The NHL began its regular season on Thursday and one of the games was a classic Original 6 battle that saw Montreal travel to Toronto.
However, the most amazing thing is the fact that it marks only the second time in 85 years that the Maple Leafs have hosted the Canadiens in a season opener.
I find that almost hard to believe.
Derek Jeter is a great, clutch baseball player.
The sure-fire future Hall of Famer will soon become the Yankees all-time franchise hits leader, an impressive stat to say the least.
However, despite the Yanks running away with baseball's best record, Jeter is not the American League MVP for 2009 as some would suggest.
Barring a total collapse, anyone who doesn't vote for the Twins' Joe Mauer should have their voting privileges taken away.
Mauer is hitting a robust .367 entering play on Thursday and has 82 RBIs on a team not nearly as good as the one Jeter gets to play for.
Also (sorry New York fans) Mauer fields his position much better than Jeter and to post such incredible offensive numbers as a catcher is downright scary.
Without Jeter, the Yankees still win the East. Without Mauer, Minnesota is well below .500 and is playing September call-ups by now.
That's the question many Philadelphia Eagles fans -- and indeed fans all around the league -- must be asking themselves now. No doubt the Eagles signing of Michael Vick came as a huge shock, and it certainly sparked the anger of many fans and animal rights activists, including some in York County.
But Vick is trying to show the public he is, indeed, a different person. He has partnered with the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) to try and educate inner-city youths about the evils of dogfighting and animal torture.
While reporting for our local reaction story on Vick on Friday, I stumbled onto an interview with HSUS' Chief Operating Officer, Michael Markarian, who offered an interesting take on Vick's efforts with the HSUS, and just how much he could mean to the effort to stop dogfighting.
Cliff Lee was great on the mound, but was also 2-for-4 at the plate, including a double and a run scored in his Phillies debut at San Francisco.
Lee, who was a victim of shoddy run support with Cleveland, pitched with a lead most of the game, something that rarely happened with the Indians.
Gee ... maybe the Tribe offense would have been better if they let Lee hit.
I realize I am hardly in the minority here, but I must put my two cents in.
Major League Baseball and whoever else is holding the 100+ names on the 2003 positive steroid test list should just go ahead and publish the whole list once and for all.
Otherwise we will have these names trickling out every few weeks, like David Ortiz this week, and will have to keep living the nightmare that will taint baseball forever.
If they publish all the names, we will all speak our disdain and disgust for a while, but it will go away much quicker in the long run.
Of course, the MLB Player's Union doesn't see the logic in that - go figure.
Famed ESPN analyst Peter Gammons said that Major League baseball teams are really starting to put a greater emphasis on defense and speed now.
To that I say, it's about time. It is the perfect strategy for the game, still fighting the effects of the "Steroid Era."
Plus, the excitement of a great defensive play, a stolen base or a runner taking an extra base has been a lost art in the game for many years.
Welcome back exciting baseball.
The final, heart-stopping play of Super Bowl XXXIV has its own Wikipedia page.
But that's not the play that comes to my mind first when I think back to that game, and the efforts of Titans quarterback Steve McNair, who was found shot to death today in Nashville.
I was covering that game, on Jan. 30, 2000, for the Spartanburg Herald-Journal, sitting with the rest of the less-important media in the upper level of the Georgia Dome, so high I could have probably reached up and touched the roof.
The play I'll always remember is the next-to-last play of that Super Bowl. Not the last one.
It was classic McNair, avoiding multiple tacklers and a near sack, spinning and scrambling -- impossbily staying on his feet far behind the line of scrimmage -- and ultimately finding Kevin Dyson for a 16-yard gain to the Rams' 10-yard line with six seconds remaining. Without that effort by McNair, there almost certainly is no Famous Last Play.
McNair, in his prime, was one of only a small handful of NFL quarterbacks in history who could have pulled off that next-to-last play, given the pressure of the situation.
That was my jaw-dropping moment from Super Bowl XXXIV.
That's my Steve McNair memory.
The slumping Philadelphia Phillies got a lift from an unlikely source on Friday night -- former Baltimore Oriole Rodrigo Lopez.
Lopez pitched 6.1 innings and allowed just two runs in the Phillies' 7-2 win over the New York Mets at Citizens Bank Park.
Lopez was one of baseball's best stories in 2002, when he burst onto the scene with the Baltimore Orioles and went 15-9 with a 3.57 ERA.
Dan Connolly, who covered the Orioles that year for the York Daily Record, wrote the following for the June 8, 2002, edition:
BALTIMORE -- Rodrigo Lopez dreamed of one day pitching for the Los Angeles Dodgers like his childhood hero and fellow Mexican, Fernando Valenzuela.
He never was given the chance. He signed with the Orioles as a minor-league free agent when no other team, including the Dodgers, showed interest.
On Friday, Lopez started against L.A. and came within one out of capturing his first complete-game shutout. Instead, he settled for a 4-2, interleague victory and a standing ovation from an energized Camden Yards crowd of 33,624.
"The feeling is pretty good," said Lopez, a native of Tlalnepantla, Mexico. "I've been a Dodgers' fans since I was a kid. (The win) means a lot to me."
Within six months, the 26-year-old right-hander has gone from the Culiacan Tomato Growers of the Mexican Winter League to being arguably the Orioles' staff ace. Lopez (6-1) is second in the American League with a sparkling 2.51 ERA and is making a claim to become the Orioles' representative to the American League All-Star team.
"He's incredible," Melvin Mora said of Lopez. "This guy can just pitch. He throws the ball and uses his brain.... That's pretty good."
Lopez mixed his nasty slider with a 93-mph fastball against a team that had only one hitter in the lineup - Brian Jordan - that had ever faced him before.
The fairy tale didn't continue forever for Lopez, though.
He struggled in 2003, posted 14 and 15 wins in 2004 and 2005, respectively, for the Orioles (while seeing his ERA rise). And then he fell off the cliff in 2006, losing 18 games and posting a 5.90 ERA.
He was quietly dealt to the Colorado Rockies in the winter following that season. Lopez made 14 unremarkable starts for the Rockies in 2007 and then didn't pitch again in the majors until tonight. He made three minor-league starts for the Atlanta Braves in 2008 and started this season in the Phillies' Triple-A rotation at Lehigh Valley.
Now, with the World Champion Phillies struggling with injuries and inconsistency in their starting rotation, the 33-year-old Mexican native might just have a chance to stick in Philadelphia for awhile.
Friday was a promising first step.
The Associated Press felt the need to let the world know that Manny Ramirez has a cold.
Is this really necessary? Do we care? Do you care?
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Manny Ramirez is not feeling well.
The suspended slugging outfielder has apparently caught a bug that's been going around the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Manager Joe Torre says Ramirez has a cold and is running a slight fever. Torre says he had a brief bout with laryngitis recently.
Ramirez is serving a 50-game suspension for violating baseball's drug rules.
The Dodgers have not settled on a date for Ramirez to begin his 10-day rehab assignment before he is scheduled return on July 3 at San Diego. Torre said that should be determined by the end of the week.
Talk about perspective, even for a sports reporter who has lived and breathed sports for more than four decades.
As a lifelong fan of the Detroit Red Wings (I grew up in Detroit and hockey is my favorite sport), the last 15 years have been a lot of fun.
Still, that doesn't mean that I was ready for my most beloved of all sports teams to relinquish its crown to a young up-and-coming team just yet.
However in Games 6 and 7 against the highest of pressure, the Pittsburgh Penguins simply proved they wanted it more -- thus earning the Stanley Cup in the process.
I felt this thing slip away when the Wings didn't put the Pens away in Game 6, something Detroit always has done in its recent history.
On Friday night when Pittsburgh scored its second goal to open a 2-0 lead, I knew it was over.
But a funny thing happened.
You see, I have two children and while my 6-year-old son Andrew (also an avid Red Wings fan) was watching with me in calm disbelief, my daughter Alexis, who will turn three in August, was making a commotion.
She had one of her babies and was putting the doll on the bottom step heading upstairs, which is where Alexis is forced to sit when she isn't behaving properly.
Alexis yelled at this baby. "I told you to sit on the step baby. You are on time out. Don't move."
She said this a couple of times and when I finally realized what she was doing I laughed -- very hard. I looked over at Andrew, he smiled -- very brightly.
All of a sudden my beloved, but crashing Red Wings just didn't seem so important after all.
Thank you Alexis (and baby).
It's been a pretty good week so far for baseball's World Champions (feel free to knock on wood, Phillies fans). And that's pretty good, considering the team suffered a rough blow last week with the loss of its No. 2 starter, Brett Myers.
1. Entering Friday's game, the Phillies had won seven games in a row and built a four-game lead over the hobbled New York Mets in the National League East.
2. The Phillies have an astonishing 20-6 record in road games, far and away the best record in Major League Baseball. The Dodgers are second at 17-12.
3. Raul Ibanez and Ryan Howard are both in the NL's top five in home runs and RBIs.
4. Antonio Bastardo, a 23-year-old pitcher from the Dominican Republic who is taking Myers' spot in the rotation for now, won his major-league debut on Tuesday, pitching six innings and allowing just one run in a win over the San Diego Padres.
5. J.C. Romero returned from his 50-game suspension to further bolster a strong bullpen.
6. World Series MVP Cole Hamels tossed a 97-pitch shutout in Thursday's 3-0 win over the host Dodgers. Hamels is rounding into form after a slow start. He is 4-0 with a 2.84 ERA over his last seven starts.
7. Former first-round draft pick Kyle Drabek made a strong first start for the Reading Phillies after being promoted to Double-A. He went seven innings, allowing three hits and no runs in Wednesday's win against the Akron Aeros. Drabek might not be too far from seriously challenging for a spot in the Phillies' rotation.
I was recently helping my mom clean out her basement -- which partially involves going through all of the stuff my grandmother and great-grandmother pack-ratted over the years and stuffed in envelopes and boxes and filing cabinets -- and I stumbled across this postcard from the 1970s.
It's quite a blast from the past, showing three sports complexes in south Philly -- two of which don't exist anyone.
From top to bottom are:
1. John F. Kennedy Stadium, which was originally Philadelphia Municipal Stadium. Among other things, it was the home of the Philadelphia Eagles for a short period in the 1930s and 1940s; the host stadium for the Army-Navy Game from 1936 to 1979; and the site of the American portion of Live Aid in 1985. The stadium was demolished in 1992.
2. The Spectrum, which opened in 1967 and will close its doors forever this fall. It is scheduled for demolition in late 2009 or early 2010. Its most famous tenants, of course, have been the Philadelphia Flyers and Philadelphia 76ers. Plus there have been countless concerts, circuses and pro wrestling events held there.
3. Veterans Stadium, which opened in 1971 and was demolished in 2004. Its concrete bowl was the home of the Philadelphia Eagles and Philadelphia Phillies, among other teams.
Funny what you find in a basement. What memories does this postcard evoke for you?
