Jim Carty made his last call into WTKA this morning, at least for the summer very possibly for good.  It seems his new “regular” life in law is taking quite a hold.  From Carty’s site Paper Tiger No More: As a result of the internship, I told the fellas at WTKA last night that I’m saying farewell to our weekly Monday morning spot. There would likely be times my responsibilities to the court would interfere with a regularly scheduled gig, and I don’t want to be either juggling both or repeatedly bailing on WTKA. Today will be the last appearance at least for a while (link here when available). We’re saying it’s for the summer, but I think it might be for good. It always feels a bit odd to be introduced as “former Ann Arbor News sports columnist Jim Carty”, and it’ll get weirder in a few weeks when there is no A2 News. Although I very much enjoy the spots and love the guys, it’s always better to leave early than late. I’m not sure how much I’ll bring to the table as time goes on, and my interests at this point are truly much more oriented toward the law than sports. It’s a loss.   Of course the morning show will survive without a segment or two of…

Buckeyes everywhere are celebrating the 2000 days that have passed since Michigan defeated Ohio State.   That’s fine.  Whatever.  More importantly, it’s been about 2000 days since my last appearance in Sports Illustrated via this shot highlighting me and MVictors contributor “Lew”: I still have that lucky yellow hat. I don’t know if this photo won any awards; I haven’t been contacted.  I should have asked SI’s Richard Deitsch about it when I was in studio on WTKA with he and John Bacon a couple weeks ago.   Next time.

ESPN’s Colin Cowherd today once again recounted the tale of his incident with former Michigan blog M Zone, telling listeners that the reason he can’t reply to email is because the guys at the M Zone ratted him out to his boss.  “What guy does that?”, he asks. “They thought they got me.  What they did is screw you. They limited access.” Here’s a bad snippet of the audio: [display_podcast] His memory is at least getting a little better, recalling that the issue was that he used content from the blog site on his show but failed to acknowledge the source.  Back in January he brought up the incident and said, “I don’t even know what happened”. Related: Spawn of M Zone!

Photo: Bettmann/Corbis If you missed it, in the wake of the allegations that A-Rod ran a pitch-tipping scheme earlier in his career, here’s a story from the NY Times about the Tigers gift wrapping an at-bat for Yankee legend Mickey Mantle.  An excerpt: “When I got there, Denny said, ‘Hey, big guy, should I let him hit one?’ ” Price recalled Thursday night in a telephone interview. “I said it was a great idea. Mickey was always nice to me. So I went back behind the plate and Mickey, like he always did, was tapping the plate with his bat when I said, ‘Want us to groove one for you?’ ” Mantle apparently didn’t believe Price, but when he saw McLain nodding on the mound, he understood what was going on. “High and tight, mediocre cheese,” Price said Mantle responded. Full story here.

Hutch: “How come you couldn’t get your boy Marinelli out here?  Is he busy with the Lions?”.  Griese: “Buurrnn!”  Photo: MLive National champion quarterback Brian Griese dialed into WTKA this morning to promote The 3rd annual Brian Griese/Steve Hutchinson Champions for Children’s Hearts Celebrity Golf Tournament which will be held this year on May 16-17.  The event is sold out this year, but Griese mentioned you can call for a slot next year if interested by dialing 734-998-7702.  Details here on this year’s event, which has raised around $750,000 for the hospital over the last 2 years. Griese discussed the event of, the impact of the players’ trips to Mott Hospital and the various athletes and coaches (Rodriguez, Carr, Moeller, Hanlon..) that will be attending this year. He also reflected briefly on last season’s woes, “It was such a transition, not just from the coaching staff…it was very difficult for them to be successful.” On the outlook for Rodriguez’s bunch, Griese called on the old Parcells adage in support of Rodriguez, “If you want me to cook dinner, you have to let me get some of the groceries.  Hopefully coach Rodriguez has the opportunity to get some more groceries…” When asked about the outlook for Matt Stafford and the Detroit Lions, Griese suggested that the new quarterback will need to…

Former Buckeye (hated him!) and Detroit Lion (loved him!) Chris Spielman joined Mitch Albom on the radio in Columbus.  It sounds like Mitch was in town for a speech and did the show at a studio where Spielman does a drive time show with Kirk Herbstreit. An interesting moment right off the bat, and Mitch recalls that getting a quote out of the Lion linebacker was like pulling teeth, and now marvels that he’s on TV and radio.  Spielman took it in stride, admitting, “I probably had an unhealthy obsession with football, now that I think about it.” You may have viewed my headline and figured I was going to rip on the guy for saying that.  No way.  Somewhere inside I think we kind of hope everyone on the field is a little bit obsessed/crazy about football.  Just like you in the stands.  I loved the guy when he played for the Lions because while maybe he didn’t say a lot, it was clear he was wild about the game.  Didn’t he insist that if injured, he’d never allow anyone to help him off the field?  That he’d crawl or drag himself with one arm if need be?  That’s awesome.  I don’t know if David Harris was shared Spielman’s obsession but he sure played like it. And this is…

Baseball coach Rich Maloney dialed into 1050AM WTKA to talk about this season, the struggles and the outlook in coming years for his young team.  Worth a listen: [display_podcast] Elsewhere:  An excellent profile of offensive line coach Greg Frey from mgoblue.com.  An excerpt, sending bloggers and internet nerds into a tizzy: “David Molk, Tim McAvoy and Perry Dorrestein spent three hours on the Wii one time and I think Molk still holds the record for the slalom in Winter Olympics,” says Frey. “Dan O’Neill is huge on Call of Duty and a lot of the guys are into video games. We’ll talk about some of the new games and they’ll make recommendations and I might be six months late on getting a game, but on a random Saturday in the offseason, maybe I’ll pop in a game and play for a while.”