Cliff Lee dominated the Dodgers, Ryan Howard and Jayson Werth provided the big swings early and the Philadelphia Phillies cruised past Los Angeles 11-0 Sunday night for a 2-1 lead in the NL championship series.
The Toronto Blue Jays are tough to figure out, sometimes the look like a team on paper that should be far better than they are, and then sometimes they look like a team that is far behind their division mates like the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, and Tampa Bay Rays. In April of the past year, the Jays looked like a team that could compete for the American League Wild Card, and then the lost 70 of their final 118 games, and got their General Manager fired. There are rumors that the team does not like their old school manager Cito Gaston, and of course their are the attendance issues.
The normal cycle of a sports team is a team drafts a young core of players, they make strides towards the post season, they have some ups and some downs, and then the general manager blows out the roster and starts all over again. That is how it works for most teams, but the Milwaukee Bucks are not most teams. Last year was a rebuilding year after finishing last in their division in each of their last five seasons, but General Manager John Hammond blew up his roster, shredded some big salaries and drafted some project players. Good news for Bucks fans, they are rebuilding yet again.
How now, without Yao? That is the question for the Houston Rockets and their fans. Of course it is not like Yao Ming has been all that healthy since he came to Houston in the 2002 NBA draft. While he missed just two games in his first three seasons, Yao has been anything but healthy since then. Now, after having undergone bone graft surgery to repair his foot it now appears that Yao will be gone until training camp of next season. That means the Rockets are minus the player that their franchise has been built upon. They also lost Ron Artest in the off season, and the future looks very dark indeed.
Jimmie Johnson won the NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Lowe's Motor Speedway last night. It was Johnson's sixth win of the 2009 Sprint Cup season, and the 46th win of his career. However a few other numbers are the ones that are more impressive. Johnson, in his bid to win his fourth consecutive Sprint Cup title has become the first ever driver to win three of the first five chase races, with the win Saturday Johnson now has won 17 of the 55 Chase races in NASCAR history, and with his sixth career wins at the Lowe's track he ties NASCAR greats Bobby Allison, and Darrell Waltrip with the most wins at this speedway.
Alex Rodriguez is putting all those playoff failures behind him. The Los Angeles Angels are turning the AL championship series into a defensive debacle.
Danny Sullivan threw a 50-yard touchdown pass to Chris McGaha with five seconds to play Saturday night to give Arizona State a stunning 24-17 victory over Washington.
Colt McCoy was a mess. His right thumbnail was ready to fall off, a nagging cold was wearing him down and Oklahoma was confusing him with blitzes he'd never seen.
Nikolay Davydenko produced a fine comeback to stun second seed Novak Djokovic and set up a showdown with Rafael Nadal in Sunday's Shanghai Masters final.
