The Post Mortem

Congratulations to Ana Ivanovic for winning the French Open. She didn't win on the court, but she won the hearts of Internet perverts everywhere that finally moved past high school track stars.

Ivanovic also boosted her career by losing. Only the ugly chicks win in women's tennis. Martina Navratilova, Billy Jean King, and the Williams sisters all dominated tennis. All ugly and never as popular as Chris Evert or Anna Kournakova. Ivanovic will keep losing if she wants to remain in the spotlight.

And speaking of attractive athletes, the elusive Mandy Beard Playboy pictures have been found. Thanks to the Insomniac for sending out the files. If you haven't seen them, you can probably find them here until the Playboy lawyers get a hold of Ufford. Playboy really went out of their way to hide Beard's face.

Some lucky reader of MLB.com is going to win a chance to meet Alyssia Milano at a Dodgers game. Pass. Even if you got to meet Alyssia like Nuke Laloosh met a groupie on a training room table in Bull Durham, that is still not enough to actually go to Dodger Stadium. Go ahead and insert your own, "But Alyssia has already dated all of Major League Baseball" joke right here.

And Blonde is back, too.

ROAD TO OMAHA

The West Coast will be represented in Omaha with Cal State Fullerton, UC Irvine and Arizona State already in. Oregon State is on the cusp. Of course, all four teams are seeded in the same bracket, ensuring that it won�t be an all-West Coast final. But it does mean that one team from the West will make the final series. The smart money says Arizona State, but how can you bet against Fullerton right now?

Speaking of betting, sports gamblers in Las Vegas will seemingly take anybody�s advice. But the dude in the Flamingo sports book who did that Fullerton/UCI/ASU parlay had to be pretty happy late Saturday night.

• Robin Ventura is officially the worst game analyst in the history of baseball. Wow, that guys is awful. As a poster on Titan Central put it, Nolan Ryan must have done permanent damage to him.

• What would the Angels record be if they got to play the National League all of the time?

• Rain forced NASCAR to shorten Sunday's race at Pocono, giving Jeff Gordon the victory. NASCAR explained that it had to stop the race because Gordon, like most Californians, can't drive in the rain.

• But who wouldn�t want to see NASCAR race on a slick track? And it's such a female-dog move to cheer the rain. Whata weak way to win.

• Tommy Morrison competed in an MMA event this weekend. Seriously, MMA doesn't want to be popular, right? You have to be pretty low on the totem pole when you are forced to promote fighters that even boxing wouldn�t take.

• Many people argued that the NBA made a mistake showing Game 2 of the Finals against The Sopranos. But that shouldn't make a difference. People actually watch The Sopranos.

• Just in case anybody missed it, Roger Clemens returned to the Yankees with another minor-league rehabilitation assignment. This time against the Pittsburgh Pirates. Baseball Tonight dedicated 20 minutes of the show to Clemens and the Yankees who still languish far behind the Red Sox. Hopefully Troy Percival will be given the same treatment when he starts pitching for St. Louis.

• You all realize that the Yankees are going to make the playoffs, right?

• Michael Strahan is dating the ex-wife of Eddie Murphy. Makes sense for Strahan seeing that Eddie liked to pick up male prostitutes.

AND FINALLY

The Imperial Palace has a new Top Gun slot machine that has all of your favorites such as Goose, Ice Man and Kelly McGillis. That's right, no freaking Jester! What an absolute joke. Michael Ironside makes any slot machine infinitely cooler.

Of course, there was no Maverick, either. Would have loved to have been in that marketing meeting to hear this pitch. "Hey, how about we do a slot machine based on a movie released over 20 years ago. We got Kilmer, Edwards, McGillis�"

"Hey, that's great, how about Tom Cruise?"

"We can have the machine do a flyby when you reach a certain level."

"Yeah, yeah, that�s wonderful, but is Cruise aboard?"

Seriously, how does this thing get approved? Did this guy pitch a Batman slot machine with Robin, Commissioner Gordon and The Joker, but no Batman? Does the Superman machine have Lex Luther, Miss Teschmacher and Jimmy Olsen, but no Superman.

Unbelievable.