Sports

In Los Angeles at the Staples Center, it may be a case of too much of a good thing. Two NBA teams and one NHL team all call the Staples Center home and now the Clippers, Lakers and Kings have all made it to the playoffs. That means this weekend, the three teams will play a total of six home games in about 80 hours. Robert Siegel speaks with Lee Zeidman, senior vice president and general manager of the Staples Center, about the challenges of converting from ice to wood, stocking concessions and making sure there is parking for all those fans.

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Fans of the Chicago Cubs come up with all kinds of explanations for the team's epic ineptitude: the curse of the Billy Goat, Steve Bartman's 2003 foul ball catch, and generations of incompetent management. In the Wall Street Journal today, Rich Cohen comes to a different conclusion: Wrigley Field. Destroy it, annihilate it, he wrote. Implosion or explosion, get rid of it, not merely the structure but the ground on which it stands.

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — The Louisiana Legislature is asking the NFL to reconsider the penalties imposed on the New Orleans Saints because of its bounty program.

The formal request received final legislative passage with a 28-1 Senate vote Monday.

In the resolution, lawmakers say there is "widespread public opinion throughout the state of Louisiana and beyond that the penalties imposed upon the Saints are too harsh and should be reconsidered."

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — The New Orleans Hornets will continue receiving a tax break that saves the NBA team $37 million over 10 years.

The Senate sent the tax break bill to the governor's desk Monday with a 28-7 vote. The measure is part of the state's deal to the keep the Hornets in Louisiana.

The tax break ran into sharp criticism in the House, where lawmakers bristled at the idea of giving a multimillion dollar tax break while also weighing budget cuts to colleges and health services.

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The streets of Manchester, England ran sky blue today as tens of thousands of soccer fans cheered a parade celebrating Manchester City's triumph as champions of England. Their shocking come-from-behind victory yesterday won Manchester City its first championship since 1968.

Here's how it sounded on ESPN when Manchester City scored the final heart-stopping, game-winning goal in the fourth minute of injury time.

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The conference finals are underway in the National Hockey League playoffs. In the East, the New York Rangers will face the New Jersey Devils Monday. In the West, the Los Angeles Kings have won Game 1 — beating the Phoenix Coyotes 4-2.

You may think of surfers as slackers. But in Santa Cruz, Calif., they're city council members and business owners. And they're also conservationists — who just got their piece of the central California coast named a World Surfing Reserve.

Long before surf music topped the charts and long before surfers had crazy nicknames, surfers have been riding the waves in Santa Cruz.

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This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Rachel Martin.

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MARTIN: If life is a ball game, then Mike Pesca is the guy behind home plate helping us sort out the check swings from the foul balls. He is, of course, NPR's sports correspondent and our guide to the fascinating intersections between life and sports. He joins us, as he does every week. Hey, Mike.

MIKE PESCA, BYLINE: Hey. Every once in a while you could foul a ball off a check swing.

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SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon. You didn't think we were going to get through this week without talking about sports.

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SIMON: Both New York and L.A. host big game sevens tonight - hoops on the West Coast, pucks on the East Coast. NPR's Tom Goldman can open a can of bean dip, sit on the couch, watch the TV and say, hey, don't bother me, I'm working. He joins us from an undisclosed location.

Morning, Tom.

TOM GOLDMAN, BYLINE: Hi. I wake up eating bean dip.