Tomorrow and Wednesday we’ll be taking a closer look at the brackets region-by-region, and one Thursday and Friday we’ll check in throughout the day with observations from the games. Today, though, we’ll just hit a few notes from around the sporting world before we forget that all other sports exist for a couple of days:
I thought it was the Pro Bowl that was cursed with a ridiculous number of injuries, but now it seems as if it is just all-star games in general this year. The Pro Bowl had more than 30 players who were chosen but didn’t show up, and most were due to real or fake injuries. Now the NBA All-Star game seems to have almost as many. Today, both Allen Iverson and Kobe Bryant informed the league that they would be unable to play (incidentally, the loss of Bryant caused the line to move half a point – the West is now favored by 1.5). They join an impressive list of players on the sidelines, including two other Western guards besides Bryant – Brandon Roy and Chris Paul. Monta Ellis was originally going to replace Bryant, but he’s out with a leg injury as well. On the Eastern side Derrick Rose is questionable. It’s a curse, I tell you.
It was a great day at the Breeders’ Cup on Saturday. Zenyatta’s win in the Classic was, without exaggeration, one of the top five racing moments of my life – and I have seen a lot of them. She is truly an all-time great. She should be the horse of the year in my book without question – and that’s no insult to Rachel Alexandra. Rachel won a Triple Crown race and beat older horses, but Zenyatta’s win over older horses was far more impressive, and it came in the richest race in North America – one a female horse had never won. The field in Zenyatta’s race was far deeper than Rachel’s as well. I’d be fine with a split award this year, but if there is one winner it has to be Zenyatta.
There are few things harder in gambling to win than a pick six. It costs a fortune to play it properly, and it all can be derailed too easily. I haven’t done any Breeders’ Cup content this year because I don’t get the sense that most people here care about the ponies as much as I do. For kicks now, though, I’m going to try to put together a winning pick six ticket. It’s play money, so I plan to spend a lot of it. I can afford to, though – the pick six paid more than $155,000 today, and should be much bigger tomorrow. Here we go:
1. The Toronto Maple Leafs are a truly awful team right now. Incomprehensibly bad. Like Oakland Raiders bad. They are theoretically rebuilding, but the signs of progress are slim right now. Their top two goalies are hurt, most of their offense is either hurt or benched, and coach Ron Wilson seems to have a tenuous grasp on the team. Incredibly ugly.
If Brett Favre were to fall off the face of the earth I wouldn’t miss him at this point. You have to be a seriously egotistical jackass to string a team along like he did for as long as he did before deciding to pack it in. I’m making a vow now – I absolutely will not write a word about his next comeback attempt. Or the one after that.
Two guys in the news right now are making their lives much harder than it needs to be because of strange decisions. The first is Dany Heatley, the Ottawa Senators’ sniper. Heatley hasn’t got along well with new Ottawa coach Cory Clouston, and he pouted his way through the second half of the season. His frustration was enough for him to demand a trade after the season ended. That’s a tough situation for the Sens – Heatley is talented, but he doesn’t always play well with others, and he is very expensive. The Kings, Sharks and Rangers all expressed interest, and it seemed like New York was taking the lead when they cleared salary cap space by trading away Scott Gomez to Montreal. Another team came through in the end, though – Edmonton. The Oilers had a deal in place, and they looked like they would add a new sniper for their new coaching staff to play with. Just one problem, though – Heatley has a no-trade clause, and he wasn’t willing to waive it to go to Edmonton, a team that doesn’t have a great reputation among current players. There is another level of difficulty – Heatley was due a $4 million bonus last night at midnight, and Ottawa was hoping to get rid of him before they had to cough that up. Now they have to pay it, and salary cap rules don’t allow them to recoup it from another team in a deal. The Sens therefore have to ask a bigger price for Heatley than they already were. Needless to say, Heatley isn’t a popular character in Ottawa.
Super filly Rachel Alexandra returns to action today for the first time since her impressive win in the Preakness. She’ll return at Belmont, the track she avoided by skipping the Belmont Stakes earlier this month. Though she has never won on the track, and her jockey Calvin Borel is both inexperienced and unsuccessful on the surface, she finds herself in a very good spot to win. She’s back against the fillies in the Mother Goose Stakes, a race run at a mile and an eighth that has attracted just four challengers for the big filly. Though it’s a small field, and Rachel Alexandra is the clear and deserving favorite, it’s still an interesting group that has gathered to face her. Here’s a look:
(For those of you not into horse racing, two things – this will be the last article for a couple of months on the topic, and what the heck is wrong with you?)
First, let me congratulate Summer Bird. That was one heck of a race for a horse that was quietly coming into his own. This is one crazy Triple Crown season – the Derby winner was 51-1, and the Belmont winner was 44/1 in the Derby. Not a great time to be a handicapper, but a great year to be a fan. I’m pretty thrilled with both of the Birds – when I went to the Derby for the first time in 1996, Grindstone was the winner, his son Birdstone won the Belmont in 2004, and now two grandsons are champions. That’s the kind of thing that makes a sentimentalist like me happy.
This is a bittersweet day in my mind. It’s a Triple Crown race, and I love those – that’s the sweet part. The bitterness comes from the fact that the Triple Crown is over for another year at about 6:30 tonight. That means that racing fades back into obscurity, and many of the great three year olds that I have grown to know and, for the most part, really like won’t be heard of much anymore. It happens every year, but I still never get used to this feeling. Before I get all sad and start crying, though, let’s take a look at how I see this race breaking down:
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