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.
Reuters fileNifty wording from his attorney, by the way. Kudos. Way to face the music while denying culpability. Using the word “intentionally” twice was an especially nice touch.
This reminds me of an old Cheech and Chong routine, where a lawyer is defending a stoner in court on possession charges: “Your honor, my client had merely FOUND these drugs, and was on his way to the police department to turn them in at the time of his arrest.”
It makes you wonder just how long Palmeiro had been unintentionally taking a substance that turns cans of corn into dingers. Jose Canseco said in his tell-all book that he introduced Palmeiro, Ivan Rodriguez and Juan Gonzalez to steroids when they were all teammates in Texas in 1992. Canseco had been traded there from Oakland in August of that season.
So, for example, if you mark Palmeiro’s home run totals from ’93 to the present – assuming Canseco is telling the truth, and assuming Palmeiro took steroids from that point until the moment of his capture this season – that calls 474 of his homers into question. If the accusations are true, that’s a lot of juice.
Actually, if you look at Palmeiro’s pre-Canseco numbers versus his post-Canseco numbers, the latter are far more, shall we say, muscular. His highest RBI total in seven major league seasons before ’93 was 89. After ’93, he drove in over 100 runs in 10 of the next 11 campaigns.
His home run totals spiked, too. He had never hit more than 26 taters before 1993. In 11 seasons after ’93, however, he hit 37 or more 10 times.
During these years, no one can say for sure that the use of steroids was rampant, but rumors about their widespread use certainly were. This was the modern age when scouts began to place a high value on a prospect’s musculature as well as his ability to hit, run, field and throw. Players, in turn, were hitting the weight room like never before, convinced that puffed up chests and meaty forearms would translate into big-money contracts.
Steroids had been around for years. Arnold Schwarzenegger admitted using them during his “Pumping Iron” days in the ‘70s. Lyle Alzado, who died of brain cancer in 1992, said he started using them in 1969 and never stopped.
But they didn’t reach the epidemic stage in baseball until the ‘90s — while both the union and the commissioner’s office stood idly by and watched.
Today, along with Rafael Palmeiro, they’re paying the price.
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.