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Remember Aaron Small? As a 33 year-old journeyman he burst onto the scene in 2005, going 10-0 for the Yankees. This past week Small officially announced his retirement. Small had received a spring training invitation from the Mariners, but he decided to retire rather than go to the minors. Small now spends time with his family and gives private pitching lessons to the kids who make their way to the mound Small built on his farm. Small is happy with retirement, although he may have a decision to make once Ron Villone’s ERA reaches double digits and the Yankees come calling.

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There are few NFL players with a passion for politics, but Broncos receiver David Terrell is one of them. Terrell was so inspired by Barack Obama’s memoir that he decided to become a volunteer for Obama’s presidential campaign. Terrell’s work thus far has included spreading the word to a group of athletes and entertainers, and creating a line of “Free Mind For Obama” t-shirts.

What I’d like to see is a political debate between Terrell and Curt Schilling. In fact, why not just replace the two candidates with Terrell and Schilling in all future presidential debates. I think that would be much more entertaining for everybody.

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In their first meeting since the 2006 World Series, the Detroit Tigers annihilated the Cardinals 13-0. In hindsight, that seemed like the obvious outcome. The Tigers had a chance to get revenge on the team that kept them from winning the World Series, while the Cardinals had little extra motivation. It made perfect sense that the Tigers would come out and crush them. That got me thinking about whether or not in these so called “revenge games” the losers from the previous year generally get their revenge by winning. Here are the relevant examples over the last three years from the four major sports. These games are all the teams’ first meetings after the previous season’s post-season. Due to the lockout, the NHL had no revenge games from 2003-2005.

Teams That Got Revenge

MLB

2007–Detroit beats St. Louis 13-0, avenging 2006 World Series loss.

2005–St Louis beats Boston 7-1 and 9-2 in first two games of their series, avenging their 2004 World Series loss.

NFL

2006–Broncos beat Steelers 31-20, avenging 2005 AFC Championship Game loss.

2005–Indianapolis beats New England 41-20, avenging 2004 playoff loss.

NBA

2006-2007 –Dallas beats Miami 99-93, avenging 2006 NBA Finals loss.

2005-2006–Detroit beats San Antonio 85-70, avenging 2005 NBA Finals loss.

NHL

2006-2007–Edmonton beats Carolina 3-1, avenging loss in 2006 Stanley Cup Finals.

2006-2007–Anaheim beats Edmonton 6-2, avenging loss in 2006 Western Conference Finals.

2006-2007–Buffalo beats Carolina 3-2, avenging loss in 2006 Eastern Conference Finals.

Teams That Didn’t

There are really only three examples of team’s failing to get revenge.

2006—-Chicago White Sox beat Houston 7-4 in the first game of their interleague series.

2005—-New England Patriots beat Steelers 23-20 a year after beating them in the AFC Championship Game.

2004-2005—-Detroit beats the Shaq-less Lakers 103-81 a year after beating them in the NBA Finals.

So what does this all mean? Probably not all that much, although the results of these games do seem to indicate that the team seeking revenge generally gets it. Just make sure to be wary of betting on the Colts to beat the Patriots in next year’s regular season.

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From the L.A. Times comes a lengthy story about a battle over horse racing gambling that shockingly revolves around…drumroll… money!! Apparently there are two competing horse racing TV networks. The network that reaches a larger audience, TVG, also takes bets. The other, HRTV, is affiliated with gambling sites, but does not actually take bets itself. The different networks are each associated with different tracks, and the networks cannot take bets for races on their rival’s tracks. That means that while TVG can take bets on next month’s Belmont Stakes, it couldn’t take bets on the Kentucky Derby and will not be able to take them on today’s Preakness. None of this really makes sense to me, but it’s safe to assume there are a lot of degenerate gamblers who are unhappy about not being able to bet on the Preakness through their TV’s.

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There was no succinctly thrilling statement like the first time Michael Jordan made a dramatic return, but as David Scott of the Charlotte Observer points out, Jordan is back in the spotlight. After leaving the Wizards is 2003 Jordan maintained an extremely low profile even after taking over the Bobcats a year ago. However, in the last few months Jordan played golf with Tiger Woods at a Pro-Am, gave the “Gentlemen Start Your Engines” order at a NASCAR race, and spoke to the media about his vision for the Bobcats for the first time in nine months. One theory is that Jordan is merely trying to do some good PR for the Bobcats. I think Jordan is just making sure his over-40 days will be remembered for something other than drafting Adam Morrison.

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Two titans of the media will meet later today when Stephon Marbury makes an appearance on “The Oprah Winfrey Show.” Marbury, who will be Oprah’s first NBA guest since Kevin Garnett, will be on the show to promote his line of $14.98 Starbury sneakers.

I think what Marbury is doing is amazing, but it will be interesting to see how going on “Oprah” works out. I’m not really big on the whole idea of “street cred”, nor do I now what it is, but I do believe that you need it to sell sneakers and I don’t believe that Oprah has it. On the other hand, Marbury does say he “wants to change the world”, and going on “Oprah” is certainly a big step towards reaching that goal. The most interesting part of this whole thing is that by appearing on “Oprah” Marbury will be competing with his own show. “Oprah” airs from 4-5 and Marbury’s show, “Stars on Stars”, airs from 4:30-5.

Finally, the story about Marbury appearing on “Oprah” is worth reading strictly for this paragraph.

“While in Chicago, Marbury plans to check in on teammate Eddy Curry, whom he lobbied for All-NBA center honors. Curry received two votes. ‘I think he should have been third team,’ Marbury said. ‘It’s the politics of the NBA.’”

Um…yeah Stephon. That’s the only reason why Curry wasn’t All-NBA.

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Chad Johnson is in trouble again. The Bengals receiver is being sued by man who claims Johnson falsely represented a raffle at a comedy club. According to the man, last December Johnson was supposed to give away a new Lexus in a raffle at the club. Instead, Johnson didn’t hold the raffle and gave the Lexus away to a “female acquaintance.” The lawsuit seeks a refund of money, legal fees, and damages for the false promotion.

Meanwhile, Johnson is already doing his best to play innocent. “I couldn’t have misled them in any way. I did what I said I was going to do,” he said. “This one night I wanted to do something for someone. One night out of that six months I wanted to give somebody something and you punish me for that?”

You have to love the fact that Johnson admits to only doing something nice once in six months. I say it’s time Roger Goodell to lay down the law. Raffle fraud cannot be tolerated in the NFL. I expect nothing less than an 8 game suspension.

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Somebody besides seedy agents and ESPN has decided to make money from high school sports—-the high school’s themselves. Seattle recently became the latest city to approve a pay-to-play program for high school sports. Under the proposed program, students must pay $50 to play one varsity sport or 75$ for two or three. That’s great—-high school athletic programs are now operating under the same discount system as bedroom furniture at Wal-Mart.

You might be wondering why the schools need money so bad. Apparently the reason is that they lost a lot of vending machine revenue when it became forbidden for the machines to sell soda and junk food. So the schools lost money because of a measure designed to keep kids healthy. Then to recoup that money, they do something that influences kids to not be healthy. That makes a lot of sense.

The Seattle school system will at least allow some students to pay a reduced fee, and they may waive the fee altogether in cases where students are unable to pay at all. Still, this seems like a poor way to raise money, and it undoubtedly will result in a lot fewer high school student playing sports. In the end, the only thing this system helps is the chess club, which can now use its free membership as a major selling point.

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After what Fred Taylor went through this offseason, blocking blitzing middle linebackers will be a piece of cake. The Jaguars running back took an offseason trip to Africa that included visits to Zambia, Zimbabwe, and a safari in a South African national park. That was the relaxing part of the trip. Next came the terrifying part.

After the safari Taylor boarded a single-propeller 15 seat plane. Suddenly, two miles from the runway and at an altitude of 6,000 feet, the plane door flew open. “I thought that was it,” Taylor said. “I put my head down and started praying. The runway was about two miles away, but it seemed like it took 10 or 15 minutes to get there.”

Fortunately, the pilot was able to land the plane and the passengers emerged unscathed. Despite the scare, Taylor was still able to joke that it was the first time he felt like he was near death since he played for Tom Coughlin.  All in all it was a frightening experience for Taylor, but the good news was that in all the commotion on the airplane he managed not to tear his groin.

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Now the Nets are in trouble. Down 3-1, they already faced an uphill battle to stay alive in the playoffs. Needing every break they could get, the Nets instead did they one thing they couldn’t afford to do. They pissed off Lebron James.

Lebron is livid over a number of plays in which he believes the Nets intentionally tried to injure Sasha Pavlovic. He says that was why he got in the face of Mikki Moore after Moore committed a flagrant foul against Pavlovic in game 4. Lebron also claims they were numerous cheap shots taken against Pavlovic in game 3. James made sure to issue a veiled threat to the Nets should their actions continue. “It’s not a fair play,” he said. “You can injure somebody like that. We’re not a dirty team at all. We don’t look for anything but if things start to happen, we got to react.”

The Nets only chance to win game 5 was if Lebron decided to mail it in and take the night off. There’s not much chance of that happening anymore. Tonight, for one of the only times this postseason, an angry Lebron will likely play hard for 48 minutes. That will spell the end for the Nets.

If the Net’s season does come to an end tonight, it could very well be Vince Carter’s last game in a New Jersey uniform. It’s still early, but Orlando appears be one of the leading candidates to land Carter’s services.

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