Novak Djokovic Proves It Takes A Real Man To Whine Like A Little Girl

It is possible that when Novak Djokovic quit against Andy Roddick earlier in the week, it was the most courageous act of the young 2009 sports year.

Djokovic has a bit of history with retiring early from matches, at least 4 times in Grand Slams. He actually has the highest percentage of retirements to career losses among the top 10- nearly 10% of the time he loses because he quits. Perhaps he retired each time because of injury. Or perhaps he retired because he was losing.

He also has a history of calling the trainer out to get treatment during matches, something other players have expressed annoyance with. There is nothing illegal or unsportsmanlike about getting treatment, but it just seems like he happens to need it far more often than most guys.

So last year during the U.S. Open, Roddick came out and called Djokovic on all of this and said that Djokovic "is either quick to call the trainer, or he's the most courageous guy of all time," joking with the press that it could be any number of ailments, from shoulder, knee, ankle and back injuries, to SARS, anthrax or a commong cold. This after Djokovic said in an on-court, post match interview ealier in the tournament that he needed to stand next to the next so he wouldn't fall down. When Djokovic later beat Roddick in that tournament, he spoke live on the air and over the stadium P.A. and whined that Roddick had said those mean things and said that crushing Roddick as he had just done proves he didn't have those fake injuries. He was soundly booed by the New York crowd and ripped by the general media.

The irony of course, is that by playing "hurt" in one match and then playing brilliantly with no sign of injury the next match (like he had done here), it kinda proves that he was faking, right?

Then before this latest Grand Slam, Djokovic bristled at the (truly absurd) idea that Brit Andy Murray belonged on tennis' current Mount Rushmore alongside Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Djokovic. Let's be honest, Djokovic doesn't even belong there, and Murray sure as hell doesn't...the guy hasn't won anything yet. Murray has been in one Grand Slam final and he got crushed in straight sets. All of this is fine for me to say because I am not one of his opponents, and no one is reading this anyway.

But Djokovic couldn't resist and came out before the Australian Open and whined how offended he was that Murray was being called a favorite alongside himself, Federer and Nadal. Of course, Djokovic has won one Grand Slam (against a patsy in the final when Nadal and Federer had both been upset earlier) and his only other Grand Slam final looked a lot like Murray's: a straight-set crushing by Federer.

Anyway, after all of this, you would never think that Djokovic would ever have the guts to fake injury, ask for extra treatment, or certainly not retire early against Roddick again! And not in a Grand Slam where the true champions show their mettle!

This week Djokovic and Roddick faced each other in a Grand Slam for the first time since that U.S. Open match and the conditions were brutal. By the end of the match, the on-court thermometer showed about 136 degrees Fahrenheit (the air was actually about 95).

Djokovic came out well early and won the first set. Roddick took an early lead in the second and almost instantly Djokovic looked like the walking dead. I understand that it was hot, but it was hot on Roddick's side of the court as well. And it was hot on every other player who had been playing that day and that week. And these are supposed to be some of the finest athletes in the world!

So Roddick jumped all over Djokovic, winning the next two sets, with the Serb dragging himself around the court like he'd been shot for most of the time. He had a few extended breaks with the trainers coming out and putting ice on his neck and stretching his legs and shoulder. Roddick even drove the "you're a whiny girl" point home by standing in the sun, running place and keeping loose during one of Djokovic's "injury breaks." Then finally when the match was about to get out of hand, Roddick up 2-1 in the fourth and 2 sets to 1, Djokovic summoned all the courage he had in himself and disregarded that what he would do in the next 30 seconds would characterize himself for his entire career: he quit.

Federer, who is about as prone to smack talk as the Pope said after the match, "Well you know, it's not the guy who's never given up before...he gave up against me in Monaco last year because of a sore throat." After that sore throat match, Djokovic said in an on-court interview that he felt a little dizzy too. He said that he'd been checked by a doctor the day before and cleared, but that he thought the doctor's diagnosis was wrong, "obviously." He was booed off the court.

Federer went on to say, "If Novak were up two sets to love I don't think he would have retired 4-0 down in the fourth."

So the book is closed on this one. He may go on to one of the great champions of all time (once Federer and Nadal retire), or he may succumb to all these unnamed maladies. But either way, Novak Djokovic will very likely go down as one of the biggest whiners and quitters the sports has ever seen.

Stay tuned (in the middle of the night) Saturday for what is bound to be an epic final between two acutal champions, Nadal and Federer.

Recapping A 'Magical' Weekend In Sports

Magic Numbers are now being posted in baseball standings, which means the about 80% of the games played don't matter anymore. Thankfully the NFL rushed into the void to make Sports Center worth watching, because otherwise there would only be about five minutes of worthwhile highlights spread over the 60 minute show.

Sunday would have been quite a show to produce! What stories do you pick to squeeze into it? NFL week 1 and its myriad off-field stories (Brady's knee, Favre, Vince Young out, Panthers' finish, rookie QBs, etc.). NCAA Football and the USD Toreros holding the longest home winning streak in Division I. The U.S. Open and Captain Fist-Pump knocking off Nadal to make the Final against the "slumping" Roger Federer. Serena Williams' continued masquerade as a woman and her winning another Grand Slam. And then there was a high stakes weekend in MLB where five of the six divisions are separated by four games or less.

Here would have been my rundown:
NFL: Patriots 17, Chiefs 10 + Tom Brady is out possibly for the season. Trent Dilfer cited an anonymous but "very trustworthy source" within the Pats who said Brady is done for the year. But my question, is who the hell knows since his MRI wasn't completed until Monday? But if he is out, are the Jets the team to beat in the AFC East? I'd still go with the Pats because the gap between them and everyone else was so big last year and the Jets are starting all over. Sure Matt Cassel is new, but what better way to get comfy that with that offense?

NFL: Jets 20, Dolphins 14. The Brett Favre magic works outside of Green Bay as evidenced by the Jets scoring a touchdown on one of the worst pass-decisions or executions I have ever seen.

MLB: Mets and Phillies split a doubleheader. The Phillies had won the first two games of the series, crawling to within a game of the lead, but Johan Santana and Carlos Delgado pushed the divisional lead back to two and Jimmy Rollins went 0-5 and struck out to end the last game the Phillies will ever play at Shea. The Mets' Magic Number is 18. And Mike Schmidt is a huge ass.

U.S. Open: Serena Williams beats Jelena Jankovic to win the Open and Andy Murray hangs on in a rain-suspended match from Saturday to beat Rafael Nadal and advance to Monday's Final against Roger Federer. Murray is suffering from fatigue in his fist-pump muscles and the outlook for the Final isn't pretty. Roger Federer is in the worst slump of his career in 2008 and has only made it to three of the four Grand Slam Finals. Poor bastard.

NFL: Panthers 26, Chargers 24. I was getting ready to leave the house yesterday afternoon and turned on the TV just in time to see the Panthers lining up to go for the win with two-seconds left on the clock, down by five, on about the Chargers' 10-yard line. Instinctively I sprinted to the stereo to switch the audio from the TV feed to A.M. radio and tuned to 570. Alas, all I got was static, but I would have loved to have heard the Chargers' announcers, easily the worst in football, swallow this loss.

Actually, come to think of it, those are the only stories I care about in the least. I guess there were still only about five-minutes of highlights worth watching. Which is why I watched the show straight through three or four times.

I suppose including the Dodgers' sweep over the DBacks is big news. During the Mets-Phillies game last night, ESPN ran a commercial that showed Manny Ramirez with the title "1 Man: The Difference." I will give you that Manny has been fantastic and the team seems to believe and the fans are engaged, and they are in first place. But it has been six weeks since he's been in L.A. and are 19-16 in that time. Before we give the NL Pennant to the Dodgers after this eight-game win streak, let's remember that they are .500 in their last 16 games.

The King Is Dead!

John McEnroe called Sunday's Wimbledon Gentlemen's Championship match the greatest match he'd ever seen, and I suppose I would have to agree considering McEnroe has probably seen a few more matches than me. This got me thinking about the remarkably high number of spectacular championship games and stories we have seen in 2008. How often is the NCAA Tourney Final or the Super Bowl or the NBA Finals a sleeper? This year we have experienced riveting moment after riveting moment and while I think it is just a perfect storm of sport, I'd like to think it was a trend. Consider:

Super Bowl XLII: Giants 17-Patriots 14
The highest rated sporting event in American television history featured one of the greatest upsets in pro sports history, as the Giants muffled the best offense in NFL history throughout the game and drove the length of the field to score in the final seconds after the Patriots had just completed their own would-be game-winning drive. The Giants vanquished the widely perceived bad guys and stopped their run at a perfect 19-0 season as Eli Manning matched his older brother as Super Bowl MVP.

Men's NCAA Tournament Championship Game: Kansas 75-Memphis 68
A rare match-up of two #1 seeds and two preseason favorites wound up being a rare dream Final for the fans. Memphis used the second half's first minute-and-a-half to erase Kansas' 5-point halftime lead (the largest lead of the game to that point). The powerhouses then traded blows for the next 10 minutes before Memphis began to pull away. The lead stretched to 9 with 2:12 to go. Kansas immediately began fouling Memphis, a much maligned free-throw shooting team, and put on a furious charge to close the gap. Memphis missed four of its last five free throws and Mario Chalmers nailed a three-pointer with 2.1 second to go to send it to overtime. Kansas jumped out to a six-point lead in the overtime and Memphis was unable to make it up.

Stanley Cup Finals: Red Wings 4-Penguins 2
In the first ever postseason meeting between two of the most storied franchises in sports, let alone hockey, the Detroit Red Wings looked like they might cruise to an easy Stanley Cup win after blowout wins in the first two games. In Game 3, back in Pittsburgh, the Penguins were again out-shot by more than 10, but superstar Sidney Crosby made the best of two of his shots to keep the Pens in the series. In Game 4, The Red Wings killed off a 5-3 advantage for a minute-and-a-half midway through the third period to preserve a 1-1 tie and then scored the game winner with 2:26 to go to take a 3-1 series lead. Facing elimination on the road in Game 5, Pittsburgh pulled their goalie and Maxime Talbot scored an overtime forcing goal with 34 seconds left in regulation. The fifth-longest game in Stanley Cup Finals history was won by Penguin Petr Sykora in the third overtime after he had predicted to a sideline reporter earlier in the overtime that he would win it. Detroit won the Cup in Game 6 on a shot that was stopped by Pittsburgh goalie Marc-Andre Fleury. Fleury knew he did not have clean possession of the puck so he fell to the ice, hoping to trap it underneath him. In doing so, he knocked it into the goal. The Penguins had a last second shot stopped spectacularly by Chris Osgood and the Wings took the Cup.

NBA Finals: Celtics 4-Lakers 2
The NBA Finals pitted the league's greatest historical rivals, and each Conference's best regular season team against one another. Game 1 was a good, but unmemorable game until Boston star Paul Pierce fell awkwardly and was carted off of the court in a wheelchair. Pierce later returned to the game and sparked a Celtic win only moments after it appeared their series was doomed. In a game of streaks, the Lakers led Game 2 early on, but the Celtics put together a run to lead at halftime by 10. The lead stretched to 24 with under eight minutes to go before a furious charge by the Lakers to cut the lead to 2 with 28 seconds remaining and the Lakers had the ball. The Celtics denied the ball from Kobe Bryant, blocked Sasha Vujacic's shot and held on to win and take a 2-0 lead. The Lakers held serve in game three, winning on the backs of Bryant and Vujacic (56 points combined) as Pierce and Kevin Garnett struggled mightily for Boston. In Game 4, the Lakers surged out to a 35-14 first quarter lead and led by as many as 24 before Boston threw together a 21-3 third quarter run and eventually took the lead for good with just over four minutes remaining. It was the largest comeback victory in the NBA Finals in 37 years and the Celtics now led 3-1. Game 5 saw the same pattern repeats itself as the Lakers jumped out to a 43-24 lead, but then the Celtics reversed course and took the lead with a 38-17 run. The Lakers again jumped out to a 14-point lead in the fourth quarter before Boston put together a 16-2 run to tie it again. The Lakers held on to win at home and send the series back to Boston for Game 6 (3-2 Celtics). The Celtics led Game 6 24-20 at the end of the first quarter, but their coronation began in the second quarter as they outscored the Lakers 107-72 in the last three quarters. This was the largest Finals-clinching win in NBA history (131-92).

U.S. Open: Woods -1, Mediate E
Tiger Woods won his fourth U.S. Open and 14th major despite playing on a bad knee that would eventually be revealed as a torn ACL, forcing him to miss the rest of the 2008 season. Rocco Mediate outplayed Woods on Sunday and made up a two-shot deficit to tie the champ at -1 through 72 holes. In the 18-hole playoff, Woods played his typical steady game, opening up a three-shot lead through 10 holes, largely due to the seventh hole, which Woods birdied and Mediate bogeyed. Mediate scored three consecutive birdies on the back nine, and Woods slipped before birdying 18 to force a sudden-death playoff that would begin on the fateful seventh hole. Mediate bogeyed again and Woods' par earned him the Championship.

College World Series: Fresno State 2-Georgia 1
The Fresno State Bulldogs became the lowest ranked champion in NCAA all-sports history when they won the final two games the College World Series over Georgia to win the title. In the tournament, the Bulldogs won 9 games against teams ranked in the top 10, with six of those wins coming when they faced elimination.

Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest: Chestnut 59-Kobayashi 59
Longtime rivals Joey Chestnut and Takeru Kobayashi met at the Super Bowl of competitive eating on Coney Island and the titans of this "sport" took their battle down to the wire with Chestnut finishing a dog in the final seconds to tie it up. They went to the first "Dog Off" in 28 years, in which the first to finish five hot dogs wins and the American did his nation proud with an epic win on Independence Day.

Wimbledon: Nadal def. Federer 6-4, 6-4, 6-7 (5), 6-7 (8), 9-7
With a win, Roger Federer would tie the all-time record of six consecutive Wimbledon Championships, and 65 consecutive grass court victories. Nadal would become the first man since Bjorn Borg 28 years earlier to win the French Open and Wimbledon back-to-back. The pair had met in the last two Wimbledon Finals as well. Nadal won the first set and came back from a 1-4 deficit to win the second. Neither player faced a break point in the third set, as Federer won it 7-6 (7-5) in a tie-breaker. The fourth set also saw no breaks of serve and went to a tie breaker. Nadal jumped out to a lead and was serving for the Championship at 5-2. Federer won both points on Nadal's serve and later held off two Championship points to win the fourth 7-6 (10-8). Neither of these two top-seeded men had been able to earn a service break in over three sets before the match went to the tennis equivalent of overtime. With no fifth set tiebreakers at Wimbledon, the match was level at 6-6, then 7-7 and Nadal finally won a service break at 7-7 in the fifth set and then held serve at 8-7 to win his first Wimbledon Championship in the longest match in Wimbledon history in both time elapsed and games played.

Erosion Wears Down Mediate And Randolph

Last week, Rick Reilly wrote a typically inspired column in which he urged fans to root for Phil Mickelson to beat Tiger Woods. Essentially his point was that it is too easy to root for Tiger because he wins all the time. "It's like rooting for erosion," he wrote. It's just gonna happen whether you want it to or not. Watching Rocco Mediate try to beat Tiger in the U.S. Open playoff was a perfect example of a guy getting worn down by erosion. Mediate played beautifully, and of course the run he put on to go up by a stroke through 17 was incredible, but he had to be perfect on every shot in order to be close.

Mediate gained over 100 spots in the world rankings and is now in the 50's. Tiger hasn't played in two months and is firmly planted as #1. So you knew going in that it was going to take a miracle. They battled back and forth all day but the final two holes were a microcosm of this entire playoff.

Tiger teed off on the par five 18 and landed about a mile-and-a-half down in the fairway. Mediate teed off and came up well short of Tiger and in some trouble. Mediate's second shot put him back into the fairway, one shot from the green and in front of Tiger's ball. The trouble is, no matter what Mediate did on his drive, it was going to take him three shots to get to the green. It was a par five, so that is appropriate. But it was only going to take Tiger two shots to get there.

So now they were both hitting onto the green, Tiger from a little over 200 out, Mediate from around 140, with Mediate's one-stroke lead essentially gone already. If those two guys play that hole 100 more times, Tiger gets there in two 90 times and Mediate wouldn't get there in two once. It is like the guy plays on a different course. It is like watching two guys play one-on-one basketball, only one guy is shooting at an 8-foot hoop.

Granted, Mediate is not the biggest hitter in the world, and lots of other guys would be able to do just what Tiger did. But the thing with Tiger is that he doesn't miss shots. His putt on 18 wasn't great - he left himself a tough 6-footer to finish with, but the first one was from about 40 feet!

So like erosion, Tiger just did what he always did and steadily continued along until his opponent couldn't match him anymore. The difference this time was that his opponent never really crumbled, he just was playing on a different course at the end.

Speaking of golf, it looks like Willie Randolph will have some time on his hands to pick up the sticks. I like Randolph. He seems like a good guy. And the expectations placed upon him were impossible to fulfill. But the team stinks and he simply makes no changes to fix things. They can't score runs and he doesn't change the line-up to shake things up. The pitchers struggle and he just keeps running the same relievers in the same scenarios out there until it's too late. The team has no energy and while he may get a bad rap for seeming to be calm when in reality he may be much more fiery, it is his job to get them to wake up, and whatever he has been doing isn't doing it.

It is not necessarily the manager's fault when a team struggles, but you can't fire 25 players so someone has to go, and when the biggest problem with a team is that their attitude stinks, that is the manager's fault. But really, has there been any doubt this was coming?

That said, Omar Minaya had better work some magic very soon because he must be on a very, very short leash. The way Randolph was fired was cowardly and few of the big moves Minaya has made have benefited the Mets in the long run at all. He's been give the money to "win now" for four years in-a-row and they have nothing but an NLCS loss and a monumental, historical collapse to show for it.

Milton Bradley Lost It, The Sun Set, And Other News This Week

It has been over a week since I have written anything sports related because this page was not loading properly and I couldn't post to it anyway. To say the least, it has been an eventful week, so today will be just a quick recap of the biggest sports stories of the week in my world:

Everyone is piling onto Mets' manager Willie Randolph because the team stinks. For a long while I thought this was mostly unfounded, but the more they lose the more you realize that something needs to change. I wonder though, why is Omar Minaya's job so safe. After all, he is the person who spent all the money and equipped Randolph's clubhouse with all of these chumps. So Carlos Delgado seems to be hitting again, but the Mets' regular bench consists of Damion Easley, Endy Chavez, Marlon Anderson, Fernando Tatis. Granted, there have been a lot of injuries and the team has had to dig deeper into the bench than Minaya could have expected, but these guys combine for a .209 batting average, with 32 runs, 27 RBI, 16 extra base hits, 15 walks and 49 strikeouts in the equivalent of about 90 games played.

Granted: if Pedro Martinez, El Duque, Ryan Church, Moises Alou, Angel Pagan, and Luis Castillo hadn't all been on the DL for extended periods this season, they could easily have accounted for the 6.5 games that the team trails the Phillies, but every team gets injuries. This team fills holes with old, slow, injured, has-beens with no minor league prospects to be found. When do we start blaming Minaya?

It is hard to give any credence to what Tim Donaghy says about games being fixed in the playoffs because Donaghy is a crook who could likely just be throwing blame around, but the guys sure picked interesting games to mention. And not that I think we should go around believing every scrumbags conspiracy theories, but didn't the world react the same way to Jose Canseco's wild claims until they turned out to be almost 100% true? And David Stern is not doing the league any favors by being a smug, arrogant prick that almost makes you root for the other scumbag to bring him down.

Soon I will research the worst current contracts in baseball. The Dodgers' announcers were ripping the Mets last week for having this crazy payroll and I have a feeling they would not be happy with that I discover (I am looking at you Esteban Loaiza, Andruw Jones and Jason Schmidt).

The Orioles sent Steve Trachsel to the minors the other day. Since he has been gone, the league-wide average game time has dropped by 11 minutes.

Kevin Garnett did a commercial for ABC's Finals coverage in which he makes sweet love to the Finals Trophy. I don't like players holding a trophy they haven't won and talking about how good it feels to hold it. You don't touch it until you deserve to touch it.

Through three games, the Lakers' fans are proving what everyone things about L.A. sports fans: lazy, unintelligent and uncreative. They don't cheer unless the scoreboard tells them to, and the best chants they came up with were "Boston Sucks," and "MVP." Really? OK, so "beat L.A." is not much better than "Boston sucks," but it is better somehow. But Laker fans cannot compete with a Boston crowd that chants "No means no" at Kobe Bryant on the free throw line. Absolutely classic.

ABC pulled the most shameless in a long line of shameless promotional plugs in Game 3. They actually had a 3-D cardboard Wall-E ad in the seats for the game. This makes Fox look tasteful and dignified. Well, not dignified...actually, just forget I wrote that.

Chris Simms has asked to be released from his contract because he says he doesn't see himself fitting into their QB plans and wants to play somewhere. I have two thoughts here: the Giants should sign him and win Super Bowls with father and son (son on the bench of course), and why did Simms feel no hope for playing time in Tampa? San Diego Torero Josh Johnson, baby!

Michael Strahan pulled a John Elway and retired at the pinnacle of his career. Thank you Michael!

Dontrelle Willis was sent to the Minors because he was struggling. Not big news there. Except that he wasn't just struggling: his ERA was 10.32, and he had 5 strikeouts and 21 walks in 4 starts. And he wasn't just sent to the Minors, he was sent to Class A! Ya think his $29 million contract will be on my list?

Kobe Bryant got a technical foul in Game 2 and another in Game 3 for whining for calls on the only two plays that there probably was no actual contact. He hasn't punched anyone yet though, so thus far his behavior has been well above standard, except the pouting, screaming at teammates to stop shooting and give him the ball, whining, posing and almost total avoidance of the team's actual offensive strategy.

The Celtics are not as bad as everyone thought they would be and the Lakers are not as good. It is very likely that Kobe will not pass the ball once for the rest of the series (1 assists in the "must-win" Game 3). And as long as I watch the games with my friend Justin (who went to Gonzaga but I am the forgiving sort), the Celtics will win if the pattern holds.

5 points goes to any reader who can remember the first and last name of Big Brown's trainer without looking it up. Post it in a comment to this post. It has only been 5 days and already no one cares. But hey, at least everyone thought he was a complete ass during the duration of his 15 minutes.

It is weird to think that I have played golf on the course on which the U.S. Open is being played today/this weekend. That almost makes me a pro. I want free clubs. When I played at Torrey Pines, it was the week after the Buick Invitational in 2000. The course was tough and long, the rough was deep and the empty grandstands and T.V. towers were very intimidating. This week, the course is playing a lot tougher and a lot longer, the rough is probably 2 inches deeper and the grandstands and T.V. towers will be full. I am starting to think that professional golfers might be better than I am.

Milton Bradley blew up and tried to kill someone yesterday. Not news, I know, but it is a funny story: the Royals announcer said that Bradley would be well served to own up to his mistakes and move past them like Josh Hamilton has done. Bradley went nuts when he heard the comments, stormed through the clubhouse and had to be restrained from going into the booth to apparently take the guy's life, thus proving the guy right. He then was dragged back to the clubhouse and began sobbing about how no one thinks he's changed and gotten over his anger problems.

Maybe it was the scouting report on the Diamondbacks, but on Tuesday John Maine threw 104 pitches. 80 of them were fastballs. How about mixing in an off-speed pitch once in a while (that said, he struck out seven and was in line for a win before the bullpen blew another lead and the offense feel asleep in the last half of the game again).

Milton Bradley just screamed at me from the street. He's coming upstairs...I have to go.