Firsts and Milestones

Northwestern University won its first national championship in athletics since 1941 when the women's lacrosse team defeated Virginia for the NCAA title over the weekend. NU also became the first school outside the Eastern time zone to win a lacrosse championship, which just shows how regional that sport is.

Paula Craemer won the LPGA Sybase Classic last weekend. Craemer is 18, making her the second youngest to win a LPGA event and the youngest in about 50 years.

Jon Garland finally lost for the White Sox in Anaheim last night. The Angels beat Garland 4-0, handing him his first loss after he had won his first eight starts.

The Cubs faced starting pitchers making their major league debuts in each of the last two games and won both. No such luck tonight when they face Roger Clemens. The Cubs counter with emergency-pitcher-du jour Sergio "Meatball" Mitre, who will be up from Iowa long enough to give up about seven runs in four innings before catching the next bus back.

Anastasia Myskina won last year's French Open in women's tennis, but lost in the first round this year. She's the first defending champion of that tournament to tank in the opening round the following year. Only two others have done the same thing in other majors, Steffi Graf and Jennifer Capriati, so she's in pretty good company.

On Sunday, former IRL driver Felipe Giaffone was out shopping at the We B Babies in Indianapolis when his phone rang. It was AJ Foyt offering him a chance to qualify for the Indy 500. So he popped over, got in a car, practiced a little, and qualified for the last spot in the field, bumping Arie Luyendyk Jr. Little Arie (it doesn't have the same ring as "Little Al," does it?) tried to bump him back, but couldn't get his car over 210, so he'll have to try again next year.

On Saturday at Indy, Kenny Brack came out of retirement to drive defending champion Buddy Rice's Rahal-Letterman car to the 23rd spot on the grid with a faster time than pole-sitter Tony Kanaan. Rice crashed in practice a couple of weeks ago and doctors won't clear him to drive yet.