Flyers' Thoresen released from hospital after taking puck to groin

ARLINGTON, Va. -- Philadelphia Flyers left wing Patrick Thoresen was released from the hospital Saturday after tests revealed no serious injury from a shot that hit him in the groin.

Thoresen lay writhing in pain after blocking Mike Green's shot in the third period Friday night of a 5-4 loss to the Washington Capitals. The 24-year-old forward was taken to Washington Hospital Center, where he underwent two ultrasound tests.

Thoresen

"My groin area is sore and swollen," Thoresen said in comments released by the team. "I can't really walk properly right now. It hurts."

Thoresen rested at the team hotel while the Flyers practiced Saturday.

"Everything checked out OK. They were checking to see if there was a rupture. There was none," general manager Paul Holmgren said.

Holmgren said he wouldn't be surprised if Thoresen played in Game 2 on Sunday.

"The chance is there because there is nothing wrong right now," Thoresen said. "It's just a matter of pain. Right now it doesn't feel like I am ready to go because I am very sore. But I will keep icing the area today and keep trying to get the swelling down and we will see how I feel."

Green left a message for Thoresen through the Flyers' trainer.

"He wished me well and said he hoped everything will be OK with me," Thoresen said. "That was very classy of him."

Washington was on the power play when Thoresen was injured. Officials did not stop play, in effect giving the Capitals a two-man advantage during which they scored the tying goal.

"I know in the past there have been players that have laid there and rolled around trying to get a stoppage in play when they've just been hit on the shin," Holmgren said. "It's a tough call. I didn't have a problem with it last night and, thinking about it, I still don't have a problem. The ref has to make a judgment call in a split second, and they made the call they made. Obviously it cost us a goal. I don't believe that's the reason we lost the game."

Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press

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Gumbel leaves NFL Network gig

Gumbel

After two years of getting roasted by sports-media critics, Bryant Gumbel has ankled his job as play-by-play man for the eight live National Football League primetime games carried each season by the NFL Network.

The network hired Gumbel when it secured rights to the eight-game package in 2006, even though Gumbel had no experience doing NFL play by play. His sports expertise comes from his 13 years as host of HBO’s monthly hourlong series “Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel” and his early career at NBC Sports.

Referring to the two years doing the games as “a new experience for me,” Gumbel said in a statement that he and the network have “agreed that we’d all be better served going in different directions.”

Cris Collinsworth will continue as the analyst on the games. The network has begun the search for Gumbel’s replacement.

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Yankees will donate once-buried Red Sox jersey to Boston-area charity

Construction Worker Tells His Side Of 'Jerseygate'

NEW YORK -- A construction worker's bid to curse the New York Yankees by planting a Boston Red Sox jersey in their new stadium was foiled Sunday when the home team removed the offending shirt from its burial spot.

After locating the shirt in a service corridor behind what will be a restaurant in the new Yankee Stadium, construction workers jackhammered through the concrete Sunday and pulled it out.

The team said it learned that a Sox-rooting construction worker had buried a shirt in the new Bronx stadium, which will open next year across the street from the current ballpark, from a report in the New York Post on Friday.

Yankees President Randy Levine said team officials at first considered leaving the shirt where it was.

"The first thought was, you know, it's never a good thing to be buried in cement when you're in New York," Levine said. "But then we decided, why reward somebody who had really bad motives and was trying to do a really bad thing?"

On Saturday, construction workers who remembered the employee, Gino Castignoli, phoned in tips about the shirt's location.

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AP Photo/Frances Roberts

A worker at the new Yankee Stadium pulls a David Ortiz jersey out of the concrete. A Red Sox fan had placed the jersey in the concrete beneath the stadium in the hopes of jinxing the Yankees.

"We had anonymous people come tell us where it was, and we were able to find it," said Frank Gramarossa, a project executive with Turner Construction, the general contractor on the site.

It took about five hours of drilling Saturday to locate the shirt under 2 feet of concrete, he said.

On Sunday, Levine and Yankees CEO Lonn Trost watched as Gramarossa and foreman Rich Corrado finished the job and pulled the shirt from the rubble.

In shreds from the jackhammers, the shirt still bore the letters "Red Sox" on the front. It was a David Ortiz jersey, No. 34.

Trost said the Yankees had discussed possible criminal charges against Castignoli with the district attorney's office.

"We will take appropriate action since fortunately we do know the name of the individual," he said.

A woman who answered the phone at Castignoli's home in the Bronx on Sunday said he was not there.

A spokesman for Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson said Sunday he did not know whether any criminal charges might apply.

Levine said the shirt would be cleaned up and sent to the Jimmy Fund, a charity affiliated with Boston's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Along with that, New York will send a Yankees Universe T-shirt, which is sold to benefit Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

"Hopefully the Jimmy Fund will auction it off and we'll take the act that was a very, very bad act and turn it into something beautiful," he said.

Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press

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