Good morning!
Josh Hamilton is red hot on the net and at the plate. An amazing four home run night, only the 16th big leaguer to accomplish such a feat, has vaulted him into the viral universe. The quartet of two-run homers in the Texas win over Baltimore gave Hamilton pause to reflect after the game. He has battled the demons of drug and alcohol addiction throughout his career.
(AP Photo)
"I think about what God's done in my life, everything I did to mess it up," he said. "To finally surrender everything and pursue that relationship with Christ on a daily basis and understanding when I don't pursue it, I end up messing up. Understanding that what I'm doing and what God's allowed me to do, coming back from everything I went through and allowing me to play the game at the level I play it, it's pretty amazing to think about."
Hamilton's home run heroics are an exclamation point to a season that it is off to a blistering start for the former MVP. He's batting .406 and leads the majors with 13 homers and 36 RBIs.
Speaking of baseball, Harvard players have put together a viral video. Members of the Ivy League school's baseball team choreographed a routine to Canadian Songstress Carly Rae Jepsen's hit "Call Me Maybe."
North Carolina is a hot topic again this morning after voters overwhelmingly slammed the door shut on same-sex marriages. They approved a constitutional amendment defining marriage solely as a union between a man and woman.
Also on the political front, six-term Indiana Senator Dick Lugar has been forced into retirement, routed in a primary battle by the right-wing of the Republican party. Tea Party-backed Richard Mourdock, the state treasurer, has pained the 80-year-old Republican as too moderate for the conservative state. Mourdock will face Democratic Rep. Joe Donnely in November in what will likely be a hotly contested campaign. The big question is whether the outcome in Indiana is a reflection of the national mood. As one Tea Party activist put it, the party has abandoned street protests and become a stealth movement of average Americans fed up with Washington, D.C. Lugar outspent Mourdock by a 3-to-1 margin, but Mourdock out-hustled Lugar on the ground with door-to-door canvassing, logging nearly a half-million miles to talk to some groups as small as a dozen people at a time.
Against Me! singer, guitarist and songwriter Tom Gabel has revealed that he will soon undergo the transition process to become a woman. Rolling Stone broke the news. Gabel will soon begin taking hormones and undergo electrolysis to transition to Laura Jane Grace. What really gets me about this story is Gabel plans to remain married to his wife, Heather. They have a 2-year-old daughter.
"For me, the most terrifying thing about this was how she would accept the news," he told Rolling Stone. "But she's been super-amazing and understanding."
Huh?
Ever wonder what Los Angeles Clippers star forward Blake Griffin's game face would look like on a child? Point guard Chris Paul's son has you covered.
There's a hot debate on Twitter this morning: Iron Man or Hulk? The responding tweets appear to be pretty evenly divided, and a few people have tossed Spider-Man and Superman into the fray.
When the elephant keepers at the Smithsonian's National Zoo hear the sound of a harmonica, it's not the radio they've left on. Instead, it's the zoo's 36-year-old Asian elephant, Shanthi, who, unsolicited, has a propensity for coming up with her own ditties using whatever instruments the keepers have provided. These include harmonicas, horns and other noisemakers. The zoo has captured some of Shanthi's most recent capriccios on this viral video.
Former all-pro wide receiver Cris Carter has jumped into the bounty bowl, saying he put bounties on opposing players as a form of protection during his 16-year career in the NFL. Carter, an ESPN NFL analyst, says he would offer money to his teammates to take out opponents who he thought were trying to take out him.
"I'm guilty of (bounties) -- I mean, first time I've ever admitted it -- but I put a bounty on guys before," Carter said. "I put bounties on guys. If a guy tries to take me out, a guy takes a cheap shot on me? I put a bounty on him right now!" When asked if he was alone in bounty hunting, Carter replied "Hell no!" However, Carter added that the bounties in his day where not intended to purposely injure opponents. "The bounty was based on protection, or a big hit, excitement or for helping your team win. It wasn't to maim or hurt the dude," he said.
Finally, in the day's most inspiring story, we have Coleman Shannon. South Carolina's Weekly Observer profiles the one-armed high school baseball player, who recently pitched a no-hitter.
That's the Trend!
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GEOFF MULVIHILLNEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. -- A former Rutgers University student convicted of using a webcam to spy on his gay roommate is poised to start serving his 30-day jail sentence. 
