Justin Timberlake

After a wayward 3rd shot on the 17th hole at St. Andrews, Miguel Angel Jimenez gave us a shot that one wouldn't even attempt at mini golf for fear of injury, much less at the biggest golf tournament of the year. Stuck almost flush against a stone barrier, Jimenez showed some outside-the-box thinking and turned his back to the hole, ricocheted his shot off the wall and somehow managed to land the ball on the green. His playing partner's reaction pretty much says it all.

Meanwhile, we would like to make a bit of an abstract analogy, if you will follow along. We reveled in John Daly's dinner attire at the Champions dinner. If you can believe it, he ramped it up a notch when he actually hit the course. We maintain that these pants are the wardrobe equivalent of Jimenez's golf shot. Who's with us?

Pretty in pink. (Getty Images)

Tiger Woods, eat your heart out. (Getty Images)

George Steinbrenner, owner of the New York Yankees, died Tuesday morning of a heart attack. His name is synonymous with the New York Yankees, baseball's glamour franchise. But it wasn't always that way. The man known simply as 'The Boss' bought the team in 1973 for a little less than $9 million. At last estimate, the Yankees have been valued at around $1.2 billion (with a 'b'), with a new stadium and a cable television network devoted entirely to the team and its doings. He was blustery, totally unreasonable at times, and ruled with an iron fist. But the Yankees enjoyed 11 pennants and 7 World Series championships under his watch, so it's hard to argue with his methods.

"Show me a good loser and I'll show you a loser," he told '60 Minutes' in a 1987 interview. That was Steinbrenner.

His life reads like any other, we suppose... He made his money in shipping, then bought a stale Yankees franchise from CBS, as part of an investment group. He quickly started running the show, with or without his investment group's approval, demanding the team's training facility be run like a boot camp, forbidding his players to wear beards or long hair, once benching star first basemen Don Mattingly for refusing to cut his hair.

He fired managers whenever he felt like. He fired Yogi Berra 16 games into the '85 season. And he played yo-yo with Billy Martin's career, who served as Yankee manager five different times through the 70's and 80's, which inspired this famous Seinfeld spoof.

He made illegal campaign contributions to Richard Nixon in 1974, which led to one of two suspensions from baseball. The other was when he hired a private investigator to dig up dirt on newly acquired right fielder Dave Winfield over a contract dispute.

Steinbrenner and Winfield, 1989. (AP, via NYTimes)

His insatiable pursuit of big-name players led Major League Baseball to implement revenue sharing to try to curtail his outlandish spending, but it only seemed to egg him on. He consistently outbid other teams for the game's best players. After one particularly heated bidding war over Cuban pitcher Jose Contreras, which of course the Yankees won, Boston Red Sox president Larry Lucchino called Steinbrenner's Yankees 'The Evil Empire.' In 2009, three of the four highest paid players in baseball manned the Yankee infield. Yankee fans, on the other hand, don't seem to mind.

"Hello? Big-named player? Come play for me." (AP)

From the beginning, Steinbrenner believed the Yankee brand was something very valuable, and grew it to where it stands now -- a veritable empire. He was the first to realize that the actual games were a sellable commodity, and sold broadcast rights to local channel MSG, initially, before the real stroke of genius: starting his own cable network (The YES Network). Regional sports networks have since popped up all over the country. George Steinbrenner turned the Yankees into the model sports franchise.

Well, it happened. Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, LeBron James have colluded to form a Dream Team in Miami. (Getty)

Word leaked early Thursday that LeBron James had rented a block of villas at the W Hotel in Miami to celebrate his arrival [are we the only ones who find it amusing that sports giant ESPN got scooped by a bunch of bellhops spilling the beans to US Weekly?]. Still, residents of Cleveland, New York, and to a lesser extent New Jersey, held out hope that LeBron would grace them with his talents for the foreseeable future.Then, official word came, via his hour long infomercial on ESPN last week, that he'd be joining Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh in Miami.

Cleveland owner Dan Gilbert was, as you can imagine, none too pleased. In a letter released just hours after James made his announcement, Gilbert called James' decision a "cowardly betrayal," and then slipped into borderline delusional territory, writing (yes, in all caps): "I PERSONALLY GUARANTEE THAT THE CLEVELAND CAVALIERS WILL WIN AN NBA CHAMPIONSHIP BEFORE THE SELF-TITLED FORMER ‘KING' WINS ONE." With what army, exactly, remains to be seen.

In fairness, Gilbert was simply voicing the bitter disappointment of a community that considered James one of their own. He was born and bred in Akron, OH, played his high school ball there, and electrified his hometown Cavaliers before his contract allowed him to leave for greener pastures. Cleveland is not taking this breakup so well...

What does this mean for the NBA? Well, the Miami Heat are absolutely scary. They have three of the best players on the planet, and just signed 3-point specialist Mike Miller to stretch the floor. Not to mention that Pat Riley should announce any minute now that he will descend from his cushy boardroom and coach, basically, an Olympic team.

"Psst... This is gonna be hella fun." (Getty Images)

As you can see in this Sony video, Justin and Peyton got a special tour of the new Sony 3DTV technology a while back. A bit envious? No worries! Sony is giving several of you lucky world citizens the unique opportunity to get a special 3DTV exper...

It's the Summer that NBA teams have been waiting for. The Knicks and Nets have suffered through some abysmal seasons, trading away whatever big-money [read: good] players they could, in the interest of clearing enough salary cap space in preparati...

David Villa has scored five goals in this World Cup, making him the tournament's leading scorer. His latest score put tournament favorite Spain in the semifinal for the first time ever, with a 1-0 victory over Paraguay, which pretty much makes Vil...

With the summer days flying by, Justin will soon host the Justin Timberlake Shriners Hospitals for Children Open on Oct. 18-24, 2010. Set at the scenic TPC Summerlin golf course in Las Vegas, the annual event will raise money for the Shriner's Hos...

FIFA President Sepp Blatter has apparently softened on his stance that technology has no place in football -- a new, reasonable stance that hopefully marks a new age for an organization that has been notoriously stubborn and unreceptive to the desires of its participating players, coaches, and billions of fans around the world.

Blatter: "Yes our refs have been bad, wanna fight about it?" (Photo: Reuters, via theglobeandmail)

The refereeing has been a point of contention for much of this World Cup -- with disgraceful behavior going unnoticed, and innocent behavior punished harshly, and in some cases changing the course of matches. We all remember the Ghana player who fell on his own and writhed around for 3 minutes to waste time, while the US tried desperately to score a tying goal. Or the Ivory Coast player who bumped into Kaka on Brazil, then went down holding his face, and got Kaka thrown out of the match...

But beyond the [really unwatchable] flopping and diving, the objective black-and-white mechanisms of the game aren't being honored, with legitimate goals being overlooked or disallowed for no reason. Thankfully, it seems goal-line technology, at the very least, will be open for discussion. “It is obvious that after the experiences so far at this World Cup," Blatter said, "it would be nonsense not to reopen the file on goal-line technology.”

It was this goal from England -- in its 4-1 loss to Germany -- that is front and center in this controversy. The mistake is most egregious, given that there was no acceptable reason for [presumably] trained professionals on the sport's biggest stage should miss such a clear goal. It was more than a foot beyond the goal line, and would have tied the match at 2 going into halftime.

If the ball crosses the goal line, and no ref is there to see it... (Photo: via The Mirror)

Unfortunately, Blatter will not budge on anything but goal line technology -- meaning no offsides reviews, no reviews of red cards or any other penalties that occur in the field of play. So his apology to Mexico? Kind of hollow. But baby steps, we guess...

Heartbreak for the US. I guess the real question is, "Cubs fans: How do you live this way?" (Photo: ALESSANDRO BIANCHI / Reuters) After a thrilling victory that vaulted the US World Cup soccer team to the round of 16, US dreams were dashed by a ...

Landon Donovan celebrates his game-winning goal. (AP) With the US on the brink of elimination, Landon Donovan scored the goal of his life on Wednesday, with a rebound shot in stoppage time that propelled Team USA to a 1-0 victory over Algeria. Hi...