I drove over 2,000 miles in the last six days. I spent nearly eight hours stumbling through 170,000 mint julep-ed Derbygoers and managed to complete a circuit around the entire infield at Churchill Downs. I saw the Queen of England. I won cash money betting on Street Sense to win. I played pong outdoors and not once did I have to explain myself to an S&S officer. I witnessed 55-year old women sucking face with 22-year old Dartmouth students. I saw the most beautiful girl in Kentucky.
But none of the events of this past weekend could top the post-fight interviews after the Mayweather-De la Hoya bout on Saturday night. For $49.95, you too could have seen 12 rounds of De la Hoya trying to be quicker than he really was, and Mayweather doing exactly the opposite of what he said he would do on the HBO 24/7 series leading up to the fight. De la Hoya controlled the ring for the majority of the fight, and Mayweather did his usual dance around the ring and fought crouched down like he was scared of heights. Both fighters looked like they had just finished a few wind sprints after the 12-round fight that turned out to be everything but the "fight to save boxing," as Richard Hoffer of "Sports Illustrated" might have had you believe.
Instead, it was the fight to see how mentally handicapped the Mayweather family really is. Floyd Sr. was interviewed for five minutes after the fight and could not answer a single question. In fact, looking at the transcript of the interview, I'm hard pressed to find a complete thought to attribute to Floyd Sr. The younger Floyd's interview was equally outrageous, as he promised he was going to "retire" because he had "nothing left to prove," despite the fact that there are several undefeated challengers in his weight class. It's too bad De la Hoya couldn't connect with any of his flailing haymakers -- he might have knocked Mayweather back into reality. There is no doubt that Mayweather is the best pound-for-pound fighter in boxing, but after Saturday night he proved that he was also the most delusional fighter in boxing.
But enough about boxing and horse racing. It's time to move on to sports that aren't so clearly fixed and give out some awards for the week:
Fielder of the Weekend: Prince Fielder, 1B, Milwaukee Brewers
Despite the fact that Fielder plays for the Brewers, he somehow overcame the team's mediocrity to be named last week's National League player of the week. In that span he hit .440 with four home runs, 12 RBIs and scored eight runs -- pretty impressive. Last week's offensive explosion has Fielder leading all major league first basemen with nine home runs and boosted his season RBI total to 26, second among MLB first basemen.
Worst Visiting Clubhouse of the Weekend: New York Yankees
In an effort to curb their recent losing streak, the Yankees decided last Friday to remove all alcohol from their visitor's clubhouse after reports of losing teams "doming" themselves in the visitor's clubhouse surfaced. It was not until after four beer bongs, two unregistered kegs and a group of Coors Light marketing girls were removed from the visitor's clubhouse that Yankees manager Joe Torre voiced his dissenting opinion on the situation. "I'm not sure what the logic is behind this," Torre said. "We can't buy a win right now, and the only thing we had going for us was the hope that our opponents would drink the roofied beers before the game. Now we have to play sober opponents for the rest of the season, and I don't think our starting rotation of 43 pitchers is going to be very happy about facing batters who only see one baseball instead of three."
Dartmouth Award of the Weekend: ?
Well, this is usually the section of WOE where I give out an award to a Dartmouth athlete or athletic team deserving of some recognition. But considering the fact that nearly all of the major spring teams finished their seasons with abysmal records, I'm not really sure what to put here. So instead, I'm just going to urge everyone to play Jon Grecu '08 in pong sometime this week. He keeps trying to tell me he's the best player on campus and he won't shut up about it, so someone please just beat him so I can beak him next week. If you don't know him, see the picture above. He'll be at Chi Heorot all week.
