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.
Golf's dream pairing - Woods and Mickelson - is on the course in the final round at Pebble Beach. Jason Sobel has 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.
Euro Roundup: First-place Manchester City won 1-0 at Aston Villa on Sunday on Joleon Lescott's goal in the 63rd minute, maintaining its two-point lead over Manchester United in the Premier League.
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.
APThe answer is, “Jim Beattie and Mike Flanagan.”
The question is, “Who are the dunderheads running the Baltimore Orioles?”
The word is these two co-general manager geniuses have been smitten by the bold idea of trading with the Cubs for Sammy Sosa. When this deal becomes official, it will go down as the worst acquisition of a formerly potent superstar since the Mets signed George Foster.
I’m not going to ask for an explanation for this one, because there is none. The Orioles are an afterthought in the AL East, where the Yankees and Red Sox rule. Baltimore finished below .500 last season, entirely because they didn’t have a pitcher who won more than 14 games and had just three pitchers who finished the season with double-digit victories.
So they set about chasing the Yanks and Sox by signing a slugger who is going downhill so fast Bode Miller couldn’t catch him? And who can become a free agent after just one season?
The man hit 64 home runs four years ago, 49 three years ago, 40 two years ago and 35 last season. His RBI totals for the same four years were 160, 108, 103 and 80.
His games played were 160, 150, 137, 126 — and last season he went on the disabled list when he threw out his back sneezing. He’s 35 years old and will be 36 in June. And Major League Baseball has just instituted a fairly strict steroid policy.
This isn’t to say that Sammy did steroids. The only thing we’re sure he did was put cork in his bat. But he’s gotten a bit smaller over the past year, and he’s gotten a lot more brittle, and his stats are sliding downhill. Even three years ago, you could have called him one of the premier players in baseball. Today, you can’t call him anything but a distorted reflection of what he once was.
And for some reason, Baltimore wants him.
If you’re an Orioles fan, the only advice I can give is to see if you can get a refund on your season tickets. Even if Sosa was the Sammy of four years ago, he wouldn’t get you into the playoffs. And as he is now, an over-the-hill, fragile wreck who doesn’t play the outfield very well, he’s got as much chance of pushing the Orioles into the playoffs as a ruptured mouse does of pushing an 18-wheeler up Pike’s Peak.
The only way to explain this is to assume that Baltimore needed someone to replace Albert Belle, the formerly great slugger they got from Cleveland, only to see him retire with a destroyed hip.
To describe this deal as dumb is an understatement on the same lines as calling the geology of Titan interesting. If the Orioles want to contend in the AL East, there’s just one way to do it: with pitching.
Pitching wins the AL East. It wins the division and it wins the wild card. And the Red Sox and Yankees not only have the pitching, but also the offense to back it up.
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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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.
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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.