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SEATTLE — The Mariners are off to a slow start this season for various reasons, but club president Chuck Armstrong says manager John McLaren isn’t one of them.
“I think he’s doing fine,” Armstrong said Wednesday night prior to the Mariners’ game against the Rangers. “I like our staff. I like the manager. It’s been said that there are two things that every male in North America can do better than any other male. One is charcoal a steak, and the other is manage a baseball team.
“I think Mac is doing a fine job. He’s got a good staff and they’ve given him good support. He’s provided good leadership.”
The Mariners were expected to battle the Angels for American League West supremacy this season, and that still could happen. But the seas have been anything but smooth sailing so far.
“We’ve had some good times and seen some good play,” Armstrong said. “Opening Day was a special day, and I’ve seen some excellent play. But to be where we are with the schedule we started with, I’m disappointed. We’re all disappointed.
“We have a good team here and we should be playing better than we are. Sometimes these things happen.
“Patience in baseball, I think, is often a virtue,” Armstrong said. “But it is a fine line. We’ve already made moves this year to address what we think were some of the problems. Maybe that’ll come back to bite us, but we think we made them in a considerate manner.”
Several roster moves have been made, most notably the promotions of catcher/designated hitter Jeff Clement and right fielder Wladimir Balentien from Triple-A Tacoma, but there does not appear to be other changes on the horizon.
McLaren, meanwhile, keeps searching for the right combination to get his team on track.
“We have tried different things,” he said. “We’ve tried the build-me-up approach, the challenge approach, the down-and-dirty approach. Like I said, it’s not like we’re not trying or putting out the effort, because we are. It’s just not happening yet.

mlb.mlb.com

The Calgary Vipers of the Golden Baseball League couldn’t get newly signed pitcher John Odom into Canada for immigration reasons. And the Laredo Broncos of the United League were willing to take a cheap gamble on a pitcher.
Oh, and the Vipers really, really wanted some new bats.
And so Odom, about a month after being acquired by a Canadian team, found himself Tuesday on the roster of a team on the Mexican border. All for the price of 10 Prairie Sticks Maple Bats, double-dipped black 34-inch C243 style.
“They just wanted some bats, good bats — maple bats,” Broncos General Manager Jose Melendez said Friday.
According to the Prairie Sticks website, their maple bats retail for $69 apiece, discounted to $65.50 for purchases of six to 11 bats.
The Vipers had signed Odom, but it seems Odom had a “minor,” but unspecified, criminal record that he did not reveal to immigration officials before they scanned his passport, Vipers President Peter Young said.
Calgary found the Broncos were willing to take Odom, but the Vipers weren’t interested in any of the Laredo players. Plus, it would have cost Calgary $1,000 to fly any new player in from Laredo. Laredo offered cash, but Young said that was “an insult.”
The bat trade wasn’t the first time Calgary tried some creative deal-making. The Vipers once tried to acquire a pitcher for 1,500 blue seats when they were renovating their field, Young said.
As for Odom — who did not immediately return a call for comment — he’s scheduled to be activated Monday. And he’ll get his first start Wednesday, Melendez said.
“It will be interesting to see what 10 bats gets us,” he said.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

usatoday.com

One of the teams performed a slightly self-conscious lap of honour at the end of this match, but not the justified one. The bouquets and plaudits deserved to be thrown and offered to Chelsea, whose players have made what could have been a dismal, depressing season for English football memorable for the right reasons.
Had the European Championship debacle been followed by disappointment in Europe and a tired, predictable chase for the Barclays Premier League title, the 2007-08 season might have fizzled out, a damp squib from every angle. Instead, the first all-English final in the Champions League will be preceded by the most exciting final day of the league in the modern era, with Chelsea locked on points at the top of the table with Manchester United, with all the delicious permutations that implies.
No Premier League season has ever been this close, indeed, only two have gone to the final day with the destination of the title still to be decided, and statisticians were forced to trawl back through four decades to find a final set of fixtures as beautifully poised.
The last comparable date was May 11, 1968, when Manchester United and Manchester City were joined at the hip on 56 points at the top of the old first division. Manchester United lost 2-1 at home to Sunderland, Manchester City won 4-3 away to Newcastle United and the prize went to Maine Road (although United stole their thunder, and how, in the European Cup final some days later). There have been other occasions when rival teams have played games in hand at a later date, collected the trophy from a beach as Derby County did in 1972, or played catch-up in an incredible head-to-head match as Arsenal managed to do away to Liverpool in 1989, but in terms of nail-biting spectacle, people with radios glued to their ears, false alarms and the potential for emotional turmoil at opposite ends of the country, this is as good as it gets.

timesonline.co.uk

Raven Navajo left the Clark County jail last week for a state prison system in which she will be one of only a few male-to-female transgender inmates, a prisoner taking daily estrogen doses in a world of caged men.
The prison decides where to place transgendered inmates — people who do not identify with or present themselves as their birth gender — depending on their genitals. If you have male genitals you’re imprisoned with men, no matter if you have artificially induced breasts, no matter if you consider yourself a woman and act like one.
It’s the same in most states, as well as in federal prisons. Nationally, the estimate is that transgendered inmates number in the low thousands. The actual population is unknown because it is not tracked by authorities.
Prison officials have historically feared that if they allow male-to-female transgendered inmates to bunk with women, inmates will pretend to be transgender just to be near women, said Alexander Lee, director of the San Francisco-based Transgender, Gender Variant and Intersex Justice Project. There’s also the fear that prisoners with male genitalia will impregnate female inmates.
As for simply keeping transgender inmates together and segregated from the rest of the prison population, Nevada doesn’t have enough of them for that. Officials can’t give them their own wing because those wings are built to hold dozens of prisoners, prison spokesman Greg Smith said. The crowded prison system doesn’t have the luxury of leaving any bunks empty.
The hairdresser who bleached Raven Navajo’s roots in jail wasn’t given much time or many tools, so the result was more mine shaft canary than blond — dingy yellow hair fried so thin it seemed to float on static electricity. The color clashed something awful with her blue jailhouse jumpsuit, an effect opposite of what Navajo had hoped for: Sitting in court, in her melted mascara and makeup-spackled skin, she still looked like a man.

lasvegassun.com

Associated Press - April 26, 2008 8:04 PM ET
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - Notre Dame and Indiana each had two players chosen in the second round of today’s NFL draft.
The latest selection was Fighting Irish defensive tackle Trevor Laws, who was taken 47th overall by the Philadelphia Eagles.
Earlier in the round, Indiana cornerback Tracy Porter went to the New Orleans Saints at number 40, and Hoosiers receiver James Hardy went forty-first to the Buffalo Bills.
Purdue tight end Dustin Keller was the only player from an Indiana school taken in the first round. He went 30th overall to the Seattle Seahawks.
The Colts still have not made their first selection. They have the 59th pick overall and eight picks tomorrow on the second day of the draft.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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wthitv.com

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philly.com

A daughter from the second marriage of John Earnest Deaves is devastated by her father’s incestuous relationship with his daughter from his first marriage.
Deaves’ third wife, Dorothy, said Deaves’ youngest daughter, from his second marriage, had not known of his relationship with her half-sister until it was aired on television this week.
Deaves and his daughter from his first marriage, Jennifer Anne Deaves, have had two children from their eight-year affair, with one child, a girl, dying a few days after birth from a congenital heart disease.
The couple claim they had virtually no contact until they started their relationship after being reunited in 2000, almost 30 years after Mr Deaves separated from Jennifer’s mother.
But Dorothy, who runs a wildlife sanctuary in South Australia, says that’s not true.
When Dorothy became Deaves third wife in 1984, Jennifer, then aged 15, stayed with them for a week, she said.
“He definitely had contact with Jenny when he was married to Pam (his second wife), and she stayed with us for a week when we got married - until 2000 she stayed with us four times,” Dorothy told AAP.
Deaves’ first wife Joan was appalled by his affair with their daughter, Dorothy said.
“She’s not too good, and his other daughter is devastated.
“It’s brought the rest of us all together. I’m close to his sister now, and I had lost track of Pam. Now we are back in contact. I’ve always talked to Joan.”
Dorothy said the incestuous relationship between father and daughter began in 2000 when Deaves went on a trip to Dubbo Zoo.
“When they got back here he informed me it was the best sex he ever had.
“If that doesn’t degrade you I don’t know what does. It was my second marriage, and you feel like … you get a very poor opinion of yourself.”

news.smh.com.au

Presenting this week’s sports media notes while wondering why talk of recession never seems to involve my waistline:
• It’s a baseball verity that hope springs eternal. But Orioles fans are certainly being more realistic as the club embarks on trying to rebuild. ESPN analyst Steve Phillips agrees with the diminished expectations.
“It’s going to be a long season,” Phillips said of the Orioles during a conference call Wednesday.
Still, he said there are a few players to hang your Orioles hat on.
“Jeremy Guthrie [and] Adam Loewen may be part of the long-term solution,” said Phillips, former general manager of the New York Mets. ” Nick Markakis is part of the long-term solution. There are some pieces around which to build on.”
• John Kruk was also on the ESPN conference call, but he declined to comment on the Orioles, saying he has already riled Baltimore fans enough. He was likely referring to his comments last year when Sam Perlozzo was fired — he said no one should want the Orioles manager’s job because the team was “an absolute mess.”
• On that same call, somebody — OK, me — asked how much the Baseball Tonight crew would end up talking about steroids.
Kruk said: “If Barry Bonds goes to court, we’re going to talk about it. If someone hits 30 home runs in the first half of the season, we’re going to talk about it. … But if you talk to fans, if you talk to kids, they couldn’t care less [about steroids]. The want to know about their favorite teams.”
Phillips agrees that fans have gotten their fill of steroids. (Hold it, maybe I should rephrase that …)
“I think people are numb to it. … I really don’t think from a fan’s perspective it’s had much of an impact at all,” he said, citing increased attendance in the majors.

baltimoresun.com

N o one is suggesting the Royals are going to be the sleeper team in the American League this season.
But the national image of the Royals might be ever so slowly starting to change.
ESPN baseball analysts John Kruk and Steve Phillips, in a conference call with reporters Wednesday, each told me they think the Royals are finally headed in the right direction.
“The biggest thing,” Phillips said, “is that they’re letting their young kids play. They’re not going out and signing a whole bunch of older veterans, thinking they can win right now, kind of what Tampa Bay did a couple of years ago.
“They signed Jose Guillen, and who knows how that will impact the younger players, but for the most part, they’ve got young guys who need to play and who will play. If you’re a Royals fan you’re going to see some mistakes and some mental errors, but you’re also going to see some great play. They’ve got talent.”
Like most baseball observers, Phillips is dutifully impressed with Alex Gordon and Billy Butler.
“I really like Alex Gordon’s swing,” Phillips said “It’s just a solid baseball swing. And Billy Butler, I love watching that kid play. He can hit.”
Kruk said he believes the Royals are headed in the right direction, especially at manager.
“Most everyone in baseball agrees that Trey Hillman is the perfect match for the Royals,” Kruk said. “He’s a developmental guy who’ll be a great teacher. He’s a serious baseball guy, really a perfect fit for them.”
Back to the pen
A little disappointment for our old friend Jeremy Affeldt. He signed with the Reds this year with the promise of a shot at the starting rotation.
But it’s back to the pen after four games and 11 2/3 innings in which he gave up 19 hits, walked five and allowed 15 earned runs.

kansascity.com

The Wedding Singer
Memorial Auditorium, Progress Energy Center—Movies-turned-musicals (and movies-turned-musicals-turned-movies) are becoming increasingly common fare on Broadway. After the success of the stage version of Hairspray, New Line Cinema was looking for another of its films to “musicalize” and found it in The Wedding Singer, the 1998 Adam Sandler/ Drew Barrymore romantic comedy. After 284 performances and five Tony nominations, the musical closed in 2006—but has been revived as a national tour that arrives in Raleigh this week.
Tim Herlihy, who wrote the original screenplay and co-wrote the book to the stage version, says he’s “never quite figured out” why The Wedding Singer has such an appeal. Indeed, the stage version spawned a cult of “Wed Heads” who repeatedly attended the show, sometimes dressed as the characters and singing along with the lyrics. “I don’t know where they got the money to go to all these shows!” Herlihy says with a laugh. “I guess people just relate to the story.”
Herlihy says The Wedding Singer originated when Sandler, whom he’s known since they were college roommates, had the idea for a film about a wedding singer who gets left at the altar. “I was listening to the radio show Lost in the ’80s, and I said, ‘I want to do a movie set in the 1980s,” Herlihy recalls. “So of course, we thought, ‘Why don’t we do a story about a wedding singer in the 1980s?’” At the time, Herlihy didn’t think the film was that different than his previous frat-friendly collaborations with Sandler, Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore. “I think it was the chemistry (between Sandler and Barrymore) and what was going on in our own lives—I had just gotten married, and maybe that affected the script,” Herlihy says.
Adapting Singer into a play “wasn’t too much of a stretch” for Herlihy, who says it’s “the only movie I’ve written with headphones on.” He says Sandler’s given his stamp of approval to the stage version, which has also recently opened international productions in London and Tokyo. Does he have any stories about Sandler’s college days that can be printed in a family newspaper? “He once put a whole plate of chicken parmigiana on his head,” Herlihy says. “It was something you had to be there for.” —Zack Smith

indyweek.com