And you’ve never heard of them.

Real Salt Lake went into the final weekend of the MLS season needing a whole bunch of results to go their way in order to make the playoffs. They took care of their own business, annihilating local rival Colorado Rapids, but that was only one step of a 5-piece parlay the Utah team needed to reach the postseason. And, improbably, every piece fell into place.

There really isn’t any good way to compare how lucky Salt Lake even was to make the playoffs. The closest metaphor I can come up with would be if last season’s Tampa Bay Rays made the playoffs. Not a great team, hardly even a good team, but somehow the math worked out in their favor.

Of course, in baseball, squeaking into the playoffs usually means you’re rewarded with the toughest opponent on the slate. MLS is much the same way – Salt Lake’s four-leaf clover gave them a date with the Columbus Crew, last season’s MLS Cup Champions and this season’s best team in record. But Salt Lake became the little team that could, beating Columbus in both halves of the two-game series to earn a spot in the Eastern Conference Finals. (I know, “Eastern Conference Finals” and Salt Lake City? MLS has a strange process that lets the best 8 teams qualify, regardless of conference. They get broken into East and West after that.)

But even beating the champs left them with a match against the Chicago Fire, who had dispatched the New England Revolution in their Eastern Conference Semifinal matchup. The game was in Chicago, where massive supporters groups light flares and hurl streamers and dance and sing for 90 minutes solid, all in an effort to intimidate the away team.

And somehow, despite having just barely made it into the playoffs in the first place, the Rocky Mountain gang pulled it off. After a full 90-minute game and 30 minutes of overtime, nobody had scored. So the Eastern Conference Championship would go to the team that could best win in penalty kicks.

Here’s another baseball reference for you. Imagine penalty kicks as being like a Home Run Derby. Only the Home Run Derby counts, and they use it instead of extra innings. That’s what the pressure is like.

Remarkably, Salt Lake goalkeeper Nick Rimando (”moonpie” to his detractors in fanbases around the league) stopped three of the penalty shots he faced in a Herculean effort that saw this season’s Cinderella through to the championship.

But two household names are waiting to smash the glass slipper. Landon Donovan, David Beckham, and the rest of the Los Angeles Galaxy will take on the “Eastern Conference Champion” Real Salt Lake in the MLS Cup Final November 22nd in Seattle. L.A. will be a heavy favorite, but so was Chicago. And so was Columbus.

And so were the four teams Salt Lake leapfrogged on the last weekend of play.

For once, the Cinderella story might not end at midnight. It might carry through to next season.

Police Maj. Muthanna Khalid says a striker from the Buhairat amateur team was facing only the goalie during a Sunday match in Hillah when a supporter of the rival Sinjar club shot him in the head in the final minute of play.

PHOTO CAPTION:  An Iraqi soccer player plays soccer in full uniform.

Sinjar was leading 1-0 when the shooting occurred. Khalid said a spectator was arrested.

This is nothing to joke about…

…but the Golden State Warriors are exploring this defensive tactic after giving up 154 points in regulation time to the Phoenix Suns last night.

It has been confirmed that the shooter was not football analyst Cris Carter and the player was not current Buffalo Bill Terrell Owens.

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So yeah, it looks like the United States will qualify for the World Cup so that they can disappoint millions of Americans on the global stage…again.. Well done.

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A round ball will never fit into a square goal:

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We’d rather just shut it down than to run a boring, poorly updated blog, which is what OTR is starting to become.

We can’t thank all of our readers enough. You guys have all been great and we had a ton of fun playing with everyone. Maybe we’ll do it again some day. We could have just let the blog die slowly and not update it, but that’s not fair to anyone. We thought we would give OTR a proper burial by at least letting everyone know that we are calling it quits.

Memorial services will be held Sunday, December 21st at 2 PM at the Lodi, NJ YMCA.

You can send thoughts and regards to MPerry_77@hotmail.com and MicahW@feverpitchmedia.com.

Happy Holidays to all of those in OTR land!!

And guess what?  It worked.  The three Cantania players dropped their shorts (to their knees) during a kick by fellow teammate Giuseppe Mascara.  Torino goalie Matteo Sereni couldn’t see the kick and the ball found the net.  The goal ended up being the difference in Cantania’s 3-2 victory.  

This got me thinking.  Can this be done in other sports?  And if not, what creative strategies can we think of that are similar to this maneuver?

• Can a basketball player drop their shorts in an attempt to stop a basketball from being passed in between their legs?  Would their lateral movement be effected?  Can they drop their shorts during an opposing teams’ free throw to try to distract them?  Or do the balloon-like noise makers already do that?
• Can Randy Moss pull down his pants, moon the Packer fans, and wipe his bum on the field goal post?
• Can Bill Buckner drop his pants so ground balls don’t go through his legs?  Again, will that effect his lateral movement?  Actually, does he still play?  If not, can I swap Bill Buckner with Akinori Iwamura?
• Can Charles Haley drop his pants in the locker room?
• In an attempt to motivate the 49ers, can a coach…lets say Mike Singletary…drop his pants to show his players what part of their body is getting kicked? 
• Can a hockey player drop his shorts to screen the goalie?  Probably not a good idea if you want to have babies.  Maybe Travis Henry and Jason Caffey should play hockey and drop their shorts?  They don’t need any more kids.  They have a combined 19 kids by 17 different women (as far as we know).  What are the odds that one of those women has a kid from both Travis and Jason?  I’ll set the odds at 25-to-1.

Alright, I’m done.  Feel free to chime in.  Let’s hope no clothes are coming off in the WNBA, right fellas?

Kiko is a former legendary striker for the Spain National team whom he played for from 1992 to ‘98.  I’m not sure if I used the word ’whom’ correctly, but I will rely on our editing team to fix it if I’m wrong.  It’s what they get paid to do.

Let’s take this time to compare and contrast.  Torres uses the same open-handed technique that Kiko used to do (Bolt uses the index finger-point technique).  However, if you notice, Kiko has a slight turn at the waist as he diagnoally points.  Opposed to Torres’ style where he doesn’t turn his waist.  Kiko is pointing to what’s behind him as Torres is pointing to his side.  These different variations are mind-boggling and further proof that we have not seen the end of this until the pose has been perfected. 

Perry’s prediction:  Terrell Owens will breakout the best Bolt-Torres-Kiko pose of all-time during the 2008 NFL season.  Please stay tuned.

However, it does look like there is a slight difference in techniques.  Usain Bolt points diagonally to the sky with his index fingers (see post below).  Torres points with all fingers or one could say he uses the open-handed technique.  Very interesting.

The 24-year old Torres currently plays for the Liverpool soccer club and is a member of the Spain National team.  His nickname is ‘El Nino’ which means ‘The Kid.’  When I say soccer, I mean football.  Torres scored the game winning goal against Germany in the finals of the UEFA Euro 2008.  It was the only goal scored in the match.

The evolution of this pose is quite intriguing.  Can someone else deviate from Torres and Bolt and point with two fingers?  How about three?  Only time will tell sports fans, only time will tell.

“We are going to use everything that is possible to us and that will help him recover as quickly as possible,” Gaspar told the Spanish sports daily AS . “But Cristiano Ronaldo will not be in an optimum state for the competition until 12 weeks are up. He is working very well and he is optimistic.

I’ll be offering more thoughts on the whole Euro Cup during the early part of the week. But, for now I will just say that Germany asks Lahm to run wayyyy too much and that could be the reason that he’s a turd on defense. There was no excuse for letting Torres in on that goal.

Another big don’t is: You don’t rob Pele at gunpoint. Although, that’s what seems to have happened recently in Brazil when some angry youths (we don’t know if they were angry, but we think it’s a safe assumption) robbed the greatest soccer player of all time (I don’t want any emails from the DeMarcus Beasley people. He simply hasn’t done it long enough).

The incident took place on June 13th, but it’s just now coming to light. The youths took Edison Arantes do Nascimento’s necklace, cell phone and watch.

Photo Caption: Pele is most famous for his years with the New York Cosmos.

“I will talk with Manchester and we will try to reach a deal,” said the Portugal winger, who will have surgery on his right foot. “The possibilities to go to Madrid are great, but it doesn’t depend on me.”

One would think that this deal would exceed the $90 million world transfer record that Real paid for Zidane in 2001.

That is, until Cech put his signature on the game. He went out on a cross around the 88-minute mark and let a ball he catches 99 times out of 100 slip through his fingers. Nihat Kahveci was right there to put an exclamation mark on the screw up. 2-2.

“The only positive thing about this season is that it’s over,” said Cech. “When you make a mistake, you have to admit it. … It was my mistake that decided that we have to go home.

“The ball was all the sudden too far away from me and as I tried to control it landed just in front of Nihat. Football is played by 11 players and unfortunately, every time it happens that some do well and some do worse.”

But, it wasn’t over. About a minute and a half later Nihat was at it again, firing a ball that bounced under the crossbar and into the goal. It wasn’t Cech’s fault, but the damage was done. Turkey had recovered from a 2-0 second-half deficit to beat a superior team.

“To lose like that is just incredible,” said Czech Republic head coach Karel Bruckner. “We were three minutes from the last eight!”

Now, thanks in large part to Cech’s huge error, it will be Turkey moving on to the next round.

He reportedly told his close circle: “If I don’t leave Manchester United now, I certainly will in a year.”

99% of this blog audience couldn’t give two sh*ts, but this is still big news in sports. While the guy is a legitimate bitch, he still has the quickest feet we’ve ever seen in soccer.

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PHOTO CAPTION: ‘barry’ was kind enough to forward his school picture from this year.

I spoke to ‘barry’ last night to let him know he was receiving this award and I asked him to tell us a little bit about himself that the readers might not know. Before I could even get out the question ‘barry’ yelled out, “Tomorrow is Monopoly night. Baltic Ave is my favorite.”

With a little snicker I responded, “That’s great, ‘barry,’ that’s great. Tell us more?”

The conversation continued for about ten minutes before he had to finish up his life-sized Simon Birch sculpture for his LEGO contest this weekend. But let me highlight some interesting facts ‘barry’ wanted to share with OTR and you, the readers. His favorite sports team is the Charlotte Sting. He loves the WNBA, because he doesn’t feel dunking should be legal. “It’s too violent,” he said. ‘barry’s’ favorite color is dark orange. And he has a pet turtle named after his favorite person of all-time, ‘Skippy’ from Family Ties, who was played by Marc Price.

Before we ended our conversation I asked ‘barry’ what his favorite comment (or as he likes to say, ‘coment’) was on OTR’s site. He singled out this quote under a Chad Johnson article:

“no coment micah? hummmmm why? because the jimmey rollins”

“Because the jimmey rollins,” I don’t think Micah or myself could have summed it up better. Again, we salute you ‘barry’ as OTR’s Fan Of The Year. Don’t stop commenting. Continue your schooling to get that grammar perfected. And tell your friends that OTR did an article all about you, buddy. You are the best.

OTR Note: ‘barry’ is now commenting as ‘mark.’ I guess he doesn’t realize we can see his posts are coming from the same computer. You will soon see ‘mark’s’ aka ‘barry’s’ comments (same grammatical errors). They are currently in moderation.

“Discoveries in genetics, physiology and nanotechnology are creating new challenges to definitions of cheating. Sports executives including Atlanta Falcons President Rich McKay and former World Anti-Doping Agency chief Dick Pound say a reconsideration of what’s fair may lead to more-invasive testing, rules designed for emerging technologies and even legalizing banned substances if they become so commonplace they confer no advantage.”

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Former World Anti-Doping Agency chief Dick Pound? Are you kidding me? Dick Pound? I need to do more research. His full name is Richard William Duncan Pound. This is even more funny. Let’s say he uses his middle name as Will. Dick Will Pound? Honestly, how do you name your child Dick Pound? I apologize if there are any Dick Pounds that read this blog.

PHOTO CAPTION: Dick Pound shows that he measures up to the competition.

Alright, enough…read the article, it’s pretty good. And while you are on that site, check where the 10 year treasury is at to see if mortgage rates will go up or down tomorrow.