The News

--Pens win! Pens win! And more importantly comes the revelation from a reader that Dan Potash may be the Pittsburgh equivalent of TNT's Craig Sager. All he needs is a few loud suits, and he's all set.

--Pitt wins! Pitt wins! The good news: Pitt wasn't upset by Mississippi Valley State, alma mater of Jerry Rice. The bad news: DeJuan Blair left the game with an injured tailbone. The insignificant news: the Pittsburgh XPlosion open their season at the Pete tonight. But you'll have to wait until February 1 to see the Atlanta Krunk.

--Bad news for Barry. But on the bright side, there's that offer from the Wild Things....

--A-Rod stays in pinstripes for 10 more years. So let's recap: first, he interrupts the World Series to announce that he's opting out of his Yankee contract. And now, he steals the headlines from Barry Bonds!

--After six games, ESPN already has a tracker comparing the Celtics to the 1995-96 Bulls. No, they're not overreacting at all...

--Another black eye for Penn State...and from the sounds of it, a black eye for the victim of this beatdown.

--Deshea Townsend: INNOCENT!

--In other Steeler secondary news, Ryan Clark has one less spleen than he used to.

--35-year-old Game Manager Trent Dilfer fights a 22-year-old defensive back at 49er practice yesterday. I'm guessing Mike Tirico would spin this as "the struggling team showing some fight".

--A great blog: Men Who Look Like Old Lesbians

--The one guy who left Sabathia off his Cy Young ballot explains himself.

--What's going on with the NHL All-Star voting free XM preview?

--Great news: you can now text your orders to Papa John's.

--Here's a quick site to figure out your BMI (Body Mass Index). I'm hoping for your health's sake that most of you come in at "normal weight" as opposed to "obesity".

--From the Headline Says It All Department: "Woman Finds Boyfriend Dead In Cat Door"

--If the words Ninja Gaiden, Double Dribble, and Baseball Stars ring a bell, it's time for you to take Nintendo Historian Quiz 2.

A LIST OF TODAY'S TOP LISTS:

The 8 Guys You Run Into at a Sports Book

The 25 Most Baffling Toys From Around the World

The 9 Most Racist Disney Characters

Afternoon Wrapup

--First off, a reminder that the Tuesday mailbag is coming...today is the last chance to get your questions in, so send your thoughts and questions to mondesishouse@gmail.com.

--For those of you who have asked, my Dave Dameshek radio segments are now available for download courtesy of the kind proprietor of sportscontraption.com. I'll be making another appearance on Dave's show on 93.7 on Tuesday night at approximately 7:45.

--This was interleague rivalry weekend, so the Pirates were playing...the Diamondbacks. And in typical Pirate fashion, they lost two of three, including a colossal meltdown on Saturday night. The only good news from Pirate country is that Tony Armas will be replaced in the rotation.

--Bob Smizik tells us that the Pirates' pursuit of .500 is an impossible dream. He's dead-on in his analysis, making this quite the depressing read.

--Tickets.com and Mobiqa introduced a new mobile phone system that allows fans to purchase baseball tickets via a cell phone. Tickets@Phone will send a barcoded message to the user's cell phone that will be scanned at the gate for admittance to Nationals, A's and Pirates games. So now you can use your cell phone to be one of the 9,582 in attendance the next time the Pirates host the Marlins.

--Nice job by NBC, switching away from the Senators/Sabres overtime game to go to a horse racing pregame show. Could this be the hockey equivalent of the Heidi game?

--Deep-sea explorers have uncovered possibly the richest find in shipwreck history: over $500 million in colonial-era silver and gold coins. Any chance the explorer is from the Pittsburgh area and is interested in buying a baseball team?

--Remember the guy chasing Hank Aaron around third base after he hit his record-breaking home run? It was TNT's ugly suit-wearing Craig Sager.

--Two plumbing services are fighting over the rights to the phone number 867-5309, made famous in a 1982 song by Tommy Tutone.

--Here's a tremendous gallery about your Google searches

--Anyone catch Ludacris on the Simpsons last night? What are the ramifications of this? Did the Simpsons jump the shark? Or does Luda lose some street cred much like when 50 Cent played at that girl's bat mitzvah?

Actually, 50 didn't lose any street cred because he was playing at a private event for a teenage girl. He lost it because he was wearing a Pirates hat.