Soapbox Sports

Last night I watched one of the greatest tennis matches I have ever seen, Marcus Baghdatis vs. Andre Agassi in a second round (!) match at the US Open. Andre appeared to be cruising to victory after taking the first two sets, but Baghdatis was quite the fighter. He also annoyed the shit out of me with all his antics, talking to the sky (God? How did you guide my shot into the net?), pounding his chest, etc. But I gotta hand it to him, down two sets to one and trailing 0-4 in the 4th set, most players would have packed it in. This son of a bitch from Cyprus (the country, not the city) fought all the back and took the set 7-5, setting up the deciding 5th set. And then he broke Agassi in the first game of the 5th! Andre's match and career appeared to be on the ropes! Then Baghdatis suffered some sort of thigh "injury" and used a long injury timeout. This only gave a visibly frightened Agassi time to sit and regroup. It also gave the raucous New York crowd time to build their "Let's go Andre" chants to a deafening pitch. Sure enough, when play resumed, Agassi broke him right back. They stayed on serve until the 9th game (4-all)...Baghdatis had by this point already established himself as one of the most extroverted players in the game today. Imagine the over-acting antics of a professional wrestler but in tennis. Anyway, with Agassi serving in the 9th game, Baghdatis is suddenly stricken with sever leg cramps. He's rollin' on the ground in "pain," jazzing the whole thing up for the crowd that doesn't care. However, the rules state that you cannot receive treatment for the same injury in the same set so his trainer cannot help him without causing a forfeit. So Andre is a good sport and delays his next serve as long as he can and play resumes. You would think if the guy was in so much pain that he could barely walk that there would be no chance he could chase down an Agassi forehand. Yet every time the point was in play, he looked fine and kept battling to stay alive. I think it went to something like 25 points. Andre was trying to exploit the injury but in doing so was overhitting balls and keeping Baghdatis in it. Between every single point, Baghdatis is hopping over to the umpire on the sideline, practically begging for treatment. He was making faces like he was enduring torture rather than tennis and yet he kept getting to these balls just fine ten seconds later. It began to look like the World Cup. Finally, finally Agassi captured the game to take a 5-4 lead. In the interest of brevity, I will just say that he went on to win 7-5 in a match that lasted 3 hours and 48 mins. He had to get a cortisone shot after his last match and here he was going nearly 4 hours and outlasting the 21-yr old kid! Unbelievable. Say what you will about Roger Clemens dominating baseball at the age of 40 but let's face it, Clemens best outing in the last two seasons could not compare with what Agassi did last night. Andre's post-match interview only solidified his standing with me as one of my favorite athletes of all-time. He was humble, gracious, funny, intelligent, and, get this, sincere. Baghdatis was actually very classy in his remarks as well. Did anyone else see this damn match?! I didn't think so. Damn it! Way to go Andre! Five more matches, one at a time!

I am disappointed to see that the USA Basketball team lost to Greece today, but mostly because now sports radio is saturated with the same tired bullshit about the team being "selfish, overpaid, individuals," and about how they don't "make each other better." The latter concept is the most asinine notion in basketball broadcasting this decade. It has no meaning, makes no sense, and is completely subjective.

USC Football starts tomorrow! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!! I can barely stand it! Of course my mom comes into town on the same day which is also my grandmother's birthday, but damn it, I will watch that game come hell or high water! FUCKIN' FIGHT ON! So everybody knows that Matt Leinart knocked up his now ex-girlfriend from SC, but did anybody know that she is mormon? Daaaaaaaaang. She also used to date Az St. QB Rudy Carpenter. Just some trivia.

Texas' freshman QB is named Colt McCoy. Texas quarterback named Colt McCoy. That's like if SC had a signal-caller named Troy Newport. It's just too good.