Former NFL quarterback Steve McNair and a woman were found shot to death Saturday inside a residence in Nashville, police said.

Nashville police spokesman Don Aaron confirmed that authorities were called to a condominium and found McNair and a woman shot to death inside. Aaron said police don’t yet know the circumstances of the shootings.

“I don’t have any answers for you now as to what’s happened, who’s responsible,” Aaron said.

Every day is precious and you never know what will transpire. Read it all.

The Williams family dream, developed more than 20 years ago on the glass-littered courts of Compton, Calif., has played out on every major championship surface since then. On the Fourth of July, Serena and Venus Williams, the American superstars and the only real standard bearers of women’s tennis, slugged it out on the hallowed grass of Wimbledon’s All England Lawn Tennis Club.

After all the anguished cries and pummeled groundstrokes between the pair, their 21st meeting ”” and their fourth in the Wimbledon final ”” ended with but a muted celebration. Serena Williams, the younger sister by 15 months, steamrolled big sister Venus, 7-6 (3), 6-2 to win her third Wimbledon championship.

She smiled and dropped to the grass, but was not gloating with Venus standing on the other side of the net in resigned defeat. Venus’s final backhand sailed plaintively into the net, as Serena captured her 11th major championship title by unleashing unrelenting serves and executing razor-sharp angles.

Fantasatic serving by Serena, she deserved to win. Read it all.

The best match I have ever seen him play. Watch it all–KSH.

Roger Federer was all class as he made history by becoming the first man to reach seven consecutive Wimbledon finals.

The five-times champion produced some immaculate tennis against a brave but outclassed Tommy Haas to win 7-6 (7/3) 7-5 6-3 and maintain his 100% record in Wimbledon semi-finals.

I got a chance to watch this morning while hacking away at some projects–Federer just played superbly. Read it all–KSH.

Wow. Amazing.

Update:Brazil wins 3-2. Brazil had too much speed and skill and the U.S. still lacks sufficient depth, but at least we are improving–KSH.

The stunning 2-0 victory by the United States over Spain ”” the best team in the world ”” is probably the greatest victory by the men’s national soccer team.

And when you think of it, the victory Wednesday is probably the second-biggest upset by an American team, behind only the 1980 Miracle on Ice by the hockey team over the Soviet Union in the Olympics.

Those Soviets were state-supported professionals, beaten by amateurs from the United States. On the field in South Africa on Wednesday, everybody was a professional, although just about every Spanish player is employed at a higher level than his American counterpart.

Read it all.

Wow.

Why does Wimbledon leave so much money on the table, easily tens of millions a year, when other sporting properties do everything short of look behind bleachers for extra change to boost revenue? When I asked a tournament official, he laughed gently and said, “While there are plenty of offers for sponsorship, if the tournament hung banners behind the baseline or sold naming rights to center court, Wimbledon wouldn’t be Wimbledon, would it?”

Yes, there’s money to be made from having a business sponsor your mascot or from carving out luxury suites. But there’s also equity in tradition and dignity. Wimbledon “doesn’t do costings” — that is, make its financials available to gauche journalists — but profits from 2008 exceeded $50 million. This suggests that protecting the brand, and keeping “Wimbledon, Wimbledon,” has plenty of value as well. In short, a sporting event’s soul is worth something, too.

It sure would be nice if more franchises adopted this philosophy. Even if meant that home runs were to brought us by the actual batter that hit them; not by an insurance company.

I caught this one by podcast on the morning run. Read or listen to it all.

When you begin watching this lovely piece, guess where the featured man lives. His home will be shown toward the end–watch it all.

Watch the whole touching and encouraging story.

Seven years after their last championship, five years after a series of humbling losses in Detroit, and 362 days after a futile Finals effort against Boston, the Lakers were back, in a big way.

A victory parade will proceed through Los Angeles on Wednesday, the celebration becoming official after the Lakers thumped the Orlando Magic on Sunday, 99-86, to win the NBA Finals, four games to one.

Read it all.

Winning Game 7 avenged losing the Cup to Detroit at Mellon Arena in 2008 and completed a remarkable turnaround by the Penguins. When Dan Bylsma was brought in to replace Michel Therrien as coach Feb. 15, they were five points out of the final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference standings.

Bylsma promptly led them to an 18-3-4 record during the stretch drive and rallied them from a 3-2 deficit in this series. He joins Al MacNeil as the only rookie coaches to win a Cup after getting his job during the season. MacNeil did it with Montreal in 1971.

The Penguins have won all three of their Cups on the road — they did it in Minnesota in 1991 and in Chicago in 1992 — and last night became the only road team to win a game in this series.

Read it all.

The New Hampshire Legislature approved revisions to a same-sex marriage bill on Wednesday. If Gov. John Lynch signs the measure into law, the state will become the fifth in New England and the sixth nationally to allow same-sex marriage.

Lawmakers have been working on the bill for months; gay-rights supporters hope the latest changes will ensure it becomes law. The changes further emphasize that by legalizing gay marriage, the state will not impinge on the religious freedom of those who do not believe in it. Mr. Lynch, a Democrat, has indicated he approves of the latest revisions.

Read it all.

Gee, that was discouraging.

Congratulations to Chelsea who were the better team today–I enjoyed watch it. Read it all.

Sir Alex Ferguson conceded that Manchester United performed poorly last night after his dream of becoming the first manager to retain the Champions League perished at the hands of an outstanding Barcelona team who made history of their own.

Goals in each half, from Samuel Eto’o and Lionel Messi, were enough to give Pep Guardiola’s side a 2-0 victory that their performance merited, making them the first Spanish club to complete a treble of league, domestic cup and European Cup.

However, while Ferguson had the good grace to acknowledge that Barcelona deserved to win, he is likely to be infuriated to learn that his tactics were criticised by Cristiano Ronaldo. “We only had ten minutes [on top] and then we never found ourselves again,” the United forward said. “We were not well, the tactics were not good and everything went wrong.”

Congratulations to Barcelona. I was disappointed with Man U.’s performance. After a strong start by Ronaldo, they looked dazed when their opponents scored. Read it all—KSH.

I caught this on the morning run. There is just so much here: Two cultures, England and America, separated by a common language, the power of a devoted single mother, the challenge of overcoming huge obstacles, and many more highlights. Watch it all–KSH.

This is hysterical!

What a fantastic shot!

After a journey through seven games of mood swings, turns in the story line and questions about just who these Lakers are, Kobe Bryant said he finally learned something about his team.

“That we’re bipolar,” Bryant said with an ear-to-ear grin.

–From Lakers Beat Rockets to Advance to Western Conference Finals in yesterday’s New York Times, by Billy Witz

Two movements began that day. Northwestern began playing for Jaclyn, and soon after it started winning national championships, four in a row. The team is 20-0 this season and three victories from its fifth straight title. Northwestern will host Princeton in an N.C.A.A. quarterfinal game Saturday afternoon.

The players say they are just as excited about what they helped create off the field during their championship run. The team’s support of Jaclyn was a catalyst for her father, Denis, to start a charity that pairs pediatric brain tumor patients with college teams. Nearly 100 children have been “adopted” by teams like St. Bonaventure and Southern Mississippi. Three hundred teams are on a waiting list to adopt such children.

“Disney couldn’t make up some of the stuff that’s happened,” Denis Murphy said.

Jaclyn and Denis Murphy said the bond the Northwestern team formed with Jaclyn helped save her life. She is now a healthy 14-year-old freshman at Arlington High School in LaGrangeville, N.Y., where she plays junior varsity lacrosse.

I caught this one last night on the plane. Simply fabulous. Read it all.

Manny Ramirez has tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs and will be suspended 50 games starting today, The Times has learned.

The test result and suspension is expected to be announced later today. The Dodgers informed triple-A outfielder Xavier Paul this morning that he was being promoted to Los Angeles.

Read it all.

Jack Kemp, the former football star turned congressman who with an evangelist’s fervor moved the Republican Party to a commitment to tax cuts as the central focus of economic policy, died Saturday evening at his home in Bethesda, Md. He was 73.

The cause was cancer, said his son Jimmy Kemp. Jack Kemp’s Washington consulting and lobbying firm, Kemp Partners, announced in January that he had cancer but did not disclose the type.

Mr. Kemp was secretary of housing and urban development under the first President George Bush and the Republican vice-presidential nominee in 1996. But his greatest legacy may stem from his years as a congressman from Buffalo, especially 1978, when his argument for sharp tax cuts to promote economic growth became party policy, one that has endured to this day.

Mr. Kemp, having embraced a supply-side economic theory, told the House that year that the nation suffered under a “tax code that rewards consumption, leisure, debt and borrowing, and punishes savings, investment, work and production.”

Read it all.

In the second-biggest upset in Kentucky Derby history, Mine That Bird, a 50-1 shot, ran away from the field along the rail down the stretch to win by six and three-quarter lengths Saturday.

That was one happy jockey! Read it all.

In many ways, it was like hundreds of pep talks and locker room speeches he’d given in nearly three decades as an NFL coach. Tony Dungy’s message was one of responsibility, of motivation, of not letting down others ”” or yourself. As always, he was pointed and analytical yet smooth and laid-back.

This time, however, Dungy’s audience wasn’t a highly paid collection of elite athletes.

On this day, Dungy ”” a little more than two years removed from becoming the first African-American coach to win a Super Bowl and less than three months after retiring as the leader of the Indianapolis Colts ”” was in a prison yard, a Bible tucked under his left arm.

This is Tony Dungy’s new world, the one he has embraced since walking away from cheering crowds, a salary that exceeded $5 million a year and a team that was equipped for another Super Bowl run.

Read it all.

Well worth the time to watch.

I don’t know how the game goes on without his input and, more importantly, the way he provided his input. There was no emotion left on the table with Harry Kalas ”” you heard, you felt, you understood everything that was happening on the field. If there was ever someone who could relay to the fans what it is like to be a major league baseball player, it was “H.K.”

Harry framed my connection to the Philadelphia Phillies, from my childhood excitement when the Phillies won the 1980 World Series to my game-winning, walk-off home run to beat the Expos in the first year at Citizens Bank Park. He was my full circle, and I suppose his circle became complete, in a way, when the Phillies won the 2008 World Series.

My friend, the baseball expert Jayson Stark, said it well: when Harry didn’t get that chance to put his signature on a play, it was “as if it never happened.” He was the most important bridge to the player experience for a fan of this game. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a word from Harry Kalas painted a thousand pictures.

His was the voice I listenened to when I grew up in central new Jersey. he actually came to my elementary school. I was genuinely impressed. I will always love the sound of his voice. Read it all[/i]