In NBA news, the Orlando Magic re-signed center John Amaechi to a very small contract - near the minimum. He had been offered a contract in the $1.8M/year range to play for the Lakers but said he did not want to play there because he would not get much playing time. (Clearly, he understands the pecking order in LA!) And so he stayed with the Magic in order to be able to get less "pine time" and more "maple time."

The Timberpuppies signed Chauncey Billups. According to FOXSports, this is Chauncey's fifth team in three years. That is NOT a good sign.

The Paper Clips have signed their three first round draft picks but still do not have a coach. Supposedly, negotiations with John Lucas have gone slowly over the subject of - you guessed it - money. Donald Stirling has it and does not like to spend it.

In baseball action last night, the A's led the Yankees 3-2 going into the bottom of the ninth and they brought in their closer, Jason Isringhausen. Jason delivered what had to be the worst possible performance under the circumstances:

First Pitch = Home run to Bernie Williams. Score tied. Blown Save.

Second Pitch = Home run to David Justice. Game over. Put a loss in his record.

The guy who does the overnight radio show on ESPN Radio (Todd Wright) calls the Tampa Bay team the "Tampa Bay Double A's". Not bad at all! Todd does a good show if you are ever suffering from insomnia or live in Hawaii or get up at 0400 like my friend Festus and get a chance to tune in.

Yesterday, I mentioned that the fastest game in baseball history happened in 1920. Last night, the Angels and Red Sox played a game in 2 hours and 2 minutes. When you realize that at least 35-40 of those minutes where devoted to commercials, this was an "old time baseball game."

Yesterday was not a good day for pitching coaches. Leo Mazzone passed out in the dugout and fell to the ground and hit his head on the concrete floor. He went to a hospital where they did tests and he was reported in "satisfactory condition." Mel Stottlemeyer began his next round of treatments for bone marrow cancer and will likely not accompany the Yankees on their upcoming West Coast road trip.

In NFL news, the Redskins had a "scare" when a bomb squad was summoned to the training facility to destroy a package that had been sent to Danny Boy Snyder and there was music coming from the package. Looking at the return address, someone realized that this was the same person who had written a "long, rambling and sometimes unintelligible" letter to Danny Boy a couple of weeks ago. The bomb squad used a water cannon to render any explosive device useless. At that point they found that the package contained four musical dolls. Hopefully, these were not dolls depicting fat women; if so, the next package may have a bomb and a note that might say:

"Now it is over because the fat lady sang."

Robert Porcher has finally signed a contract with the Lions for 4 years and $24M with a $10M signing bonus. Sounds good - until you hear the saga and realize that he came up very short:

His opening demand was 6 years, $42M, $15M signing bonus.

Lions offered 5 years, $34M, $12M signing bonus and he rejected it and the agent said that negotiations broke down due to lack of respect shown to Porcher.

Lions sent a fax to NFL Hqs saying Porcher was their franchise player. They made the qualifying offer of 1 year at $4.3M. Porcher changed his mind but the fax had been received and so he was the franchise player and the Lions could not lift the label. So they took their previous offer off the table because if they did that, then they could not use the franchise tag on anyone else until that contract was over.

Porcher was "angry" and broke off negotiations again.

He signed the one year offer to get to camp and began the long term contract negotiations again. Now, the Lions could have the franchise tag back since he signed a one year deal while the tag was on him, but the Lions had signed other players in the meantime and their total cap was now down to the number that was the offer he signed.

Yesterday, he left camp again saying he would not sign it. When the Lions hinted that they would sign a replacement - lowering their cap further - Porcher signed with the explanation that he only left camp so he could confer with his wife.

So he is short $2M in signing bonus and $10M total in contract value from their previous offer that he felt was disrespectful. One more round of negotiations like this, and he will qualify to be a special assistant to Secretary of State, Madeline Notbright to conduct peace negotiations somewhere.