Good news, the Cardinals won their last two games to snap their losing streak and Matt Holliday is back.

Bad news, Albert Pujols is going to be out for 6 weeks.

SnowAngel

The Twins, who ended May with the worst record in the majors, have been hot this month, winning 14 of 17 games so far. They're still 8 games under .500 and 7.5 games back, but moving up nicely. Hopefolly they'll be able to get out of this hole and still have something left for the second half of the season.

On a related note, stargazer, Madison Bumgarner just had the worst start for any major league pitcher in over 80 years, facing none other than...the Twins.

Bumgarner pitched 0.1 innings, the only out coming when he faced an American League pitcher. He gave up 8 runs on 9 hits, while throwing just 25 pitches.

Isn't it sad how he'll have that on his career stats? Poor guy. He'll bounce (pardon the cliche) back! I was going to listen to the whole rest of the game after work, but when I turned on the radio after the second inning they'd already been "slaughtered".

College football officially kicked off this weekend! Some of the highlights:
-No. 4 LSU beat No. 3 Oregon 40-27. The Tigers were dealing with a slew of off-field issues, including the suspension of starting QB Jordan Jefferson, but held the Ducks to just 95 rushing yards and forced four turnovers. The Tigers are now in the thick of the National Title hunt, while Oregon has a long climb ahead of them.
-No 5 Boise State beat the No. 19 Georgia Bulldogs 35-21 to kick off their quest for another BCS bowl appearance. If the Broncos can finish the rest of the season undefeated, which would include beating No. 14 TCU, that will set off a huge debate over whether or not they're worthy of a berth in not just a BCS game, but the championship game.
-First few upsets of the year: Baylor beat No. 14 TCU 50-48 Friday night in a wild shootout in which TCU briefly retook the lead after trailing by 24 in the fourth quarter, but Baylor kicked a field goal in the final minutes to win. South Florida also upset No. 16 Notre Dame 23-20.

Other big news in college football: Texas A&M recently announced that they were looking to join a new conference, presumably the SEC. If A&M does leave, that will set a huge domino effect. Texas and Oklahoma are reportedly already in preliminary talks to join the Pac 12 along with Oklahoma State and Texas Tech. This would create the first 16 team football conference, and almost surely destroy the Big 12, leaving the former members scrambling to find new conferences. Since Texas A&M would be their thirteenth team, the SEC would also most likely look to expand, possibly inviting several ACC teams to join and setting off even more changes. Things could be very different by next season.

**Edit**
Texas A&M has been voted into the SEC unanimously by the member presidents, but will not be officially accepted until the SEC has assurance from all Big 12 schools that there will be no lawsuits.
http://espn.go.com/college-sports/story/_/id/6939017/texas-aggies-accepted-sec-legal-threat-delays-move

Got to post thing. ESPN's Gregg Easterbrook writes a weekly column every Tuesday after the weekend of NFL games called Tuesday Morning Quarterback. This week, he makes a hilarious relation of the Indianapolis Colts under Peyton Manning to the Golden Age of Narnia and the embarrassing walloping the Houston Texans gave them without Peyton as the Calormen invasion in TLB. Pretty funny, even if you don't agree with the analogy.

http://espn.go.com/espn/page2/story/_/i ... nfl-narnia

The local NFL team has managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in each of its 3 games so far this season (dominant first half performance followed by a second-half collapse)...but it's time for MLB playoffs anyway.

This week I visited friends in eastern Wisconsin, and one of our activities was attending one of the season-ending games at Miller Park in Milwaukee (it happens to be the one game of the 3 in the series that the Brewers lost). 'Twas great fun anyway.

We also watched TV the last nights of the season; the games determining the wild card spots and the playoff seedings were pretty exciting, with lots of extra innings.

I think I'll cheer for the Brewers in the NL playoffs (they host Arizona beginning tomorrow) and in the AL, I'll cheer for either Detroit (vs the Yankees) or Tampa Bay (which beat Texas 9-0 in their first game today).

Not that anyone besides me necessarily cares, but the World Gymnastics Championships are on this week, and the women's team final was this morning. I'm very pleased to report that my USA girlies won, quite convincingly!

So happy for them. They're such a young, new team (Aly Raisman is the only one who has competed at a Worlds before, and she's 17) and they had a really rough time getting to this spot, but they pulled out the win and I'm thrilled.

In other news, possibly my most favorite gymnast ever, Alicia Sacramone, injured her Achilies tendon right before Worlds and couldn't compete. I'm heartbroken for her...she was on track to making the Olympics next year, and now it's really unlikely.

Anyway, lots more events to come, and I may or may not post about them. I don't usually get to talk about gymnastics outside gymnastics forums, lol!

Has anyone else been watching the playoffs? I know Elanor is a Brewers fan and Princess Anna is a fellow Cardinals fan, is there anyone else who's team is still in it?

My brother and I have all of the Cardinals games. And little bits of some of the other games as well. The Cardinals/Brewers game on Monday was awesome! Albert Pujols was great.

SnowAngel

Good luck to the gymnasts! I enjoy reading your very knowledgeable reports, Gymmie. And the Olympics are less than a year away now.

SnowAngel, I'm cheering for the Brewers in the NLCS (sorry). I've been to a few of their games while visiting friends in Wisconsin and they're usually fun to watch.

In the ALCS I don't have a clear preference. Detroit is from my home team's division, and I think a Detroit-Milwaukee Series would be a good Midwest rivalry (but then, so would Detroit-St Louis).

The Chicago Bulls have canceled the entirety of their pre-season.

The Chicago Bulls have canceled the entirety of their pre-season.

Word on the street is that the NBA may not even have a season. Then again I haven't actively watched the NBA in many years.

I only got to watch the first game of NLCS since we don't get TBS, and we have to go to my grandparents to watch it. So far everything is going as I predicted (a jubilant win of the first game for the Brewers, and then two winds from the Cardinals), but now I'm a bit leary as to what happens next. I'm thinking Brewers will win, but I have no clue after that. Anyway, I'm hoping - you're the best, Milwaukee!
I've only missed one of the Packer's games so far (the 4th) and I'm kind of in a state of disbelief of how well they're doing. I thought they'd lose that last game, and goodness, they sure tried. Apparently the Defense was really good, but the Offense, I'm sorry, was stinking for the first half, anyway. But we won, as did the Lions, so still two undefeated teams! I'm hoping we outlive them, or at least we go down together.

This morning was the women's all-around at the World Championships, and it was VERY eventful. The battle for gold was pretty much between two gymnasts, Russian Viktoria Komova, an amazing gymnast who has tons of potential but has struggled in competition recently, and American Jordyn Wieber, who took home the gold with the USA team two days ago and has been completely on form.

The girls started out on vault where Jordyn took a fairly sizable lead due to having a more difficult vault. Things sort of fell apart on bars, though. Jordyn had a pretty big mistake and Vika hit, which not only made up the ground she'd lost on vault, but put her a whole point ahead. American Aly Raisman also had a pretty disastrous bars routine, which was particularly gutting for me since I love her and I'd really wanted her to do well in this AA since she'd had a pretty similar mistake last year.

Then they went to beam, where Vika underperformed and Jordyn hit. She was able to make up half a point on that event, which basically left the deciding factor down to the very last event, floor. If you're not familiar with gymnastics, you'll know that it is extremely rare for things to be that close towards the end. Usually the winner will have a fairly significant lead by the end of the first or second rotation, barring any mistakes.

Anyway, both girls did well on floor. Jordyn had a great routine aside from one out-of-bounds deduction, but Vika missed some crucial dance skills and had some wonky landings. Still, she didn't need a huge score to win, and I was pretty sure she'd done it.

Then her score came up, and she lost by .033 . It's one of the closest AA loss margins ever, and certainly the closest in recent history. As soon as the score flashed, both girls burst into tears; Jordyn because she was absolutely stunned that she'd won, and Vika because she'd thought she'd done enough to win.

All in all, it was the most intense gymnastics event I've ever witnessed, and it definitely kept my blood pumping at 4am this morning.

Jordyn cries after she's found out she's won.

Vika's reaction to placing second...poor thing. She's sixteen, but she acts so much younger. That's not to say she's immature or a bad sport; she's still very much a child.

Jo celebrating

Two-times World Champion, Jordyn Wieber!

Anyway, congrats to Jo! Bars notwithstanding, she did a great job today, and I'm very proud of her. Jordyn becomes only the 6th US woman to win the World AA; preceded by Kim Zmeskal, Shannon Miller, Chellsie Memmel, Shawn Johnson and Bridget Sloan.

For those who've been following the NFL, the Denver Broncos have named Tim Tebow as their starter. It's good time for him to get some reps since the pre-season practices were locked out and since Denver has a bye this week. We'll see how he does a week from Sunday.

I am heading for Albuquerque this weekend for a fencing tournament. I have no idea how I am going to do but it's going to be fun no matter what. I'll be competing in Epee on Saturday and Foil on Sunday.