Preamble

Webster’s dictionary defines champion as the winner of first prize or first place in a competition. Webster’s defines league as a group of sports teams that regularly play each other. Finally, Webster’s defines final as relating to the ultimate purpose or result of a process. This is why you don’t write lede paragraphs at 5 am in the morning.

The day has come for the champions of champions to be crowned in London. 180,000 German football fans are in the English capital to observe the most highly anticipated match of the season. Dortmund will be without talisman Mario Goetze. Jurgen Klopp could push İlkay Gündoğan into an attacking role in order to compensate for the absence of Judas Goetze. Bayern Munich is fully fit aside from long term injuries to Holger Badstuber and Toni Kroos.

Italian Nicola Rizzoli is your referee. He’s offciated big games before, including the 2010 UEFA Cup Final and three matches at Euro 2012. Rizzoli is an architect in his spare time.

Weather

15 degrees, clear skies and a 20% chance of rain. Expect rain.

The lineups

Bayern Munich Starting XI: Neuer; Lahm, Boateng, Dante, Alaba; Martinez, Schweinsteiger; Ribery, Muller, Robben; Mandzukic

Borussia Dortmund Starting XI: Weidenfeller; Piszczek, Subotic, Hummels, Schmelzer; Gundogan, Bender; Blaszczykowski, Reus, Grosskreutz; Lewandowski

Heath Bell fielding a ninth inning bunt off the bat of Will Venable went about as well as you could expect for someone with Heath Bell’s physique. The Diamondbacks beat the Padres 5-2, and Bell picked up his seventh save of the season. I’d like to say I appreciate his effort on this play, but I really just love watching portly men belly flop.

UPDATE: Earlier on Friday, Adrian Wojnarowski broke the news that the Nuggets had granted Tim Leiweke and MLSE permission to meet with Masai Ujiri about Toronto’s vacant General Manager position (you can find my reaction to that initial report in the original post below the asterisks). Late Friday night, Woj reported that “Ujiri will take the next couple days to fully consider the move,” but that the Raptors’ multi-year contract offer will likely lead to the reigning Executive of the Year’s departure from Denver.

Digging even deeper, Wojnarowski writes that the Kroenke family “doesn’t appear moved to make a competitive bid to hold onto him” and that citing a league source familiar with the talks, “Denver ownership ‘seems to be moving on.’”

As I had mentioned earlier on Friday, once the Nuggets granted the Raps permission to negotiate with Ujiri, the only real hurdle between MLSE and their coveted target was cleared. Based on these latest updates via Yahoo! Sports, I’d be surprised if there isn’t a reported deal in place by the time we wake up Monday morning, if not sooner.

I suppose nothing is really done until it’s done (as Raptors fans have learned in the past), but still, you’d have to assume that part of the reason the Kroenkes even allowed the Raptors to speak with Ujiri and part of the reason they don’t sound too eager to get into a bidding war for his services, is that he probably let them know he was interested in the Toronto job. I’m aware that Stan Kroenke has a reputation for undervaluing his front office staff, but in this case, would you want to start throwing massive sums of money around for a guy who may have admitted he now wants to be elsewhere?

On a final note, an interesting couple of quotes on the situation from Josh Kroenke in The Denver Post: First, while everyone knows by now that Ujiri’s contract expires on June 30, Kroenke told The Post that the Raptors position opened up as he and Ujiri were finalizing the details on a multi-million dollar, multi-year deal that had been agreed to in principle.

Here are two quotes from Kroenke in that aforementioned Denver Post story…

“In my mind, we had an agreement but it doesn’t matter because I would never hold someone back from an opportunity they might be curious about. Especially someone I hold in such high regard as Masai.”

“If it was any other team, I wouldn’t even have thought about granting permission to speak to him.”

(Again, you can read my thoughts on the original Friday afternoon report and some thoughts on the GM search in general below)

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The French Open has always held a sacred place in this tennis fan’s heart. Parisians aren’t like you or I. Fact is, they’re better. Whether it’s smoking cigarettes in the stands or vociferously booing players for no discernible reason, they do things their own way. Refined jerks add so much more to the sporting landscape with their hooting and demonstrative  sighing than the casual fan. The game – nay, the world – would be worse off without them.

Here’s looking at you, Satan.

We head into the second major of the year with less questions to answer than expected. Rafael Nadal’s knees have withstood the rigors of the European clay court season. Serena Williams dispatched Victoria Azarenka with ease in Rome, proving the only person who stands a chance of stopping Serena from winning her second French Open title is Serena herself. The favorites have made an impressive case, one so strong that seeing someone other than Nadal and Williams leave Roland Garros with a garish trophy and fat check in hand will be quite surprising.

It’s the ‘others’ that will intrigue in Paris. The others being the group of players that have a shot – however fleeting – at knocking off the overwhelming favorites. On the men’s side three names come to mind, all with their own personal demons when it comes to taking down Rafa on clay, let alone at a major. Roger Federer will need divine intervention to win it all, and no, Robin Soderling is not walking through that door. Novak Djokovic is the only hope for the anti Rafa crowd and he’s coming off an uncharacteristic loss to Tomas Berdych. The Czech big man could be this year’s Soderling. Unfortunately the words ‘could be ‘ have been synonymous with Berdych’s career up until this point.

On the women’s side there is slightly more belief. Serena bowed out in the first round last year, losing to Virginie Razzano in one of the biggest upsets in French Open history. Azarenka will be there at the end, as will Maria Sharapova. Unfortunately for those two their head-to-head numbers against Williams are terrible (4-25 combined).

Two weeks in Paris awaits.

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I’m not sure how many times I’ve mentioned that it’s May. But, well, it’s May, and therefore whenever a head coach or player of prominence says something with a statistical prediction attached to it, fantasy fiends begin wondering and imaging. Most of all, we begin discussing, and that’s what we do around here. We talk about stuff.

Yesterday, Aaron Rodgers provided our wandering minds with a nice little jumping off point, and another reason for Randall Cobb infatuations everywhere to grow.

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I think this nicely sums up how Jonathan Toews has been feeling in playoffs these days. C’mon dude, Zetterberg seems like a swell gent.

(S/t Austin1227)

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It’s Friday afternoon aka time to head over to YouTube and check out some game glitches for humor. These were some of the best recent one’s that we’ve come across, so feel free to send us some of your favorite glitches via Twitter.

The long and awkward fall (NHL 13)

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Click here for a full-sized version of this newspaper clipping from a 1972 recap of a game between the Bucks and SuperSonics, then please explain to me why Kareem-Abdul Jabbar didn’t change his shorts at halftime. Even Kevin Seraphin isn’t that silly.

(via Uni Watch)