Weekly Sporties

-It is often said that America is a forgiving country as long as person appears to be truly sorry for what they have done. Well, I don't know if Milwaukee Brewers slugger Ryan Braun is really sorry for taking steroids or if he is only sorry because he got caught taking steroids, but either way Braun appears to be taking the first step on his recovery tour, getting the numbers of dozens of people who bought Brewers ticket this season and calling each number to talk to the person and apologize for getting suspended. To me this is the smartest thing he can do because while there is nothing Braun can do or say to mute the reaction he will get on the road (which I don't think will be all that bad because of the team he plays for. With a guy like Alex Rodriguez you had cheating and playing for one of the most hated franchises in baseball. No one outside of Cubs fans think about the Brewers enough to not like them.), he was in for a very long season if the people in Milwaukee had turned against him for good. The Brewers fans most likely want to cheer for him again (even Barry Bonds never lost his home crowd) so all Braun has to do is give them a reason to do so. I'm sure there will still be some fans who refuse to cheer for him ever again but this story is going to at least mend a few fences (which is also why you are crazy if you don't think the Brewers leaked this to the media). I'll say this much for Braun - I have never heard of anyone who failed a drug test doing this before. Sure, traded players will take out one-page ads thanking the city they were just traded from, but I've never heard of them calling complete strangers. On top of that Braun is a very charming guy, which is half the reason no one wanted to believe he had failed a test in the first place. Still, to me there is only one guy Braun really needs to call if he wants to start atoning for his sins - the collector who he publicly accused of tampering with his sample. That guy's name and reputation were dragged through the mud and he is really the only one hurt by this scandal, so if Braun wants the casual fan off his back that is the guy who should be hearing his phone ring. Anyone can ask forgiveness from the people who only think they were wronged but asking it from the person you really hurt takes some guts.

-For legendary Yankee closer Mariano Rivera, this season has been one long farewell tour. Rivera is one of those athletes who has hung around for so long hatred has turned into begrudging respect, so when he announced before this season that it would be his last, longtime foes began to wish him a healthy retirement in the form of gifts during the Yankees final visit to their city. It is the ultimate sign of admiration from the entire baseball community (I especially like the Twins gift of a rocking chair made out of bats). But, a funny thing happened on the way to hanging up his cleats - Rivera has been pitching great. Just the other night he recorded his 40th save of the season for a record-tying 9th time. This has caused Yankee manager Joe Girardi to announce that he plans to try to talk Rivera out of retirement and may enlist Derek Jeter to help him. First off, I want to know what would happen to all the gifts Rivera has received during this time. But beyond that I want everyone involved to recognize that there is no way this can end well. (Before we go any further, do not take this as a Red Sox fan trying some reverse psychology. Rivera has more blown saves against the Red Sox than any other franchise. Hell, he blew the save on Thursday. He no longer scares us.) Rivera has an opportunity which is rarely given to professional athletes - to go out with a little something left in the tank. I know giving up the game you have played your entire life has got to be tough, but there is something admirable about walking away before the rest of the world tells you it is time to go. No one liked seeing Michael Jordan in a Wizards uniform and even Red Sox fans would take no pleasure if next season was full of images of Rivera walking off the mound after taking another loss. Rivera has already blown more saves this year than during any other season in his career, including a stretch of 3-straight which had never happened to him before. That tells me the end is close and trying to squeeze one more year out of him would be a recipe for disaster. Reportedly Rivera's mind is pretty much made up and there isn't much Girardi, Jeter or anyone else can say which will change it. That's good to hear because it is always better to go out leaving your fans with memories of how good you were and if there is anyone who should know when it is time for a game to be over it should be a closer.

-A couple months ago I told you that rapper Jay-Z was becoming an agent. At first his agency only signed baseball players like Robinson Cano but after a while he turned his gaze to signing basketball stars such as Kevin Durant. This created a conflict of interest because Jay-Z is also a vanity shareholder of the Brooklyn Nets, helping to create their uniforms and was acting as the public face of the organization as the team attempted to build its brand in Brooklyn. The NBA doesn't want agents to have ties to specific organizations because they are afraid the agents will start funneling players to certain teams (who wants to tell them the players do this own their own?), so no matter how small his stake in the Nets may be, this meant Jay-Z had to sell his shares. Since he reportedly only owns about 1% of the team I didn't think it would be too hard to find a buyer and it turns out I was right because he actually found a few people willing to further divide his tiny sliver of the franchise. But, here's why this story is noteworthy: Jay-Z has announced he will sell a percentage of his shares to Brooklyn Nets legend Jason Kidd, who also happens to be the new coach of the team. Am I the only one who finds that to be just as big a conflict of interest as an agent with an ownership stake? For some reason I even thought the NBA had a rule in place preventing owners from coaching their own teams to prevent a guy like Mark Cuban from patrolling the sidelines, but I guess not. Now, the big joke among sports pundits was Kidd, who has never coached a minute at any level but has a team which is expected to contend for the Eastern Conference title, did this to make himself harder to fire. But, go back to the beginning of this story and remind yourself that Jay-Z owned about 1% of the Nets and he is only selling Kidd a percentage of that. Basically, Kidd owns only slightly more of the Nets than you or me, which is probably enough to get him a discount on seats and nothing more. It may make it slightly more awkward to fire him considering he will still be around the building, but it won't make it harder if it turns out he can't coach. But Kidd can always take solace in the fact that if the team really under-performs over the next two seasons most of ownership will probably be on the way out with him. Mikhael Prokhorov doesn't seem like the kid of guy who deals well with losing.

-If this is Kidd's only season as an NBA head coach the good news is that he will have ample opportunities to document his time on the sidelines. On Friday the NBA announced they are going to start having motion-activated cameras placed in every arena with the goal of having one camera dedicated to following around specific players on the court. Not only will this provide fans watching online a new camera angle to control, the statisticians for the league contend it will provide an unprecedented look into how players move while on the court and provide extremely accurate data of where they have their highest shooting percentages, their best side for defense, even how many consecutive minutes they can play before they start getting tired and their performance starts to drop. It will revolutionize the statistical database for teams and give the analytics departments of these teams more numbers than they could ever hope to crunch... and if I were a player I could not oppose this idea strongly enough. The main reason I wouldn't want a camera following my every move is because it would feel very invasive. (And for certain players it would show franchises just how overpaid they really are, which no one wants.) But, the other reason comes when you remember that not all numbers in sports are used for good. For every coach who watches hours of tape and discovers the exact spot his player with never miss from, there will be some underpaid intern working for another team designing defenses to make sure that player never gets to that spot again. I just fear coaches will become too in love with numbers because there comes a point in sports in which numbers simply must be ignored. Do you know what I love most about basketball? It's not baseball. I have friends who love to talk about WHIP and WAR and as soon as they open their mouths I want to shoot myself. I respect the premise of analytics in sports and understand all the good they do but they have no place in the playing of a sport which is supposed to be as fluid as basketball. The NBA does its best to stay up with the times and I respect what they want to accomplish, but I simply would prefer they keep the math where it belongs - scouting and making sure salaries fit under the cap. The last two minutes of an NBA game take long enough as it is, no need to drag it out further waiting for some assistant coach to figure out an equation of where the final shot should be taken from.

-Last weekend was the first Saturday of college football and while the biggest thing we learned is that the Pac-12 may be a bit over-rated we also discovered there will be no shortage of points this season. High scores and gaudy passing numbers were already the trend thanks to increased rules against the defense, but on top of that more and more schools have started to implement up-tempo offenses designed to speed up the game and not allow defenses to get set and read their formation before the snap. Think of it like a basketball fast-break, just with fatter guys up front. However, in sports as in nature for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction and this means defenses are working on ways to slow down these hectic offenses without burning through all their times-outs on the first possession. As a result last week there was a wave of players going down with injuries which seemed to miraculously heal themselves a short while later. You see, if a player is injured and can't get off the field the clock stops and neither team has to use a time-out, so several head coaches think that their counterparts are instructing defensive players to fake cramps or other injuries so the offense's tempo gets busted. Given that football players double as lousy actors, it is hard to disagree with those coaches. (This is hardly a new technique, by the way. Brian Urlacher admitted that the Bears even had a play call for this, called the "Swan" so that only one specific player would take a dive and not make it look so obvious.) Some are saying defensive players who cause excessive injury stoppages should be penalized, but I am not sure how you would know who is faking and who is not. I would also like to just say this - I have no issue with this tactic. Look, every rule which has been adopted over the last 5 years has been designed to aid the offense so I completely understand why defensive players are getting frustrated. When your side of the ball is being legislated out of the sport you will do whatever is necessary to prevent that from happening. The fact that defenses feel they have to resort to something which is borderline cheating says more about the failure of the NCAA to equally create rules on both sides of the ball. I'm not saying I want fast-pace offenses to be illegal, just that all this talk calling for unsportsmanlike conduct penalties for defensive players who get injured needs to stop. But, since this is the NCAA rather that address the problem I expect them to notice all the defensive players who are "cramping up" and implement new rules about hydration.

-For all their big talk and tough guy personas, I actually find many race car drivers to be among the biggest babies in all of sports. Every time guys like Tony Stewart or any member of the Busch family open their mouths I expect them to start whining about something. On top of that if someone so much as bumps them they want that driver banned for life, only to turn around and perform the same maneuver on another car and call it tough driving. I won't deny they are brave guys for taking a job which could kill them at any moment, but there are plenty of other jobs where that is a real possibility, pay a lot less and you never hear those guys talk about how bad-ass they are. I guess it wouldn't bother me so much if I didn't have multiple example of race car driver talking tough and then backing down when it was time to act. This exact scenario happened last weekend in the NASCAR Truck Series when drivers Max Papis and Mike Skeen got into it during the final lap of their race in Canada. The two drivers were going for the same spot when Papis spun Skeen and Skeen was understandably ticked off, hitting Papis's truck after the race was over. Now, normal protocol for this would be for both drivers to get out of their trucks, confront each other with 10-20 crew members between them, followed by lots of pushing and shoving, maybe one of them would throw a punch (even though neither side would ever take their helmet off), before both walked away claiming they were too mad to talk about it right now. The problem arose when Skeen's girlfriend apparently didn't get the stage notes, walked up to Papis and slapped him in the face. (Showing just how bad-ass NASCAR drivers really are, Papis at first claimed the slap broke his jaw.) Proving violence has no place in NASCAR the organization fined the girlfriend $2,500 and indefinitely suspended her from the pits. Look, if that is what they want to do that is totally within NASCAR's rights, I just don't think you can sit here and talk about how tough all your drivers are and then ban the only person who actually followed up on all the tough talk. That is why I don't doubt that NASCAR called this woman to tell her she was barred from future races because they were probably too scared to be in the same room with her.

-Last week I shared a few pictures I took while checking out the Deutsche Bank Pro-Am. You'll notice that I didn't take any pictures of beautiful swings by any of the amateurs and that is for a simple reason - there weren't any. Seriously, some of these guys looked as if they had never held a club before and on a couple of occasioned I wondered out loud to no one in particular how these guys could spend several thousand dollars to be in the pro-am and yet not have any money for lessons. Well, this week I got a good window into the mindset of one of these golfers when an amateur in the pro-am took professional golfer's Chris Kirk's bag out of the locker room to use as his own because he didn't bring any clubs. Apparently the amateur showed up completely unprepared and asked the pro shop to get him some rental clubs. The amateur then walked into the locker room, saw Kirk's bag and assumed it was for him, going so far as to swap out a couple clubs he didn't like the looks of and even put on Kirk's shoes. For those of you who may not be golfers, this behavior is all kinds of insane, the aspects of which we will break down individually. First off, who shows up to a pro-am without any clubs, shoes, balls or gloves? I mean, someone told him this was a golf tournament, right? Secondly, what kind of person thinks a pro-shop provides shoes? This isn't bowling. Thirdly, what rental set in the history of the world, has ever shown up in a really nice, professional cart bag? They are always something that looks to be falling apart. (Admittedly, the "country clubs" I typically play are a lot less fancy than TPC Boston.) Finally, who thinks they can just pick and choose clubs from around a locker room until they have cobbled together a set they like? Even if you thought they were rental clubs you play with what you are issued. Making matters even worse, some of the clubs removed from Kirk's bag were prototypes. Fortunately the pro playing with the group noticed the issue and called the pro shop to get replacement clubs and shoes out to the course and then called Kirk to let him know everything was ok (strangely Kirk was reportedly the most upset that the guy was wearing his shoes). To me this is a perfect example of a guy who has too much money and who thinks he can do whatever he wants no matter where he is. It also serves as perfect reminder that you can't buy common sense.