Get the tuck out

The NFL rule that made Al Davis scream at the top of his lungs, "Mother tucker… MOTHER TUCKER!!!" is no more.

Ok, it's doubtful Davis ever yelled those words, but there is no doubt the "Tuck Rule," as it came to be known, played a significant role in NFL history, most notably on a snow-covered field in Foxboro, Mass., during the 2002 AFC Divisional Round playoff game between the Oakland Raiders and New England Patriots.

You know what happened, so there's no need to go over the details.

If Davis were still with us, he'd be elated, but probably still cursing, to know NFL owners, at their annual meeting in Phoenix, voted 29-1 Wednesday to eliminate the controversial and, if you ask me, stupid rule. Apparently 29 NFL owners also deemed the rule stupid, for lack of (read: laziness of trying to find) a better word.

The Redskins, for this reason, and the Patriots, understandably, abstained from voting. The Pittsburgh Steelers voted to keep the "Tuck Rule." Why, Steelers? Why?

Meanwhile, the Raiders official Twitter feed needed only 17 characters, well shy of the 140 limit, to express the team's sentiments:

Adios, Tuck Rule.
— OAKLAND RAIDERS (@RAIDERS) March 20, 2013

It was only five days ago, when speculation was the "Tuck Rule" was in danger of extinction, that the tweeting Raiders had this to say:

Tuck Rule? It’s been 11 years, 1 month and 23 days…but who’s counting? twitter.com/RAIDERS/status…
— OAKLAND RAIDERS (@RAIDERS) March 14, 2013

Raining Champions

The Dominican Republic battled through a persistent rain Tuesday night to take a 3-0 win over Puerto Rico and capture the World Baseball Classic title in soggy conditions at San Francisco's AT&T Park.

True to the weather forecast, rain began falling as the two Caribbean neighbors played in the fourth inning, just about the time I finished tucking my kids into bed and tuned into the game. How lucky can a sports/weather blogger get, right?

(I had to toss in that last bit of information because this post was beginning to sound a bit too newsy.)

Anyway, the rain proved to be only a minor inconvenience, probably more so to the 35,703 fans than to the ballplayers. However, as the wet stuff continued to fall, Dominican Republic pitcher Samuel Deduno did ask for the grounds crew to work on the front of the mound. He also had a pitch slip out of his hand during the frame.

Deduno, who struck out five in five scoreless innings, got some help from center fielder Alejandro De Aza who made a nice catch on a long drive during perhaps the heaviest part of the rain. The catch enabled Deduno to get out of the inning in which he had issued two walks.

MLB.com has a photo gallery containing a handful of rainy night shots.

Earthquakes and laziness make for a suboptimal blog post

Where does a short video of a 4.7 earthquake striking during a live Tennis Channel broadcast fit into a sports weather blog? Hmmmm. I'm not sure it does, but I'm posting the video anyway. Why? Because it's mildly interesting to say the most.

And in case you missed it, a sinkhole swallowed a guy on a golf course, but the golfer is ok. I think this happened in Illinois, but I'm not sure and I haven't done the research. Man, I'm lazy today.

And I'm sure there were a handful of rained out or snowed out college baseball games today.

That's your sports weather blog update for the moment. Enjoy the new pope.

Corner flood

The header atop this video claims this is the "worst conditions for a corner kick ever."

Really?

Could there not be worse conditions for this Kazakhstan first division league match between Ekibastuz and Alamaty? What if the field suddenly caught fire? They'd postpone the match, you say? Well, they certainly didn't deem a corner flooded to Biblical proportions postponement worthy here.

How about if a group of tigers suddenly ran onto the pitch and sat right on the corner, waiting for a brave footballer to dare set the ball down in their newly proclaimed domain?

Get my point? This probably isn’t the worst conditions for a corner kick, but tell me: What the heck is going on here?

After some cool soccer-style ingenuity, two players – I don't know which team – managed to kick the ball out of the more-than-ankle-deep water and into play. But wouldn't you know it, some goofball sends the ball sailing right back into the lake.

Beautiful!

That's the kind of stuff that used to happen in the backyards of my neighborhood in the 80s.  

No one is making it rain in Manchester

If you're stuck in the office today, like me, keeping track of the Manchester United vs. Real Madrid Champions League match today on your computer and wondering to yourself, "Hmmmm, is weather playing factor at Old Trafford today? Will Renaldo slip and fall on his arse?"

These are good questions to ask because for about month, it seemed like every time I tuned the TV to a Premier League match, snow or rain, or both, were falling from the sky and soaking the pitch. So it's reasonable to think there's a good chance of precipitation for today's match.

In reality, however, there's only a six percent chance of rain according to the Manchester weather forecast, with temperatures dipping to about 44.

#gounited

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I love live street cameras, particularly this one outside Wrigley Field.

As Chicago braces for a storm that is expected to drop 4-8 inches of snow by Tuesday night, just a few short weeks before the opening day of the 2013 Major League Baseball season, today would be a good day to pull up the street cam on your laptop or tablet or whatever and watch the snow pile up on the street in front of the legendary field.

That is unless you're at work. We don't won't to slow your roll at work today by encouraging you to sit at your desk, drink loads of coffee and watch snow fall.

By the way, the above screen grab was taken at about 9:24 Central time this morning.

One more thing: Could someone clean the rain/ice off the Arch Cam in St. Louis? Thanks!

Update: The weather guy on HLN just said Chicago could get up to 10 inches of snow from this storm. Wow. Keep you eyes on that Wrigley Field cam, unless you live in Chicago. In that case, get to work. As my wife says: the snow is not going to shovel itself!