . . Headline at the theonion.com: Detroit, Pittsburgh Both Attempting To Lose Stanley Cup, Avoid Expensive Victory Parade. . . . So who was in charge of security at the French Open? Clouseau? . . . Outfielder Tyson Gillies of Kamloops continues to have a fine season with the Class-A High Desert Mavericks, a farm team of the Seattle Mariners. Through Thursday, Gillies was hitting .310 and that was tied for 12th in the California League. He was fourth in on-base percentage (.421) and 16th in OPS (.872). His nine triples had him tied for the league lead. And he had made only two errors. . . . The Mavericks, at 39-21, had a five-game lead atop the South Division.
Headline at Fark.com: LeBron undergoes procedure to remove growth from his mouth. No word yet if his foot is OK. . . . Scott Ostler, in the San Francisco Chronicle: “This was kind of cute: As LeBron James was wheeled into the operating room to have a growth removed from his jaw, the surgeon poured a pile of disinfectant powder into his hands and flung it into the air.” . . . The New York Daily News is running a contest as it looks for a nickname for the new Yankee Stadium, which has turned out to be something of a launching pad. One of the entries: Jack in the Bronx. . . . Mark Kriegel, over at FoxSports.com: “EA Sports is coming out with a Tyson vs. Ali game. In other words, the guy who beat Liston, Frazier and Foreman against the guy who beat Trevor Berbick. Need more evidence that video games are contributing to the epidemic of ignorance among our nation’s youth?”
If the Los Angeles Lakers win the NBA championship, head coach Phil Jackson will have 10 rings. “If he gets it,” writes Jim Armstrong of the Denver Post, “he would move into a tie with Mrs. Kobe for the team lead.” . . . Mike Lupica, in the New York Daily News: “Those 'voluntary' workouts in the NFL — aren’t they a little like 'voluntarily' paying your income taxes?” . . . There have been rumblings that the turf at Hillside Stadium may be too hard to allow the B.C. Lions to hold training camp here. But wait . . . maybe not. “The condition of the field at (Abbotsford’s) Rotary Stadium prompted the Lions to set up camp this season a block away at W.J. Mouat Secondary and could force them off to Kamloops next year,” wrote Lowell Ullrich in the Province the other day.
The Globe and Mail’s Jeff Blair, before Game 6 of the Stanley Cup final: “So, if the Pittsburgh Penguins and Sidney Crosby spit out the bit in a second consecutive Stanley Cup final, can we say Our Sidney has done a halfway decent impersonation of Buffalo Bills quarterback Jim Kelly, who led his Bills to an 0-for-4 Super Bowl run?” . . . Ahh, summer in Kamloops. The panhandlers on the medians are fighting for space with the squeegee kids and cars cruising by supply them with all the music they need. . . . Dan Wetzel of Yahoo! Sports, after Game 5 in Detroit: “The NHL is all about marketing its stars and Pittsburgh has two of the game's biggest in Malkin and Crosby, the only two teammates ever to each score 30 points in the playoffs. But it’s entire teams, organizations even, that win Stanley Cups, and there isn’t anything that compares to these Wings.”
Dave Krieger, in the Denver Post, after the Colorado Avalanche re-arranged the deck chairs: “When the Chinese government suffers an embarrassing public failure of some kind, it tends to react by purging a couple of high-ranking officials. Everybody beneath them moves up a rung and things go on as before. This procedure came to mind last week as the Avalanche announced its ‘new management structure,’ which looked a lot like the old management structure, minus a couple of high-ranking officials.” . . . So what did reliever J.C. Romero of the Philadelphia Phillies miss the most about the major leagues while he served a 50-game suspension after failing a drug test? “My paycheque,” he said.
For the second straight year, Bonnie Richardson was the girls’ track team at Rochelle High, a Texas school with 14 students in its graduating class. And, for the second straight year, she won the Class A state championship all by herself, outscoring 56 other schools. Bonnie finished first in the long jump and high jump, second in the discus, third in the 200 metres and fourth in the 100. As Mike Penner of the Los Angeles Times noted: “Rochelle did not enter any relays.” . . . Fans of baseball’s Albuquerque, N.M., Isotopes, who play in the Pacific Coast League, set a hot dog-eating record Monday night. There were 11,110 fans on hand for 50-cent dog night and they scarfed down 37,669 of the North American delicacies. That obliterated the previous record of 35,468 which had been set six years ago by, yes, Albuquerque fans. . . . Sheesh, think of what the record might be had they — BURP! — invited Joey Chestnut and Takeru Kobayashi.
Matthew Futterman, in a Wall Street Journal story: “At the bush tracks in Cajun country where Calvin Borel learned to ride horses for $4 a mount, standards weren’t much higher than the pay. Most of the tracks were dirt straightaways with no turns, and much of the liquor was homemade. To meet the requirement that every horse had to have a ‘live’ rider, some owners would strap a rooster to the saddle.” . . . Larry Brooks, in the New York Post: “Television industry functionaries can attempt to spin it any way they like, but the decision by Versus to delay the Game 3 postgame show by a half-hour in order to show an episode of ‘Sports Soup’ was a slap across the face to every hockey fan who had been watching. Commitment to hockey, indeed.”

Gregg Drinnan is sports editor of The Daily News. He is at gdrinnan@kamloopsnews.ca and gdrinnan.blogspot.com. Keeping Score appears Saturdays.