But if you tune in to the Showtime event, you will surely be disappointed to learn that the welterweight championship fight on the undercard will not happen. Champion James Page (I bet no one could pick him out of a line-up with the McGuire Sisters) pulled out the fight against challenger Andrew "Six Heads" Lewis (Only Stevie Wonder could not pick him out of a line-up with other humanoids).

Earlier this season, I thought that Jose Lima was a victim of going from the cavernous Astrodome to Enron Field (appropriate nickname is Ten Run Field). Lima was a 20 game winner last year and was dominant. This season, he is 4-14 with an ERA over 7.00 by more than a little bit. I saw him get clobbered this week and the problem is not just the change of venue. His fastball is high and it is a straight as a laser but not fast like a laser. Batters are routinely getting the fat part of the bat on the ball; and unless you are pitching in the Grand Canyon, that is not a way to win baseball games.

Last night, David Cone won a game. The Yankees welcomed him back from his visit to the minor leagues to work on his mechanics by posting 7 runs in the first two innings. It is a lot easier to pitch under such circumstances.

Last night there was a mirror image to Cone's performance. David Wells has been overpowering most of this year and last night he got bombed and had to leave the game in the 4th inning having given up 7 runs and 11 hits - and he only threw 55 pitches meaning that the batters were not shy or intimidated at all.

The Phillies lost to the Padres last night 15-3. Looking at the box score today, I noticed a recipe for sure disaster. The Padres line-up in the 6th - 9th position (counting starting pitcher Williams) came to bat 19 times and got 11 hits. That part of the line-up is where you are supposed to find "outs" if you are the team in the field!

There were two NFL exhibition games last night. By the way, the NFL does not like to hear them called exhibition games since lots of teams charge season ticket holders close to regular season prices for the seats to these "events", but that is what they are - exhibitions. For example, in the Carolina/Pittsburgh game, Steve Beurlein did not play. Assuming that he is not decapitated prior to Labor Day weekend, he will likely be in the opening game of the season that actually matters. And ten different Panthers carried the ball in that game which is an unlikely event in the real season. On the other side of the ball, the Steelers ran the ball 30 times and Jerome Bettis had zero carries.

But for you fantasy league players, there may have been an indicator for you in the Miami/Tampa game. Miami won 15-13 on 5 field goals by Olindo Mare and three of them were under 30 yards. The Miami offense may put him on the field a whole lot this year.

A change the NFL needs to consider - and somehow get the NFLPA to consider in a constructive context - is to expand the season to 18 games and to reduce the number of "pre-season games" to 2. Each team could schedule 2 of the "controlled scrimmages" that they use and play 2 games and then move on to the season. Starting a week early and eliminating that tedious extra week between the conference championships and the Super Bowl would accommodate the scheduling. To assuage the screams about how this would expose more players to injuries, the rosters could be expanded from the current 53 to something like 55 or 56 giving the union about 100 new jobs to "represent." Just a thought…

Dennis Miller will be on TV next Monday nite and hopefully this telecast will not receive the same level of scrutiny as the last one. I suspect that someone has taped the audio track and played it backwards to see if there any Satanic messages in there.

In the Canada Senior Open golf tournament, George Burns is leading after the first round. This is a SENIOR golf tournament to be sure!

In the NBA, the San Antonio Spurs signed free agent, Danny Ferry. Danny had been with Cleveland for ten years collecting the monstrous contract that he signed when he came out of college as a can't miss prospect who managed to miss by a mile. Terms were not released; but if the Spurs paid more than $29.95, they got hosed.

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