Gone Are The Days That The Sports Are The News

So yesterday was an interesting day in sports, but for the most part it wasn’t for on-field or on-ice issues. It is getting to the point when you are watching shows like SportsCenter or Sportsnet Connected where it takes 10 minutes of news before you get any highlights. It isn’t just the fact that it is news but it has little or no impact on the games but is more like an episode of E! Now or Extra or one of those gossip shows.

First there was the news that Jets QB Brett Favre has decided to call it a career...again. For this player who has had more speculation of "will he or won’t he" then Friends Ross and Rachel and an episode of The Young and the Restless combined. I think that maybe this one may stick just because this time he has a legitimate injury and even with the use of his trusty Bow Flex it will be difficult for him to make a recovery to get to the point where he is healthy enough to get back into game shape. It doesn’t hurt that there is little options for a banged up 40+ year old starting QB. In any event I will go ahead and set the over/under date before speculation starts up about a possible return at July 8.

Next there is the startling lawsuit brought against former Blue Jay great Roberto Alomar by an ex-girlfriend. A $15 million dollar civil suit. She claims that Alomar has AIDS, and insisted on having unprotected sex with her. This seems similar to the Trevis Smith situation in Regina for the former CFL player. Whether it was as predatory will be interesting to find out. But I guess we wait to see how it plays out. It is sad to hear on both a sports level / social level/ and a personal level, both for Alomar himself as well as the ex-girlfriend. Until more info comes to light we won’t know all the facts but whatever direction it takes it is an unpleasant situation. (Alomar was on time engaged to former French tennis star Mary Pierce who was born in Montreal)
What says Spring is coming like pitchers and catchers reporting, like they are to do this Friday to get the baseball season off and running? Well that isn’t this issue, again a couple off field issues that have taken that out of the headlines.

First it was Joe Torre’s book about his time managing the Yankees. Early quotes from the book made it sound like it was a tell all expose with things like -the players called ARod (Alex Rodriguez) A-Fraud and things of that nature. In actuality it wasn’t as bad as it first sounded but I don’t think that Torre is far enough removed, time wise to come out with a book. Thankfully for Joe his book has gone to the back burner after the SI revelation followed by the admission from ARod that he took performance enhancing drugs (possibly steroids and/or HGH) between 2001-2003. Some people have commended him for admitting use others criticize him for only kind of apologizing but still more ducking many questions. It is hard to give credit for telling the truth, something that you are supposed to do but it is more then many players before him. It was a no win situation for him in whatever he had said but at least he went a little further then Jason Giambi did when he apologized but never said what he was apologizing for. ARod had a blueprint on what to do after seeing how Clemens, McGuire, Palmero, Pettite, Tejada, et al.

History Made - PVR That Home Run!

Last Thursday Major League Baseball began a new venture into the realm of technology....the use of "limited" replay.
Last night was the first time that replay was actually used to uphold a decision on the field of a home run by, and fittingly so Alex Rodriguez. The "Lightening Rod" hit his 549th homer putting him into 12 place all time passing Mike Schmidt. The ball was a towering shot that was hit above the fair/foul pole. The umpires gathered, left the field to review the video, a process that took 2 minutes, 15 seconds and upheld the call.
As for most sports they have already adopted such a system and have had it in place for some time now. Even the CFL had it first, which is a little embarrassing. nevertheless MLB has it at their disposal but only for disputed home runs and only at the decression of the umpiring crew chief, unlike the NFL there are no challenges.
In fitting MLB fashion they screwed up but implementing this 3/4 of the way through the season with no testing but here were are and lets go from here.
It is an interesting venture and one that is a good idea in theory, but then again Communism works in theory too.
Home Run calls are one thing, however there are other plays that may be just as important that are unreviewable. The one thing about baseball is that 1 small seemingly unimportant play sets off a chain of events that dictates how the situation will become resolved, more so then any other sport, it really is all about the flow of a play until its completion.
This is why C.C. Sabathia’s potential no hitter could not, and should not have been overturned. Yes it was a bad call to call that play a hit and not an error but you can’t reverse it now if you wanted to. Based on that 1 hit being on the board would have not only changed the mindset of the pitcher, his approach to the rest of the game, the increasing drama and stress and how the team played behind him. Just like the home run debate 1 call changed the outcome of that entire game.
Surely in the future it will be tweaked and more will become reviewable, I just hope they know when to say when and draw the line.
In a sport like baseball you can’t take the element of human error out of the game, it is part of the fabric of the sport and one of the reasons the game is great.