Silva: Each NFL team enters the offseason with a series of pressing needs. Sometimes a team can address them all, sometimes they ignore them all. But if a team's smart, they'll listen to us. These are the most crucial aspects for NFC teams.
SportsTalk: Albert Pujols signs with the Angels and Prince Fielder joins the Tigers. Which team is better now?
Ryan Callahan scored for the fifth time in four days and defenseman Ryan McDonagh snapped a second-period tie to lift the New York Rangers to a 3-2 victory over the Washington Capitals on Sunday.
Kobe Bryant hit a baseline jump shot with 4.2 seconds left and the Los Angeles Lakers wrapped up a six-game road trip by holding on to beat the Raptors 94-92 on Sunday, their eighth victory in nine meetings with Toronto
Arc's five up, five down: After No. 11 Michigan State's 58-48 upset of No. 3 Ohio State, you'd be a fool to discount the Spartans' national title chances now.
Miami coach Al Golden says the worst is behind him, but his headaches figure to continue now that former booster Nevin Shapiro, now in jail, says his involvement with the Hurricanes program will result in stiff penalties.
Eleven shots separated Phil and Tiger Sunday at Pebble Beach as Lefty secured his 40th Tour win. Jason Sobel had hole-by-hole reports.
The United States completed a 5-0 rout of Switzerland in the Davis Cup on Sunday, with 19-year-old Ryan Harrison and John Isner winning closing singles matches.
Zambia has won the African Cup of Nations, beating pre-tournament favorite Ivory Coast 8-7 on penalties in a dramatic final at Stade de l'Amitie.
Tessa Worley of France fought off gusting winds to win a second consecutive World Cup giant slalom Sunday in the Andorran Pyrenees. Overall leader Lindsey Vonn was more than a second behind and finished eighth.
Robins: It’s the Year of the Dragon on the Lunar calendar, and this Chinese influence could extend to it also being the year of the Pekingese on the green carpet at the 136th Westminster Dog Show on Tuesday.
APThey say it was the biggest sports news conference in the history of the New York Yankees, which means the history of New York. And Alex Rodriguez was properly impressed.
Normally slicker than lard on a doorknob, Rodriguez actually betrayed some of the excitement he felt at actually pulling on a pinstriped jersey in front of more lenses and recording devices than he’d ever seen before, fairly gushing about how awesome it was to be the center of so much attention.
“I'm going to relish opening day, going to Tampa, putting on the pinstripes and representing the best organization in baseball," he said, and all a veteran Yankee-watcher could think on hearing that was that the poor lad has no idea what he’s talking about.
First, it’s more than a bit misleading to call George Steinbrenner’s ego extension the best organization in the game. Other organizations that spend a lot less money and still get results have to be better than the Yankees or they couldn’t compete. The adjective that A-Rod really needed wasn’t “best” but “most demanding.” Or maybe “least forgiving.”
Either way, if the best player in the game thought Tuesday had an elevating effect on the blood pressure and heart rate, he hasn’t seen anything yet. Tuesday was a happy-happy, joy-joy celebration. In another six weeks, when the real games start, he can count on the same sort of attention, but not the same atmosphere.
Tuesday was no pressure. Beginning on Opening Day is nothing but pressure. It’s something A-Rod has never experienced in his career, not when he was a young and rising star in Seattle and certainly not in Texas, where he spent three years without ever having a meaningful at-bat.
He talked blithely about getting his new best buddy, Derek Jeter, another six rings, and you couldn’t help but remember how, when he arrived in Texas, he talked about bringing championships there. A-Rod seems to think that championships just follow him around, which is a strange idea for someone to have who’s never won a title.
His problem is going to be that the fans also think that he is the ticket to World Series trophy. That’s not a legitimate expectation; the Yankees still need to prove they have the starting pitching to win it all. But it’s what people think.
When Jason Giambi arrived in New York and didn’t produce immediately, the fans were on him like sweat on a wrestler. He finally belted a grand slam to win a game and everything got better – for a while.
So the first thing A-Rod is going to have to do is produce – not next week or next month or sometime in August, but right now. He’ll have to do it in his home town (He grew up just a few miles north of Yankee Stadium.), and we’ve seen how easy it was for Ken Griffey, Jr. to produce when he went home to Cincinnati.
It’s not going to be easy. It will, in fact, be the hardest thing A-Rod has ever done, because nothing is harder in life than trying to prove that you’re worth all the money and attention and fame that’s been showered on you.
“I’ve come to a point in my career when winning is the most important thing,” Rodriguez said. “And being a New York Yankee — it provides the opportunity, when you drive to the ballpark, every day you have a chance to win.”
That’s kind of funny, too, because he had that chance pretty much every day in Seattle, too. But I guess that was when winning wasn’t the most important thing; making the most money was. It’s also ironic, because you know he would have been saying the same thing had the deal to send him to Boston not fallen apart.
He might view all this as being excessively picky, and all I can say is, “Get used to it, kid.”
Because every day now, A-Rod will have a chance not just to win but also to be under more scrutiny than a tissue sample in a crime lab. Every day he’ll have a chance to be the object of the latest derisive screed from the owner. Every day he’ll have a chance to be swarmed under by more media than he saw in a normal month in Texas. Every day he’ll have a chance to be drawn and quartered on the two sports talk radio stations and a dozen newspapers.
In Texas, the newest addition to Steinbrenner’s trophy case saw maybe a half dozen writers and a columnist or two a day. In New York, The Daily News and The Post alone will each send delegations that size to every game. The New York Times will get by on three or four men. Then there’s Newsday, The Record, The Star-Ledger, two Gannett papers, The Asbury Park Press, the Trenton Times, The Stamford Advocate – the list goes on and on.
But that’s just the start. New York has six broadcast television stations, two sports cable networks, several other local cable outlets, and more radio stations than you can shake a boom mike at, not to mention delegations from ESPN, CNN, and the four major networks, all with conveniently located bureaus or headquarters a short ride away in Manhattan.
It’s really peachy when they’re all there to see you sitting with Reggie and Jee-tah and Joe Torre and smiling from ear to ear. But soon enough they’ll be there to demand that he perform like the best player in baseball.
It might not be as easy to do as he thinks.
SportsTalk: Albert Pujols signs with the Angels and Prince Fielder joins the Tigers. Which team is better now?
DeMarco: Plug in a well-heeled ownership group and negotiate one of those mega-bucks TV deals that are going around, and the Dodgers could become the west coast version of the New York Yankees or Boston Red Sox.
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Zambia has won the African Cup of Nations, beating pre-tournament favorite Ivory Coast 8-7 on penalties in a dramatic final at Stade de l'Amitie.
Wesseling: Each NFL team enters the offseason with a series of pressing needs. Sometimes a team can address them all, sometimes they ignore them all. But if a team's smart, they'll listen to us. These are the most crucial aspects for AFC teams.
After leading by 18 points in the first half, the Los Angeles Lakers were staring at a four-point deficit with less than two minutes to play.