With the first pick in the MLB Rule 4 draft, the Chicago Cubs select . . .?
The consensus in the rumor mill is Miami
area HS CF Albert Almora, if he makes it to #6. But there are other names
floating out there.
An overflow thread will go up at 7:00 pm. If a third one is needed, I'll add
it later.
Other than a new 60 minutes the 2012
miss USA
pageant was the top performing program of Sunday night, as the final hour
had 6.6 million viewers. The ABC premieres of Secret Millionaire and Extreme
makeover : weight loss opened to pretty soft numbers, but in terms of summer
programming, they weren't bad.
CBS still won the night with 5.98 million viewers and a 4.0 rating/7 share in
households. NBC was close behind with 5.8 million and a 3.7/6, followed by ABC
at 4.9 million and 3.1/5 and FOX at 2.8 million, 1.6/3.
The adults 18-49 demo was a different matter, as CBS finished last with a 0.8.
NBC was first at 1.5, then ABC at 1.4 and FOX in third at 1.3
Pablo Sandoval Questioned Over Possible Sexual Assault Media Social Gossip
Media
Social Gossip Associated News
SAN FRANCISCO
-- The Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Department is investigating San Francisco
Giants slugger Pablo Sandoval in a sexual assault case.
"No charges have been filed. He was not arrested, he was not
detained," Skalland said. "He was interviewed with his lawyer present
and he cooperated."
Sandoval's attorney said that his client met with the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's
Department regarding what the lawyer called a "consensual" sexual
relationship. Sandoval was a guest at Seascape Beach Resort in the popular Monterey Bay
Peninsula area some 90 minutes from San Francisco.
CSN Bay Area first reported Saturday that Sandoval met with authorities
Friday and faced possible charges. Friday is when the sexual encounter took
place, according to Sandoval lawyer Eric Geffon.
"He made a statement. I cannot talk about those things," Sandoval
said, referring to his attorney when the third baseman was reached by phone.
"I'm just concentrating on my game and getting back to the team right
now."
Said Geffon: "On Friday, June 1, Pablo Sandoval voluntarily met with
the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Department related to a consensual, personal
relationship of a sexual nature that took place earlier that day," Geffon
said in a statement. "Pablo fully cooperated with the Sheriff's
Department. Out of respect for the process, we have no further comment at this
time."
Sandoval is on the disabled list as he recovers from May 4 surgery to remove
a broken hamate bone in his left hand. Sandoval was in Stockton on Saturday playing for Class-A San
Jose as designated hitter – his first rehab game – and could return as soon as
Friday, if all goes well.
Sandoval, a first-time All-Star last season, is batting .316 with five home
runs and 15 RBIs this year. Manager Bruce Bochy said after Saturday's 2-1 win
over the Cubs that Sandoval will have to return with the right mindset and
prepared to produce again right away.
"He needs to," Bochy said, while not addressing
Sandoval's legal situation specifically. "He needs to get ready to help us
out. That's what he has to do."
I can really identify with with Elizabeth Warren, the self-governing Massachusetts Senate candidate
who may owe her connection with Harvard to the school's belief that she was
Native American. I don't say this because I'm a particularly empathetic person.
I say it because I may owe my connection with Harvard to the school's belief
that I was Native American.
It seems that the school started claiming it had a Native American on the
law faculty when Warren
arrived as a visiting professor in 1992 and kept doing so once she got a
tenured job.
The claim strikes some people as odd, since she doesn't look Indian, doesn't
have an Indian person's name, didn't grow up on a reservation and is not a
registered member of any tribe. But Warren
says it has long been a part of family lore.
_She had said she was not conscious the university was identifying her as a
minority, but after weeks of unflattering publicity, she issued a statement
Wednesday acknowledging she had told Harvard officials she had Cherokee roots.
She also says -- and school officials confirm -- that her purported ethnic
makeup played no role in her hiring, even though Harvard was under pressure to
boost its minority numbers.
I can only say I have good reason to prefer Warren's version. Back in 1971, in my senior
year of high school, I took the SAT. When the results came, they included my
score along with name, birth date, home address and the like. There was also a
line for ethnicity -- and mine was "American Indian."
This came as a surprise to me, a green-eyed Presbyterian suburbanite with an
English name. Now, it's true that, like Warren, my relatives have been known to
say there was a Cherokee way back on our family tree, but it's one of those
things that no one has ever bothered to verify for fear that it might be untrue.
I got a laugh out of my racial classification but figured it was a harmless
clerical error. I didn't know how I could get the SAT folks to correct the
mistake, which didn't seem worth the trouble anyway. I went ahead with my
college applications, and the following April, I found myself unexpectedly
admitted to the Harvard class of 1976.
Unlike Warren,
I never told anyone at Harvard about my great-uncle Runs Screaming from the
Room. After applying, I had to undergo an interview with a local alum, who didn't
ask me if I was Indian. I may have figured the answer was obvious and that the
admissions folks were smart enough -- I mean, this is Harvard, right? -- to
realize I wasn't.
Snigdha Nandipati heard a few words she didn't know during the National
Spelling Bee, but never when she stepped to the microphone.
Calm and collected throughout, the 14-year-old from San Diego spelled "guetapens," a
French-derived word that means ambush, snare or trap, to win the 85th Scripps
National Spelling Bee on Thursday night. She beat out eight other finalists in
the nerve-wracking, brain-busting competition.
After she spelled the word, she looked from side to side, as if unsure her
accomplishment was real, and, oddly, she was not immediately announced as the
winner. Applause built slowly, and a few pieces of confetti trickled out before
showering her. Then her 10-year-old brother ran on stage and embraced her, and
she beamed.
"I knew it. I'd seen it before," Nandipati said of the winning
word. "I just wanted to ask everything I could before I started
spelling."
A coin collector and Sherlock Holmes fan, Nandipati aspires to become a
physician or neurosurgeon. She also plays violin and is fluent in Telugu, a
language spoken in southeastern India.
A semifinalist last year, Nandipati became the fifth consecutive
Indian-American winner and 10th in the last 14 years, a run that began in 1999
when Nupur Lala won and was later featured in the documentary
"Spellbound."
Wearing a white polo shirt with a gold necklace peeking out of the collar,
the bespectacled, braces-wearing teen never showed much emotion while spelling,
working her way meticulously through each word. Only a few of the words given
to other spellers were unfamiliar to her, she said.
Her brother and parents joined her onstage after the victory, along with her
maternal grandparents, who traveled from Hyderabad,
India, to watch
her. At one point as she held the trophy aloft, her brother, Sujan, pushed the
corners of her mouth apart to broaden her smile.
Her father, Krishnarao, said Snigdha first showed an interest in spelling as
early as age 4. As she rode in the car, he would call out the words he saw on
billboards and she would spell them.
In the run-up to the bee, Nandipanti studied 6 to 10 hours a day on weekdays
and 10-12 hours on weekends – a regimen that she'll need to maintain to get
through medical school, her father said.
"She says this is harder than being a neurosurgeon – maybe," said
her mother, Madhavi.
Stuti Mishra of West Melbourne,
Fla., finished second after
misspelling "schwarmerei" – which means excessive, unbridled
enthusiasm. While many spellers pretend to write words with their fingers, the
14-year-old Mishra had an unusual routine – she mimed typing them on a
keyboard. Nandipanti and Mishra frequently high-fived each other after spelling
words correctly during the marathon competition.
Coming in third for the second consecutive year was Arvind Mahankali of Bayside Hills, N.Y.
At 12, the seventh-grader was the youngest of the nine finalists. He has one
more year of eligibility remaining, and he pledged to return.
"I got eliminated both times by German words," Mahankali said.
"I know what I have to study."
Nandipati's prize haul includes $30,000 in cash, a trophy, a $2,500 savings
bond, a $5,000 scholarship, $2,600 in reference works from the Encyclopedia
Britannica and an online language course.
The week began with 278 spellers, including the youngest in the history of
the competition – 6-year-old Lori Anne Madison of Lake Ridge, Va.
The field was cut to 50 semifinalists after a computer test and two preliminary
rounds, and Lori Anne was two misspelled words away from a semifinal berth. The
tiny, blue-eyed prodigy said she'd be back next year.
The highest-placing international speller was Gifton Wright of Spanish Town, Jamaica, who tied for fourth. This
week, Scripps announced tentative plans for a world spelling bee with teams of
spellers from dozens of countries. Once that gets off the ground, the National
Spelling Bee would be closed to international participants.
Also tied for fourth were Nicholas Rushlow of Pickerington, Ohio,
and Lena Greenberg of Philadelphia. The excitable Greenberg, a crowd favorite
who ran delightedly back to her chair after each correct word, pressed her
hands to her face and exclaimed, "Oh! Oh!" when she was eliminated.
Rushlow was making his fifth and final appearance in the bee, and this was
his best showing. He got three words he didn't know – one in the semifinals and
two in the finals – and managed to spell two of them correctly before the third
one, "vetiver," tripped him up.
While he was satisfied with his performance, he's sad that his run is over.
"I'm a has-been now," Rushlow said.
Media Social Gossip Associated
News
It might be the most cringeworthy few seconds in TV history -- Kathie
Lee Gifford asked Martin Short how his wife is doing
... one small problem ... she died 2 years ago.
Martin appeared on "The Today Show" this morning to endorse
his new movie, "Madagascar 3" -- when Kathie asked,
"And you and Nancy have one of the greatest marriages of anybody in show
business. How many years now for you guys?"
Martin doesn't know how to react, saying, "We ... have ... married ... 36
years."
It seems that Kathie didn't get the memo -- Martin's wife Nancy Dolman
died in August 2010 from ovarian cancer.
Kathie later apologized on the air -- saying, "I feel so badly ... my
apologies to him and his family." Media Social Gossip
