From All Star to Accused Illegal Squatter

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The story of athlete gone broke is an all too familiar one, Gatling played in the NBA for 10 years and for 8 different teams, he is said to have earned around 29 million during his career in salary. Gatling is being accused of squatting in a four bedroom Paradise Valley home in Arizona for around a year; he then tried to rent it out on craigslist. Gatling has been charged with 2 accounts of theft and forgery, one account of taking the identity of another and one count of fraud. He turned himself in on March 12th and was released on $2,800 bond. Gatling is not pleading guilty and his lawyer, Michael Alarid, had this to say on the matter,

“We believe this to be a misunderstanding, and we are working to resolve the matter,” Alarid said.

The home owner was Priscilla Jones, who has since sold the home. Authorities believe Gatling was in the home without permission from around july 2010 to August 2011, he was living with his then girlfriend who thought the home was rented legally. He obtained an Arizona license and had the residence listed as his primary home. Gatling also attempted to rent out the property to a prospective tenant who realized after he cashed her checks that he was in the house illegally. The tenant researched the home and contacted the rightful owner, Jones, who was living in California at the time.

The 300-Win Milestone Is Obsolete

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It used to be an absolute that getting to the 300-win plateau guaranteed you a ticket to Cooperstown, the kind of ticket that came with a neat bronze plaque. 300 wins has been the magic number for so long, in fact, it seems that there are some fans and pundits out there who still think it's a valid milestone.

Although I'm certainly not the first to say it, I think it's safe to say that there will not be another 300-game winner for a very, very long time. Personally, with the state of the game being what it is today, I believe that we've seen the last of the 300 game winners. The very last.

It's easy to see why this is true; with short-relief specialists, lefties who face maybe one or two batters at most, 7th inning relievers, 8th inning relievers, and then closers on top of all that, who's ever going to pitch more than 5 or 6 innings in a start? This has been the reality of pitching for years, already, and unless there are drastic and long-term changes to the way the game is played it's not going to change.

The logic of it is easy to see. If you've got a starter who makes 34-36 starts a year, he'll end up with around 25 or 26 decisions which end in a win or a loss. On a strong offensive team, maybe he wins 60% or more of those games. Of course, he has to stay in the game long enough for his team to take the lead. Going “5 strong” doesn't always cut it. On that subject, a so-called 'quality start' is defined as a start of at least 6 innings in which the starter allows no more than 3 earned runs. Based on this, a pitcher could produce a string of nothing but quality starts and end the year with a 4.50 ERA, hardly a quality pitcher even with all the 'quality starts'.

Episode 44 - CANUSA Sports Desk 05-18 Podcast Rewind

Elisa Pessetto and Derek Marques talk about the Historic Rivalries that are happening in the Second Round of the NHL Playoffs, the city of Seattle being rejected back into the NBA, Andrew Wiggins deciding to pursue his Education at the University of Kansas, Josh Hamilton's struggles in Anaheim and more.

Tiger Wins With Sigh of Relief

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The red Nike polo was out with good reason this past Sunday at The Players Championship in Ponte Verde Beach Florida, as Tiger Woods won his fourth title of the year. Woods hasn’t won the Players Championship since 2001 and he now joins Steve Elkington, Hal Sutton, Fred Couples and Davis Love III as the only winners to complete that task twice at The Players Championship, Sawgrass. Woods now has 78 wins on the PGA Tour throughout his career and he is only four wins short of tying the record of 82 wins set by Sam Snead. Woods finished on 13 under 275 earning him $1.71 million, with a grand total of $5.8 million in only seven tournaments so far for the year.  Woods is no stranger to winning and this makes his twelfth season where he has won at least four times. This is also the second time Woods has won on Mother’s Day; last time was at the 1998 Bell South Classic.
 

"We just go out there and play," Woods said. "I had an opportunity to win the golf tournament when I was tied for the lead today, and I thought I handled the situation well and really played well today when I really needed to. And that's something I'm excited about it."
 

Woods and Sergio Garcia made the final holes of the tournament very exciting, and were tied going into the final 2 holes.  Garcia wasn’t able to have much luck with the water on the final two holes as he hit three balls into the water giving himself a quadruple-bogey-double-bogey ending. Woods handled the pressure well and after hooking his tee shot into the water on the 14th hole for a double-bogey, he used his short game to make up the difference by going par on the 15th hole. Woods had a much needed birdie on the 16th and wrapped up the tournament shooting a 2-under 70 on the final two holes. Garcia wasn’t as luck as Woods and had a disastrous 17th hole and continued to fall apart as he hit his tee shot on the 18th into the dreaded water. Garcia wound up taking 13 shots on the final 2 holes costing him to go 6 over par and down spiraling into 8th place.

Boogaard Family Suing NHL For Negligence

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The family of former NHL enforcer Derek Boogaard has filed suit against the NHL itself, claiming that the league was negligent in contributing to circumstances which eventually led to his death.

The wrongful death suit was filed by the law firm of Corboy & Demetrio, whose offices are based in Chicago. The suit claims that Boogaard, who suffered multiple head injuries in his time in the league, was a victim of negligence and malpractice on the part of team doctors who were treating him for the injuries. Specifically, it states that in the 2008-09 season these NHL doctors (and dentists, as well) prescribed Boogaard a total of 1021 pills in order to treat symptoms produced by the repeated head injuries he had sustained. In one two-week period alone, Boogaard received 150 oxycodone pills for pain.

The law firm has asserted that these prescriptions contributed to, and likely caused, the same addictions which later led Boogaard to take his own life on May 13th, 2011, and as such the league was directly responsible for his death.