Weekly Sporties

-It was a tough week for MLB umpires. First Laz Diaz blew what should have been an obvious call when he ruled that Oakland A's pitcher Brandon McCarthy dropped a pop up that he did not. To his credit, Diaz probably knew he blew it, which is why he allowed A's manager Bob Melvin to yell at him for a long time before tossing him (longer, frankly, than it would have taken to check a replay and get the call right). Then a couple days later umpire Bob Davidson was suspended a game after he and Phillies manager Charlie Manuel got into a heated argument and cameras caught Davidson swearing almost as much, if not more, than Manuel. In my opinion it is about time these umps started being held accountable. Too many of them think people are coming to the games just to watch them ump and they have their own strike zones and set of rules they are particular about to prove it. I have seen too many umpires who are only too happy to get into a shouting match with a manager and then keep it going, probably because they know it will get them on "SportsCenter". If a manger can get suspended for prolonging a shouting match and causing contact, than the rule should apply both ways. Major League Baseball keeps saying that the "human element" is part of the game and umps getting calls wrong is one of those things we're just going to have to live with. Well, if you want to keep going down that path they should at least make sure those human umpires in charge of maintaining the rules have to play by the same ones as the people they are on the field with.

-Just the other day I wrote a post about how it seems that we only care about steroids in sports, when they are technically supposed to be illegal for everyone. Also, that we only care as long the person in question is an active player, because as soon as they retire we don't care what they had in their system when they played. The example I cited was that of the Roger Clemens re-trial about steroids and the level of annoyance everyone covering the story seemed to share. Apparently, annoyance was the wrong word and I should have gone with boredom, as this week one of the jurors assigned to the case was dismissed from the proceedings after falling asleep - for the second time. (Also, he is not the first person to fall asleep during the trial.) If that doesn't tell you all you need to know about this case than nothing will. Now, I know we all dread jury duty, but I always thought that was because we didn't want to spend a day listening to two lawyers argue a property dispute. I mean, doesn't everyone have the fantasy of being put on some high-profile case with a famous defendant that eventually lands them a post-trial interview with "20/20" about how divided the jury room was? Apparently, the high-profile cases are just as boring as the regular ones. Clemens is already guilty in the court of public opinion and will never make the Hall of Fame. Something tells me that will hurt him a lot more than a couple months in some white-collar prison ever will.

-Since we're on the subject of steroids, when Ryan Braun had his steroid suspension overturned at the beginning of spring training for what appeared to be a technicality, a lot of people worried that this may open the floodgates on appeals. (For those of you who may not remember, Braun argued that his sample was not directly delivered to the UPS store for deliver to the testing facility and as such there were questions about whether or not it could have been tampered with. While MLB maintained there was nothing wrong with the sample, it created enough reasonable doubt to get Braun's suspension thrown out.) Well, they may have been right to worry as this week another player, Colorado Rockies catcher Eliezer Alfonzo, had his steroid suspension overturned using a similar chain-of-evidence defense. So, what did Major League Baseball do? They fired Shyam Das, the arbitrator who had overseen the two appeals. They didn't work on fixing the obvious flaw in their system, they just got rid of the guy who didn't seem to agree with them. Das had been an arbitrator for MLB since 1999 and these were the first two drug suspensions he had ever overturned. In a sport in which failing 60% of the time makes you the greatest hitter who ever lived, I don't know if MLB is going to do better than finding an arbitrator who agreed with them 99% of the time.

-The good news for Das is that he will not be looking for something to do for very long, as he will also be hearing the NFL appeals concerning bounty-gate and whether the NFL has the right to suspend players. That story, which I would really like to stop writing about, took another twist this week as linebacker Jonathan Vilma, the only player suspended for the entire season, sued NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell for defamation. Vilma contends that he was never the person running the bounty program for the players and that by saying he was Goodell and the NFL are harming his chances of getting another NFL job when his suspension is over. Now, I'm not going to claim to know how all NFL personnel people think, but I would have to say that to a lot of them going to a lawyer and suing the Commissioner is a much worse offense than offering your teammates bonuses for big hits. I'm pretty sure most NFL coaches see a bounty-program as par for the course and the only thing the Saints did wrong is be so vocal about it. Vilma is a very good player and will have no problem getting another job, provided he actually gets reinstated once this season is over. Something tells me publicly saying the NFL Commissioner is out to get you isn't going to get you back on the field anytime soon. I honestly think Vilma is doing more damage to his career than Goodell ever could.

-Speaking of guys who are fighting to get back on the court/field, late in the week it was revealed that oft-injured NBA center Greg Oden recently flew to Germany to get his knee Kobe'd. You may remember that Kobe Bryant went to Germany last summer to have a radical procedure done on his arthritic knee which consists of taking the blood from your body, putting it into a centrifuge to get the body's own natural proteins going, adding some more healing proteins and injecting the blood back into the problem area. As shady as it sounds, no one sports league has come out and said there is a problem for people who have it done. Personally, I hope it works out for Oden. I would like to see how good he could actually be if he ever got healthy. Also, this shows more desire to play basketball than I thought was possible from him, because I never got the feeling he particularly liked being a professional athlete. Still, I have questions about this procedure, specifically this one: do you think Fred Couples is pissed that everyone refers to it as the "Kobe Bryant Procedure"? I heard about Couples having it on his back done months before Kobe and yet Kobe gets the credit as the pioneer of medical science. I guess just like in comedy when the most famous person gets credit for the joke everyone is telling, the most famous athlete gets all the credit when he has the same sketchy medical procedure as a bunch of other athletes.

-When former Washington Capitals player Dale Hunter took over as coach after the team got off to a sluggish start, people didn't have any idea what to expect from him. As a player he was tough and the kind of guy whom you love as long as he is playing for you team, but hate if he is on the opposing side. There were a lot of people who didn't think he would mesh with the latest version of start players the NHL has to offer. But, Hunter did much better than expected, guiding the Caps into the playoffs as a 7-seed and upsetting the defending Stanley Cup Champion Bruins in a seven-game series before ultimately losing to the New York Rangers in another Game 7. That is why it was mildly surprising this week when Hunter announced that he did not want to come back to coach the Caps and instead return to London, Ontario, where he owns a successful junior-league team. Raise your hand if you get this decision, because my hand is staying down. I know that Hunter is from Ontario and probably prefers to be there. However, there are only about 30 NHL head coaching jobs and he had one of them. You wouldn't quit managing the Red Sox just because you owned an independent-league baseball team. Not to mention, it would probably bring more attention to his junior-league franchise. I've always believed athletes should never make decisions like this so soon after the season ends and I just wonder if he's going to regret this decision come next season.

-Last Sunday, Roger Federer won the Madrid Open tennis tournament. That isn't really news because even though Federer is on the back-side of his amazing career, he is still one of the best tennis players in the world today. What made this story memorable was the fact that at the trophy presentation, actor Will Smith came out to present Federer with his trophy - one the suits Smith wore in the upcoming "MIB III" movie. Now, sports history is littered with odd and obscure trophies, most of them a lot uglier than this. Also, the Madrid Open was obviously trying to make itself stand out, as the organizers had gone so far as to dye the clay courts blue, just to be different, so some movie memorabilia as a trophy was not even the strangest part of the week. And, honestly, as movie props go this isn't that bad. At least it is functional, as Federer could always wear the suit if he found himself in a pinch. But, even with all that said, this one has to be up near the top of the list for oddest sports prizes. Now, as many of you know I have a policy that the more a movie tries to promote itself in bizarre ways, the better the odds that the movie is going to be horrible, but I don't quite know where to place this one. But why do I get the feeling Federer knows exactly where he will be placing this trophy and that place is either in his storage facility or in the trash?