The Original Game » an crashed twice and thought about retirin

REVEL, France -- After so much bad luck at the Tour de France, Michael Matthews believed he was jinxed. Discount Fake NBA Jerseys .Two years ago, the Australian rider crashed days before he was scheduled to take a flight to the start of the Tour in England and had to pull out before the race.Matthews eventually made his debut at cyclings biggest race last year but broke four ribs in a crash in the third stage, and struggled until the finish on the Champs-Elysees.This month, the Australian crashed twice and thought about retiring on Sunday after the toughest Pyrenean stage.No wonder he struggled to believe that he finally won a Tour stage on Tuesday.Its unbelievable. I was close to giving in at this race, Matthews said after edging world champion Peter Sagan in the southern town of Revel. I thought maybe this race is not for me, and Id focus on other races. But today my dream comes true. I just won a stage of the Tour de France after two really bad years in this race.Matthews, who was also involved in the high-speed crash in the Milan-San Remo classic this season, profited from the work of his teammates to win the 10th stage of the Tour after a long breakaway.Sagan, who attacked from the start in the Andorran town of Escaldes-Engordany, rode at the front throughout the 197-kilometer trek in rainy conditions, but was overpowered in the final sprint. He finished second, followed by Edvald Boasson Hagen.With his morale low, Matthews said he was comforted by his wife during Mondays rest day in Andorra.My wife and I had a good talk, and she really motivated me to keep pushing, he said.Finishing 9 minutes, 39 seconds behind in the main peloton, Chris Froome kept the yellow jersey. The two-time Tour champion has a 16-second overall lead over fellow Briton Adam Yates, with Irish rider Dan Martin in third place, 19 seconds behind. Froomes main rival Nairo Quintana sits fourth, 23 seconds back.A group of six riders including Matthews teammates Daryl Impey and Luke Durbridge fought for the stage victory in a frenzied finale. Sagan tried to make the most of a small climb nine kilometers before the line but failed to surprise his rivals with his acceleration. Impey countered the move, Durbridge then tried another attack to wear out Sagan, and the small group stayed compact until the final kilometer.Impey then perfectly set up Matthews in the final section before Greg Van Avermaet launched the sprint in the final 200 meters. Matthews followed and easily passed Sagan to exact revenge after finishing runner-up to the Slovak in the world championships last year.We have such a strong group of guys here, said Matthews, who has posted stage victories at all three Grand Tours. The way we work as a team, whoevers up on that day we give that rider 110 percent. You could see Luke Durbridge and Daryl Impey today, they gave me their everything. There are no words.The stage started with a flurry of attacks in the 24-kilometer ascent to the Port dEnvalira, the highest climb of the Tour at 2,408 meters. Sagan was in the thick of the action as the air started to thin out. Former world champion Rui Costa surged from the leading group and crested the summit with a one-minute gap.He was joined by Sagan and Matthews in the highly technical descent to the spa town of Ax-les-Thermes, made even more dangerous by thick fog. Several riders bridged the breakaway group, which passed by the characteristic and colorful cafes of Ax-les-Thermes at full speed.With no general classification contenders among the leaders, Team Sky did not narrow the gap, and the 15 riders at the front built a lead of seven minutes with 90 kilometers left.Sagan then secured the green jersey by winning the intermediate sprint at Aigues-Vives, earning 20 more points in the best sprinters classification.Back at the peloton, IAM Cycling and Direct Energie accelerated the tempo and the gap dropped under five minutes with 45 kilometers to go. But under pressure of being caught, the breakaway riders started to collaborate more until Sagan accelerated, going clear in the small group that eventually fought for the stage win. Wholesale Fake NBA Jerseys . The Browns coaching search remains incomplete. Fake NBA Jerseys Online . Fred Couples, captain of the U.S. side, put it all into perspective. "We know whos in charge," he said. http://www.fakenbajerseys.com/ . Mickelson barely made the cut but had the best round of the day with nine birdies and an eagle coupled with two bogeys to sit two shots behind leader Craig Lee of Scotland. Lee shot a 69 for a 12-under 204 total. "I just love the fact I am in contention and have an opportunity in my first tournament of the year here in Abu Dhabi," Mickelson said. No matter your opinion on Alex Rodriguezs statistical merits, theres no questioning his place as one of the greatest players in the history of fantasy baseball.Rotisserie Baseball was invented in 1980, with four hitting categories (batting average, home runs, RBIs and stolen bases), and since then, A-Rod -- a nickname fantasy owners helped popularize -- has filled them like few other players could. His totals and rankings in each, compared to all players in that 37-year span:Batting average (minimum 3,000 PAs): .295, 64th Home runs: 696, second to only Barry Bonds (762) RBIs: 2,084, first Stolen bases: 329, 41stA-Rod is one of only three players with at least a .290 batting average, 500 home runs and 250 steals in that time. The others are Bonds and Gary Sheffield.By A-Rods major league debut on July 8, 1994, many Rotisserie baseball leagues had adopted a fifth hitting category, runs scored, in which he has a whopping 2,021. That puts him third in the era, behind Rickey Henderson (2,246) and Bonds (2,227). Whittling that player pool to infielders, Rodriguez ranks 41st, first, first, 13th and first in those five categories during the Rotisserie era.Most importantly, however, A-Rod will be remembered for his year-after-year dominance, his status as a consensus No. 1 pick for the better part of a decade and his consistency in terms of annual fantasy impact. In short, he was to the late 1990s and early 2000s what Mike Trout is to todays game, what Barry Bonds was to the early 1990s and what Rickey Henderson was at Rotisseries dawn.Twice since 2001 -- the 15-year span for which we have data available -- A-Rod topped the ESPN Fantasy Player Rater. That was in 2005 and 2007, not coincidentally the two years he won Most Valuable Player awards while with the New York Yankees (he had another in 2003 as a member of the Texas Rangers). From 2001 to 08, he finished among the top 22 players overall and top 16 hitters, and from 2001-05 as well as in 2007, he was the No. 1 player at his position (shortstop from 2001-03, third base in 2005 and dual-eligible in 2004, as previous year position eligibility carries over).That excludes A-Rods lone 40/40 season, 1998, the only 40/40 campaign by a shortstop in the games history. Using my player valuation system, which closely mimics our Player Rater, Rodriguez was the fourth-most valuable player in fantasy baseball in 1998, behind only Greg Maddux, Sammy Sosa and Kevin Brown.Using this same system, A-Rod finished among the five moost valuable players in fantasy baseball five times: 1996, 1998, 2001, 2005 and 2007. Cheap Fake NBA Jerseys. He finished among the 10 most valuable players another three times: 2000, 2002 and 2003. He finished among the 25 most valuable in three others, in 2004, 2006 and 2008, and among the top 50 twice, in 1997 and 1999.From 1996-2010, the 15 most productive seasons of A-Rods career, he produced a total of $458.57 in auction-based fantasy baseball earnings, or an average of $30.57 per year. To put that into perspective, $30 is traditionally regarded as elite in a 12-team standard mixed format, and Rodriguez reached that plateau in eight of those 15 campaigns. Further, he never earned less than $17.70 in a season (2009).Bear in mind that neither the Player Rater nor my system?includes positional-scarcity weighting, which makes A-Rods accomplishments all the more extraordinary. As a shortstop-eligible player for the first nine draft-relevant seasons of his career (1996-2004) and a third baseman until he shifted to DH only in 2016, he was considered the player to get because of the advantage he provided compared to other shortstops.Per Baseball-Reference.com, A-Rods 344 home runs as a shortstop were only one shy of Cal Ripkens 345 for the positional lead in the Rotisserie era. A-Rods .308 batting average as a shortstop was fourth best (minimum 3,000 plate appearances), his 985 RBIs fourth best, his 177 stolen bases 24th best and his 1,003 runs 14th best. He did that in only 1,264 games played at the position during that time, 44th most and more than 1,000 fewer than Ripken. Among third basemen, A-Rod ranked ninth in batting average (.293), 11th in home runs (287), 21st in RBIs (907), 11th in stolen bases (136) and 20th in runs scored (850).Thats why its no surprise that from 2001 to 2010, Rodriguez was the No. 1 pick in fantasy (using average draft position data) on five occasions (2002, 2003, 2004, 2006 and 2008) and a top-three overall pick in every year except 2009, when his recovery from hip surgery that March caused his ADP to dip to 31st -- still third among third basemen.Rodriguez was fantasys top superstar around the turn of the century. Regardless of how you feel about the influence of PEDs on his statistics, as a numbers-based game, fantasy baseball is one place where Alex Rodriguez would be a guaranteed first-ballot Hall of Famer. ' ' '