Maddux Sports Blog

There is an impressive amount of interesting news out there today. Let’s get to it:

It’s official – Ken Griffey Jr. is a Mariner again. I thought for sure he was going to Atlanta, but it turns out he fooled everyone. The move makes sense for many reasons. First, he’ll finish his career out as a returning hero. He’ll also be on a team that won’t have a lot of pressure for him because expectations won’t be huge. Most significantly, the AL has the DH. That makes so much more sense than Atlanta. It will be fun to watch.

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So, I’ve been thinking with all of the garbage you hear about guys in professional sports who are baby-cries, idiots and cheaters, there definitely are some players that you can’t help but root for. No, I am not nominating these guys for sainthood, but I am saying that they have character, a strong work ethic and come to play everyday.

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Kudos to Pitt. That certainly wasn’t the outcome I was expecting last night. I had grown to respect UConn, and I had grown to doubt Pitt. Oops. Pitt came into town playing a very rough and tough game, throwing themselves around like crazy. DeJuan Blair played as well as I have ever seen him, scoring 22 points, adding 23 boards, and generally asserting himself as the best player on the court. I wasn’t expecting that. I also wasn’t expecting Pitt to be as effective at containing Hasheem Thabeet as they were. This will certainly make it easier for Pitt to get a number one seed. As for Connecticut, I’m not sure what it means. There isn’t much shame in losing to the fourth ranked team, even if it is at home. The biggest lesson out of this one, I think, is that the Huskies are going to miss Jerome Dyson quite a bit. They just didn’t have all the offense they needed in this one.

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I have a new crush, and the Derby trail has a new filly. A horse named Evita Argentina made her debut against boys in the San Vicente Stakes. It was a seven furlong race on the synthetic surface. For more than half the race Evita Argentina looked absolutely outclassed. She was no closer than nine lengths off the lead, and there was a big gap between her and the field. Going into the turn she still hadn’t moved. Coming out of the turn she looked like she had been launched out of a cannon. The only gap she could find was on the outside of the field, so that’s where she went. The rest of the field made a standard stretch charge, but they were absolutely no match for the filly. She gained with every stride and was clear by a length at the finish line. It was certainly impressive, and even more so if you consider that jockey Garrett Gomez said that the track conditions stopped her from having her best race. The Fair Grounds Oaks on March 14 is set to be her next race for now, but that is for fillies, and I can’t imagine her not going against the boys again after this eye-opening performance.

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I just was looking at the Stanley Cup future odds. The Chicago Blackhawks are at 12/1. They are obviously a long way from a lock, but I like that price. At least in comparison to the other power teams in the conference I do – the Sharks and Wings have both looked vulnerable at time (San Jose is in the tank right now), yet they are at 3/1. I like the young talent that Chicago has, I love their coaching, and I think that they are ready for a deep run. In the East I think it will be either Washington (9/1) or Boston (11/2) that makes it through.

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There are few things I take more pleasure in than watching Notre Dame fail. As a Michigan fan I don’t particularly have any love for the Irish to begin with. The general hatred has elevated to a whole new level in the Charlie Weis regime, though. I think it was a bad joke that they got rid of Ty Willingham when and how they did, a bad joke that when they gave Weis, a guy with no head coaching experience, the reins, a really bad joke when they gave him a massive extension before he did anything to earn it, and a really, really bad joke when they kept him around for another year. With a nod to Marvin Lewis, Weis is the worst head coach in football. That makes the latest news from South Bend particularly ridiculous.

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This Amare Stoudemire situation is very interesting. I was convinced that Miami was going to be his new home. I didn’t think that the Suns would be thrilled with getting Shawn Marion back, but they have no hope this season anyway, and his contract will be helpful in the massive rebuilding they are suddenly faced with. That all blew up, of course, when Marion oddly ended up in Toronto in exchange for Jermaine O’Neal. I don’t think that O’Neal will particularly help the Heat – he certainly hasn’t shown much health or interest in Toronto, and that was after saying how excited he was to join Chris Bosh. It’s a great deal for Toronto. They get the room to figure out what to do next to turn this into a contender. Their current path sure isn’t working. As for Amare, now I need to find a new home for him. I still think the best home is Phoenix, and I hope he stays there. If he goes anywhere, though, then I think it will be the Cavs . The Bulls have more to give up and might make more sense for Phoenix,but I still can’t figure out why they would make the deal for him now. The Cavs could certainly use him, Danny Ferry and Steve Kerr are buddies, and Amare would probably be happy because he’d have a very good shot at a title. The rest of the teams mentioned just don’t make sense to me. I don’t see why they would trade him to Portland to make a team in their own conference that much stronger, and I think that the rumors of the Lakers deal are stupid. The Suns would never help the Lakers, and Amare does not seem like a good fit for the triangle – especially with Andrew Bynum in town.

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It’s not official yet, but it looks like Ken Griffey is heading back to Seattle to finish out his career where it started. From a baseball perspective or a betting one it probably won’t have much of an impact on the team. Personally, though, I couldn’t be happier. Allow me to be nostalgic for a second:

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I obviously won’t believe it until the season starts next year, but the news of Brett Favre’s retirement has me positively giddy today. I’m excited for several reasons:

1. I don’t need to see a guy erode his legacy in front of our eyes when it is in his control to not do so. There is enough legacy-eroding going on in baseball these days that Favre doesn’t need to do his part any more.

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I was worried for a while, but Marquette is finally living up to my expectations. They were the last team in the Big East to lose a game, but now that they have done it they seem to have developed quite a taste for it because they did it again. The first loss against South Florida was a bad lapse of concentration and focus. Tonight’s loss, though, was just a confirmation of what I have long felt about the team – they aren’t that good. They had no answer for Villanova’s offense, they could keep up with their own offense, and they just weren’t good enough. There will be plenty more opportunities to bet against this team in the coming weeks because their Big East schedule is back-loaded – they still have Georgetown, UConn, Louisville, Pitt and Syracuse left. I don’t see how they go better than 2-3 ATS over that stretch.

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