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15 - You spent Sunday night in jail for cow-tipping — with your Oldsmobile.
14 - Although armed with fire extinguishers, friends stood at a safe distance as you blew out your birthday candles.
13 - Thanks to you, Jack Daniels stock is up 15 1/4 since Friday.
12 - Boris Yeltsin called personally to ask you to slow down on the Stoli.
11 - For some reason, there's salt on the rim of your basketball goal.
10 - Your name is Otis and Sheriff Andy has brought you some of Aunt Bea's pancakes.
9 - For the money you spent on Thunderbird, you could've bought the automobile.
8 - You're now the proud inventor of the "Slim Jim": Ultra Slim-Fast shakes made with Jim Beam.
7 - Answering machine full of warnings from Coach Switzer.
6 - Absolut wants to run an ad featuring a picture of your liver in the shape of a bottle.
5 - Yet again, dry cleaner employees greet you with, "Hey, it's Vomit Man!"
4 - The doorman asks for your I.D. just to see how long it'll take you to find your pants.
3 - Your liver, in a fit of pique, leaps out of your abdominal cavity into a pan of frying onions.
2 - Worried friends call Monday morning to make sure you returned the goat.
1 - You're now sober enough to realize "Drink Canada Dry" is a slogan and not a personal challenge.
DUBLIN -
When Dublin university student Shane Fitzgerald posted a poetic but phony quote on Wikipedia, he said he was testing how our globalized, increasingly Internet-dependent media was upholding accuracy and accountability in an age of instant news.
His report card: Wikipedia passed. Journalism flunked.
The sociology major's made-up quote — which he added to the Wikipedia page of Maurice Jarre hours after the French composer's death March 28 — flew straight on to dozens of U.S. blogs and newspaper Web sites in Britain, Australia and India.
They used the fabricated material, Fitzgerald said, even though administrators at the free online encyclopedia quickly caught the quote's lack of attribution and removed it, but not quickly enough to keep some journalists from cutting and pasting it first.
A full month went by and nobody noticed the editorial fraud. So Fitzgerald told several media outlets in an e-mail and the corrections began.
"I was really shocked at the results from the experiment," Fitzgerald, 22, said Monday in an interview a week after one newspaper at fault, The Guardian of Britain, became the first to admit its obituarist lifted material straight from Wikipedia.
"I am 100 percent convinced that if I hadn't come forward, that quote would have gone down in history as something Maurice Jarre said, instead of something I made up," he said. "It would have become another example where, once anything is printed enough times in the media without challenge, it becomes fact."
So far, The Guardian is the only publication to make a public mea culpa, while others have eliminated or amended their online obituaries without any reference to the original version — or in a few cases, still are citing Fitzgerald's florid prose weeks after he pointed out its true origin.
"One could say my life itself has been one long soundtrack," Fitzgerald's fake Jarre quote read. "Music was my life, music brought me to life, and music is how I will be remembered long after I leave this life. When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head that only I can hear."
Fitzgerald said one of his University College Dublin classes was exploring how quickly information was transmitted around the globe. His private concern was that, under pressure to produce news instantly, media outlets were increasingly relying on Internet sources — none more ubiquitous than the publicly edited Wikipedia.
When he saw British 24-hour news channels reporting the death of the triple Oscar-winning composer, Fitzgerald sensed what he called "a golden opportunity" for an experiment on media use of Wikipedia.
He said it took him less than 15 minutes to fabricate and place a quote calculated to appeal to obituary writers without distorting Jarre's actual life experiences.
If anything, Fitzgerald said, he expected newspapers to avoid his quote because it had no link to a source — and even might trigger alarms as "too good to be true." But many blogs and several newspapers used the quotes at the start or finish of their obituaries.
Wikipedia spokesman Jay Walsh said he appreciated the Dublin student's point, and said he agreed it was "distressing so see how quickly journalists would descend on that information without double-checking it."
"We always tell people: If you see that quote on Wikipedia, find it somewhere else too. He's identified a flaw," Walsh said in a telephone interview from Wikipedia's San Francisco base.
But Walsh said there were more responsible ways to measure journalists' use of Wikipedia than through well-timed sabotage of one of the site's 12 million listings. "Our network of volunteer editors do thankless work trying to provide the highest-quality information. They will be rightly perturbed and irritated about this," he said.
Fitzgerald stressed that Wikipedia's system requiring about 1,500 volunteer "administrators" and the wider public to spot bogus additions did its job, removing the quote three times within minutes or hours. It was journalists eager for a quick, pithy quote that was the problem.
He said the Guardian was the only publication to respond to him in detail and with remorse at its own editorial failing. Others, he said, treated him as a vandal.
"The moral of this story is not that journalists should avoid Wikipedia, but that they shouldn't use information they find there if it can't be traced back to a reliable primary source," said the readers' editor at the Guardian, Siobhain Butterworth, in the May 4 column that revealed Fitzgerald as the quote author.
Walsh said this was the first time to his knowledge that an academic researcher had placed false information on a Wikipedia listing specifically to test how the media would handle it.
It was after Game 4 of the 1988 NBA Finals. The Pistons had destroyed the Lakers in body-to-body combat, 111-86. "Adrian Dantley went headhunting twice, after James Worthy and Magic," Los Angeles coach Pat Riley fumed after the game. Asked about the Pistons' hyperphysical play, Chuck Daly said he didn't encourage it, explaining coyly that his undersized Pistons couldn't win with that style against a team of thoroughbreds like Los Angeles.
Then Daly reversed himself.
"Things change from the regular season into the playoffs," he added. "The game is more physical. But look at us; if we and the Lakers lined up next to each other five-on-five, position-by-position, we come out on the short end. They're studs -- they make us look like a mongrel team."
There was the rationale. It was Detroit, brandishing a combative Eastern style, against the superabundantly talented habitués of Rodeo Drive. Due to their rough style, the Pistons came to be known as the "Bad Boys."
To listen to some observers, the Pistons ushered in a bruising, over-the-top defense that brought rugby into the NBA, lowered scores for more than a decade, and dragged the game through Dante's eighth circle of hell and worse.
It didn't work in 1988. After the Pistons shrunk the Lakers' potent 113-points-per-game offense to 90 points over Games 4 and 5, Los Angeles won the last two at home. But the Bad Boys were graduating adolescence and moving into Bad-manhood.
In 1989 and 1990, Detroit cut down Los Angeles and Portland in the Finals with a compelling and still undersold 8-1 record. Daly was one of five coaches in NBA history to win back-to-back titles, and if not for a disputed whistle on Bill Laimbeer with seconds left in Game 6 of the 1988 Finals, he could have had three in a row. No wonder that Daly -- recognized as an easygoing "players' coach" -- was chosen to guide the 1992 Dream Team, the first Olympic squad composed of NBA players. In 1996, he was selected one of the 10 greatest coaches in NBA history.
Daly was born in St. Marys, Pa., on July 20, 1930. He grew up in Kane, a small town two hours east of Erie, where he attended the now-closed St. Callistus parochial school. He attended St. Bonaventure in 1948 and played freshman basketball there before transferring to Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania. After graduating in 1952, his coaching career began at the high school level. He coached Punxsutawney High to a 111-70 mark (.613 win percentage) from 1955 to 1963.
After eight years as a high school coach, Daly spent six more as an assistant at Duke University. His work at Duke made him a candidate for the head coaching job at Boston College, succeeding a retiring Bob Cousy, who led BC to a 24-4 record in 1968-69 before assuming the role of player-coach with the Cincinnati Royals.
Daly coached Boston College to a 26-24 record over two seasons before moving to the Ivy League, succeeding Dick Harter at Penn. Harter, who was moving on to Oregon, was tough to replace, having posted 25-2 and 28-7 seasons. But Daly led Penn to four first-place seasons in the Ivy League, compiling a 125-38 record (.767) in six years. His entry into the NBA came in 1977-78 as an assistant to new 76ers coach Billy Cunningham.
Daly's start as an NBA head coach was inauspicious. He was already the third coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers for the 1981-82 season when he took the reins in December. They were a hapless 4-14 when he took over and he made them more hapless: Cleveland was 13-46 when Bill Musselman replaced him in February.
He got his next chance in the 1983-84 campaign, his first of nine years with the Detroit Pistons. Under Daly, the Pistons won 49 games -- 12 more than the season before and their best since winning 52 in 1973-74. Detroit averaged 117 points that first season but also allowed 114 per game, and New York knocked the Pistons out of the postseason in the first round. The following two seasons produced 46 wins apiece, but ended in second- and first-round eliminations, respectively. In three seasons, Daly hadn't fulfilled the job specs of his general manager.
"When Jack McCloskey hired me, he wanted me to do something about the Pistons' defense," Daly said in 1995. "Frankly, I wasn't sure what I could do. They won 39 and 37 games two years before I got there. I looked at the tapes of those games and I thought Scotty Robertson [Detroit's coach from 1981 through 1983] did a good job. I didn't know how I could improve on it. But I had a contract with two guaranteed years and an option for another year, and if they wanted me to work on the defense, I'd work on the defense."
Daly's revelation -- and a career-making revelation at that -- came in the summer of 1986.
He knew the league's rhythm was upbeat, as NBA teams topped 110 points per game. He also realized that teams shrank the court come playoff time and made half-court skirmishes the norm. "If you have to play that way in the playoffs, why not just do it in the regular season?" he wondered. "Why play one style for 82 games, then change it all around for the playoffs?
"The more I thought about it, the more I knew that slowing down the tempo was the way to go back then. Everyone wanted to run up and down the court and put up big numbers.
"By slowing it down, we could frustrate the rest of the league. Our identity was going to be our defense. On offense we wanted to establish a half-court game that could produce about 100 points a night. Our goal was to play every game as if it were a playoff game."
Daly convinced McCloskey to trade Kelly Tripucka, one of the leading scorers on the team, for Adrian Dantley. Daly liked the fact that Dantley's strength was a low-post game full of fakes and feints that always placed him among the league leaders in free-throw attempts. "A.D. living at the foul line gave us time to set up our defense, and it took away the other team's fast break," said Daly.
The Pistons had already drafted Joe Dumars (18th pick in the '85 draft), John Salley (11th pick, '86) and Dennis Rodman (second-round pick, 27th overall in '86). They got Rick Mahorn in a trade with Washington. Center Laimbeer had gathered 1,000 rebounds for three consecutive years and could mix it up inside and fire in tip-toe 3-pointers. Isiah Thomas was a perennial All-Star at guard.
Now the run was on. Detroit won 52 games in 1986-87, losing in a heartrending seven-game series to Boston in the conference finals. Larry Bird turned the series with seconds left in Game 5 when he stole a soft inbounds pass from Thomas and fed Dennis Johnson for a layup and a 108-107 Boston win.
The following season the Pistons won the Central Division title and eliminated Boston in six games. Boston scored 114 points a game during the season, but reached 100 just once against Detroit.
The ultimate manifestation of Detroit's defensive style came in a tactic known as "the Jordan Rules," the Pistons' strategy for stopping the upstart Bulls and the game's greatest scorer. "Jordan is embarrassing the league," Daly noted, seeing Jordan on his way to his second of seven consecutive scoring titles. But come playoff time, Jordan would not embarrass the Pistons. Detroit hit him, bumped him and swarmed him whenever possible, knocking him down repeatedly on his drives toward the basket.
In a January 1988 game at Chicago Stadium, Jordan drove the lane and got whacked. "I didn't see if it was Mahorn or Laimbeer, but one of those guys just took Michael down," said Bulls coach Doug Collins. A scrap ensued involving Charles Oakley, Jordan's designated bodyguard, and Mahorn. When it was over, Collins had been thrown into the stands by Mahorn and the league had suspended Laimbeer for a game. When asked about the Jordan treatment, the Pistons just shrugged, but belting Jordan around proved successful from 1988 through 1990, with Detroit ousting Chicago from the playoffs each year.
When 1988-89 came, it appeared to be their year, one that would overcome the Pistons' dismal history.
The Pistons had been in the NBA since 1948 and had moved to Detroit from Fort Wayne, Ind., in 1957. In 41 seasons, they had come up empty, despite having made it to the seventh game of the Finals in both 1955 against Syracuse and 1988 versus Los Angeles. In both series they had a 3-2 lead, and lost Games 6 and 7.
But in 1988-89, Detroit won a franchise-record 63 games and finished second in league defense. When a flag bearing the name "Detroit Bad Boys" was brought to center court during the Finals' Game 1 introductions, the Lakers might have taken it as an omen. Magic Johnson and Isiah Thomas kissed on the cheek before the game, but that was the last sign of civility. Lakers starting 2-guard Byron Scott missed the game with a hamstring tear, and Detroit prevailed easily, 109-97.
In Game 2, Johnson tore his hamstring and missed the last 16 minutes of the game. Even without Johnson, the Lakers took a 92-84 lead into the fourth quarter. But comeback ability was another component of Detroit's identity. The Lakers' makeshift backcourt featured reserves Michael Cooper and Tony Campbell. The Pistons scored the first 10 points of the quarter and pulled out a 108-105 win. Detroit had held Los Angeles to a paltry 13 points in the fourth quarter.
The Pistons won the last two games in Los Angeles, taking Game 3, 114-110, and then overcoming a 16-point second-quarter deficit to win 105-97 in Game 4. The sweep was staggering, considering the 11-0 playoff record the Lakers had run up in the Western Conference against Portland, Seattle and Phoenix. The Pistons had their first title and ended the career of Lakers center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who was retiring at age 42.
The Pistons set a playoff record (in the 24-second clock era) for fewest points allowed (92.9). "All that on the defensive end was hard work," Daly said after Game 4. "We deserved the championship."
Averaging 27 points for the series on 58 percent shooting, Dumars took the Finals MVP award.
The Lakers posted a league-best 63 wins in 1989-90, but it was Portland that emerged from the West in the playoffs. Portland and Detroit finished with 59-23 records.
Detroit had its toughest playoff test with Chicago, but took Game 7 at home, 93-74. Jordan had played well but had no help. Scottie Pippen had been averaging 19 points for the series, but on this day had a migraine headache which produced double-vision and left him disoriented. Horace Grant missed 14 of 17 shots, and John Paxson was injured. So Chicago suffered its third consecutive elimination at Detroit's hands.
In the Finals series between Detroit and Portland, three of the five games were decided by three points or less. But despite the close contests, it was evident that one team was tournament-tested and the other was not, as the Pistons prevailed.
Daly signed a new contract following the season but coached Detroit just two more years. The Pistons fell off to 50- and 48-win seasons and the Eastern Conference swung to the Bulls. The Jordan Rules had been rendered irrelevant. In Detroit's playoff series against Chicago in 1991, the Bulls built a 2-0 lead at home and then completed the sweep on the Pistons' floor, running up 113 and 115 points in the final two games.
Daly followed his nine years in Detroit by coaching the Dream Team in 1992. His All-Star squad squashed the competition in Barcelona, Spain, with an 8-0 mark and a 44-point average margin of victory to earn a gold medal. He then returned to New Jersey to coach his new team, the Nets. His key players were Kenny Anderson and Derrick Coleman, and he got 22 points per game from Drazen Petrovic, who died tragically in a car accident following the 1992-93 season. Daly led the Nets to 43- and 45-win seasons, but they lost in the first round in 1993 and 1994. During the 1993-94 season, Daly was inducted to the Basketball Hall of Fame with Buddy Jeannette, Denny Crum and Carol Blazejowski.
He spent his next three years as a broadcaster with Turner Sports before Orlando lured the 67-year-old coach back for a final two years. He was 31-17 in his final year and was a candidate for coach of the year in that lockout-shortened season. But the old players' coach, who had once given Thomas a day off because he was angry over a newspaper column, was tired of nursing the egos of his young players, and he quit with a year left on his three-year, $15 million pact. From there, Daly slid away from the NBA scene over his final years.
His legacy is secure. Not only did he win consecutive NBA titles but he did so by shaping one of the greatest defensive teams ever assembled -- and in doing so, he changed the game.
WASHINGTON -- Tackling an issue sure to rouse sports fans, lawmakers pressed college football officials Friday on switching the Bowl Championship Series to a playoff, with one Texas Republican likening the current system to communism and joking it should be labeled "BS," not "BCS."
John Swofford, the coordinator of the BCS, rejected the idea of switching to a playoff, arguing it would threaten the existence of celebrated bowl games.
Sponsorships and TV revenue that now go to bowl games would instead be spent on playoff games, "meaning that it will be very difficult for any bowl, including the current BCS bowls, which are among the oldest and most established in the game's history, to survive," Swofford said.
“It's like communism. You can't fix it.
” -- Texas Rep. Joe Barton
Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, who has introduced legislation that would prevent the NCAA from labeling a game a national championship unless it is the outcome of a playoff, bluntly warned Swofford: "If we don't see some action in the next two months, on a voluntary switch to a playoff system, then you will see this bill move."
After the hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee commerce, trade and consumer protection subcommittee, Swofford told reporters: "Any time Congress speaks, you take it seriously."
Yet it is unclear whether lawmakers will try to legislate how college football picks its national champion before the first kickoff of the fall. Congress is grappling with a crowded agenda of budgets, health-care overhaul and climate change, and though President Barack Obama favors a playoff, he hasn't made it a legislative priority.
College football's multimillion-dollar television contract also could be an obstacle.
The BCS's new four-year deal with ESPN, worth $125 million per year, begins with the 2011 bowl games. That deal was negotiated using the current BCS format.
Alhough ESPN has said it would not stand in the way if the BCS wanted to change, the new deal allows the BCS to put off making major changes until the 2014 season.
Jonathan Turley, a constitutional law expert at George Washington University, said the legislation could result in a court challenge.
"This is a rare effort by Congress to prevent people from using what is a common description of sporting events," he said in a telephone interview. The legislation, he said, "may run afoul of the contractual agreements between parties, wiping out benefits that have already been paid for by companies."
Barton, the top Republican on the committee, said at the hearing that efforts to tinker with the BCS were bound to fail.
"It's like communism," Barton said. "You can't fix it."
Barton quipped that the BCS should drop the "C" from its name because it doesn't represent a true championship.
"Call it the 'BS' system," he said to laughter.
The current system features a championship game between the two top teams in the BCS standings, based on two polls and six computer rankings.
Under the BCS, only select conferences get automatic bids to participate. Conferences that get an automatic bid -- the ACC, Big East, Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-10 and SEC -- get about $18 million each, far more than the non-conference schools. Swofford also is commissioner of the ACC.
“I think it is fair, because it represents the marketplace.
” -- BCS coordinator and ACC commissioner John Swofford
"How is this fair?" asked the subcommittee chairman, Democratic Rep. Bobby Rush of Illinois, who has co-sponsored Barton's bill. "How can we justify this system ... are the big guys getting together and shutting out the little guys?"
"I think it is fair, because it represents the marketplace," Swofford responded.
Craig Thompson, commissioner of the Mountain West Conference, which does not get an automatic bid, called the money distribution system "grossly inequitable."
The MWC has proposed a playoff and hired a Washington firm to lobby Congress for changes to the BCS.
The proposal calls for scrapping the BCS standings and creating a 12-member committee to pick which teams receive at-large bids, and to select and seed the eight teams chosen for the playoff. The BCS has previously discussed, and dismissed, the idea of using a selection committee.
The four current BCS games -- the Sugar, Orange, Rose and Fiesta bowls -- would host the four first-round playoff games under the proposal.
Valero Alamo Bowl chief executive Derrick Fox, representing the 34 members of the Football Bowl Association, said that a playoff "is rife with dangers for a system that has served collegiate athletics pretty well for 100 years."
But Gene Bleymaier, athletic director at Boise State, noted that his school's football team went undefeated several times, yet never got a chance to play for the national championship under the BCS.
Asked by Rush whether Congress should intervene, Bleymaier responded, "The only way this is going to change is with help from the outside."
In the Senate, Utah Republican Orrin Hatch has put the BCS on the agenda for the Judiciary's antitrust subcommittee this year, and Utah's attorney general, Mark Shurtleff, is investigating whether the BCS violates federal antitrust laws.
Fans were furious that Utah was bypassed for the national championship last year despite going undefeated in the regular season.
The title game pitted No. 1 Florida (12-1) against No. 2 Oklahoma (12-1); Florida won 24-14 and claimed the title.
Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press
First, let's give credit where credit is due. These are not your father's Denver Nuggets, not with Chauncey Billups setting the tone in the locker room and defensive stalwarts like Dahntay Jones and Kenyon Martin adding some substance to all that style, and they took care of business again tonight.
| Playoff schedule |
|---|
| WEST FIRST ROUND Los Angeles 4, Utah 1 Lakers win series, 4-1. Denver 3, New Orleans 1 Dallas 3, San Antonio 1 Houston 3, Portland 1 EAST FIRST ROUND Cleveland 4, Detroit 0 Atlanta 2, Miami 2 Philadelphia 2, Orlando 2 |
Denver looks for all the world like a legitimate conference finalist, especially if Carmelo Anthony has overcome his season-long shooting slump and can keep cooking like he was tonight (26 points, seven assists). They're deep, they're talented, and they have just enough quality size to play with the big boys.
Now that we've got that out of the way ... I'm sorry, but the New Orleans Hornets' performance was one of the most pathetic efforts I've ever seen, and the fact that it came in a home playoff game with a chance to even the series just makes it more shameful. The Hornets' 121-63 loss to Denver tied for the most lopsided in NBA history, and it was humiliating from the get-go.
On Denver's second possession of the game, David West left Kenyon Martin to double-team Nene, then stood there with his teammates and watched as Martin caught a pass near the 3-point line, dribbled down the middle of the lane and tomahawk dunked.
Nice D.
And things got worse from there.
Two minutes later, Rasual Butler handled the ball in the backcourt against Chauncey Billups -- no, we don't why -- and was picked clean. Billups missed the shot but Jones got the rebound and put it in because Chris Paul jogged back while Jones blew past him. Paul wouldn't score until his team was down by 13 and finished with his worst night as a pro: four points, six assists, and six turnovers.
And so it went. Denver scored 88 points in the first three quarters; instead of being "on a string," as coaches like to say, the Hornets' defenders were on codeine.
Some of the breakdowns were flat-out embarrassing, and if we're going to name names, West was particularly awful -- there was the play later in the first quarter where West met Billups on a switch, kindly stepped to the side and allowed him by for an easy lay-up; the one where he and Peja Stojakovic botched a switch for an Anthony dunk; the one where he left Nene wide open under the basket and James Posey screamed at him after another dunk; and the one where he could have taken a charge on Dahntay Jones's baseline drive but decided it wasn't worth the trouble and conceded a lay-up.
That wasn't a comprehensive list, mind you -- those are just my notes from the first quarter. It ended with Denver up 36-15 and degenerated from there, as the Nuggets ripped off an 11-0 run to start the third quarter and go up by 32, and a 6-0 run to close the quarter, putting them up by 38 and sending little-used subs on both sides scurrying to the scorer's table. Just to extend the embarrassment, the Hornets' scrubs then gave up a 23-2 run to Denver's scrubs, providing a perfect coda to a season where New Orleans' lack of depth has been a killer.
The Hornets couldn't even lose with class, confusing physical, playoff basketball with just getting angry and hitting people. Tyson Chandler seemed more focused on taking out Nene than defending him -- twice he swung elbows at him while defending the post; adding insult to non-injury, both times Nene made the shot anyway. Rasual Butler picked up a technical foul after Anthony Carter had the temerity to foul him on a breakaway, Posey contributed his de rigueur after-the-whistle foul for another tech, and Paul got an early T after taking exception to a legal Kenyon Martin screen.
"It was the worst we've played since I've been here," Hornets Coach Byron Scott said, making a dramatic understatement (and using the word "played" very loosely).
Unfortunately, Game 5 will be held in Denver on Wednesday anyway. If this were a fight, it would have been stopped already. The Nuggets have defeated New Orleans by 58, 29, and 15 in this series; I'm going to go out on a limb here and say they're the better team and will close it out.
In fairness to the Hornets, I should point out that they were dealing with some physical ailments. Paul (knee), West (back), Chandler (ankle), Stojakovic (ankle), and Posey (knee and shoulder) all were playing with injuries of one kind or another. That doesn't excuse their effort, but it does help explain why they've seemed so overmatched.
Nonetheless, if his starters can't be bothered to try, Scott might try to use the Hornets' final game -- which Game 5 certainly will be -- to send a message by playing some different faces. That is, if Monday's mail-in hasn't affected his own job security in the Big Easy.
Regardless of how the Hornets decide to proceed, tonight's result removes any doubt that there will be some changes in Nawlins this offseason. The Hornets aren't in a great economic position to begin with, and they certainly aren't going to be willing to pay the luxury tax to get their doors blown off in the first round of the playoffs.
We'll know more on Thursday, when the Hornets' front office begins its offseason. For the players, however, it apparently began three days earlier -- some time before the tip-off of Game 5.
BAYONNE, N.J. -- On the pitcher's mound, a 12-year-old girl from New Jersey is perfect.
Mackenzie Brown is the first girl in Bayonne Little League history to throw a perfect game. She retired all 18 boys she faced on Tuesday.
There are no official records of how many perfect games are thrown per season. Little League Baseball in Williamsport, Pa., estimates only 50 to 60 occur each year. No one knows how many have been thrown by girls.
Brown says she knew she had something special going in the fourth inning and just tried not to mess up.
She'll get to throw out the first pitch at Citi Field on Saturday when the New York Mets host the Washington Nationals.
Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press
