By Jim Coffman
The Bulls just missed pulling out an improbable win after a great comeback in Toronto (nice shot to tie it over towering Chris Bosch at the end of regulation Ben Gordon!). Later, the Canucks took the Hawks to the woodshed (on their way to a 4-0 win) but at least there was an almost-brawl that included bloodied faces, shredded undershirts and hair-pulling. Oh, and there were two not exactly dramatic NCAA men’s tournament games.
But the best part of this sports Sunday was Tiger Woods’ charge at Bay Hill. The only other competitor who compares to this guy in terms of willing himself to wins in the last quarter century is that character who used to play for the Bulls, the one who’s been statue-ized. I know it’s tricky to compare competitors in team sports and individual sports but the Bulls’ championships were about one individual as much as any team championships have ever been. There were plenty of stellar supporting players but the Bulls’ won because of Michael’s indomitable will.

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Posted on March 30, 2009

By Thomas Chambers

Thoroughbred horse racing was having big problems before the economy blowed up real good. Primarily because of old, bad decisions and now a truly stupendous lack of unity, racing struggles with market share as Americans gamble more than ever.
In this environment, Hawthorne Race Course soldiers on. The last standing beam of Sportsman’s Park, just north across the lot line from Hawthorne, hits the Cicero deck as this is written. Although victim of one of the most lunkheaded ideas (let’s install an auto track!) ever – it was the victim of a colossal Bidwill, (the Bidwills have made enough of them to get their own noun) – can we really believe or dream that Sportsman’s would have survived anyway?

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Posted on March 27, 2009

By Dan O’Shea

Most fantasy baseball leagues will have finished their drafts by this weekend, and now that spring training is almost over, it’s time to assess what we might have learned from the last few weeks of non-competitive competition and a little thing called the World Baseball Classic.
More specifically, I need to reassess my earlier sleepers, since some of them didn’t survive the spring. Regular readers will remember that back on March 7, I posted my earlier sleeper picks for 2009 at every position. And now for some adjustments:

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Posted on March 25, 2009

By Jim Coffman

The Hawks finally broke through at home on Sunday, edging the Kings 2-1 (OK, OK it was 4-1 but empty-netters like the two the Hawks scored in the last minute-and-a-bit against L.A. should somehow be listed in a separate category). In so doing they moved back into the fourth playoff spot in the NHL’s Western Conference, by two points over Vancouver with 11 games left in the regular season. If the season ended today, the Hawks would play the first game of the first round of the playoffs at home . . . which is probably good news.
Then again, as my wife Julie put it as we turned on the game in the afternoon, “People keep talking about the race for home ice advantage . . . but the Blackhawks stink at home.” The squad was 4-7-2 in their last 13 on the West Side going into Sunday.

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Posted on March 23, 2009

By Thomas Chambers

It was an exciting and interesting day of Kentucky Derby prep races, but it’s difficult to say if any questions really got answered. I spent the day at beautiful Hawthorne Race Course. When you’re at the track, you try to bet on the races on the premises, but there was a lot going on around the country. But I managed. Sure did.
Not a lot happening this Saturday, so let’s recap last week.
Tampa Bay Derby, Tampa Bay Downs
Musket Man kicked it in gear to just nose out Join in the Dance with Justdontcallmejeri running a fine race all the way around. Sam Davis winner General Quarters trailed badly, was in close enough into the stretch and then flattened out. Hello Broadway and Sumo didn’t look too good either. Hard to see how any of these will compete in the Kentucky Derby, but we’ll see then.

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Posted on March 20, 2009

By Dan O’Shea

Is it possible that I am the only fantasy sports columnist still writing about fantasy basketball, the lone voice in the wilderness as the NBA season winds down? It kind of feels that way.
The NBA season is interminable, evidenced by the increasing number of players heading to the injury list. Devin Harris, Jameer Nelson, Marvin Williams and Andris Biedrins are three of the biggest names to take a fall in the last week. The season should really start later, end earlier or both. The NCAA tournament takes precedence in March. Also, if you’re a three-sport fantasy leaguer like me, it’s tough to focus on the basketball draft with football season just ending, and tougher still to care about the end of the basketball season with baseball drafts coming together.
Having lodged my complaint to whom it may concern, let me use the last week before playoffs begin in most fantasy basketball leagues to give out my fantasy stud awards for this season.

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Posted on March 18, 2009

By The University of Illinois Department of Computer Science

Odds are, not after the Sweet 16, University of Illinois professor says
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – For budding “bracketologists” busily weighing picks for their annual March Madness office pool, a University of Illinois professor has some advice on how to pick winners: In the later rounds of the tournament, ignore a team’s seeding, which is a statistically insignificant predictor of a team’s chances of winning.
According to Sheldon H. Jacobson, a professor of computer science and the director of the simulation and optimization laboratory at Illinois, for the top three seeds in the four regional brackets, the road to the Final Four of the NCAA men’s Division I basketball championship will most likely play out according to their initial seeding in the first three rounds of the tournament – that is, the higher-seeded teams will most likely beat their lower-seeded opponents.
But once the field has been winnowed to the so-called “Elite Eight” teams, Jacobson says each team’s odds of winning are statistically no different than a coin flip, no matter how high or low the teams were initially ranked at the start of the tournament.

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Posted on March 17, 2009

Ahhh, spring training: the sunshine . . . the green grass . . . the games that have so little to do with what will happen in the first month of the regular season. That is especially the case back home in Chicago, of course, where chilly weather baseball is a little different than desert diamond doings. But still, there have been plenty of promising storylines playing out over the past month with the White Sox and the Cubs. And then there is that World Baseball Classic thing. The U.S. apparently stayed alive with a 9-3 victory over noted baseball power the Netherlands last night. USA! US . . .
I think I’ll head on back to Arizona now, where we find that:

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Posted on March 16, 2009

By Thomas Chambers

This is a perfect opportunity to comment on artificial surfaces in horse racing.
In Saturday’s Gotham Stakes on the inner track at Aqueduct, trainer Jeff Mullins shipped maiden winner I Want Revenge all the way from Santa Anita basically to find out if the horse likes to run on dirt, the surface of the Kentucky Derby. The horse had finished a nose second in December’s Cash Call Futurity at Hollywood and then third in the Robert B. Lewis at Santa Anita early last month. Those two tracks have different artificial surfaces. More on Santa Anita later.
Well, I Want Revenge looks on his way to the final plateau on the $99,000 Answer as he won by 8-1/2 lengths (Kid Joe Talamo, in my opinion, went to the whip a little too often and a little too late, knowing he had the win, to push this horse. This could be a mistake that manifests itself on Derby Day.). Imperial Council came from last place to finish second and just nose out Mr. Fantasy.
Mullins got his answer. But horses like The Pampelmousse and Pioneer of the Nile will most likely go to the Derby without ever having raced on dirt. Others will have their final prep on the fake stuff at Keeneland. In 2006, Sinister Minister annihilated the Bluegrass Stakes at Keeneland and was near the top of the tote board for the Derby. He finished 16th.
The opinion here is that the use of artificial racing surfaces in this country has been a knee-jerk reaction typical of our quick-fix mentality.

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Posted on March 13, 2009

By Dan O’Shea

The admission that he used steroids earlier this decade couldn’t stop A-Rod from still being rated as a top 5 pick, and neither could lingering questions about whether he has been on steroids more recently. But it now appears that a cyst is his hip will do just that and more.
Alex Rodriguez still looked like a No. 3 or No. 4 pick to me, possibly even No. 2 because the Yankees line-up looks like such a promising run-scoring machine. But A-Rod had minor surgery on his right hip just days ago, and now will likely be out for at least the first month of the regular season. He’s also already scheduled to have a follow-up surgery after this season, and though the medical reports are casting his odds as pretty strong to have an otherwise healthy year, too much doubt has begun to stir.
Just the other day, I looked at the Yahoo! Player Ranker, which allows Yahoo! Fantasy Baseball members to vote on player rankings, and was not surprised to see A-Rod with an average draft position of about No. 22. Some people might be surprised it isn’t lower, but it’s probable A-Rod stock value has not yet hit bottom.

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Posted on March 11, 2009