The Sports Curmudgeon®

Aaron Fike was a NASCAR driver. He may not be as famous as some of the other guys on the NASCAR circuit, but he too has driven cars – and trucks – around oval speedways at up to 190 mph. Recently Aaron Fike admitted that he drove in a truck race last year under the influence of heroin. The admission was made to ESPN relative to a story for ESPN the Magazine. Fike is under suspension by NASCAR at the moment because he was arrested for heroin possession sometime after the race in question.

Kevin Harvick is also a NASCAR driver. Kevin Harvick also owns some of the cars that Fike drove on the Nationwide Tour - - that is NASCAR minor league racing for those not in the know. Harvick is now mightily unhappy with NASCAR’s drug testing policies as well he ought to be. The thought of “swapping paint” with someone at nearly 200 mph while that someone is spaced out on heroin is a life-threatening thing. He wants more random drug testing claiming that in his ten years in NASCAR he has never been tested. [By the way, Tony Stewart, Jimmie Johnson and Kasey Kahne say they have never been tested either.]

Stand by for Senator Arlen Specter to call for drug hearings related to NASCAR any time now… Not holding my breath on that one.

Speaking of driving after putting something in your body that is not fully compatible with driving, Carmelo Anthony was stopped and booked on suspicion of DWI in the Denver area early Monday morning. That arrest came on the heels of a really poor game by Anthony; he scored only 11 points and shot 3-14 on Sunday. Let me try to make this very clear:

If the number of points on your driving record is equal to or greater than the number of points you score in a basketball game, that is not a good thing.

In the world of college baseball, Creighton defeated the University of North Dakota recently 2-0. That’s not any big deal except that North Dakota used two pitchers in the game and those two pitchers combined to throw a no-hit game. Yes, they threw a no-hitter and they lost. The North Dakota starter walked four of the first six batters he faced and then hit a batter. That pushed two Creighton runs across the plate in the first inning. Creighton never got a hit; North Dakota failed to make up the run differential and that is how it happened.

I hope you will pardon me for not falling all over myself to find ways to praise MLB and MLBPA for their newly announced drug-testing regimen. That something so minuscule in terms of a step forward and so clearly needed to prevent Congressional action that no one would want or need took so long to reach fruition tells me that none of these folks “get it”. And by the way, there is still no agreement for testing for HGH and that is not a loophole in this procedure; that is a mountain pass.

Consider this new agreement to usher in this new testing era like this:

Out with stuff like nandrolone and things of that ilk that show up in urine tests and in with HGH and other designer drugs, which may only be detected with blood tests.

This great progress is brought to you by Bud Selig and Donald Fehr - - neither of whom ought to be on any list of great American sportsmen.

Once again, I need to report to you on baseball attendance here in Washington DC – the town that was starving for baseball for 35 years. After just under 40,000 folks attended the opening day game in the brand new stadium, the Nats hit the road and then returned to host the Florida Marlins. Granted, the Florida Marlins are hardly a “tough ticket”, but for the baseball-starved fans here and their new stadium the results of the Marlins series has to be confusing. In three games, the Nats drew just over 68,000; that is less than 23,000 per game; given the capacity of their new stadium, they are already playing to 45% of the park as empty seats. In addition, these numbers represent the number of tickets sold and do not necessarily represent the number of fannies in the seats that were sold.

Washington DC is not a good sports town for any team other than the Washington Redskins. For every other team – college or professional – they will draw large crowds and significant attention if and only if they are winners and are contending for championships. Other than that, they will languish in a state where the local people sort of know who they are and what sport they play and perhaps the names of two players on the roster - - and not much else. So far, Nats’ attendance is down 10% on average from last year in fetid RFK stadium to this year in the brand new ballpark – the one that was supposed to change the paradigm for how ballparks would be built and blended into their community. With the Nats already owning the worst record in the NL – they shouldn’t finish the season that way but they won’t contend for anything meaningful either – it will be interesting to see if the summer weather makes for better crowds that can bring the average attendance up to what it was last year.

I heard a report on the local sports radio station that the Mayo Clinic did a study on retired NFL players and found that more than 80% of them had some measure of arterial blockage and this can put them at risk for heart attacks and hypertension and strokes. I do not want to make light of these risks nor do I intend to demean the renowned Mayo Clinic here, but was a study really necessary here. The incidence of obesity in the NFL is far greater than it is in the general population; the eating habits of most NFL players tend not to mirror whichever “food pyramid” the FDA is promoting this year. I would be far more surprised to know that former NFL players were more cardiovascularly healthy than the general population than I am to learn that more than 80% of them have cardiovascular health problems.

Finally, a comment from David Letterman on the subject of things we put in our bodies and José Canseco’s recent book:

“In 1998, he introduced John McCain to Metamucil.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…

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I was not sure I would be writing today. Hence my comments on income taxes in yesterday’s rant. Yesterday was my long-suffering wife’s birthday and we ventured out to Baltimore for the day and had dinner there. I expected it to be a late night but we got back at a reasonable hour so I have time this morning to write before a hectic afternoon/evening today. This morning I found in my e-mail a single line from a former colleague about Tiger Woods’ loss in the Masters and its nullification of his Grand Slam possibilities this year. Would that I had thought of this yesterday:

“Tiger must be having the first bite of his Grand Slam at Denny’s this morning.”

Do you remember last year when Hope Solo was less than diplomatic in her criticism of her coach for benching her and for her replacement’s “ineptitude” in goal for the US Women’s Soccer team? The coach got fired; the team lost their game; commentators claimed that Solo had been ostracized from the team and had caused a giant rift there. Well, that rift cannot have been so gigantic because Hope Solo is back on the US Women’s Soccer team as it prepares for the Olympics in Beijing. That would seem to indicate to me that the rest of the team has accepted that she is there. By the way, it also says to me that Hope Solo is something more than a second-rate goaltender because if she were it would have to have been easier to find a replacement for her given the events of last year.

A gentleman in Greensboro, NC won $100K in a fantasy sport contest. It was a fantasy fishing contest - - there are no typos in this sentence. In a press release after his win, this gentleman said:

“It’s still hard to believe that I won. My wife … is still in shock. It’s easy to enter, and it’s fun to play. It makes following the FLW pro bass anglers even that more exciting.”

No peeking or googling allowed now. Answer these three questions:

1. What does “FLW” stand for?

2. Why is fishing a spectator sport?

3. What could possibly make “following the FLW pro bass anglers” less exciting than it is?

When ESPN put Stephan A. Smith on the air with his daily TV show, Quite Frankly, I said at the time that I thought that it was possible that a daily show would hurt Smith. Like him or not for his bombast, Stephen A. Smith is a good journalist who will ask the tough questions and find the difficult stories. Smith had loads of good sources inside the NBA and I thought the daily grind of an ESPN TV show might erode them. Well, in the past two years, Smith has lost his TV show; he has given up his column in the Philadelphia Inquirer and now his radio program on ESPN Radio has gone silent. I really hope Stephen A. Smith comes back from this bad period because he is a very good sports journalist.

Bryant Gumbel is out as the play-by-play man for NFL games on NFL Network. Quite frankly, I will not miss him in that role very much. I did not find him to be either entertaining or informative on those telecasts and that pretty much covers the range of things you want from a play-by-play announcer in a football game. According to NFLN, Gumbel resigned; I have read speculation that he was fired. It doesn’t matter. What does matter is that NFLN finds a good play-by-play announcer to team with Cris Colinsworth (who is very good at color analysis) for those telecasts. From my previous opinions about football announcers, it would make me very happy if NFLN put either Ian Eagle or Pam Ward into that slot.

One other note about NFLN today, Dave Darling reported in the Orlando Sentinel that NFLN president, Stan Bornstein said at the NFL owners meeting that the network would shut down before it accepted being put into a premium cable package by the big cable TV companies. Said Bornstein:

“We’re all about mass distribution and wide availability of our product, and there’s no reason we want to make this an elitist product.”

To which Dave Darling’s comment was:

“Ah. That explains why your network is available only on satellite dishes in most markets.”

The TV ratings for the NCAA Men’s basketball final game came in at 12.1. That is a significant number even though it is down slightly from 2007. For the Women’s basketball final game the TV ratings were 3.0, which is about what the XFL drew in the middle of its single season on TV. Nevertheless, the women’s number is a good one because it is up significantly from last year and it was achieved on cable TV not network TV. That is a good sign.

But leave it to the NCAA and its member institutions to find something wrong enough to complain about. It seems that some of the member institutions think there were too many beer commercials on the CBS-TV coverage of all the men’s tournament games. About a hundred of these schools sent a letter to Dr. Myles Brand asking him how there could be so many beer commercials in light of the NCAA guidelines that “exclude those advertisements and advertisers … that do not appear to be in the best interests of higher education and student-athletes.” I cannot wait to hear Dr. Myles Brand’s peroration on this subject…

I think it would be even more interesting to ask Dr. Myles Brand and the one hundred or so signatories to this letter a different question:

With so many participants in NCAA men’s basketball who leave school after a year or two and without their degrees, why do you insist on calling them student-athletes?

Finally, since today is actually the day you need to file your income tax returns let me offer up a situation that seems contradictory to me:

The President always says that we should pay less in taxes - - but if we actually do that, the IRS will send us to jail.

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…

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If you have not already filed your income tax returns, you should not be reading this until you do so. Don’t be one of those goofs who make it to the post office at 11:45 PM tonight to get the envelope postmarked properly for tax filing. And while you are at it, don’t be one of the dopes who watch the coverage of those procrastinating dopes on your local TV news stations. It is no longer news – and it never was interesting – that some people are dumb enough to procrastinate until late on the 14th of April to do something they have to do.

In a way, I am glad that Tiger Woods lost the Masters. I bear him no animus; he is clearly the best golfer in the world and an athlete who possesses more than his share of grace and dignity. However, the incessant chatter about whether or not he could/would win the Grand Slam this year just because he said that was his professional objective for the year had gotten way beyond tedious already. At least we will not have to hear about that topic again until after the golf season is over when some reporter will obviously ask Tiger if his objective is to try to do that next year. Wait for it; someone will ask. What the hell do you think his range of potential answers might be…?

Since I mentioned golf, let me observe that there may be a tectonic shift underway in the world of professional golf. For all of the time that I have followed sports, the US golf tournaments have been the focus for pro golfers from around the world. Three of golf’s four “majors” are here and the “ordinary tournaments” on the PGA Tour have been much more lucrative than tournaments elsewhere that the top golfers have sought to play here. That may not continue to be the case.

Golf is becoming more popular in developing nations and has drawn some very wealthy backers. Next year, the Dubai Championship will offer $10M in purse money; do not be surprised to see a few of the top American golfers adjust their schedules to play in that event. Moreover, with more deep pockets for financial backing for tournaments abroad, do not be surprised to see large appearance fees spread around to golfers other than just the top two or three players. [There are reports that Tiger Woods received a $3M appearance fee to play in the Dubai Desert Classic last February. I don’t know if that is true; only the IRS does.]

It may be a while before a single geographic area overseas has a golf tour that surpasses the PGA Tour, but taken as a whole, international tournaments in Qatar, Dubai, Singapore, India and Japan could become viable competitors to American tour stops.

[Tax Day Interlude: Intaxication is that feeling of euphoria that you get when you receive your tax refund - - lasting only until you realize it was your money in the first place and the government held it for a year at no interest.]

Around the NBA trade deadline, there were four “big trades”. When the Lakers acquired Pau Gasol and got rid of Kwame Brown at the same time, I said that was a miraculous deal for them. I still wonder if Lakers’ GM, Mitch Kupchak, had a mask and a gun when he conducted those “negotiations”. Gasol had an injury that kept him out of about ten games, but with him in the line-up, the Lakers have won 20 and lost 5. The Lakers have to get an A+ for that deal.

The Phoenix Suns acquired Shaq. I did not think that was a good trade because I did not see how Shaq could fit into the way the Suns play - - and at first the fit was pretty bad. However, the Suns have gone 16-7 to close out the season, so maybe the coaches and players in Phoenix deserve a heap of credit for making this work? I remain skeptical - - albeit not nearly as much as I was – about this trade; so I’ll give the Suns a B+ as an interim grade. That can rise if they make a playoff run and it can sink if they go in the tank next season without making a playoff run this year.

The Mavericks acquired Jason Kidd in the shameful trade that could only be made because Keith Van Horn nominally “came out of retirement” for a month and collected about $4M. I still say that makes a mockery of the NBA salary cap and something has to be done to prevent that from happening again. Nevertheless, the Mavericks have not been shining since the trade. They were 35-18 when the trade went down; they are merely 15-11 since the trade. In addition, they are only 3-11 against teams with winning records since the trade. I’ll give the Mavs an interim grade of C for the trade. It can go up if they win the NBA championship this year. If not, it will likely go down because they gave away young players to get a 35-year-old point guard in Kidd.

The Cavaliers traded a bunch of guys to get a bunch of guys. I said at the time that I did not see how the Cavs would be a lot better with the likes of Wally Szcerbiak, Ben Wallace and the much-traveled Joe Smith as the supporting cast for LeBron James instead of what they had. [I did say I liked Delonte West whom they also acquired.] Well, the Cavs were 30-24 on the day of the trade and have gone 13-12 since the trade. While it would seem as if this trade ought to get a grade well below a C, I’ll give the Cavs a C because they traded accessory parts for accessory parts and there is no reason to think they cannot move some of these guys along to get other accessory parts sometime in the future.

[Tax Day Interlude: Have you ever noticed that when a politician says you will pay a “slight tax increase” it costs you several hundreds of dollars and when he/she passes a “substantial tax cut”, you wind up with an extra $3.47 in your pocket? Just asking…]

I’m happy to know that such an esteemed sports columnist as Scott Ostler (SF Chronicle) agrees with my position that the Olympic Torch Relay should be stopped. Here is one of his observations on that subject:

“Marion Jones’ 400-meter and 1,600-meter relay teammates from the Sydney Olympics have been asked to give back their medals. Finally, a practical use for the Olympic Torch: Melt down all the repo’d scrap metal.”

Now let me pose a question to you regarding Professor Ostler’s observation. You are one of the people who won medals in the Sydney Olympics on those relay teams with Marion Jones. Your medal is safely locked away in your safety deposit box. You get a letter from the IOC telling you to send it back to them - - presumably in a postage paid envelope. Under those circumstances, could you write them a letter in response that would not require significant “bleeping” if read aloud? I don’t think I could.

Finally, in honor of tax day, here is a line from Will Rogers that was true when he said it 80 years ago and remains true today:

“The only difference between death and taxes is that death doesn’t get worse every time Congress meets.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…

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There has been a lot of coverage of the Boston Red Sox inviting Bill Buckner to throw out the first pitch at their home opener. Buckner was reviled in Boston for more than a decade to the point that he and his family had to move out of the area. When the fans welcomed him to Fenway Park and he threw a strike in the ceremonial first pitch, many have said this brings him closure. If that is what it took, good for him and good for the fans of the Red Sox.

Juxtaposed with that feelgood story, Moises Alou now says – about five years after the fact – that he would not have been able to catch the ball that Steve Bartman interfered with in Chicago. That is certainly not what his body language and anger said at the moment of the play, but revisionist history seems to be one of the major pastimes for athletes, celebrities and politicians these days. Maybe Alou is trying to give Bartman closure? Who knows? Here is the issue that Cubs’ fans need to wrestle with:

For the home opener in 2009, who should throw out the first pitch: Steve Bartman or Moises Alou dressed in a billy-goat costume?

The escalating salaries in sports seem to have made me numb to some of the press releases associated with signings. However, now that the baseball season has begun, two contracts seem to stand out and ask the question, “Can that be right?”

The White Sox will pay Octavio Dotel $11M this year. Excuse me, but a few years ago, I suggested that he should be called Octavio “Heartbreak” Dotel. Just for clarification, that is not a compliment for a relief pitcher…

The number may be a tad smaller, but the other contract that has to have some folks in Milwaukee shaking their heads would be the $10M that the Brewers will pay Eric Gagne this summer. When I saw a reference to that contract after Gagne blew two saves in his first three appearances this year, the first thing that went through my mind was “Really? Who thought that was a good idea?”

There are a whole lot of players in MLB on the DL for varying periods of time at the moment. If there is a team that came north from Spring Training with no one on the DL, I cannot think of it. The corner of my brain devoted to cynicism/realism wonders actively if this is the aftermath of the steroid era in baseball. Allow me to elaborate…

For years, lots and lots of players were taking steroids to build themselves up and to help them heal from injuries. Now that testing is more prevalent and more meaningful and now that penalties for testing positive can cost several million dollars in lost wages, it is reasonable to assume that fewer players are taking their chances with steroids. So maybe their enhanced strength is too much for their tendons and joints and they do not have access to other steroids to help the repair process along the way. And maybe that is why there are so many players on the DL at the moment. It will be interesting to see if the DL becomes less crowded as younger players who came up in the “non-steroid era” become the majority of players in MLB.

I read a report that Brandon Backe and Albert Pujols got into a verbal tussle before a recent Astros/Cardinals game in Houston. Evidently, Backe did not take kindly to the fact that in the previous game, Pujols really clobbered JR Towles – the Houston catcher. The Backe/Pujols confrontation was purely verbal and after the fact, Backe told the Houston Chronicle:

“It’s apparent that we don’t like each other. That’s OK. There are plenty of other people I don’t like in this game. The competition between he and I just escalated.”

Here is one more thing that is apparent – over and above the fact that Backe thinks that he and Pujols do not like each other:

Backe’s best subject in school was probably not English if that class demanded that he use objective case pronouns properly…

For your term paper assignment in this on-line course in sports reality, answer the following in a minimum of 3000 words and a maximum of 5000 words:

Considering various sports and the people who organize/run them, which of the following sports is the sleaziest and why:

1. Boxing

2. Pro ‘rassling

3. The Olympics

4. NCAA “revenue sports” [men’s basketball and football]

Finally, with regard to baseball’s salary structure, here is a comment from Greg Cote in the Miami Herald about the lower end of that spectrum:

“The Marlins’ $17 million payroll for the 25-man active roster is the lowest in baseball by more than double. Put it this way. When ‘Mr. Marlin’ Jeff Conine signed that one-day contract to retire as a Marlin, he briefly became the team’s highest-paid player.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…

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A few days ago, I stated as unequivocally as I could that any boycott of the Beijing Olympic Games would be a useless undertaking in terms of forcing political and social policy changes upon the government in China. I continue to believe that is the case. Moreover, because I remain firmly convinced that this is the case, it is now time to put an end to the highly symbolic and grossly stupid Olympic Torch Relay. Stop that nonsense immediately; take the damned torch from wherever it is and fly it to Beijing; bring it out at the Opening Ceremonies and light the puppy so that it can ignite the Olympic flame. By the way, I can’t wait for the Al Gore acolytes to complain about the Olympic flame’s contribution to greenhouse gasses and how taking the torch around the world has a carbon footprint equal to a jillion farting cows in feedlots around the world.

In 1996 – when the Olympics were to be in Atlanta – the torch relay came down a street that was less than 200 yards from my house. I had to slowly make my way to my home through throngs of mouth-breathers who jockeyed for position to watch someone jog down the street carrying the torch. I don’t know about where you live, but I cannot avoid seeing joggers every day of the year here in the DC area. Once home, I poured myself a nice glass of wine and ignored the silliness. What a waste of the space-time continuum…

In 2008, the torch relay has caused the Chinese government to send a paramilitary team to protect the torch and to keep protesters from accosting the runners and/or swiping the silly thing. In London, the Chinese torch protectors were forceful and efficient to the point where Lord Sebastian Coe – leader of the movement to bring the Olympics to London in 2012 – called the torch protectors “thugs”.

Then again, the torch carriers themselves have been known to find ways to make the torch relay into an event that will annoy the Chinese government. In France one of the runners – identified as an “environmental journalist” – decided that she would carry the torch for her part of the relay while wearing a headband with the flag of Tibet on it. She expressed surprise that the Chinese torch protectors took umbrage at that and took her headband from her. I wonder if she would have been so bold as to have worn that headband had she been running a relay leg in China itself. Somehow, I doubt that…

If there is no torch relay, there is no obvious event for protesters to disrupt. So just stop doing this and get on with the business of running the games instead of a symbolic relay race.

Meanwhile, the folks who are in charge of deciding what may be in the bloodstream of Olympic athletes and what may not be there have banned eating deer penis and turtle blood because of some metabolic substances that offer performance enhancement possibilities. Actually, if an Olympic athlete were to be able to run down a stag so that the athlete could kill it and eat the penis, that seems as if it might be part of the ancient “Olympic ideal”. On the other hand, in all of the myriad cookbooks that my long-suffering wife has, I find no mention of deer penis as a foodstuff to be prepared in any way. Maybe you could braise it in turtle blood…

I read that the NHL franchise, Minnesota Wild, is about to change hands and that the price will be between $240 – 260M. I realize that Minneapolis/St. Paul is one of the areas of the US where ice hockey is a big attraction, but this is a league with no significant television deal and one that had to cancel a season in order to put a hugely restrictive salary cap in place just to survive. When you put that in juxtaposition with estimates by financial publications that some NFL franchises are worth something in the neighborhood of $1.5B, it makes me wonder where the end of these spiraling values might be. Some folks suggest that when the Cubs and Wrigley Field and other assets are unbundled and sold, that franchise might bring in something north of $1B.

Earlier this decade we saw stock in the “dot-coms” turn into stock in the “dot-bombs”. At the moment, the US is working through economic issues related to the “housing bubble”. In those cases, assets with a basic and intrinsic value soared to price levels that made no economic sense - - and then they crashed. Is that happening in the world of sports with the prices paid for franchises?

By the way, how did you do in your WNBA Draft pool? Are you going to take your winnings and buy an extra team in the WNBA fantasy league this year? Just asking…

Sports Illustrated did one of its features listing the 25 toughest athletes in the world. Lists of that kind are innately silly and meaningless but SI managed to make it even sillier by putting Tiger Woods on the list.

Tiger Woods is a great golfer; there is no debate on that point. He is a man who wins and loses with grace, dignity and class; there is no debate about any of that either. Nevertheless, he plays a sport where competitors smoke cigarettes during the action and he is totally unnerved by the sound of a single camera shutter while he is competing. The folks who run golf testified in the Casey Martin trial that the ability to walk the course is an essential element of golf; most five year olds can walk the length of a golf course. If SI feels the need to slurp Tiger Woods yet again, they can make lists of the most dominant athletes or of the most charismatic athletes and sing paeans to him.

Since I am talking about silliness, let me mention the comments made by Rich Rodriguez’ lawyer relative to the trial Rodriguez faces with West Virginia. The lawyer claims that the $4M buyout that WVU seeks to collect makes WVU the equivalent of slave owners. The lawyer said:

“It’s like back before the Civil War when slaves had the right to buy their freedom. A penalty of $4 million is almost like a slave from Africa trying to buy his freedom in America. I think it’s an outrageous amount. It’s just not fair and it’s not related to any damages the university is suffering.”

Recall when Larry Johnson of the Knicks called himself a rebellious slave just as the last work stoppage in the NBA commenced. Johnson was making more than $10M a year and could change his employment status any time he wanted. That is not slavery - - and neither is Rich Rodriguez living under any conditions that even start to resemble slavery. Here is the deal. If there is a clause in his contract with WVU that says he has to pay $4M to leave, then WVU is perfectly within its rights to try to collect that money. If that clause is not there, then the court should toss the case out in no time flat. Unless of course Rodriguez’ lawyer can show that Rodriguez was coerced into signing the contract in the first place and that the contract committed him to a term of bondage. That would make this a case related to slavery. I will not be holding my breath there.

Finally, here are two comments about Max Mosely and his reported dalliances with ladies-of-the-evening:

“Parting thought: Max Mosley, president of the governing body of world auto racing, is alleged to have engaged in sex acts with five prostitutes in a scenario that involved Nazi role-playing. Needless to say, the incident has caused quite a Fuhrer.” [Greg Cote, Miami Herald]

“Rumor of the Week: Formula One officials accuse Patriots of illegally filming Max Mosley’s walk-through.” [Dwight Perry, Seattle Times]

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…

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The NBA regular season is drawing to an end. I know; but it only seems as if an NBA season last as long as an Ice Age. There is a real light at the end of the tunnel; and very soon, there will be no more Miami/Minnesota match-ups. So, before the NBA moves on to its next seemingly interminable phase – its three-month playoffs – allow me to present my nominees for a few of the season-long awards:

NBA MVP: For this year, I believe that Kobe Bryant, Kevin Garnett and Chris Paul stand several significant steps above the rest of the field. I do not think it would a stain on the award or the league if any of these three players won the award. My preference by the slimmest of margins is Kevin Garnett.

NBA Rookie of the Year: Once again, three players stand out above the crowd - - Luis Scola (Houston), Al Horford (Atlanta) and Kevin Durant (Seattle). I like Durant slightly more than Horford for this honor.

NBA Sixth Man: It has to be either Manu Ginobli (San Antonio) or Leandro Barbosa (Phoenix) and I like Barbosa here.

NBA Defensive Player of the Year: Several worthy candidates here but for effectiveness and consistency play-after-play and game-after-game, I have to favor Shane Battier.

NBA Coach of the Year: I could make a case for Stan Van Gundy, Jerry Sloan or Doc Rivers - - but not this year. My two finalists would be Mo Cheeks (Phila) and Byron Scott (New Orleans). I think Scott deserves to win it.

In the NBA playoffs, people talk about the need to protect one’s home court and the importance of a road win. Frankly, that is the key to making the playoffs too but a simple measure of a team’s ability to do this is to take the difference between a team’s wins on the road and their losses at home. It gives you a pretty good measure of the quality of the team over the season. Consider the NBA East; you have a sense that Boston and Detroit are the cream of the crop. Check out this measure for the playoff teams as of this morning:

Boston +23
Detroit +17
Orlando +10
Cleveland + 4
Washington + 2
Philly + 2
Toronto 0
Atlanta - 3

In the NBA West, this measure provides an interesting ordering to the myriad of very good teams there. Note the absence of any playoff teams in the NBA West with differentials near or below zero:

San Antonio +15
Los Angeles +15
New Orleans +14
Houston +14
Utah +13
Phoenix +13
Dallas +10
Golden State + 9
Denver + 8

Only Atlanta has a playoff shot with a negative differential here and only Sacramento of the “also-rans” has a differential anywhere near zero - - the Kings are minus-2 as of this morning.

The English FA Cup “tournament” has been contested since 1871. For those in the US who think it would be impossible to play all 340 of the NCAA Division I basketball teams in a tournament, consider the FA Cup. It starts out with over 700 teams in England and Wales and plays a single elimination format that weaves the tournament games in and among the regular season games for the various teams and leagues. Granted, it takes about an eight-month span to get all the games in, but they do it every year.

This year, Cardiff City – a Welsh team – will be in the final game at Wembley Stadium on May 17. The last time a Welsh team made it to the finals was in 1927 when the same Cardiff City club beat Arsenal to win the Cup. All the “powerhouse” teams that folks in the US hear about all the time have been eliminated; the final game will be Cardiff City versus Portsmouth. This year, Cinderella went to Great Britain and took hold of the FA Cup competition.

Speaking of soccer, I read somewhere - - didn’t make note of where so I can’t send you there for details - - that the salary structure in MLS has become severely unbalanced. According to my notes, David Beckham is guaranteed to make $6.5M this year for MLS play. Players in MLS making the minimum salary will earn $33,000; players who have developmental contracts with MLS will earn $12,900. According to the article I read, Beckham will account for approximately 15% of the total salary paid by the league to all of its players for 2008. I find that last number stunning.

The disparity between the “top-paid player” and the earnings of players at the league minimum is probably similar in other sports - - such as the NBA. But even a player making $25M in the NBA would not come close to accounting for 15% of the total NBA salary amount. In rough numbers the total amount the NBA paid out in salaries for the 2007/08 season was 2.06B; the highest paid player was Kevin Garnett making $23.7M; thus, he makes 1.2% of the league total not 15%. For a player to make 15% of the NBA total salary, he would have had to make about $310M for last year.

By the way, if I asked you to guess who the second-highest paid player in the NBA was for the past year, I suspect you would have to guess for a while. This player made $21.7M – more than Stephon Marbury and Shaq and Kobe and Allen Iverson. Give up yet? It was Michael Finley…

Finally, here is a comment from Dwight Perry in the Seattle Times about Don Cherry - - and it could be equally applicable to Craig Sager:

“Filming is expected to begin this summer for “The Don Cherry Story,” a two-part TV movie on the life and times of CBC’s caustic but colorful hockey commentator.

“As for procuring Cherry’s garb, the wardrobe department insists, no 1960s-era Hide-A-Beds will be harmed in the making of this movie.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…

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I want to start today with four observations about last night’s game:

1. John Calipari said on Pardon the Interruption several weeks ago that he was not worried about Memphis’ foul shooting because they would make the free throws when they needed to. He added that when he looked at a recruit, on a list of twenty-five important attributes, free throw shooting was twenty-sixth. Those words came back to haunt him last night.

2. Chris Douglas-Roberts’ play in the tournament certainly moved him up on the draft boards for NBA teams. However, his gagging on three free throws in the final two minutes of the game that allowed Kansas to put the game into OT might give some NBA GMs pause.

3. The referees last night definitely decided to call a loose game. That’s fine because they were consistent from beginning to end and consistent with regard to both teams.

4. Billy Packer went on a huge rhetorical flight last night. He said that Kansas knew all about overtimes in championship games - - referring to the multiple overtime game for the championship in 1957. Not a single person on the team was alive in 1957 and it is possible that none of the Kansas players’ parents were alive in 1957. Talk about filling the airwaves with unimportant blather…

With regard to the tournament as a whole:

1. Tennessee coach Bruce Perl said his team did not deserve a #2 seed. Looks to me as if he was absolutely right; they were not that good.

2. Where and when did the idea of players on the bench locking arms begin? It would probably be interesting to study videos of games to find out how often it works to secure victory. Scientists love to quantify superstitious behaviors…

Now that the men’s tournament is over, I want to offer to the NCAA and the tournament organizers a couple of ideas on how to make March Madness even better. I also have some thoughts for the folks who run the women’s tournament. As with my ideas for improving the NFL game, I will not be holding my breath until any of these things come to pass.

The final two or three minutes of a college basketball game might take 30 minutes to get through. With all of the time-outs and all of the delays by the coaches, the pace of what was probably an exciting game staggers to a halt. Here are two ideas to speed that part of the game up:

1. No team may call more than two timeouts in the final two minutes of a game AND there can be no more than three timeouts called by both teams.

2. When a player fouls out in the final 5 minutes of a game, the coach must replace the player within 10 seconds or the ball will be put in play. Every time a player fouls out, it becomes a de facto timeout.

Tournament organizers need to get rid of the “play-in game” - - or whatever euphemism they want to attach to that contest. It’s not interesting at all. The reason it is there is to allow one more at-large team to make the field. Forget that; invite one less at-large team and drop this silly and meaningless game.

Please limit the games played in football stadiums to the Final Four. There were regional games this year in Houston and Detroit in huge domes. It affects the players; it makes for bad seating and viewing. The raised floors make the players on the bench look as if they sitting in a pew in a church. I know it brings in more revenue, but is everything about money here?

Please assure that colleges allow at least some of their student body to buy tickets to the games. I don’t think any school has to go as far as Davidson did in providing transportation for its students to the game site, but when I looked in the stands at folks dressed in team colors, there seemed to be a lot more “codgers” and “beautiful people” there instead of students. If the players on the floor are really “student-athletes”, shouldn’t there be a lot more “student-spectators” around?

Why are halftimes of tournament games longer than halftimes of regular season games? Please do not tell me there has ever been a clamor for more time listening to the studio folks chatter on about the various games. No one wants to see them; everyone wants to see basketball. So cut back the halftime shows and put the games on the air.

To avoid the contrived controversies about #1 seeds getting home court advantages, a simple rule will take care of that. Except for the Final Four where the site is fixed long in advance of the tournament, no team will play any of its tournament games within 150 miles of its campus. That will keep Duke and UNC out of places like Charlotte or Greensboro and it will keep UCLA out of Anaheim and Syracuse out of the Carrier Dome.

The difficulties facing the women’s basketball tournament are much more serious and need suggestions that are more radical. Bob Molinaro of the Virginia-Pilot summarizes a major part of the problem with women’s college basketball here:

“ESPN’s relentless promotion of women’s basketball gives the impression that it’s more popular than it really is. In Greensboro, N.C., on Tuesday night, high-profile UConn and Rutgers played a regional final before an intimate gathering of 4,623.”

Women’s regional finals games averaged 6400. Put that in context here; LSU was in New Orleans in a regional final and drew only 5000 fans. Women’s basketball is not a sufficiently popular draw to sustain the tournament the way it is organized now.

First of all, just because the men’s tournament has 64 teams does not mean the women’s tournament needs to have 64 teams. Wins by teams seeded ten-and-below happen every year in the men’s tournament; in the women’s tournament, winds by teams seeded five-and below are rare. The women’s tournament needs to be cut back to 32 teams at the very most and perhaps to 24. Moreover, while they are at it, the women’s tournament should get rid of all “automatic qualifying teams”. It’s all very egalitarian and very proper, but it makes for a lot of early round massacres that no one wants to watch and then they lose interest and cease to pay attention to the rest of the games. UConn beat Holy Cross this year 91-36; would anyone want to see a rematch just because Holy Cross was an “automatic qualifier”?

Next, the women’s tournament needs to go in the opposite direction from the men’s tournament on this next issue. Women’s basketball is not a sufficient draw to get fans to travel very far to see games so they need to really make their “regionals” into “regional matters” and keep everyone close to home until the women’s Final Four. If they send the Ivy League champ out to Eugene Oregon to play in a #1/#16 sacrificial game, few if any people are going to go. But if the game is in Buffalo or Boston or even Philly, you might generate interest. And generating interest should be front and center for the women’s tournament organizers.

As the collegiate basketball season ends, here is a comment from Greg Cote in the Miami Herald:

“In other college hoops, Ohio State won the NIT title, after which its players did a good job faking like they were thrilled.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…

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A while back, I wondered out loud what had happened to those folks who asserted with a combination of righteous indignation and moral certitude that the only reason that the Federal government was pursuing Barry Bonds was because he was Black. There was a segment of the commentator universe that held this was nothing but institutional racism. After all, Mark McGwire showed many of the same growth trends as did Bonds and Mark McGwire had “shady supplements” in his locker and Mark McGwire had been a horrible witness in front of Congress; yet the Feds were after Barry Bonds and they were leaving Mark McGwire alone.

Some of the air went out of those sails when Roger Clemens found himself in the crosshairs of some Federal investigators. But now that the case of Tammy Thomas stands front and center, the folks who claim this is nothing but a racist witch-hunt seem to have been stilled. As I think they should have been from the start.

Tammy Thomas was a world-class cyclist and she is Caucasian. If anyone doubts me, use Google Images to convince yourself. Tammy Thomas was convicted last week of lying to a grand jury that was investigating some nefarious folks who distributed steroids to a wide range of world-class athletes to include baseball players, football players and track athletes. Does the prosecutorial basis for bringing Tammy Thomas to trial sound anything at all like what the Feds are interested in with regard to Barry Bonds?

The backdrop to the Tammy Thomas story seems to be that she took some form of performance enhancing substance and tested positive for whatever it was. Through the procedures in the world of international cycling that attempts to provide due process to athletes, Tammy Thomas was banned from cycling for life in 2002. All might have ended there because international cycling is not a sufficiently big deal here in the US that she would have had to deal with her infamy all that much. But it didn’t stop there…

There was a grand jury looking into BALCO – perhaps this rings a bell with the folks who have followed the Barry Bonds saga – and Tammy Thomas was made to testify there. Evidently, she spoke untruths to that grand jury because that is what got her to trial and that is what got her convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice.

According to a commentary on the Jim Rome TV show, Thomas was so into steroids and performance enhancers that she developed facial hair such that she needed to shave like a man. On one occasion, reportedly, an investigator came to her house and she greeted the investigator at the door with a face full of shaving cream. I have no idea if that is factual, exaggerated, or fabricated, but Tammy Thomas seems not to understand even a small measure of the concept of personal accountability.

Since her banishment from cycling, Tammy Thomas went to law school. Surely, at some point in law school the professors have to confide in the aspiring students that convictions in Federal court on counts of perjury and obstruction of justice are not positive entries on one’s résumé. So, all she had to do was to tell the truth to the grand jury - - after all, she had already been banned from cycling for life so there wasn’t much else the international cycling mavens could do to her - - and none of this would have happened. But a jury just said that Tammy Thomas did not tell the truth to that grand jury and she now faces six to thirty months in prison and a severe blow to any legal career she may have contemplated.

Please note some of the parallels to the Barry Bonds situation here. The cases are not identical to be sure; but there are enough parallels that we should put to rest once and for all the notion that the fundamental reason to investigate and potentially put Barry Bonds on trial is founded in racism. It is not.

Even if it were, in a perjury case there is an ace of trump for the accused. It is called the truth. If what he said to the grand jury is indeed the truth, then the perjury trial will end in acquittal. But if it isn’t the truth – and by the legal definition that means the whole truth and not some nuanced truth – then he is no different from Tammy Thomas.

After the verdict had been entered, Tammy Thomas reportedly yelled at one of the Federal prosecutors in her case, “You’re out to destroy lives. You like to destroy lives.” That may be correct; those prosecutors may indeed possess misanthropic souls that revel in the misfortune and the destruction of other people. More likely, they are members of the judicial system of the country who don’t appreciate having witnesses lie under oath intead of being misanthropes.

I think the most important aspect of this case and Ms. Thomas’ outburst at its conclusion is that if her life had indeed been destroyed, she is the one that did it. Taking the performance-enhancing substance that triggered the positive drug test was a choice she made - - unless I am to believe that this was foisted upon her against her will and without her knowledge on a sufficient number of occasions to bring her to the point where she allegedly needed to shave like a man. While one can conjure up some movie-plot set of circumstances where this may be the case, it is then hard to figure out how lying to the grand jury while she was under oath can be an act taken in anything other than a positive and willful manner by the person telling the falsehood.

Bottom line: Tammy Thomas is responsible for destroying her life if indeed this conviction represents something so dire. And if – I said IF – the same thing happens to Barry Bonds, it will be something of his own doing and no one else’s.

Finally, here is a commentary from syndicated columnist Norman Chad regarding his own experimentation and use of steroids is coming along:

“I just started on tetrahydrogestrinone, and with any luck, I’ll have Marion Jones’ biography done by dusk.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…

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No one can properly accuse me of being a lackey for “The Olympic Movement”. I have, in fact, likened the Olympic Movement to one’s bowel movements on occasion. Back in 2001, I wrote an entire piece on just a few of the things that I thought were wrong with the Olympics. /

If that does not provide me sufficient credentials with regard to finding fault with the modern Olympics, consider that in 2003, I suggested canceling the Olympics in their entirety.

I do not retract anything I said in those commentaries above. Obviously, the IOC has not changed any of the things I found objectionable in the first rant and surely the Olympics have not been shut down completely as I suggested in the second. With all of that as a backdrop, we come to the present where we have a chorus of people in the media and in the political world – talk about symbiotic relationships! – calling for nations to boycott the Olympic Games in Beijing this summer. To all of those high-minded rhetorical gassers let me say this:

Stuff a sock in it!

The Games will happen. Let there be no idealistic flights of fancy here. The Games will happen. So, every time you hear someone call for a boycott, ask them to explain in pragmatic terms just what that will accomplish. After they are finished waxing poetic, refer back to the opening line of this paragraph; the Games will happen. Translation:

A boycott may make someone feel good, but it will not change a damned thing.

Let us look at the recent history of Olympic boycotts. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter responded to the Soviet Union invasion of Afghanistan with a US boycott of the Olympic Games in Moscow. That was probably the harshest moment of the Carter Administration in terms of foreign policy. So, did the Red Army withdraw? History tells us that they did not - - until about 10 years later.

Then in 1984, the Soviet Union boycotted the Olympic Games in Los Angeles for some foreign policy reason that obviously had little meaning. The games happened without the team from the USSR and soon after that boycott the USSR ceased to exist - - thereby rendering their putative foreign policy objective(s) moot.

The cold hard truth is that Olympic boycotts have no real effect. They do not change the behaviors of people or nation-states. So when French President Sarkosy says he is considering various boycott options, you can feel free to yawn after you marvel at his sensitivity. When German Chancellor Merkel says she is not going to the Opening Ceremonies, feel good for her once you realize that she won’t have to sit through about four hours of mind-numbing boredom. Simultaneously, realize both of them are grandstanding and not much will come of their histrionics.

Here in the US, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has declared that President Bush should not attend the Opening Ceremonies. But either Speaker Pelosi is too cowardly to call for an outright boycott or she realizes in her heart that all of this posturing has less gravitas than a pinch of pigeon poop because she affirmatively wants US athletes to compete in Beijing. That’ll show those infernal Chinese autocrats; that’ll get them to change their behaviors…

Rep. Thad McCotter (R-MI) drafted a bill that would limit the abilities of USG officials and employees to attend the opening ceremonies and the “Parade of Nations”. Said Rep. McCotter:

“President Bush, as the leader of the free world, must uphold America’s beacon of liberty… This noble cause is harmed through his attendance as a guest of this oppressive government.”

Making sure that such vital legislation has a name that will be remembered by the voting public, Rep. McCotter has called it “The Communist Chinese Olympic Accountability Act”. In addition, he says that it intends to “stop politicians taxpayer funded junkets to the Communist Olympics.” [Cue The Battle Hymn of the Republic here]

Let me make two points. Rep. McCotter’s bill has as much chance of passing and being enacted into law as I have of becoming the next American Idol. Secondly, what is the pragmatic point Rep. McCotter hopes to make here. Forget USG employees and officials attending these annoying ceremonies; there are hundreds of rather important and influential US businesspeople attending Chinese events – some related to the Olympics and some totally divorced from the Olympics – every waking hour of every day. Doesn’t their “attendance” at those events/negotiations/meetings aid and abet this “oppressive government”? Sure they do, but Rep. McCotter knows that this is an election year where job loss is already a huge issue and the last thing he needs to do is to propose something that might cause more job losses – or increases in the consumer costs.

At the instant of time when the International Olympic Committee decided to award the 2008 games to the People’s Republic of China, all of these events were cast in concrete. Nancy Pelosi needed to have spoken out then referring to whoever may or may not be occupying the White House in the present. Rep. McCotter needed to have introduced his bill back then. Anyone who believed that none of these “conflicts” or “contradictions” would obtain in the days leading up to the games probably also believes that Shawn Kemp is a virgin.

There could have been no doubt that idealistic moralists were going to have differences with the PRC government over issues of freedom and human rights and the occupation of Tibet and the status of Taiwan. All those issues were there then; they are here now; they are going to be around for more than a little while once the Olympic Games are over. The plain fact of the matter is that those issues are not linked to the Olympic Games.

I said above that Olympic boycotts do not change the behaviors of people or nation-states. I do need to amend that statement narrowly. The US athletes who trained to compete in the Moscow Games and the Soviet athletes who trained to compete in the Los Angeles Games made serious changes to their behaviors. In addition, the people who were going to provide television and journalistic coverage of those Moscow Games certainly changed their behaviors. Should the current clamor for boycotts of the Beijing Games gain traction, these are the kinds of people who will have to change their behavior once again. But make no mistake; that will be the full extent of it.

The IOC has a history of staging games in countries that may not necessarily fit neatly into the high-ideals of people who are often described as human-rights activists. I do not want to get into any current political debates here so let me tread on relatively safe ground and suggest that Nazi Germany in 1936 was such a place. There was no boycott then or any great outcry for one. What I find most interesting is that by sending Jesse Owens to Germany that year, the US government unwittingly provided about as clear a demonstration as one could provide that the Nazi concept of Aryan supremacy in all things was flawed at the core. Might something like that happen this year to demonstrate some flaw in the PRC gestalt? Probably not. However, one thing is certain; if there is a boycott, there will be no opportunity for such an event to happen.

To all those noble orators who tell me that we need to do something to “send a message” to the Chinese government, let me suggest that they write a note and send it via carrier pigeon. This same message has been “sent” to China for years; it isn’t being received. I have to wonder if the “message senders” aren’t equally interested in getting publicity for themselves as they are in actually getting a message across to the Chinese government. If changing the behavior of the Chinese government were truly paramount, then maybe they might consider changing the message in some way…

In the spirit of full disclosure, I hope that all of these do-gooders get through the current spasm of venting in the next few weeks and then they take breather for a couple of months. My long-suffering wife and I are going to China in May. We will not be sending any messages to the Chinese government; we will not be there with any grandiose purpose such as to change the outlook of the Chinese people that has taken millennia to create; we will not do anything related to the Olympics other than possibly taking pictures of the venues in Beijing that will house Olympic events in August 2008. We are going there to see China and to try to learn what we can about Chinese art and history and culture. We were supposed to go to Tibet for four days; that part of the trip has already been “redirected”. The fact of the matter is that my trip to China will not change anything either - - except my understanding of Chinese art and history and culture. So, if these folks can just put this on hiatus for a while, I would really appreciate that.

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…

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I ought to be wearing sandals and a burlap robe as I type this. If I am going to be a voice crying in the wilderness, I ought to dress the part. Let me explain.

You must have seen by now the replays of the final 0.5 seconds of the Atlanta/Toronto NBA game where Toronto was hosed. On an inbounds play, a Raptor breaks free of all defenders, takes a lob pass, and puts it in the basket. However, the clock reached zero while the ball was in his hands BECAUSE the clock operator started the clock before he touched the ball. With the ball still in the air, the clock shows 0.3 seconds and its running. Why does this make me a voice crying in the wilderness? Well, it was less than two months ago (5 Feb 2008 to be exact) that I wrote about the need for the NBA to be concerned about the integrity of their shot clock operators. I said then they had the ability to affect the Over/Under in games; here you see how they might affect the actual outcome of games. Oh, and this is the second time this season that the clock operator/official scorer personnel in Atlanta have made an egregious error. Recall that the NBA had to play a do-over of the final minute of a Hawks/Heat game because the official scorer miscounted the fouls on Shaq.

I am not saying any of these people are involved in anything illegal. I am more than willing to chalk up the recent blunder to incompetence rather than to venality. But once again, the NBA opens itself up to charges that the outcomes of games are not always determined solely by actions on the court.

To say that Larry Bowa has a hair-trigger on his temper would be like saying Skip Bayless would be an odds-on favorite to win a “Please Shut Up Award”. Bowa is suspended for three games after a manic tirade got him tossed from the Dodgers’ second game of the season. Bowa is the Dodgers’ third base coach and he was not standing within the confines of the coaching box. The umpire told him to get in the box; Bowa didn’t do that and the two of them got into a shouting match that would have qualified them to host the old CNN program Crossfire. [Aside: The demise of that program proves to me that there is a God and He is a merciful God.]

These two chronological adults got into this “spitting match” over the third base coaching box. Can we agree that the markings of a coaching box on a baseball field and the presence of feet in that box are not cosmically important? While there is no question that Bowa lost his cheese in this confrontation and that he deserved to be ejected for his tantrum, I have to side with him on the merits. The presence of a coach completely within the coaching box is anything but universal. If I had a dollar for every pitch in a MLB game where a coach was outside the coaching box, I could fund an economic stimulus package all by myself.

Memo to MLB Umpires: I do not want to rattle your cages here, but lots of batters do not stay within the confines of the batter’s box either…

Staying with baseball, Steve Rosenbloom of the Chicago Tribune had a cogent observation about the telecasts for Cubs’ games. Think about the potential for mischief here:

“Fukudome came to bat Wednesday and Comcast SportsNet flashed to a fan’s sign of Japanese characters, and I’m wondering, how long before Comcast or WGN-Ch. 9 shows a sign that is utterly offensive because nobody in the truck knows what it says?”

Barry Zito’s opening day outing for the SF Giants was “less than good”. The most sobering aspect of the performance was the report that his fastball topped out at 84 mph. That’s OK for a knuckleball pitcher; Zito is not a knuckleball pitcher. That may be sobering news for Giants’ fans but here is really bad news for the team. The Giants still owe Barry Zito $116M on his guaranteed contract. All together now - - YOWZA! Let me paraphrase Bob Dylan to summarize this situation:

How does it feel?
How does it feel?
To owe all that bread,
To an arm that’s dead.

Forgetting the disastrous economic impact of Zito’s contract on the Giants, imagine how bad that team will be if they do not have someone in their rotation as an ace. The Giants are bad and they are old. There are lots of bad teams in the league but with most of the other ones, there are young players on the roster and in the lineup that can make fans believe – at least for a while – that there is hope somewhere down the line. Those “kids” might actually develop into quality players and maybe the bad teams will find a way to dig into the cash reserves and find a way to keep them. But the Giants look to be bad now with a roster dominated by codgers. Just to clarify, that is not good.

Do you recall the times when the Baltimore Orioles sold out all of their games at Camden Yards? Well, if you have not been following the events in Baltimore recently, let me say that such is no longer the case. In the Orioles’ second game of the season, the announced attendance was 10,505. The stadium seats about 45,000 – give or take a thousand or two. With another year or two of incompetence on the field and a meddlesome owner, the attendance here could easily sink down into “Florida Marlins Territory”.

Finally, here is a baseball observation from Greg Cote in the Miami Herald:

“The Tampa Bay Rays have discussed possibly signing Barry Bonds. Because, evidently, finishing in last place every year isn’t embarrassing enough.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…

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