Every once in a while, the stars align for the less fortunate NFL team, allowing them a shot at the playoffs or even a Super Bowl. Some, like the Patriots, use it to spawn a run of success. Some, like the Browns and Falcons, can only hope to point to it in future years as the coach’s office empties yet again. In any event, this year’s lucky team is… Arizona.
Yes, it’s been a long hard road for Cubs and Red Sox fans. Everyone knows it was 1908 since the Cubs have won a championship and 1918 for Boston. Those years have been filled with turmoil, agony and heartbreak. But they aren’t the only fans that have experienced heartbreak or who have been waiting for a championship as long as they can remember. Hell, some fans don’t even know what it’s like to be heartbroken.
Like him, hate him, respect him, loathe him. Wherever your views on Ray Lewis as a human being may fall, it’s nearly impossible not to be awed by him when it comes time for your team to play his Baltimore Ravens.
There is a reason that I, and many golf fans, don’t like seeing Todd Hamilton and his ilk win the major tournaments. There is a reason why the sport doesn’t (shouldn’t?) like it. It’s dreadfully, interminably boring.
Please don’t go Randy.
One of the profound speculations in sport has always been, to me, if athletic prowess were sold at Wal-Mart, in what section would it be found?
Would it be packaged among the frozen pizza in the grocery section? Would it hang beside the Wrangler jeans in the clothing isle? Could it reside amongst the candy bars and gum in the checkout lane?
Never before has this question earned more relevance than in recent weeks. As a 25-year-old accused rapist dismantles the NBA’s flagship franchise and the Yankees try to dangle a talentless farm system and a bag of money in the face of the Arizona Diamondbacks in order to lure the Big Unit to the Big Apple, talent is something to be bought, sold or swapped, not cultivated or cherished.
The baseball off-season is a time for rebuilding, revitalizing, and reenergizing your ball club. By the end of the first half of play in baseball most clubs have an idea of where their teams’ are headed. The 2004 baseball season has been anything but anticlimactic consisting of comeback stories, rising superstars, battles through injury, and underachieving, overpaid loudmouths. Some clubs have performed much to the expectation of critics, and others have not performed as expected. I’ll examine which off-season deals were helpful and which were devastating to the clubs during the first half of play.
13. Change the abbreviation to Broken Computer System. Or take the C out. Admit you were wrong and add a playoff game.
12. Add to the ranking factors a cheerleader swimsuit contest. It’ll help just as much as everything else you’ve ever tried. Then admit you were wrong and add a playoff game.
11. Line a monkey cage with media guides. Place the teams in order of media guides the monkey relieves himself on. Use this to replace the New York Times computer rankings,which it would far surpass in accuracy. Then admit you were wrong and add a playoff game.
As America’s pastime begins its home stretch, it’s now time to look at what’s about to happen. Since I’ve got a few leftover tea leaves, let’s take a look:
Exactly how can you not love Todd Hamilton? The man’s been through the golfing versions of hell, purgatory and the Japanese Tour. He’s fought, lost, dusted off, and started clawing again. And just when you think it’s over, just when Els starts hitting the clutch shots, when the man who went second at Augustaand fourth in the U.S. Open looms over him, the man delivers. The “Any Given Sunday” Rule got put to the test today–and it passed with flying colors.
For those of us south of the Mason-Dixon line, hockey doesn’t come up on the register very often, if at all. Our psyche is so bent on baseball, basketball and football that the concept of following some sport we fail to understand and are incapable of playing seems laughable. But occasionally, there enters into the world a story so bizarre, so strange, so irrefutably perplexing, that our minds drift from the courts and fields more suited to our more tepid climes. Such a story has drifted from the glacial land of Canada, intertwined with the similarly frosty plains of Illinois, made a beeline in the livable domain of St. Louis, and finally arrived at our attentions, compelling us to train our minds to its endless complexities. It is a story of family secrets beyond which can be found in the Southern tradition of the dimestore novel, a betrayal which far surpasses the bounds of any film-noir screenplay, and smitten manipulation which exceeds the confines of even the most scandalous of tabloids. It is the story of Mike Danton, a young, talented left wing for the St. Louis Blues, who Friday pled guilty to murder-for-hire conspiracy, along with girlfriend Katie Wolfmeyer.