LINKS

Drew Sharp of the Detroit Free Press has an interesting take on the NFL’s handling of Deflategate and takes the league to task for letting the Seahawks draft Michael Clark:

Sharp writes:

The Seahawks are no doubt ecstatic that the Patriots’ punishment has deflected attention from their gross mishandling of the Clark situation.

Art Thiel of Sportspressnw.com writes about the U.S. Open, specifically how broadcasters Joe Buck and Greg Norman will be tested during the week.

Thiel writes:

This is the first year Buck has done golf, the first year for Norman as a broadcast analyst, and obviously the first time they’ve paired — on a course hosting the Open for the first time in a region that has never experienced it.

Rookie ball for all. Sorta.

“I’d be an idiot to not — not be concerned or apprehensive, but there will be things I’m hit with that I’m not expecting, Buck said. “This isn’t second nature, but it will be. Gotta start somewhere.

“My approach is to take my time and not try to wow everybody with everything I say. Silence speaks volumes, and you pick your spots.”

Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam sings Take Me Out to the Ballgame at Wrigley Field.

Only two pitchers in MLB have six wins, Felix Hernandez and …… Bartolo Colon. Colon, now with the Mets, has 40 strikeouts and just one walk, which adds up to his age (41).

TWEETS

@SteveSandmeyer of 1090 The Fan warns fans that it’s best to stay a little even-keeled when it comes to following your favorite MLB baseball team.

https://twitter.com/stevesandmeyer

Players walkways going up between third and fourth holes at Chambers Bay. @AaronQ13Fox has the photo. 

PUMAS

The Kitsap Pumas get their 2015 season started with a first-round U.S. Open Cup game against Tacoma 253 on Wednesday at Mount Tahoma. The 7 p.m. game will be live streamed. http://ustream.com/channel/sonarfeed or http://www.youtube.com/user/acseattlechannel

The winners plays Sounders FC2 at Starfire in Tukwila on May 20.

Here’s The Sun’s preview story. And here’s the Pumas roster and schedule, or fixtures as  they like to say in the soccer world.

BLUEJACKETS

In case you missed it, the Kitsap BlueJackets schedule is out. They open West Coast League play at Bellingham on June 5.

Here’s a look at some of their players.

PREPS

The annual high school all-star baseball and softball games will be held June 4 (a Thursday) at The Fairgrounds. The Kitsap Athletic Roundtable sponsors the games, which start at 4 p.m. The softball game includes the top players in the area, regardless of year in school. The baseball game (or games, depending on the number of players selected) are for seniors only. It’s affiliated with the Washington State Baseball Coaches Association, and top players will be nominated for the all-state series in Yakima.

Good luck to all of the local teams and athletes as they head into the postseason. Follow them at the prepzone.kitsapsun.com or at The Prep Beat blog.

COLLEGIANS

Baseball

Pacific Lutheran catcher Curtis Wildung (sr., Kingston) and the Lutes, the Northwest Conference champs, will open play in the six-team NCAA Division III South Region at Demorest, Ga., on Wednesday. Wildung hit .308 and started 25 games for the Lutes (30-12). He has two homers, 12 RBI, and hasn’t made an error. He has earned 20 base on balls and has a .446 on-base percentage and a slugging percentage of .487.

Linfield pitcher Joe Stevick (sr., Olympic) and the Wildcats (30-13) were an at-large selection to the NCAA Division III tournaments. Linfield opens the six-team West Region tourney at Tyler, Texas on Wednesday. Stevick, a right-hander, is 2-1 with a 4.15 ERA in 14 relief appearances. He’s pitched 26 innings, allowing 23 hits, striking out 20 and walking four. … A.J. Milyard (so., North Kitsap) is a relief pitcher for Whitworth (28-13), which is also headed to the West Region.

Logan Knowles (fr., South Kitsap) had a 3-run inside the park home run over the weekend, helping Navy (36-18) beat Lafayette in the Patriot League semifinals series. Navy faces Lehigh in a best-of-three series for the Patriot championship on May 16-17. Knowles has started 34 games for the Midshipmen and is hitting .183 with 11 RBI.

Shane Matheny (fr., Olympic) has started all 50 games for Washington State. The third baseman is hitting .219 and has 19 RBI, third-best for the Cougars (27-23, 9-15 Pac-12), who have six regular-season games left.

Softball

Third baseman Erin Kinney (so., Bainbridge) and shortstop Alissa Buss (so., South Kitsap) helped Linfield wins its NCAA Division III regional in Decorah, Iowa over the weekend. The Wildcats came out of the loser’s bracket to win four straight games, sweeping Iowa Conference champion Luther College in the finals. Linfield (35-13) will play Central College (34-10) in Pella, Iowa in the super regionals, starting Friday, May 15. Kinney is hitting .389; Buss .367.

NWAC

Olympic College’s softball team qualified for the Northwest Athletic Conference championship for the eighth straight year and third year under head coach Dan Haas. The Rangers (17-15) were seeded No. 13 and open against No. 4 Mount Hood (29-9) on Friday at noon at Delta Park in Portland. The full bracket can be found here.

 

 

 

 

Nothing against the established local sports talk-radio stations, Sports Radio KJR (950 AM/102.9 FM) and 710 ESPN Seattle, but when I’m driving around, I find myself tuned in to 1090 The Fan more and more.

1090 AM is CBS sports radio. You get the opinions of national personalties like Jim Rome, Doug Gottlieb and John Feinstein. And you still get your local Seattle fix from 3-6 p.m., with Steve Sandmeyer, formerly of KJR, and longtime Seattle broadcaster Bill Swartz interviewing local athletes and coaches and breaking down the hot topics of the day.

Nothing wrong with the old standbys at KJR (if you’re a Husky fan, you gotta get your Husky Honks fix) and ESPN 710 (The Go-To Guy, who writes a weekly column for my favorite daily newspaper, remains a favorite), but it’s nice to have an alternative. Instead of getting the same old stories hashed over and over again, you can go to 1090 and get something totally different. Just throwing it out there in case you weren’t aware that you had another choice.

While we’re at it, it’s nice to see that Fox is launching an around-the-clock cable station that’s going to take on ESPN. Fox Sports 1 is scheduled to launch on Aug. 17. It’ll be tough, probably impossible, to take down ESPN, which has over the years mostly lived up to being the “world-wide leader in sports,” as it claims. ESPN has contracts with the NFL and NBA. But Fox seems ready to take ’em on. The network already has contracts with the MLB, NASCAR, the Pac-12, Big 12, soccer’s Champions League and Europa League and the UFC. When ESPN’s contracts with the NFL and NBA expire, some think FSI might have enough millions (ESPN paid the NFL $1.9 billion for its latest contract) to make a serious play. And maybe they’ll come up with some better alternatives to ESPN’s tired day-time programming. First Take I can’t take anymore. And Around the Horn, Pardon the Interruption, Sports Nation, Mike and Mike etc. etc., they stuff the same topics down listeners ears hour after hour.

Let’s hope FS1 will be worth tuning in to. It’s good to see somebody taking on the big dog in sports broadcasting.