The Rain Maker Sports: Sports Bytes - June 8, 2010

The Rain Maker Sports: Sports Bytes - June 8, 2010

If at the start of the Stanley Cup Finals you asked the Chicago Blackhawks whether they'd be satisfied returning home for Game 6 with a 3-2 games lead, I'm fairly certain they'd have eagerly accepted it . . .

Yankees SS Derek Jeter will not be recruiting LeBron James to play in NY, insisting that his opinion doesn't matter since the two athletes play in different sports. He compared it to Magic Johnson recruiting him to play for one of the Los Angeles baseball teams. "If I were going to another baseball team, how would a basketball player help?" Jeter said. "I don't play basketball. I have nothing to do with that." Although Jeter probably does feel this way, I think there's a bigger reason why he is not getting involved in the LeBron sweepstakes. Professional athletes like Jeter probably find the suggestion that they participate in the ridiculous hoopla surrounding King James insulting. I know I would if I were a future Hall of Famer in my own right like Jeter . . .

Colts owner Bill Polian says that although Peyton Manning's contract with the team expires after this season, he expects to re-sign the franchise QB before then. Does anyone seriously believe Manning will finish his career anywhere other than Indianapolis? It's about as likely as Derek Jeter retiring in a uniform without pinstripes . . .

The NFL has demanded that the Baltimore Ravens cancel the final week of OTAs (Organized Team Activities) as punishment for "violat[ing] the rules concerning the intensity and tempo of drills conducted on the club's organized team activity days" . . . Now that's a team that wants to win . . .

There never seems to be a lack of sports "experts" who live-and-die by how good teams look on paper. No matter how many times a team fails to live up to expectations, those same experts will drink the Kool-Aid and pick them as eventual champions. For ex, in the early 1980s the Dallas Cowboys were picked perennially to win the Super Bowl because of their stacked roster. They were loaded from top to bottom. Danny White, Tony Hill, Tony Dorsett, Randy White, Ed "Too Tall" Jones, etc . . . Yet, despite the household names the team failed to get past the NFC Championships from 1980-1988 (Coach Tom Landry and most of that group were no longer with the team after 1988) I raise this point because I see the same mentality today with respect to the San Diego Chargers. For ex., NFL.com columnist Steve Wyche has listed his predictions for the 32 NFL teams and, lo and behold, the Chargers top his chart. How many times do the Chargers have to be embarrassingly eliminated from the postseason before the experts accept that the Bolts will always be the bridesmaids and never the bride? . . .

I confess that I enjoy watching the glitz-and-glamor Lakers lose. Just seeing the disappointed faces of Hollywood at courtside makes it worth it . . .

Boxer Yuri Foreman will undergo knee surgery to repair the meniscus he tore in his bout Saturday against Miguel Cotto at Yankee Stadium . . .

Here's hoping that Stephen Strasburg is not MLB's version of Ryan Leaf . . .

The Boston Globe website features some of history's most famous (infamous) blown calls by officials. Not surprisingly, four of the eight incidences selected involved the Yankees receiving the benefit of the bad call. It is a Boston newspaper after all . . .

Although obnoxious sports fans are found in every city and every stadium, Philly fans argue that they are unfairly labeled as exceptionally loathsome. Unfortunately for the City of Brotherly Love, incidences continue to arise that support this less than flattering view of Philadelphians. For ex., video has surfaced showing a young boy (maybe four or five years old) apparently drinking from a beer bottle during Sunday's Phillies-Padres game . . .

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