Random Rumblings: I still can't get into MMA

• Those who read this web site regularly know how I feel about MMA. I just can’t fall for a sport whose fan base considers the curb stomp scene in American History X to be cinematic brilliance. I feel like arguing that fans don’t watch for blood (the group I was with cheered for it) is basically arguing that people don’t rob banks for money. And worst of all, every time a new, bigger, badder and skinheadier fighter comes along, he seems to always disappoint.
  
  But with all that said, I decided to watch UFC 94 with a few friends last Saturday night and give it one last chance. Maybe I wasn’t seeing something. I mean, I missed the boat on backyard wrestling and I do have pretty awful vision, so anything is possible.
  
  So I sat there, drinking Bud, waiting for blood and praying no one would slap and arm bar on and beg me to tap out (I don’t watch enough MMA to know reversals). At some point, I wondered when I would be overtaken with excitement. There were a flurry of punches here, a nice takedown there, but nothing that made me not wish I was watching the Royal Rumble. Even the main event, which featured B.J. Penn, a great snowboarding name and Georges St. Pierre, a great skiing name, couldn’t have been more boring if they were squaring off in some snowy X Games competition instead.
  
  My final conclusion was this: There weren’t any interesting storylines, no one got knocked out and too many guys in the crowd had bad haircuts. I watched UFC 94 on a 50 inch plasma, but I saw nothing that could possibly make me enjoy this sport.
  
  
• I have two different thoughts when it comes to the Michael Phelps “Up in Smoke” tour:
  
  1) By no means am I one of these hippy-dippy, “legalize it,” Call of Duty playing pot heads, but can we give the kid a break? It’s not like he was pushing his ADHD medicine on the street corner.
  
  2) If Phelps were a guy with tattoos and black skin, we would be debating the merits of rehab versus jail time.
  
  
• So let’s get this straight: Alex Rodriguez is obsessed with being the best player in baseball and works harder than just about anyone in history to achieve the numbers he puts up every single year. And somehow this is a bad thing?
  
  How, New York sports fans, is he supposed to become more of a team player? Should he start bunting? Should he lead team stretches before games?
  
  
• You have to wonder what Knicks players must feel like knowing that on any given night, just about any given player can score 50 on them.
  
  
• People seem to thinks throwing Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens in jail will somehow help the steroid era in baseball vanish. The truth is, you could execute both of ‘em live on television and their records, along with the accomplishments of every other cheater from this timeframe will be around for the rest of time.

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Random Rumblings: Time for the Rays to get serious

• Maybe, as SI’s John Heyman suggested on WFAN yesterday, the Tampa Bay Rays didn’t actually believe this would be their year. Maybe the team wasn’t prepared to negotiate deadline deals because it thought a .500 record was the ultimate goal in 2008.
  
  But now, everything has changed and the Rays need to make a move. The team is still in first place, two games ahead of the Red Sox and four in front of the Yankees, but it is in desperate need of a bat. The Rays have scored more than four runs in a game just three times since it completed a sweep of Kansas City on July 6.
  
  Jason Bay, a player I love, might be the guy the team is trying to trade for, but he isn’t the best player available. That honor goes to none other than Barry Bonds, the guy whose OBP last season was almost 100 points higher than anyone in the Rays lineup today.
  
  Even if Bonds has regressed, he is still going to be on base 40 percent of the time and will undoubtedly put butts in seats. And if you’re telling me he isn’t more valuable than any of the players the Rays currently stick at DH, you’re out of your mind.
  
  The Rays considered Bonds an option before the season; now it’s time to make the Home Run King a priority.
  
  
• The Angels had a perfect night in Boston, acquiring Mark Teixeira before its game and then watching John Lackey no-hit the Sox for 8 1/3 innings. Already a World Series favorite, the trade puts the Angels in a league of its own, far ahead of the Red Sox, who they seem to dominate every time they meet.
  
  
• ESPN ranked UConn Men’s Basketball the sixth best program of the last 20 years, which is a testament to how Coach Jim Calhoun transformed a regional program into a national brand. But you have to wonder if he is proud of the current state of the program.
  
  His players have had off the court problems dating back to the laptop incidents, which have resulted in a couple arrests and even more transfers. Most recently, he brought in Nate Miles, a red flag guy who took the spot of the academically ineligible Stanley Robinson.
  
  Calhoun is an old school guy and it seems like he has figured out in a hurry that you have to be willing to compromise integrity in order to remain sustainable as a big time basketball program. It will be interesting to see how much more of this he can take.
  
  
• I’m always amazed by the people who complain about the length of the baseball and basketball seasons. They’re almost always the same ones who get all jazzed up about who is going to report to football camp in July.

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Ten homeruns changed everything for Bonds

Baseball teams have given jobs to players that were just as old as Barry Bonds is today, only with much less ability. Think Julio Franco. They’ve employed admitted cheaters, guys who needed steroids just to stand on the field or guys who used them to make history. Think Jason Giambi, among many others. And they’ve held on to men with issues that went far beyond a huge ego or a bad attitude. Think Ty Cobb for god sakes.

Yet it’s almost March and Bonds, arguably the greatest player in the history of the sport, has generated almost no interest from Major League teams. In fact, it’s gotten to the point where we are starting to hear rumors about him heading to Japan to become a real life version of Tom Selleck’s character in Mr. Baseball.

If that does happen, if he truly is banished from American baseball, you can blame it on ten of his 762 career homeruns.

That’s right. The most damaging homeruns to Bonds’ legacy weren’t the ones that vaulted him past Babe Ruth and ultimately Hank Aaron on the all-time homerun list. They were homeruns 64 through 73 during the 2001 season.

That was the season that Bonds, who apparently was extremely jealous of Mark McGwire, broke Big Mac’s single season homerun record. It was also the season that somehow made Barry Bonds more of a cheater than anyone else who used performance enhancing drugs.

If Bonds had hit ten less homers that year, Sammy Sosa would have led baseball with 64 and he would have never had to endure the witch-hunt in the years that followed. Would people still have questioned him? Of course. Would there still be a BALCO scandal? You bet. But look at the way the rest of baseball has handled these problems. Most players have never even been named in a steroid report, despite seemingly obvious signs of use. And even the guys who have been named, like Gary Sheffield, haven’t had to face all that much heat.

In fact, Bonds would have probably been given the same treatment as Sheffield is handed today. And considering the Tigers’ slugger might end up in the Hall of Fame while voters struggle to elect the all-time homerun king, that wouldn’t be a bad thing.

We act now as though Bonds suddenly started leading the league in homeruns every single season after his 35th birthday. The truth is that he has led the league just twice in his entire career and one of those seasons came in 1993.

Ten homeruns completely changed our thoughts on Bonds.

And now, ten homeruns are the difference between a spot hitting cleanup with a Major League team and Japan. Or forced retirement.

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