Strasburg mows down Braves as shut down looms

Stephen Strasburg overcame a 51 minute rain delay to go six strong innings in the Nats 4-1 over the Braves. Strasburg gave up just four hits while striking out ten as Washington increased its lead over Atlanta in the NL East to seven games. Strasburg is 15-5 with a 2.85 ERA over 145 1/3 innings (183 Ks) for the first place Nats. Washington had planned since the start of the season to shut down Strasburg after 160-180 innings. Ian Desmond and Jesus Flores homered for the Nats to provide the offense.

Pat Williams and Kenny White from Bookmaker analyze Weds Yankees/WSox

Uganda Little League gets first African win

Lots of great stories come out of the Little League World Series. The Ugandan Little League might be one of the best. There are 15,000 registered Little Leaguers share 700 gloves. The team received their visas just five hours before getting on a plane to Poland to qualify. For the past nine years their primary sponsor has been the Yankees AA affiliate Trenton Thunder. Now the first team to ever represent Africa will go home with a win after beating Gresham, Oregon 3-2 in a LLWS consolation game. Good stuff.

NFLX camp updates

In the battle between the Pittsburg Steelers and WR hold out Mike Wallace, it looks like Wallace will blink first. Reports from around the league indicate that Wallace will sign his restricted free agent tender and report to camp sometime this week. Wallace will make $2.742 million but was looking for a long-term deal
worth at least as much as the contract the Steelers recently gave Antonio Brown (worth $42.5 million over six years). The Steelers have a long history of NOT negotiating with holdouts. Wallace held out, Brown didn’t.

According to reports from the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Bear LB Brian Urlacher may have had non-invasive treatment on his knee in Europe from the same German based doctor that has treated Kobe Bryant and Alex Rodriguez. The treatment, called Regenokine injection therapy, is based on using a patient’s own blood to “relieve pain and improve joint function.” Urlacher underwent an arthroscopic procedure last week and expects to be ready for the Bears season opener.

Jags holdout RB Maurice Jones-Drew is open to a trade. The problem is that Jacksonville has no intentions of renegotiating his contract or moving him. Comments from the Jags new owner Shad Khan including, “Train’s leaving the station. Run, get on it”, have not sat well with the defending NFL rushing champ. Jones has two years remaining on a heavily front-loaded deal signed three years ago. Jones is scheduled to make $4.5 million this year. If Jacksonville is fining him the max possible under the new CBA, his holdout will have cost MJD 870K as of today.

New Paterno book released Tuesday

The author of the new Joe Paterno biography released yesterday says that Paterno and his family never tried to limit his access to them after the Jerry Sandusky scandal broke. Joe Posnanski told the Associated Press on Tuesday the Paternos wanted their story to be told and trusted him to do it fairly.

“The one thing they were so good about, they never, from Joe all the way down, they never tried to influence the book,” Posnanski said. “They never said, `Hey, leave this out or don’t put this in.’ Or this might be misconstrued or whatever. They were, every one of them, said tell the truth the best you see it.”

Paterno was released Tuesday.

Chris Paul has thumb surgery, out eight weeks

Olympic and LA Clipper PG Chris Paul had surgery on a tendon in his right thumb and will be out around eight weeks. With a normal recovery, that would give Paul about two weeks to prepare for the Clippers Halloween regular season opener. Paul hurt the thumb in early July at the Olympic training camp in Las Vegas but the injury was not thought to be serious.

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