NMTE (Late) Morning Roundup

Reporting to you at the crack of noon, here's what's happenin' in the world today:

Promising rookie hurler Jon Papelbon takes the hill for the Sox tonight as they try to bounce back from a disheartening loss to the Tiggers yesterday. Papelbon will be making his second appearance of the year in a Boston uniform after going 5 and change and allowing only 2 runs in his first major league start on July 31st against the Twinkies. Though the Sox brass had seen it fit to send Papelbon back down to Pawtucket two days later to work out of the bullpen, assuming that he would be of more use to the team as a reliever down the stretch, Wade Miller’s shoulder trouble has opened up a spot in the rotation for the rookie. Tonight he has the chance to turn things around and end this agonizing one-game slide for his new team in Detroit.

The Giants’ Randy Winn (who apparently was traded by the Mariners—who knew?) hit for the cycle yesterday against the Cincy Reds. More astounding was the fashion in which he accomplished the feat, garnering all four segments in his first four at-bats. My own cycle story was on a cloudy June night over the summer before my freshman year in college. It was a Friday and I was en route to Maine to see my Dad and listening, as I always did, the Joe & Jerry’s call on WEEI as Sox infielder (I think he was playing third that night) Jon Valentin amassed three hits—a dinger, a triple and a single—in his first three at bats against the White Sox. There’s an awful patch for radio reception right around the 101-95 junction and I remember hoping for a miracle so I could make it through this patch, onto the Maine Pike and into the area where the local Maine station (1440) would come in. Battling the static and the Friday traffic, I careened through the tollbooths and finally came to a clear reception spot…only to hear Jerry already cheering Valentin’s completion of one of the rarer individual feats in baseball. Sigh. I can only hope that a generation of Giants fans wasn’t stuck in a bad spot on the Bay Bridge and missed Winn’s cycle, ‘cause they’ll never forget it.

NBA teams took advantage of the rather confusing luxury tax amnesty rule in the new collective bargaining agreement to rid themselves of a collective $212 million worth of dead cap weight. Most of the cuts were of players no longer with the team still paying them (Vin Baker from the Celts, Alonzo Mourning from Toronto) though there were a few surprises. The Mavs cut loose captain Michael Finley, who looks to sign with Miami, Phoenix or Denver in the coming weeks. Also cut were Doug and Jackie Christie, whose ill-fated reality show should receive quite a boost from the transition to the Cuban Circus in Dallas. Players cut will still be paid by the teams that released them, in addition to the money they’ll receive from the contracts they sign with their new teams, a sign that NBA is really moving in the right direction by double-paying the most overpaid among them. Am I missing something here?