Twistity Sports Exclusive WEEKEND IN REVIEW: An All-Star is Born, Tennis the Menace and NASCAR’s long-missing number

 
There were fireworks everywhere over the 4^th of July weekend, not the least of which occurred in the world of sports. The World Cup is down to its four semifinalists, someone won a golf tournament somewhere, and a guy named Joey Chestnut ate 61 hot dogs at a speed-eating contest at Coney Island. Presumably, someone named Joey Hot Dog ate 61 chestnuts in a parallel universe at the same time. Congratulations to all.

Now, onto our featured items:

Cub Club: This could only happen to the Cubs (and how tempting it was to put the word hapless in there). They had a pitcher named to the National League All-Star team Sunday. Pretty good, right? Except they traded him last week to the Oakland Athletics. And on the day Jeff Samardzija’s selection as an All-Star was announced, he pitched seven innings for his new team – in the American League – in a win against the Toronto Blue Jays.

Since this sort of stuff is a little eclectic for even stat-absorbed baseball, no one can be quite sure but it is believed Samardzija is just the second player to make one league’s All-Star team while playing in the other league.

Serving one up: Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer put on a superb show in the men’s singles final at Wimbledon, with Djokovic coming up the winner.

Federer was chasing an eighth Wimbledon title and at 33 it’s unclear whether he will win another Grand Slam event. On the other end of the scale was Petra Kvitova’s evisceration on Saturday of Eugenie Bouchard for the women’s title. Bouchard won only three games in the two sets as Kvitova collected her second Wimbledon title. And it took her only 55 minutes to win those two sets.

NASCAR’s number: The No. 43 car in stock car racing belonged to Richard Petty, and now to Richard Petty Motorsports. But the No. 43 car had not finished first in any race since 1999. Until Sunday, at Daytona, when Aric Almirola won the much-delayed (first by rain on Saturday night, and often on Sunday by traffic accidents) Coke Zero 400.

By the time the race ended, Petty had already left the track. Officials got him on the phone to talk to reporters. For those who prefer counting damaged cars, well, there was a 25-car wreck that took out more than half of the 43-car field.
 
 
Post By: Larry Weisman, a longtime sportswriter for USA TODAY, blogs for Twistity.com. Follow him on Twitter @MrLarryWeisman .