What Happened Today? 6/16/08 Or: Tiger Flips the Script

Usually, it's complete domination. The inevitable playoff charge followed by the opponent cowering in Tiger's wake.

Today, it was neither. Rocco Mediate, an unlikely competitor (he would've been the oldest first-time major champion ever), played very well in the 18-hole playoff, and Tiger looked highly uneven. Mediate did struggle late with some bunker shots, but contrary to his usual work, Tiger did not roar forward and destroy the universe. Maybe he wasn't even capable of it with his bad knee. But Mediate was given extra chances all over the place, and ultimately, it was Rocco himself that handed out the extra chance when he missed an entirely makeable putt that would've clinched the Open on the 18th hole. He followed that by a disaster of a sudden death playoff in which he beached his first shot, then put his 2nd nearly into the gallery, forcing him to take a drop. Tiger easily two-putted in for the title.

In the end, it was major No. 14, and I'm guessing the great one takes a month off before the British Open after this trying endeavor. He clearly was not 100 percent.

Elsewhere:

The completely insane Hank Steinbrenner. Chien-Ming Wang of the Yankees will be out until at least September after hurting his foot running the bases yesterday at Houston. This is not the major news. Hank Steinbrenner took the opportunity to blast the NL for playing without the DH. "My only message is simple. The National League needs to join the 21st century," Steinbrenner said. "That was a rule from the 1800s." Well, the AL didn't have the DH until 1972, and for another thing, Hank, the FREAKING FIRST RULE OF BASEBALL in the book is that baseball is a game of "9 against 9". What the AL is doing is technically not even baseball. This is why I'm an NL fan pretty much exclusively.

Everything else that happened today in baseball is here.

Draft business. Mario Chalmers of Kansas will stay in the draft. So will Joe Alexander of West Virginia, whose stock skyrocketed in the final month and a half of the season. But the big news is that three Tar Heels - Ty Lawson, Wayne Ellington and Danny Green - are coming back...this sounds like a UNC title in 2009.

More Euro-madness. If you weren't flipping back to ESPN2 here and there while the U.S. Open playoff was going on, you missed out on a classic Euro 2008 game. Turkey's Nihat Kahveci scored two goals in less than two minutes (87th and 89th minute) to lead his team into the quarterfinals with a dramatic 3-2 win over the Czech Republic. The first goal came when Czech goalkeeper Petr Cech flubbed a ball coming right at him straight into Kahveci's foot, then the Turk fired a perfect shot into the very top of the net in the 89th minute.

The Last Word: I have to give it to Mike Mussina, talking about the 'plight' of AL pitchers playing with no DH: "We run in straight lines most of the time. Turning corners, you just don’t do that.”