Big Lead Sports Bar

12/07/2009

TODAY'S HEADLINES


Pens lose to Carolina- Continuing our city's recent trend of disappointing losses, the Penguins dropped a 3-2 decision to lowly 7-17-5 Carolina on Monday night. Sidney Crosby returned and scored his 20th goal of the season, and Mike Rupp continued his surprisingly strong campaign with his 9th goal. In his six previous NHL seasons, Rupp had scored only 27 career goals. Nice signing, Ray Shero.

The Pens outshot Carolina 32-21 and were 0-for-3 on the power play. It was also a forgettable night for Marc-Andre Fleury in goal. The Penguins are off until a Thursday game at Montreal. [PG]

Pitt-Indiana invading MSG: The 7-1 Pitt Panthers will travel to Madison Square Garden for a Tuesday night meeting with Tom Crean and the 3-4 Indiana Hoosiers in the Jimmy V Classic.

Pitt has a 23-9 record at MSG since 2000-01 and once again features several players with NY-area roots, including PG Travon Woodall (Brooklyn), C Dante Taylor (Greenburgh) and G Ashton Gibbs (Scotch Plains, N.J.).

Tipoff is scheduled for 9 PM and the game will be televised on ESPN. Let's hope the Panthers can score more than 15 in the first half. [PittsburghPanthers.com]

No Hall for Murtaugh: National League umpire Doug Harvey and manager Whitey Herzog of the Kansas City Royals and St. Louis Cardinals were chosen by the baseball Hall of Fame's veteran's committee for umpires and managers, but former Pirate Danny Murtaugh missed the cut.

Murtaugh managed the Bucs from 1957-1964, 1967, 1970-1971, and 1973-1976, and guided them to championships in 1960 and 1971. He passed away in 1976. [PG]

Good News! Pirate ticket prices aren't going up
. It's probably not wise to raise ticket prices for a 99-loss team in a bad economy, so give the Pirates credit for doing the right thing for 2010. According to the Trib article, "The team is touting its price freeze as the longest active stretch by any major league team." Which is only fair, considering it also has the longest active stretch of losing seasons in league history. [Trib]

Bucco Hot Stove is lukewarm
: Lots of goodies from Dejan Kovacevic at the Winter Meetings in Indy. The Pirates appear to have interest in P Joe Beimel, SS Adam Everett, and SS Bobby Crosby. They are not intensely pursuing Texas Ranger Hank Blalock, and they are not pursuing slugging OF Russell Branyan.

The Pirates also lost utilityman Luis Cruz on a waiver claim to Milwaukee and signed 31-year-old reliever Vinnie Chulk to a minor league contract. Chulk had a 3.75 ERA in eight appearances for the Indians last year. [PBC Blog]

Breaking news: people buy a lot of Steeler jerseys. The Steelers sold the most jerseys of any NFL team on the NFLshop.com website from April 1-November 30, according to sports business writer Darren Rovell. They also had two of the top 10 individual player jerseys, including Troy Polamalu (#2) and Ben Roethlisberger (#7). Lord Favre of the Manor is #1. Say what you want, buy the guy moves product. [CNBC]

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2 comments:

Steve said...

So, I guess the hottest place to win is Pittsburgh...if your the visiting team anyway, especially if you're a very bad one. No one can say Pittsburgh isn't a charitable place. Bring us your weak, tired and pathetic losers...

Needless to say I'm looking forward to this coming Friday morning like a dog waiting for Michael Vick to come home.

Can someone let me know when Malkin is back in the lineup...what's that..he is? Could have fooled me. I was afraid for a second they may have traded him with Fedetenko...what's that...he's been playing too?!

So the Steelers are selling like post 9-11 duct tape huh, yet they still refer to them as a small market team? Whatever. With a product as national and even global as the NFL, the market size can't simply be dictated by local demographics, especailly when refering to the Steelers.

The NFL Network could easily add a Steelers only channel and it would probably do very well. The Steelers move more merchandise than the Cowboys yet you don't see the Rooney's bitching about revenue sharing like America's Joke owner Jerry Jones.

Louis Lipps Sinks Ships said...

The impressive thing about the Steelers jersey sales is that it's not being boosted by a new star.

Of course Favre's jersey will sell well, because no one had a Vikings Favre jersey prior to this year, so the market is wide open. Same reason Ben's jersey led sales in his rookie year. Same reason Kobe's jersey sales spike when he changes his number.

The fact that Ben and Troy are still selling this many jerseys this late in their careers, when many Steelers fans are not even in the market because they already own one, says something.