Maddux Sports Blog

Spain suffered a damaging, and potentially fatal, blow as they prepare for the Euro 2008 finals against Germany. Striker David Villa will miss the finals thanks to a sore hamstring. Villa is the tournament’s leading scorer, and he has been dynamite both when he is scoring and when he isn’t, so his loss is a real blow to both the team’s chances and their confidence. Spain is still fairly heavily favored to win it all (surprisingly heavily, really), but Germany becomes an even  more attractive underdog given this news.

Very strange story coming out from the NBA Draft concerning Darrell Arthur. Reportedly several teams passed on him because of news of kidney problems. Atlanta was the only team that actually tested him, though, and they gave him a clean bill of health. That news didn’t seem to get out in time, though, and he fell from a likely spot in the lottery all the way down to 27th. That will cost him a lot of money, but it also has to be ridiculously frustrating and a bit humiliating for the player. If he is the kind of guy that can use that as motivation then it could fuel a good year for him. I just can’t believe that we are getting the whole story. Surely in this age teams would have done their homework about something like that. That’s especially the case for San Antonio. THey culd have picked him one spot sooner than he was picked, but instead they went for a guy from IUPUI that no one has ever heard of that almost certainly could have been had later on. Even if the Spurs didn’t like Arthur it probably would have made sense to acquire him purely as an asset.

The White Sox crushed the Cubs today, and the  Mets humiliated the Yankees. What does it say about me that I get a perverse and profound pleasure from both developments. Unfortunately, the Yankees came back and returned the favor in the second half of the double bill.

Ana Ivanovic became the latest top three seed to fall at Wimbledon today, following Maria Sharapova and Novak Djokovic. The third round departure was the earliest exit by a number one seed since 2001. The bloodbath at the top is bad news for bettors, but the sportsbooks must be loving it because they will be making a killing from people looking to make the safe hit. I don’t expect the disaster to continue on the men’s side. In fact, I am very confident that it will be Nadal - Federer in the final. Yet again.

The Tigers have now won 14 of 18, and they are looking pretty much exactly like we expected them to (except for Dontrelle Willis, who is toiling away in obscurity in the minors somewhere). I was about to write that Tigers fans must be relieved and thrilled, but as I think about it I just think that if I was a Detroit backer I would be pissed. We knew all along that they could play like this, so why did they insist on throwing their season away with that horrendous start? Thankfully, they play in the AL Central, so the playoffs are not at all out of the question despite the fact that they have not yet returned to .500. To win the division, though, they will have to hope that the Twins remember once again that they are the Twins. Minnesota won their tenth in a row, and 12th in 13 games tonight. Talk about a team getting it done with smoke and mirrors.

With about 29 percent of the MLB season played, you’ve got to wonder about a few things. Let’s consider a few teams when it comes to the Junior Circuit.

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Manchester United rules the European soccer world after taking the Champions League final today over Chelsea. If you are North American then chances are pretty good that you don’t care. This was a pretty spectacular game, though, or at least the finish was. They were tied at one after the 90 minutes of regulation and 30 minutes of overtime. That meant that the game and the most prestigious club championship in the world would be decided in the middle of the night in Moscow in the puring rain by penalty kicks. Cristiano Ronaldo, Man U’s top scoring threat and one of the top players in the world, missed his kick and all looked lost. All Chelsea captain John Terry had to do was score and they won. As he approached the ball he slipped and fell, and the ball sailed harmlessly wide of the net. Man U went on to win in extra kicks, and Terry, one of the elder statesmen of English soccer, looked like he was going to hang himself with his consolation medal. You don’t have to like soccer to enjoy this - you just have to like human suffering and pure agony.

A guy finishes second in a cheesy reality show and all of a sudden he is too good to practice. We have known for a while that Jason Taylor’s days with the Dolphins were probably numbered. We learned today, though, that it is his doing. While every player on his team except for him are at a voluntary mini-camp he is in New York for media appearances surrounding his dancing career before jetting back to Los Angeles to meet with entertainment execs about his future in the movie business. It seems that he has no intention of going to a mandatory camp next week, either. He says he still loves football, and that he intends to play again next year, but clearly not with Miami. That makes it very interesting to see where he ends up. He had 11 sacks last year and was a Pro Bowler, so he still has lots of game left, and he can help whatever team he joins. I bet he wishes that L.A. still had a team.

Another high priced starter is headed to the bullpen, but compared to Barry Zito this one is a bargain. Dontrelle Willis and his three year, $29 million contract has been a disaster so far in Detroit. He’s been on the DL since April 13, and he struggled to locate the plate before that. He’s apparently been told by Tigers officials that he will return as a reliever when he does make his return. Though putting him in the pen isn’t a terrible idea, it isn’t one that will likely have a long life - the top three starters other than him have a combined record of 6-16 with an ERA over six, so the rotation needs all the help it can get. If Willis shows anything more than a pulse in the bullpen then he and his goofy hat will be starting again soon.

I’ve pretty much written Pedro Martinez off. He’s been hurt, but he is getting closer to a return. That will be delayed now that he has returned home to be with his sick father. That is acceptable, obviously. What is less palatable, though, is all his talk this week that he might retire at the end of the season. Even that would be fine if he weren’t also talking about an eventual comeback as well. I respect Martinez’ game immensely, and I know that he is as talented as anyone when he is right. The guy is just such a mental case, though, and he’s increasingly bizarre. I find it harder and harder to believe that he will ever return to a point where he will be worth trusting with a bet.

I know that I spend more time talking about the AL Central than anything else in baseball, but it is just so darned fascinating that you can’t look away - it’s like simultaneous car crashes. I was just about to sit down and right a comment of some sort about how the Tigers were finally showing some signs of life - they had won three straight after all, and their offense was hitting on all cylinders. I was also going to throw in a comment about how troubled Cleveland was - they were supposed to be neck and neck with Detroit, and they were, but it wasn’t supposed to be at 5-10. I had been busy all day, and I hadn’t checked out the scores all day, so I took a quick look before making my comments. So much for that article. After Detroit blew away the Indians 13-2 yesterday, they are now trailing Cleveland 11-1 in the 8th.

Cleveland’s best pitcher is C.C. Sabathia. Supposedly. You’d never guess it from the mess that he put out yesterday - nine earned runs in four innings. That moves him to 0-3, and raises some real concerns for backers of the team. I probably would have talked about that for a while, and then tried to find a comparison with the Tigers that made Detroit look better - you know, to build the the argument that Detroit was getting better. So much for that. Justin Verlander, Detroit’s best pitcher, went out tonight and threw out another stinker. He allowed five earned runs in five innings, and unless the Tigers make a miraculous comeback in the ninth he will move to a matching 0-3 record. To confound my problems, I probably would have made some comment about how Fausto Carmona signed a rich new contract and promptly went out and sucked badly in his first game as a rich man. That argument is pretty irrelevant now that Carmona went out and allowed just one run in six and two thirds tonight.

The point is that I have given up trying to figure out what is going on in this division. To make it more confounding, the teams that were supposed to be fighting for the spot at the bottom of the league - Chicago and Kansas City - are instead dueling at the top. It’s things like the start this division is enjoying (some of the teams, anyway) that are good for sports bettors - they remind us that logic isn’t an infallible tool. Sometimes things just don’t make sense, so you might as welll just sit back and enjoy the ride. Enjoy the car wreck, and just make sure that you don’t get caught in it.

• Carmelo Anthony is a moron. He had his worst game of the year on Sunday - 11 points on 3-for-14 shooting. He chose the best and most logical way to get over the embarrassment of the situation - he went out and got hammered and drove home. He obviously got busted, and now he will have a May 14 court date hanging over him if and when his team secures their playoff spot. The Nuggets were a team that could have done some damage in the playoffs, but this kind of distraction is pretty much the worst thing possible for them. It will be very interesting to watch how they react going forward. I can’t decide if it is a good or a bad thing that they don’t play until Wednesday, and then will have days off until the playoffs start.
• It’s far to early to say for sure, but maybe, just maybe, the Tigers have remembered how to hit. They exploded for 11 runs tonight, including innings of four and six runs. That’s the best offense output of the season, and it came from the right place - huge games from Ordonez, Cabrera and Guillen in the middle of the lineup. It’s just one game, but at least it’s a start. The downside is that they allowed nine runs, so the defense was terrible, but they can only really do one thing at a time until they get the ship righted.
• The Ottawa Senators are truly terrible. They have lost three straight games to the Penguins in their playoff series, and they have not given us a single reason to think that they are going to win one before it is over. It is almost incomprehensible that a team could be the best team in the league for the first month of the season and have more talent than the all-star team has had some years, yet they barely made the playoffs and would have been better off if they hadn’t.