baseball misc. and Peyton

First, an article about Red Sox pitcher Jon Lester coming to spring training in good condition after undergoing cancer treatment last year. Here's a quote about it from his teammate Jonathon Papelbon:

"I've said prayer after prayer for him this offseason, me and my wife. It's just awesome. Awesome, awesome, awesome to see him come back from that. The fight that he's gone through, you know, it's just amazing...."

Here's the article: http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/articles/2007/02/13/lester_from_patient_to_eager/.

Here's an article about a former Marine that the Padres have signed because they think that he has a good shot of making it as a pitcher: http://sandiego.padres.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20070213&content_id=1801437&vkey=news_sd&fext=.jsp&c_id=sd.

Next, a couple of articles from Peyton Manning's appearance on David Letterman (who's from Indianapolis) last Tuesday. I taped it and watched it the next evening and it was really good. I was impressed. The first article just has a few quotes and the second is the full transcript. Here's a couple of quotes from Peyton from the full transcript, including a great quote about Dungy:

"...We talked about this two years ago, that I believed that we would win a Super Bowl eventually, once we got the right team and the breaks went our way. And this year, it happened. I just felt so humbled after the game to share it with my teammates and to be on a team that was lucky enough to win."...

Letterman: "Now, speaking of support, I guess it was near the end of the season last year, Tony Dungy is living the nightmare that every parent dreads. It comes true for him, his son takes his own life. But you've still got games to play, he comes back and finishes the season. What kind of guy is this that can do that, and how did it affect the team and what does it mean to guys who are just playing a game on Sundays to have this enter their circumstance."

Manning: "I think it truly, it makes guys realize what's important in life and where the true priorities are. We love football, it's important, but after that happened, it was sort of a recheck on your priorities. But I've never met anybody like Tony Dungy, that kind of man who has that strong a faith and his priorities in order, and for him to be able to come back to the team from that, it just made you love him even more. And to me, that's the thing about Coach Dungy is the players, they play so hard for him because they don't want to disappoint him and to me that's the ultimate job of a coach, to get his players to play for him and it just made everybody respect him and love him even more. And he's our leader. I mean, we couldn't have done that two weeks ago without him, but that really brought us closer together."

Here are the two articles:
short: http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070214/SPORTS03/702140453&theme=
long: http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070214/SPORTS03/702140419/1100/SPORTS03.

Lastly, an article about Albert Pujols and his busy winter with the mission trip and becoming a U.S. citizen: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/bbn_cardinals_pujols.