Weekend Potpourri (Early Sunday Edition)

Why do the Cubs fight so often? Derrek Lee charges the mound (Loser with Socks)
I don’t think that Lee actually punched the 6′10″ Chris Young, classic Cubs failure.

Kobe Wants Out Again? Don't Call It a Flop. (FanIQ Sports Blog)
Perhaps some teams have floppers in the front office too.

Mark Cuban Is So Rich He Can Sneeze On Hot Chicks And Still Pick Them Up (Parlayer)
For 1.8 billion dollars you can get a semi-boob grab in without much resistance.

1988 Flashback: Ric Flair explains why he's better than Dale Murphy and Herschel Walker (The Sports Hernia)
Ric Flair, 47-time World Champion and Hernia Hero, spits truth bombs.

Watson ties IL record with 42-game hitting streak (AP)
Brandon Watson extended his hitting streak to 42 games.

Bill Parcells Has Something To Say To All You Fathers Out There (Awful Announcing)
Bill Parcells actually imparts some good advice about raising kids.

ABC News Exclusive: 'If I Did It': O.J's Daughter's Idea (ABC)
A federal judge has awarded the rights to "If I Did It'' to the Goldman family.

Amanda Beard playboy signing (ShoutFan)
Enjoy.

As If We Needed Another Reason To Like Amanda Beard

Posing nude in Playboy automatically makes you one of our favorite women sports stars, but now Amanda Beard is moving even higher up in our rankings as she professes to be a big fan of all things, Ultimate Fighting.

From SI:

[Says Beard,] I switched to an advertisement for a UFC pay-per-view featuring Royce Gracie. I didn't know anything about it but it looked cool so I said, 'Why not?' and ordered it. I was instantly hooked. I couldn't stop watching it. I immediately became a fan and I wanted to learn everything about it. It's been more than a year now and I'm still learning.

Awesome. A hot chick who digs fighting and likes to take her clothes off. Does it get any better than that?

Luckily, I found a boyfriend who liked it as well, so I didn't have to be that girl sitting in her house watching it by herself.

Ohhhhhhhhhh. Point deduction - Miss Beard - boyfriend violation. Yeah, it must have been realllly hard to find a guy who likes the UFC and also wants to date a hot, female athlete. She must have had to look for at least 10 seconds to find a guy like that.

At least she is legitimately into the fights. She even has her own top five fights list. Hey, Amanda, when you lose the boyfriend, drop us an email, huh? We wouldn't want you to have to waste a lot of time searching for another guy who likes Ultimate Fighting.

Amanda Beard Wants Danica, Anna, And Maria To Drop Their Tops

In an interview with SI's Richard Deitsch, Amanda Beard was asked what other female athletes she thought would be good fodder for Hef and his nudie mag. (In case you just returned from a third-world country and don't know, she is in the upcoming issue of Playboy.) Her response was pretty on the mark, I think.

Anna Kournikova, Maria Sharapova and Danica Patrick. Anna is gorgeous. And Danica is a bad-ass chick. She has a lot of male fans, so she would be perfect.

I would add Ashley Force, Natalie Gulbis, Ashley Harkleroad, and pretty much anyone on The Big Picture's Would You Do? Athlete list.

As for what events she is targeting at the 2008 Olympics, she says "the 100 breaststroke, 200 breaststroke, and the 200 IM, and then be put on a relay."

Breaststroke... Yeah, I'll just let that settle in your mind for a little bit.

Oh yeah, SPORTSbyBROOKS HAS SFW PHOTOS OF AMANDA'S PLAYBOY SPREAD.
Thought you might be interested. Toodles.

The Constant Variety Of Sports: 50.0% Suspicious

London 2012 Olympics Logo launched in a blaze of moblogging... and no-one can read it (Shiny Shiny)

As blogs everywhere are beating news websites and print media to the punch, these pics from the dedicated moblog were possibly the first to be published. There's no denying it - the stylised "2012" Tiswas disaster is virtually unreadable, and tells us some pretty scary things about the focus group's attitude to technology.

Wie plays pro-am, still undecided on LPGA Championship (AP)

Michelle Wie played in the pro-am Monday at the LPGA Championship and worked briefly with her swing coach, and her agent said there was a "good chance" the 17-year-old would play in the second major of the year. Wie, who sat out four months with injuries to both wrists, withdrew after 16 holes of the Ginn Tribute last week in South Carolina, citing her wrists.

Is It Really Back On? (Dlisted)

According to US Weekly, they contacted NBC and Posh's rep and they both deny those reports telling them that, “Victoria [Beckham] has not pulled out of the TV show, She has had so much fun filming the show but it is true that she took last week off and is taking this week off to look after the boys and support David. However, she will be back in L.A. in mid-June to continue filming. It’s completely up to the network how long and in what format they decide to broadcast the show.”

We pillory Bonds; why not Clemens? (Sun)

Popular sentiment goes like this: Follow Barry Bonds' home run chase with pitchforks and protest signs, but please take off your hats and give Roger Clemens your undivided attention. We willingly demonize one and lionize the other. At the same time Bud Selig wrings his hands over whether he'll watch Bonds break Hank Aaron's home run record, we've curiously chosen to celebrate Clemens' return to the diamond.

CVS BONUS!
From SI Extra Mustard comes the cover shot of the upcoming Amanda Beard Playboy issue.

I can hardly wait to read the Bruce Willis interview.

Super News: Amanda Beard Is Answering Our Prayers

Rumor has it that swimming hottie, three-time Olympian, and seven-time medalist Amanda Beard is going to pose for Playboy. Yes!

According to Timed Finals,

A reliable source has told me that Beard has decided to finally appear in the magazine, and will do so in five weeks.

Not everyone is as happy as we are though.

What upsets some people like Dr. Mary Jo Kane, director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport at the University of Minnesota, as she told the New York Daily News, is that "It used to be that female athletes were portrayed as wholesome, All-American girls. Now you get female athletes in GQ, Playboy and the Swimsuit issue. The result of it is coverage that is very damaging—that trivializes and marginalizes women athletes because it does not give them the respect they deserve as competent athletes."

Yeah, and David Beckham is popular strictly because of his soccer skills, right?

(The Tip: With Leather)