MySports Today

Wow – Tiger Woods had his best round of the 2009 golf season, as he set a course record 9-under par 62 at Cog Hill at the BMW Championship in Lemont, Illinois just outside of Chicago.  Woods leads the tournament by 7 shots over Brandt Snedeker who birdied the final 4 holes on Saturday to finish with a 5-under par 66 on the day.  Snedeker will play with Woods for the 1st time ever in the final pairing on Sunday.

Woods round had a rough start – a bogey on hole #1.  His best shot – a 6-iron from the rough onto the green on the 7th hole – put him 15-feet from the hole for a par.  In between, Woods was electric – 8 birdies and 1 eagle and pars the rest of the way – leading to a 31 on the front nine and a 31 on the back nine.

Woods is the best player in the world, and unless something catastrophic happens on Sunday, Woods should win the 3rd leg of the 2009 PGA playoffs.

Michael Jordan was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame on Friday night in Springfield, Massachusetts.

Oh yeah – 3 other guys were inducted on Friday night as well – John Stockton, David Robinson and Jerry Sloan.

Derek Jeter had 3 hits in the New York Yankees 4-2 win over the Tampa Bay Rays at the New Yankee Stadium on Wednesday night.  The 3rd hit of the night tied Lou Gehrig’s record for most hits by a New York Yankees player.  Pretty amazing accomplishment for a franchise with such a storied history.  Plus, in a day and age where players change teams so often with free agency, it’s amazing that Jeter has remained a Yankees since the day he first stepped foot in to the major leagues.   Gehrig held the hit # @ 2,721 for more than 70 years – WOW!  Jeter had this to say about the honor: “I really didn’t know what to do because we were losing at the time and I didn’t want to disrespect Tampa. I never dreamt about all of this…He’s one of the classiest people to ever play this game.  It’s just kind of mind-boggling to have my name next to his.”

45,848 fans were in a attendance to see Jeter tie the record. They gave him a 2-minute standing ovation, and several Rays players even stood up in their dugout to cheer on Jeter.  The Yankees are running away with the best record in baseball in 2009.  The Yankees have a 91-50 record and are 9 games ahead of the Boston Red Sox for 1st place in the AL East.  The Angels and the Cardinals are the next closest teams with 84 wins each.  Congrats Derek – you are a class guy and you deserve it…

9th seeded Caroline Wozniacki defeated Melanie Oudin in straight sets on Wednesday night to end the 17-year old’s Cinderella run at the U.S. Open.  Oudin lost 6-2, 6-2, but should take solace in the fact that she made it to the final 8 at the U.S. Open even though she is only ranked 70th in the world.  That ranking will likely go up after her spectacular performance in NY the last 11 days.  Oudin had this to say about the experience: “The thing for me is, I love to play tennis, and that all comes along with it if you do well and if you win.  And I mean, I’m ready for that if that’s what you have to do to do well in tennis.  I’m not going to stop playing just because of that.”  Congrats Melanie – and keep it up in the future…

Wow – haven’t done this in a while, so we’ll start it up again – The Good Chris Carpenter & The Bad Pittsburgh Pirates…

Chris Carpenter is Good, real good.  The Cardinals’ Chris Carpenter threw his 1st complete game shutout in 3 years in Monday’s 3-0 win over the Milwaukee Brewers on Labor Day.  He needed just 99 pitches and gave up only 1 hit – a harmless double to Jody Gerut in the 5th inning.  He struck out 10 Brewers and won his 11th straight decision.  During the 2009 MLB schedule, Carpenter is 16-3 and he leads all of baseball with a sparkling 2.16 ERA.  He has a WHIP under 1.00 at 0.97 and he has allowed more than 3 ER in a game only 2 times all season long (4 runs against the Pirates on August 4th and 6 runs against the Giants on June 30th).  He has allowed 2 ER or less in 17 of his 24 starts.  He and teammate Adam Wainwright (18-7; 2.59 ERA; 1.21 WHIP) will be duking it out for the 2009 National League Cy Young Award.  It’s not surprising that Manager Tony LaRussa and the Cardinals have run away with the NL Central with 2 dominating pitchers like Carpenter and Wainwright at the top of the rotation.  The Cardinals are 27 games over .500 @ 84-57 and they now have the best record in the National League.

The Pittsburgh Pirates are Bad, real bad.  The Pirates have lost 12 of 13 games and are now 54-84 overall, 28.5 games behind the St. Louis Cardinals for last place in the NL Central.  The Pirates have only 7 more wins than the lowly Washington Nationals and are the 3rd worst team in all of MLB baseball (the Royals are 1 game worse with a 53-85 record).  The Pirates have guaranteed the franchise another losing season – 17 consecutive losing season for that matter.  That streak sets the longest season losing streak for any professional sports team in the four major professional sports (baseball (MLB); football (NFL); basketball (NBA); hockey (NHL)) ever.  Bad, bad, bad.  Only the Philadelphia Phillies of MLB have have had 16 consecutive losing seasons (from 1933-1948).  Bad, bad, bad…

Melanie Oudin is on a mission.  The 17-year old Oudin is now in the quarterfinals of the U.S. Open Tennis Championship and looks to continue her magnificent run against Caroline Wozniacki.  Oudin has defeated 4th seeded Elena Dementieva, 29th seeded (and former champion) Maria Sharapova and 13th seeded Nadia Petrova.  Not bad for the 70th seed in the tournament, looking to play some competitive tennis for a round or 2 heading into the 2-week tourney.  The Marietta, Georgia native has the fans on her side, and she is hoping a run at the finals is in the cards.  We’ll keep you posted here at MySportsToday.com…

Great article from ESPN’s John Clayton – the Professor.  This guy is great and the insight is interesting.  Not sure I’d go as far as he does, but it is fun to think about the NFC being a better conference than the AFC…

Talk about a sore loser.  After Boise State dominated Oregon in a 19-8 drubbing on Thursday night, LeGarrette Blount took offense to some Boise State trash-talking after the game, and sucker punched a Boise State player Byron Hout square in the face.  What a moron.  Fortunately, he has been suspended for the rest of the 2009 NCAA football season.

John Smoltz and Brad Penny are shining in their new homes outside of the bright lights of Fenway Park in Boston.

In 3 starts with the Cardinals, Smoltz is 1-1 with a 2.65 ERA and miniscule 0.82 WHIP.  He suffered his 1st loss on Thursday when he gave up 4 ER on 6 hits over 6 innings.  In his previous 2 starts (both Cardinals wins), Smoltz gave up just 1 ER on 7 hits over 11 innings pitched.  He also struck out a combined 15 batters in those 2 games against the lowly Padres and Nationals.  The Cardinals have all but locked up the NL Central division, and Smoltz will be a welcome arm for the Cardinals in the post-season.  It will be interesting to see if Manager Tony LaRussa goes with Smoltz as a #3 (ahead of 14-gaem winner Joel Pineiro) or as a #4 in October.

In his 1st start with the Giants, Brad Penny earned the win with 8 scoreless innings against the Phillies, giving up just 5 hits and 1 walk.  Penny pounded the strike zone throughout the game, needing just 103 pitches to go the 8 innings.  As a point of reference, Penny pitched into the 7th inning only 2 times in 24 starts for the Red Sox in 2009 (7-8 record, 5.61 ERA & 1.53 WHIP).  The Giants are looking for Penny to serve as the team’s #4 behind Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain and Barry Zito.  With more starts like that, the Giants could have one of the deepest starting pitching staffs for the post-season if they can overcome the Rockies for the NL Wild Card lead.

We’ll see if it holds up for the remainder of the season, but these guys are veteran major league pitchers and with prior success for each in the National League, it’s not surprising that both are thriving back in the light-hitting NL.

Talk about a train wreck.  The 2009 New York Mets could be one of the most disappointing stories in the history of major league baseball.  No joke…

The New York Mets were all excited to open a new stadium – CITI Field – in 2009, and had high hopes of playing a World Series in CITI Field in its 1st year hosting MLB baseball.  But after a decent start to the season, the Mets were still within striking distance of the NL East race.  But once the injury bug hit – Jose Reyes, Carlos Beltran, Carlos Delgado, J.J. Putz, John Maine, Oliver Perez, Johann Santana, David Wright – it was like a runaway train headed straight for “Disaster Town.”  Jayson Stark has a great article on ESPN, pointing out that the Mets Train Wreck could continue for years to come…