Morning Report: Favre’s not ready yet

Bad news for the Minnesota Vikings on the Brett Favre watch: It still hurts when the 39-year-old quarterback throws the ball.

The still-retired Favre worked out with a high school team on Wednesday. Afterward, he told WDAM-TV in Hattiesburg, Miss., that his surgically-repaired right shoulder was not ready for him to commit to joining the Vikings.

Dr. James Andrews performed arthroscopic surgery on Favre's partially torn biceps tendon on May 22.

"Dr. Andrews said more or less [in] four weeks you should know if [surgery] was completely successful," Favre said. "I threw a couple of balls today where I really felt it . . . different places in my shoulder where it's sore.

"I threw the ball OK, but OK isn't good enough in the National Football League. At least not for me. So it's got to get better."

Hall "flabbergasted." On Wednesday in Forth Worth, Texas, former major-league outfielder Mel Hall was sentenced to 45 years in prison for the late-1990s sexual assault of a 12-year-old girl he had coached in basketball.

In a jailhouse interview yesterday with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Hall insisted that he was innocent. He said he was "flabbergasted" by the verdict.

"I felt like I was found guilty of my life," Hall, 48, told the newspaper.

"That's the thing I struggle with more than anything, because I know I'm innocent and I don't believe I was proven guilty of the charge. I believe I was proven guilty of my lifestyle."

That lifestyle is flamboyant. When he was with the Yankees in the 1990s, Hall was a flashy outfielder who had two pet cougars and rented an upper-level apartment in Trump Tower, according to the Star-Telegram report.

"I've always gone to the beat of my own drum, basically, and that probably did not help me," Hall said. "Maybe things would have been different if I was the straight-laced, blue-collar [type]. Who knows?"

Hall returned to court yesterday and pleaded guilty to one charge of sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl who was a teammate of the 12-year-old victim, according to prosecutors. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison, to run concurrently with his 45-year term.