This series has potential to be a fight
The Miami Heat’s 103-102 overtime victory over the Indiana Pacers on Wednesday in Game 1 of the NBA’s Eastern Conference final felt like the playoffs had started for real, according to columnist Greg Cote of The Miami Herald.
“This was more like it,” Cote wrote. “Welcome back, tension and doubt. Good to see you again, major challenge. We missed you, edge of your seat.
“Miami has itself a series - seriously.
“Finally.
“Deliciously.
“Unqualified Milwaukee wasn’t any of that in a first-round Miami sweep.
“Wounded, depleted Chicago really wasn’t in a five-game second round.
“The Indiana Pacers look like a different story, like a team capable of standing up to the reigning NBA champions.
“Not beating them, perhaps - not quite - but standing up to them and making this a tenacious series, an antidote to the anticlimax of the first two.
“This was closer to the kind of heavyweight bout that slugs its way into the late rounds with both fighters exhausted but still punching.
“Somebody is going to fail.
“Somebody is going to raise his glove in triumph.”
Uh, no thank you
A vendor at Houston’s Minute Maid Park has been fired after a fan took video of him taking a tray of snow cones into a stadium restroom and putting it on the floor of the stall while he used the facilities.
The fan shared the video with the local NBC affiliate, which aired a report Wednesday night.
“The Astros were notified immediately by our partner ARAMARK of the incident involving a vendor on Monday night,” new team President Reid Ryan said in a statement. “We commend the swift reaction displayed by ARAMARK of terminating the employee immediately upon learning of the incident that evening.”
ARAMARK, which runs all of the food services at the ballpark, said this was an isolated incident and that the vendor’s actions were “a clear violation of our food safety practices and are not reflective of our standards.”
Perhaps it might have helped knowing if the vendor had washed his hands when he was finished.
Ill-advised drop
Mike Miller, 21, was so happy to hit a hole-in-one in a tournament at Knollwood Country Club in Elmsford, N.Y. - and win two years’ use of a new Lincoln MKZ - that he took a flying leap onto the hood of his prize.
And shattered the windshield with his rear end.
“I’m saying to myself, ‘What’s he jumping on?’ ” Miller’s father Bob told the Westchester County Journal News. “The next thing I know, he’s on the windshield.
Thank God, he turned his body around. … If he would’ve landed on his face, who knows what might’ve happened to the kid ?”
They said it
Jeff Schultz of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, on Washington Redskins fans giving wedding gifts to quarterback Robert Griffin III: “Nice to know that so many people who probably wouldn’t give a can of soup for a food drive will buy new sheets for RGIII.”
Greg Cote of the Miami Herald, after Alabama Coach Nick Saban called it “terribly disappointing” that a Florida assistant referred to him as the devil: ‘Hey, being compared to Saban isn’t exactly a thrill for me, either,’ said Satan.”
Quote of the day
“I’ve hooked some big ones, but I’ve never seen a fish that big on a golf course.” Stacy Lewis on hooking a 4-foot tarpon off the ninth fairway of the flooded Ocean Club golf course in Paradise Island, Bahamas
Sports, Pages 20 on 05/24/2013