Second thoughts
Russian shows Tebow money for two games
Tim Tebow can’t find work in the NFL, but there’s an American football team in Russia that says it will offer him $1 million for two games.
Mikhail Zaltsman, the owner of one of those teams, the Moscow Black Storm, told the state-owned Russia Beyond the Headlines that he wants Tebow. Zaltsman believes that if Tebow shows up in time to play in the semifinal of the American Football Championship of Russia on Sept. 28, Tebow can lead the team to a victory in the semifinal (against the Moscow Patriots) and then win again in the championship game. Zaltsman claims he personally spoke with Tebow, offered him more money than he would have made for playing a full season for the New England Patriots, and that Tebow wants to do it.
“We have offered him $1 million for two games,” Zaltsman told Russia Beyond the Headlines. “I talked with him personally and he wanted to go.”
Unfortunately, according to Zaltsman, Tebow’s agents are strongly urging him not to play.
Life beyond baseball
It took Jamie Moyer five decades to decide that he was finished as a pitcher. He said he has hardly missed it at all.
“I’m pretty proud of my garden,” Moyer said from his home in San Diego. “You can grow almost anything in California.”
It is fairly amazing that Moyer, who turns 51 in November, has time for his new hobby, given everything else he has done since his final game last season.
Moyer and his wife, Karen, run a foundation for children in distress. He recently took a two-week mission trip to Africa, with time for a safari and a beach vacation. He golfs. He keeps up with his son Dillon, a minor league infielder for the Los Angeles Dodgers; his two children in college; and his five still at home.
Last season, Moyer became the oldest pitcher ever to win a game, returning from reconstructive elbow surgery to win twice in 10 starts for the Colorado Rockies. He made an All-Star team and won a World Series, ranked 35th on the career list for victories, with 269, and did it with one of the slowest fastballs of his era.
Even though he played around with a knuckleball this summer, Moyer says he is done for now.
“Just being a guy that didn’t want to go away,” Moyer said, when asked how he wants to be remembered. “At 29, I was offered a coaching job. I wasn’t upset by it. I understood it. I wasn’t the prospect, I was the suspect. But I still felt I could contribute. If I didn’t think that, that’s 20 years of baseball I would have missed as a player.”
Name calling
It is a good thing San Francisco and Seattle are better at playing football than at providing clever bulletin-board material. Anthony Dixon, a backup 49ers running back, referred to the “She-Hawks” in a Twitter post last week. His former Mississippi State teammate K.J. Wright, now a Seattle linebacker, replied with a reference to the “Forty Whiners.”
“Each deleted his message,” wrote Benjamin Hoffman of The New York Times, “probably in reaction to criticism, but also potentially because the insults were terrible.”
Squawk talk
Australian skipper Jimmy Spithill of Oracle Team USA, to The Associated Press, when asked about his job security after his yacht’s woeful start in the America’s Cup: “You can be a rooster one day and a feather duster the next, mate.”