I went to look up Johnny Damon's stats and he is having a wonderful year. He is hitting .338 and he leads the AL in hits as of Wednesday. Not bad. So why did I go to look up those numbers? I read that Damon's contract is up this year and that he – via his agent Scott Boras a.k.a. Vlad the Impaler – is seeking a contract for 5 or 6 years. Johnny Damon is 32 years old now meaning that his contract demands would mean signing him for top dollar value through age 37 or 38. Yes, I know that players can be very productive at that age and beyond, but that is a risky proposition for any team that signs Damon. If one of the baseball GMs is mesmerized by Vlad – er, I mean Boras – during the negotiation processes, all one needs to do as an “intervention” is to whisper the name “Dikembe Mutombo” in the GMs ear and have him see what happens when you sign an old guy to a max contract for a long time. Ouch!

Speaking of “old guys” – in the sporting sense of “old” – the word is that 46-year-old Thomas “Hit Man” Hearns wants to fight again and is in training. The Detroit News reports that he wants to fight on the same card with his 26-year-old son, Ronald, who has a 6-0 record as of this moment. Hearns says his comeback fight against an opponent – to be picked later from the ranks of the recently comatose – will be at 180 lbs and that his goal in this comeback is to fight for the light heavyweight or the super-middleweight championship in the next year or so. That can only mean that if he beats the stiff they put in front of him, he's planning to do this again.

Memo to Sugar Ray Leonard and Marvin Hagler: This is a bad idea. Do not use it as an excuse to make comebacks of your own. Let him be alone in showing the world conclusively that his ring skills are nothing like they used to be.

While on the subject of boxing, I read that the Mike Tyson/Kevin McBride bout had 250,000 buys on pay-per-view. That means that the TV part of the promotion brought in a little over $11.2M. McBride was the winner. I wonder if his next bout will be at the head of a pay-per-view card that will draw more than $2M. Somehow, I doubt it.

The Marquette University quest for a new nickname is finally over. The university has really chased its tail for the last few months because the name selected by vote of the Marquette students, staff and alumni is - - Golden Eagles. And that is precisely the name that the school ditched because it wasn't satisfactory about two months ago. Plus ça change; plus ça meme chose.

The school's Board of Trustees made a unilateral move to change the name that caused a huge uproar that started all this silliness and now the Chairman of that same Board has the audacity to say that even though the nickname changing process “has not been perfect”, he hopes that it is all in the past as the school enters the Big East next season. Hello? Has not been perfect? It was you and your Board of Trustees cohorts that started all this nonsense with your unilateral action that chose a truly stupid name – the Gold. If you had simply stuck to your knitting and did what most Boards of Trustees do – meaning very little other than digging into your pockets to donate to the school – none of this would have happened and Marquette would not have been a laughingstock.

Oh, and just to show you how thoroughly all of this nonsense is in the rear view mirror at Marquette, this same Chair-goof said that the school was about to “hold a series of focus groups” on what to do about updating the school logo and the school mascot. Pardon me while I gag. Focus groups are nothing more than political cover for taking actions that some people aren't going to like. They provide novel insights into problems only by accident. And by the way, what will the school do in the event that the golden eagle mascot turns out to be something that offends PETA or the National Association of Ornithologists or the Society of People Who Are Pissed Off About Nearly Everything? Sigh…

TJ Simers pointed out in his column in the LA Times a couple of days ago that Clippers' coach Mike Dunleavy might have spoken with a large degree of inside knowledge when he criticized NBA draft analysts on TV. Specifically, Dunleavy was not happy with Dick Vitale's criticism of NBA teams who draft foreign players. Dunleavy said that TV analysts “are paid to make noise on TV”. As Simers points out, Dunleavy should know. He was a TV analyst for San Antonio and just this year worked the NBA's playoffs as a TV analyst – because his Clippers' did not make the playoffs.. So, just how much noise did he make on TV? Did he earn his money?

Jason Whitlock's column in the KC Star talks about Bill Self's need to “win at all costs” at Kansas. Whitlock points out that the father of a Kansas prize recruit has been quietly named as the university's “director of basketball operations”. The announcement was made just as Kansas alum Wayne Simien was about to be taken in the NBA draft such that it did not become the focus of attention in Jayhawk-land. This is not the first time that this father has ridden in on the coattails of his talented son. Whitlock points out that the father suddenly became a high school coach just as his son was showing himself to be a high school star. This is not the first time this kind of thing has happened nor will it be the last. But if the NCAA wants to look to a pristine ethical stature for the game, here is a problem far greater than the size of football media guides.

While I don't know anything about the details of it, I am aware that there is a professional fishing organization. Well, ESPN has announced that there is going to be a women's fishing tour to be known as the Women's Bassmaster Tour (WBT). That's great. Then the announcement went on to say that the WBT will emulate the Bassmaster Tour and follow a “pro-am format in which anglers are randomly paired and boaters compete against boaters while non-boaters compete against non-boaters”. If that is supposed to be a clarification, it isn't. Do non-boaters have to fish from the riverbanks? Or do they have to wade? Or are they expected to walk on the water? I don't understand this - - and I really don't want to.

Finally, Jim Armstrong of the Denver Post had this to say about Jeremy Roenick's controversial comments regarding hockey fans and what part of his anatomy they might consider kissing earlier this week:

“Did you hear bleary-eyed Jeremy Roenick's R-rated rant during a break in the, um, festivities at Mario Lemieux's charity golf tournament? The next day, Roenick became the first athlete ever to claim his comments were taken out of cognac.”

But don't get me wrong, I love sports...

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