It was a dominant performance today.

Congratulations to them they played well; Buffon is quite the goalie.

South Carolina’s dream of a third consecutive national championship vanished for good Monday night at TD Ameritrade Park when Grayson Greiner’s fly ball fell into the glove of Arizona right fielder Robert Refsnyder.
“As soon as the last out, it sunk in,” USC first baseman Christian Walker said.
There seemed to be a state of disbelief for USC and its fans. This is not the way things have ended for the Gamecocks over the past three seasons. Everyone had come to expect Greiner to deliver a three-run triple, or perhaps a game-winning grand slam.
Not this time.

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Italy were the better team and deserved to win.

I was hoping for more from France but Spain is just amazingly good and patient.

With Chancellor Angela Merkel cheering every step of the way, Germany dominated Greece ”” on the soccer field.

The Germans reached the European Championship semifinals for a record seventh time by beating Greece 4-2 Friday in a match played amid the contentious political backdrop between the countries.

But just as in the real world, where Germany has been a major contributor to economic bailouts for Greece, the three-time champions were in control at the Arena Gdansk. And after the match, Merkel visited the players in the changing room.

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All too often, Cristiano Ronaldo stuns the world with his fine footwork. On Thursday, the Portugal superstar used the determination of a raging bull to make the difference.

Ronaldo used his head to score the lone goal against the Czech Republic and send his team into the European Championship semifinals with a 1-0 victory.

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“So, you felt 40 yesterday,” one reporter said, drawing a large smile from Pettitte.

Upon reaching the mid-life milestone, Pettitte listed his three main priorities in life. Baseball came in last. A 17-year career marked by three All-Star games, eight 15-win seasons and five World Series rings ranked behind his strong faith and his relationship with his family.

“That’s just what it’s all about. I try to show humility in everything I do” he said. “I felt like God gave me the ability to do this, so why should I be arrogant about this?”

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Lefty see, lefty do.

Hours after he watched senior left-hander Michael Roth’s two-hitter against Kent State keep South Carolina’s season alive, freshman lefty Jordan Montgomery did his best imitation of the Gamecocks’ undisputed team leader when he got his turn against Arkansas on Thursday night.

Montgomery held the Razorbacks to three singles over eight innings, and the two-time defending national champions won 2-0 to force a rematch Friday night that will decide which team goes to the best-of-three College World Series finals against Arizona.

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I tried to watch both at the same time (which was a challenge). These two teams deserved to go through; nice to see Ronaldo have a good game.

Cavaliers shooting guard Anthony Parker to his dad, Larry Parker:…

“I remember losing a big game because of a terrible shooting night on my part. We sat in the kitchen and you got up and started opening drawers, and cabinets, and looking under the table. My brother Marcus asked, “What are you looking for, Dad?” You looked up with a smile and said, “Anthony’s jump shot!” The whole family died laughing! The next day you and I were on the playground working on that jumper.
“The investment you made in your children is why we are who we are today. You gave us the confidence that we could accomplish our dreams. You challenged us and motivated us to work hard and set the bar high. It’s the reason I have played 15 years as a professional basketball player, my sister, Candace, is among the greatest women to ever play the game and Marcus went to Johns Hopkins for medical school and residency to be a radiologist — a dream he had since he was 5 years old.
“When I get home, my favorite part of the day is my two boys running and jumping in my arms screaming, ‘Daddy’s home!’ To me, it means that I’m doing something right. I guess I’m still trying to emulate my dad.
“Happy Father’s Day. I love you!”

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Greece beat Russia 1-0 in Warsaw with a first-half goal from captain Giorgos Karagounis to reach the quarter-finals, a result that sent the Russians home after the Czech Republic beat co-hosts Poland on a similar scoreline in Wroclaw.

Greece, winning for the first time in the tournament, went through as runners-up and will play the winners of Group B in the last eight.

Midfielder Karagounis, winning his 120th cap to equal the record for his country, made Russia pay for a flurry of missed chances when he scored against the run of play deep into first-half stoppage time.

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A heart stopping thriller of a game. Danny Welbeck’s goal was just beautiful. Read it all and see the picture there.

It had never been done by a San Francisco Giants pitcher. It had never happened to the Houston Astros. It had only happened 21 times in Major League Baseball history.

But that was before Matt Cain joined the exclusive perfect game club on Wednesday.

Cain reached perfection in style. He struck out 14 batters along the way, tying Sandy Koufax (1965) for the most strikeouts in a perfect game since 1900.

Read it all and you can watch an ESPN video summarizing it there.

Andriy Shevchenko rolled back the years to score twice as co-hosts Ukraine came from behind to beat Sweden 2-1 in their opening game of the European Championships, in Kiev.

Read it all (and there are three videos at the bottom).

How did James Milner not score? The overall result is fair to this point it seems to me.

Update–That ended up being the final game score.

Wow.

Maria Sharapova, who once described her play on clay as a “cow on ice,” defeated Sara Errani of Italy 6-3, 6-2 Saturday to capture her first championship at Roland Garros and complete a career Grand Slam.

“If it was my only one it would be just as special as wining my fourth,” a jubilant Sharapova told the crowd in Court Philippe Chatrier not long after falling to her knees and clasping her face when Errani’s final shot in the 1 hour, 29 minute contest fell into the net.

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The top two players each won in straight sets Friday ”” second-seeded Nadal in a 6-2, 6-2, 6-1 whitewashing of sixth-seeded Ferrer and top-seeded Djokovic in a 6-4, 7-5, 6-3 win over No. 3 Federer that didn’t feel that close.

Sunday, “Rafa” and “Nole” meet and someone will make history: Either Nadal will win his seventh French Open to break the record he now shares with Bjorn Borg or Djokovic will become the first man in 43 years to win four consecutive Grand Slam tournaments.

And while they’ll have trouble putting on a better show than their last Grand Slam final ”” the nearly six-hour, five-set drama Djokovic won at the Australian Open”” it shouldn’t be hard to stage a more competitive day of tennis than what happened in the semifinals.

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Watch it all–wow, that is some flop shot on 16.

Brian Baker’s family and friends had waited years to see him play at the French Open””nine years, to be exact, since he made the boy’s final in 2003. They weren’t going to settle for bad seats.

So the Baker clan, 11 strong and ever optimistic, arrived at Court 6 at Roland Garros as two other men finished off a five-setter that had been held over due to darkness the night before. Next up were two women who played a three-set match while Baker’s entourage scouted out a section in the corner bleachers. Finally they sat and then watched as the most remarkable story of the spring tennis season got even better.

Brian Baker, the 27-year-old American who took six years off from pro tennis and had five operations, won his first match at the French Open, 6-3, 7-6(1), 7-6(5) over Xavier Malisse. He’ll play Gilles Simon of France on Wednesday, perhaps inside Court Philippe Chatrier. “It’s definitely something I didn’t envision,” Baker said.

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He is the unfrozen phenom.

Brian Baker was going to be a tennis star. That’s where this was headed. A decade ago, Baker was one of the best junior tennis players in the world, the wiry kid from Nashville, Tenn., with the punishing game, so good he would later reach the boys’ final of the French Open in 2003. His early résumé contained wins over characters you may know. Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. Tomas Berdych. Novak Djokovic. That’s right. The Djoker, the relentless No. 1 in the world, winner of four of the last five Grand Slams. That guy. Baker passed on college scholarships and pushed right into the pros. He had a clothing deal and a racket deal and a future. Life was good.

But then Baker’s body disobeyed him. Maybe “abandoned” is a better word. First Baker hurt his wrist, and missed 10 weeks. Then, in a qualifying match at Wimbledon versus Djokovic, Baker tore his MCL. This actually wasn’t so bad. Baker rehabbed his knee and resumed playing, but began feeling pain in his left hip. Hip surgery followed. Then, surgery for a sports hernia. All the while Baker’s elbow was nagging at him, especially on his serve. That led to Tommy John surgery on his elbow. Then more hip surgery””another procedure for the left hip, and the right hip as well. It was a spectacular run of medical intervention. Baker won a Grand Slam in the OR.

At this point Baker was 23….

Read it all and there is more here and still more there.

This is a whole lot of fun–watch it all.

Regular time, then extra time, then penalty kicks. What a razor-thin margin they won by–but they did, overcoming huge obstacles again and again.

At Wembley [for the recent FA cup semi-final] , I knew that the time was right to return to Goodison [home stadium for Everton of whom he is a life-long supporter]. I thought of the last time I brought my father over, when we had seats in the Bullens Road side of the ground.

He was captivated by a lady in her eighties wearing an Everton shirt and bellowing at the top of her lungs at the players on the park to “get stuck into them” as well as exchanging a few choice chants at the Middlesbrough fans in the away-section near the corner flag.

My father told absolutely everyone we met afterwards, from the pub to the airport, about this “brilliant wee woman” who has had a season ticket for more than half a century. He adored her spirit and her energy, in spite of her years.

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Sergio Aguero won the Premier League title for Manchester City with a winning strike against 10-man QPR – four minutes into stoppage time at the Etihad Stadium.

City appeared destined to suffer the most remarkable collapse in Premier League history after falling 2-1 behind to Mark Hughes’s team.

But Edin Dzeko’s header from David Silva’s 92nd-minute corner, followed by Aguero’s strike, sealed the title in the most dramatic of circumstances.

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Josh Hamilton of the Texas Rangers belted four home runs on Tuesday night in Baltimore, just 17 days after Philip Humber of the Chicago White Sox tossed a perfect game in Seattle. The Rangers thumped the Orioles, 10-3, with Hamilton adding a double to set the American League’s single-game record for total bases, with 18. He tied the major league record, set by Joe Adcock of the Milwaukee Braves in 1954.

“Obviously it’s, other than being in the World Series, the highlight of my big-league career,” Hamilton told reporters in Baltimore. “I was saying after I hit two, I’ve never hit three in a game before, and what a blessing that was. Then to hit four is just an awesome feeling, to see how excited my teammates got.

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Take a look.

The parish-based gold champions represent just one of many initiatives of More Than Gold, an umbrella group of 16 Christian denominations set up with the aim of helping the churches to engage more closely with the Olympics.

The idea of a gold champion in every parish was to try to interest the entire Catholic community in the games.

“The whole concept,” explained [Colm] Hickey in an early May telephone interview with Catholic News Service, “is just trying to get people in any way to be inspired by sport.”

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