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Over the weekend, Louisiana-Lafayette won the Lafayette region of the NCAA Softball World Series Tournament after defeating Baylor 9-1 in the final game on Sunday. But prior to the team's first meeting on Saturday, the third game of the day, fans in attendance were told that because the game was the third of the day, there would be no national anthem prior to the start of the contest. Fans at Lamson Park was none too pleased, and after several failed attempts to get the public address announcer to play the song, fans took it upon themselves to sing "The Star-Spangled...

GAINESVILLE — The North Central Texas College softball team lined up on the third-base line Friday afternoon, each player resting her hand on the shoulder of the teammate in front of her. They stood like so, heads of ponytails and braids bowed, their red jerseys bold against the January gray, in a public moment of silence. The sting of grief has become familiar for this team since an 18-wheeler plowed into the Lady Lions’ team bus last September, killing four players, none yet 21. All 15 of the players riding in the bus and coach Van Hedrick, who started the...

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WAVY) - A teacher's assistant at Princess Anne High School has been charged with three felony offenses in the investigation of an online relationship with a minor. 26-year-old Kyle Noro is the suspect in an investigation that began Saturday afternoon when a father told police his juvenile daughter was in an online relationship with someone pretending to be a juvenile male, according to James Cason with the Virginia Beach Police Department. Cason said investigators discovered the suspect was Noro, a female teacher's assistant and softball coach at Princess Anne High School. The investigation also revealed the online...

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina - Making a solid case for its modernity despite being a core sport of the ancient Olympics, wrestling saved its place on the Summer Games program Sunday. Wrestling wiped its opponents off the mat, defeating baseball / softball and squash to gain the one open spot on the 2020 Olympic program and be assured of staying at least through 2024. It took just one round of voting by International Olympic Committee members for wrestling to get the needed majority. Wrestling got 49 votes to 24 for baseball / softball and 22 for squash.

They’re not playing ball. The IRS softball team has canceled their Friday game with Sen. John Cornyn’s staff, amid the still-evolving scandal of targeting conservative organizations. The game has not been rescheduled. By the way, the IRS’s team name? “The Cheetahs.” Cornyn (R-Texas) posted the cancellation announcement on Facebook Thursday morning:

Hi, with all those I chatted with about sports in the last few days or others I have a question, and as the mom of the girl involved I don't want to go off half crazy. My daughter was put in to play second base, starting. She's in jr high and plays at the JV level. She's normally a Pitcher but was obviously not Pitching. That's no excuse but here's what happened : (note: they ended up winning the game so that was good.). The score was 2-1 and the coach yelled out to check the runner back and go...

TULSA, Oklahoma - A Tulsa man picked the wrong SUV to burglarize early Friday morning. Tulsa Police say four women leaving a south Tulsa bar took the law into their own hands and caught Jonathon Ethriedge inside their SUV. The four college softball players were having a reunion of sorts at Baker's Street Pub near 71st and Memorial. When they left the bar at around 12:30 a.m., two of them noticed someone in their SUV. The man, 29-year-old Jonathon Ethriedge got out of the SUV and ran, but not before the four women caught up with him and held him...

Three members of an amateur San Francisco team who said they were branded "not gay enough" and stripped of their second-place finish at the Gay Softball World Series have settled their lawsuit against a national gay sports organization. Steven Apilado, LaRon Charles and Jon Russ, who were members of D2, a team that was part of the San Francisco Gay Softball League, will receive an undisclosed sum from the North American Gay Amateur Athletic Alliance and will get their second-place 2008 championship trophy back,

Direct Link FOX Headline: Palin Guts Obama: 'He Has Lied to the American Public and We're Saying Enough Is Enough'

"I keep wanting to ask you about the famous case of Edward versus Jacob... [but] I know you can't comment on future cases." -- Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), brazenly courting the Twi-hard vote, in her questioning of Elena Kagan at the confirmation hearing Wednesday. See the Klobuchar-Kagan video at 44.

This is old, it’s tiring, and it’s really starting to tick me off. Chris Matthews with Andrea Mitchell yesterday afternoon is promoting his upcoming special on “The New Right” and the Tea Party. Mitchell gives him the chance to promote the show … and Matthews feeds right into the lefty paranoia machine. “They’ve got guns. It’s scary.” I love the sound bites with the militia. I love the conflation. I love the way everyone in the Tea Party is framed as a group that wants to wrestle the government from the “enemy”, like the British? You have to watch to...

To girls in the 'hood, Elena Kagan rocks. Softball-playing sisters and lipstick lesbians who gather in Brooklyn's Park Slope have suffered years of intolerance, leading to a grudging acceptance. But now, life and style choices favored in gay corners of the Slope have become, remarkably, fashionable. Chic, even. So it was no surprise on a recent night in Ginger's Bar -- New York's sapphic central for ladies who love -- that President Obama's pick for the US Supreme Court was the subject of rip-roaring debate. "I'm proud," said Nancy Pagan, 32, who plays third base on a softball team called...

The recent nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court has been marked by an under-the-radar controversy about a photograph of her playing softball. Why is this so controversial? Is it because such a photo demonstrates that she is a subversive, and un-American? (After all, the saying is "as American as baseball," not softball.) Or is it that such a photo tends to be a bit of grandstanding by the left, rubbing the collective noses of the right in the fact that Socialist and Communist Senators will be lobbing nothing but softball questions at her during her coronation confirmation hearings?...

Supreme Court nominee's antitrust role, the Coyotes' future, and a Mark Cuban lawsuit To some people, "briefs" are what you wear instead of boxers. But not in our Courtside Seat. To some people, a "related party transaction" happens when it's time to pass the hat and collect the cash for the second keg before closing time. But not in our Courtside Seat. To some people, a "memorandum of understanding" is … well, even in our Courtside Seat, we can't see how a "memorandum of understanding" might apply to everyday existence. But it sounds like fun, doesn't it? It is here....

I believe Mcain missed the softball question at the end. What is it you don’t know and what will you do to find out. Mcain should have said, What I don’t know is;

Sports Illustrated’s Selena Roberts, when asked during an interview on the SI website about the future of softball as an Olympic competition on Thursday, added some liberal commentary into her prediction about the sport’s redemption: "One other wildcard for 2016 is the exit of the Bush administration. The undercurrent of anti-Americanism within the IOC, which some say has hurt the U.S. because of its softball dominance, may abate somewhat with a potential administration led by Barack Obama, a rock star in Europe."

SI.com: Give us your best guess: Will softball get reinstated for the 2016 Games? Roberts: I think there is great momentum right now to reinstate softball for 2016 due to a couple of important reasons: First, Asian countries have poured a lot of resources into women's softball. Japan is one example, and those countries have a lot of pull with the IOC. Second, I think America is doing the right thing in exporting its knowledge of the game by establishing clinics in Europe where there is more resistance toward the game of softball. One other wildcard for 2016 is the...

BEIJING - USA softball almost lost Wednesday. And this is what passes for exciting in this sport at the Olympics.Japan nearly scored an upset. How fun for them."That was softball at its best," U.S. coach Mike Candrea said. If that is truly the case, if a 4-1 victory in extra innings to extend Team USA's Olympic winning streak to 22 games is really the pinnacle, it is time for wrap-it-up sign. It has been fun, even entertaining at times, but it's time for softball to use this possibly permanent hiatus from The Game to fix what is obviously broken.A pitching...

BEIJING, China -- Already guaranteed a medal, but showing no signs of slowing down, the United States softball team cruised to a 9-0 rout of China on Monday. [...]The three U.S. pitchers -- Osterman, Finch and Monica Abbott -- have a 0.00 combined ERA in 39 innings pitched. The U.S. has outscored its opponents 53-1 in its seven games, with the only run allowed being an unearned tally by Canada last week.

Now no longer the center ring for the traveling Democratic presidential nomination circus, Pennsylvania's inventive political community has discovered a new favorite political parlor game to while away the brisk springtime evenings: will Chris Matthews, the irrepressible host of MSNBC's Hardball, step down from his pundits perch to run for the US Senate against Arlen Specter in 2010? To a remarkable degree, speculation abounds over this possibility in the Keystone State. The indications that Matthews will run are abundant. His MSNBC contract runs out next summer, and both he and the network show signs they might be ready for a...