Sturm's OT goal gives Bruins win in Fenway's Winter Classic
The Boston Bruins provided their own unique finish to Fenway Park's history of memorable endings. In the stadium where Ted Williams hit his 521st homer into the bullpen in the last at-bat of his career in 1960 and Carton Fisk waved his homer fair down the left-field line, winning Game 6 of the 1975 World Series, Marco Sturm's overtime goal Friday gave the host Bruins a 2-1 victory over the Philadelphia Flyers in the Winter Classic. "It's probably going to be my most memorable goal ever, and I'm going to enjoy it," Sturm said. The rink ran from the left-field to right-field foul lines, primarily across the infield, with the center dot at second base. When Sturm scored at 1:57 of overtime, teammates poured off the bench and surrounded him behind the net where short left field would be for baseball games. Despite the loss that ended the Flyers' four-game winning streak, coach Peter Laviolette was excited to be a part of the NHL's third annual New Year's Day outdoor game. "The experience is once-in-a-lifetime," he said. "Bruins, Flyers, 40,000 fans on a perfect day; you couldn't ask for anything better for the game of hockey." As the minutes ticked away, it looked like the Bruins might end up like many teams that faced Roger Clemens in Fenway: scoreless. Danny Syvret gave the Flyers the lead at 4:42 of the second period with the first goal of his career. And with less than five minutes left, goalie Michael Leighton's scoreless streak had gone over 150 minutes and the sellout crowd of 38,112 had little to cheer. But then Mark Recchi, a former Flyer, tied it on a power play when he deflected Derek Morris' shot past Leighton with 2:18 left in the third period. Sturm capped the comeback when he tipped in a pass from Patrice Bergeron for his team-leading 14th goal.
Action sports
Pastrana's 269-foot jump shatters record for rally car
Travis Pastrana ended up in the water again. The daredevil easily broke the world record for the longest jump in a rally car Thursday night in Long Beach, Calif., making a nearly perfect flight of 269 feet from the Pine Street Pier onto a barge anchored in the harbor. "It was a wild ride," Pastrana, of Davidsonville, said. His Subaru skidded sideways after landing and slammed into a safety wall at the end of the barge, but Pastrana emerged unscathed. He ran up the landing ramp and did a backflip into the water in front of a crowd estimated at 20,000. In 1999, Pastrana announced himself to the action sports world when at age 15 he celebrated an X Games gold medal by jumping his motorcycle into San Francisco Bay. That stunt got him into a fair bit of trouble, and he lost his prize money and medal. This time, his splashdown was well-received. "It's soft," Pastrana joked about his penchant for jumping into the water. "It was a lot colder than I anticipated." He broke the old record by 98 feet. "The flight was awesome," the 26-year-old daredevil said. "I couldn't have asked for anything better." After teasing the crowd with a warm-up run down the 1,000-foot run-in and up the takeoff ramp, Pastrana did it for real, flying across approximately 220 feet of water to the landing ramp on the barge just a few minutes after midnight. Pastrana said he skidded at the end because the dew had set in about 10 minutes before he took off. Had he landed straight and stopped before the wall, he planned to spin doughnuts in celebration. The old record was 171 feet, set by Pastrana's Subaru teammate, Ken Block, in a rally car in November 2006. Pastrana wanted to break that mark by more than 100 feet. He came close.
- From Sun staff and news services