Can Detroit or L.A. reign supreme as top sports city?

Boston has had their little run. The Patriots videotaped their way to the top. John Henry increased the Red Sox budget by more than $100 million so they could slay the Yankee dragon, which is all that Red Sox fans really care about anyway. And the Celtics traded for Kevin Garnett because the rest of their roster was atrocious.

People (at least those from Boston, anyway) will claim Boston is the top sports city right now. Maybe. But where there is a king, there are always princes waiting in the wings.

Who could the next king of the sports nation be? Will it be Detroit, the Motor City, with the Pistons and Red Wings leading the charge? How about Los Angeles, the City of Angels, with the Lakers, Angels, and Ducks all among the elite teams in their respective sports.

I am leaning more towards the latter. Unfortunately, even with the Yankees slipping (no complaints here), New York can never be overlooked. But Los Angeles boasts one of baseball's best teams in the Angels, who appear the have the best chance to overtake Boston in the American League, and another solid team in the Dodgers as well. In basketball, the Lakers have always been thought of as an elite team, especially with their early-decade dynasty. They are back on top again, frontrunners to win their fourth championship in nine years. And then you have the Ducks, winners of the Stanley Cup a year ago and playoff entrants once again in 2008. Even the Clippers have dug themselves out of their usual doldrums the past few years, and it's getting easier and easier to overlook the fact that L.A. hasn't had an NFL team since the Rams and Raiders left following the 1994 season.

The tossup between Detroit and Los Angeles may ultimately come down to the NBA Finals. The Red Wings are comfortably ahead of the Penguins and figure to coast to the title. The Pistons are locked in a tie with the Celtics and their luck of the Irish, and would almost certainly be facing the Lakers should they win the Eastern Conference. The two teams met in the finals in 2004, which was won by the Pistons. The Pistons, by the way, are in the Eastern Conference finals for the sixth consecutive year. Pretty impressive.

Ted Kennedy will recover, hit winning homer for Sox

It's not like the Red Sox need a 76-year-old U.S. Senator to help their baseball team, either on or off the field. They have purchased a pretty handy team to stick it to the Yankees. They have two cancer survivors (which bests the Patriots, who only have one stroke survivor), and they are trying to tug at more heartstrings by claiming they took a chance on overweight and over-the-hill pitcher Bartolo Colon when no one else wanted him. But when discussing the Red Sox and all their karma and good fortune, you can't help but wonder what Boston native Ted Kennedy, recently diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor, could do for their spirits.

My first thought was that he will throw out the first pitch (a perfect strike right down the middle, I might add) at a World Series game, which will be pitched by fellow cancer survivor Jon Lester, and of course won by the Sox. But then I realized that would just be too easy and, frankly, boring.

Kennedy will, in fact, not only miraculously recover from the tumor, but then sign a one-day contract and smack a game-winning home run for Boston. That will turn the last of the unturned stomachs of those who have to endure the Red Sox winning on an almost-daily basis and provide yet another great, inspiring story for ESPN to air to honor one of their beloved Boston teams.

Just wait until the so-called "pennant" race in the AL heats up. You thought being reminded 75 times that Jon Lester is a cancer survivor was annoying. How about when lifelong Bostonian Ted Kennedy finds his way into the mix?

Trading Tejada bringing good karma for Orioles

As an Orioles fan, I was absolutely thrilled the day the Orioles finally dumped the excess baggage that was Miguel Tejada, shipping him off to Houston in a six-player deal. I was so sick and tired of his negative attitude. Not once did I ever feel sympathy for a guy who supposedly was a great player stuck on a bad team. His involvement in the Mitchell report, lying about his age (which came out after he had left Baltimore), and his constant pouting never prompted me to feel bad for him.

The day he left, the Orioles clubhouse became more unified, thanks in large part to a youth infusion that was boosted by the arrival of Adam Jones in the Erik Bedard deal with Seattle. Bedard is a fantastic pitcher, but even he was a bit of a sourpuss, mostly keeping to himself.

The Orioles are 22-19, and I am not drinking the Cool-Aid and feeling false hope. The O's are notoriously fast starters and slow finishers, but it's more the fact that they are a young team with very few expectations that leads me to believe they are playing a little over their heads right now. Nevertheless, first-year manager Dave Trembley has the O's playing hard every game, and there is no doubt the team chemistry is much improved. The thing that has impressed me about this year's Orioles, believe it or not, is how they've handled themselves in defeat. They have kept most of their games close and have battled back on a number of occasions. They have also managed to stay upbeat and have, to this point at least, avoided any major losing streaks.

As the season progresses the Orioles will be tested more and more. They may crumble as they seem to do almost every year, but at least they will stick together. Even if they fall apart.

NFL needs to keep applying pressure to solve Patriot games

While it's annoying to see U.S. Senators sticking their nose into NFL business, I can live with Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter keeping the heat on the Patriots to keep digging into their shady past (and present). The NFL Network recently aired some footage of some of the game tapes former video assistant Matt Walsh turned over to the league, and it only enhanced the scumminess of an already pitiful situation. And so where to begin?

The one excuse that bothers me the most is that these tapes are useless and have no bearing on the game. Bill Belichick has been doing this ever since he got to New England in 2000, so this is just another dirty habit of his. My question keeps being, if the tapes aren't used for any advantage, then why need them in the first place? And even if halftime adjustments aren't able to be made using the tapes, what about the games against division rivals, when the Patriots would play them a second time that same season?

It always puzzled me how nobody receivers like David Patten, David Givens, and Troy Brown consistently got so open over the years. If they weren't pushing off, they simply knew where to be in advance. And 15 second-half screen passes in Super Bowl XXXIX against the Eagles? I don't care if Jim Johnson walked over to Bill Belichick and told him he was going to blitz every play, that's simply not right.

Unfortunately we will never know how and when those tapes were used, but more answers are sure to come. The Rams feel cheated and feel that their Super Bowl XXXVI loss to New England ruined their once-formidable enterprise. That's why it's good to see Specter and NFL officials prying as much as possible to get to the bottom of this. The Patriots keep trying to brush it off and say the issue is dead, but when I see Willie McGinest giving lame half-denials in interviews (this, by the way, the same McGinest who once faked an injury to grant New England an extra timeout in a critical game against the Colts), I can't help but wonder if the players knew about and ultimately benefitted from these spy tactics.

So Mr. Specter and the NFL, keep applying the pressure. Unlike the Super Bowl, the Pats won't have an easy out against this all-out blitz.

Who tops list of NFL's biggest dirtbags?

Whenever I think the word "dirty" in the NFL I immediately think of Rodney Harrison. It's hard to imagine how most football fans don't readily agree that Harrison is the most hated player in the game. It started for me in 1999 when Harrison took the cheapest of cheap shots at Trent Green, taking out his knees, ending his season and ultimately, changing the course of history for that Rams team. Of course, Harrison plays for the Patriots, who have a plethora of bottom-feeders.

Meanwhile, I don't want to even include Pacman Jones and Chris Henry in this discussion. They are troubled individuals, to say the least, and their problems off the field are far too well-documented to even get into detail here.

Joey Porter has always been a player I've loathed, from his foul mouth to his even fouler antics. Somewhere between him ruffling up every pregame warmup by the opposing team, spitting in William Green's face, and shoving Todd Heap so hard he missed half the season with an ankle injury I guess I conjured up some negative feelings toward Porter.

Leonard Little can't not draw your ire considering what he did in 1998, when he drove drunk and was in an accident that resulted in a woman's death. Little served four months in jail, but apparently that didn't seem to teach him a lesson, as he later incurred another DWI arrest.

And of course, without rambling on too much here, I can't omit Kyle Turley from this list. Turley recently blew up on Dan Lebatard's radio show, dropping an F-bomb directed at fellow former NFLer Robert Smith. Turley was a hothead during his playing days. He will be most remembered for ripping off and throwing Damien Robinson's helmet during a 2001 game, then later erupting at Mike Martz and threatening to kill him after Martz cut him from St. Louis.

Now that I've aired out some of my dirty laundry players, I'd like to hear your thoughts of who some of the most hated players in the game are.

Are the Rays for real?

It’s hard for me not to call them the Devil Rays. The team name they carried from 1998 to 2007, a 10-year stretch when they incurred nine last-place finishes and never won more than 70 games in a season. A team that fed the Yankees and Red Sox double-digit wins each year yet always seemed to beat up on my team, the Orioles.
But now they are simply the “Rays”. A new name, and apparently a new feeling surrounding the team. Their bullpen is much improved, complementing a strong young starting rotation. Their lineup isn’t exactly Murderers Row, but is filled with up-and-coming players like Evan Longoria and B.J. Upton.
Of course, they don’t throw money at players like the Red Sox and Yankees do, and never once has a baseball god even batted an eyelash towards the Rays. So it’s almost impossible to think they have a real shot in the AL East.
But maybe one day, when the Red Sox actually have something go wrong for them, or when the Yankees finally miss the playoffs after their annual mediocre start, the Rays will stand up and be counted for as an American League playoff contender.
The talent is there, but there is a ways to go. The Rays are making more and more believers every day.

OUCH! Take a look at some Japanese baseball collisions

Maybe they play the game harder over in Japan. Or maybe just differently. Or maybe they're just plain clumsy. But if you watch this video of some of the best (or worst) baseball collisions in this video from Japan, you see a contrast in style to the American game.

At any rate, this video, which I happened to just find while perusing YouTube, is enhanced by this great Japanese song. The video is about eight minutes long, which is asking a lot to watch the whole thing, but if you're in a hurry, my favorite collision happens at about the 4:19 mark.

So without further ado, here you go: