Hitting Finch a cinch?
Basketball's James wants to try his luck
The Olympics have produced many terrific showdowns through the years.
Nancy Kerrigan vs. Tonya Harding. Rulon Gardner vs. Alexander Karelin. Michael Phelps vs. Ian Thorpe. Now comes one that will knock the glasses right off the top of Bud Greenspan's head.
LeBron James vs. Jennie Finch. Never mind they don't play the same sport.
The 6-foot-8-inch basketball playersays he can hit one of Finch's 70-mile-per-hour pitches.
The gold-medal winning American softball player thinks James has a better chance of catching up to Puerto Rico than her fastball.She is a member of the most dominating pitching staff in Olympic history, one that yielded just one run in nine games.
"All I would need is three pitches," Finch said. "I've gotten the scouting report . . . I'd even throw a changeup on the first pitch."
Sounding like the Bobby Riggs of his generation, James did not back down from his bold claim yesterday.
"She couldn't strike me out." James said after scoring 11 points in a win over Angola. "None of them could. Not her, not the backup, not the coach, not the pitching coach. None of them."
US softball staff ace Lisa Fernandez also didn't give James much of a chance.
"I'm not sure why LeBron James would even think he could hit Jennie or any other fast-pitch softball pitcher. He ought to start on a tee first and elevate his game."
Steroids found
Small amounts of anabolic steroids were found in a warehouse used by the coach of two Greek sprinters at the center of a doping scandal, government officials said.
The search of coach Christos Tsekos's facilities last week was part of an investigation into whether 2000 Olympic medalists Kostas Kenteris and Katerina Thanou tried to avoid a doping test on the eve of the Athens Games.
A prosecutor and two government inspectors confiscated 641 boxes of food supplements and found that more than 1,000 of the supplements listed ephedrine -- a banned substance -- as the main ingredient. Also found was a small batch of medicine with steroids that came from the United States, Bulgaria, and Germany, according to Greece's National Organization of Medicines. It didn't say what kind of steroids they were. The Greek athletes denied taking banned substances, but withdrew from the Olympics.
Focused on Iraq
Argentina-Italy may look like a premier soccer matchup -- but most eyes are on a team in today's other Olympic semifinal.
Iraq has overcome unprecedented problems to get within one game of the gold medal match. It has to beat another outsider, Paraguay, to reach the final.
"This success is very important for our people in Iraq," coach Adnan Hamad told reporters on the eve of the semifinal in Thessaloniki. "Every day we have one more win, they have more celebration. They are with us here."
With bombings and shootings a daily occurrence back home, Iraq's players try to use soccer to take their minds off their wartorn homeland -- but it's not easy. "To be honest, when we are winning we are still worried about our people back home in Iraq -- their circumstances and their difficulties and the daily problem they face and all the fighting," Hamad said.
Weight a minute
A prosecutor started an investigation into claims that Greek weightlifter Leonidas Sampanis, stripped of his bronze medal for doping, could have been slipped a banned substance without his knowledge . . . Don't count on seeing any major league stars in the Olympics while Bud Selig is baseball commissioner. Selig, who last week received a three-year extension through 2009, said that a delay in the big league season for players to participate in the Olympics would be too disruptive. "You can't stop a pennant race," he said . . . Australia's prime minister John Howard urged the country's women's rowing team to pull together and stop a bitter squabble sparked by a member's collapse during the final. Howard said he didn't want to take sides, but he urged the team to unite for the sake of national pride. With about 600 meters left in Sunday's 2,000-meter final, an exhausted Sally Robbins -- considered one of the team's most powerful rowers -- slumped backward and let her oar dangle in the water. The boat finished last. Robbins said that after the race, "I had some pretty hard words thrown at me." She told Australia's Seven Network that one unidentified teammate threatened to throw her out of the boat, and that others refused to speak to her.
