For much of last season, there were stories of "tension" between the Mets' GM Steve Phillips and manager Bobby Valentine. When both were rehired at the same time after the World Series, you had to figure that the stories had to be exaggerated. Now come some other personnel moves that make you wonder if this is not really a soap opera ready to happen. Valentine was close with the Mets' hitting coach, Tom Robson, but had some "less than totally positive moments" with the pitching coach Dave Wallace. Robson had been fired about two years ago and then brought back at Valentine's insistence. Now GM Phillips has fired Robson again and has brought Wallace upstairs to be an advisor to the GM. Maybe the way this gets solved is a Steel Cage Texas Chainsaw Death Match?

Speaking of that kind of melodrama, a reader asked what I thought about the Lennox Lewis/David Tua fight this weekend. The short answer is "not a whole hell of a lot." But with all the antics that Mike Tyson has pulled recently and with the inexorable trend of boxing to be more like rasslin, I think there is a possibility that Mike Tyson will be hiding under the ring and will emerge in about the 3rd round to knock both fighters out cold with a folding chair. Then he will set up a charcoal grill in the ring preparing to cook and eat the hearts of both fighters but will be prevented from cutting into them by Queen Elizabeth who will tell him that he can come to Buckingham Palace and chew on the ears of Prince Charles which is just too enticing for Tyson to resist.

It looks like the Redskins will sign Eddie Murray and Scott Bentley as their kicker tandem after a 5 way kick competition yesterday. Here is an interesting "waltz of the kickers". Last year the Skins' kicker was cut as part of the kicking game purge after the Skins lost to Tampa in the playoffs. In training camp, Brett Conway was declared the solution to that problem. The Skins are now in the process of signing their fourth and fifth kickers of the season. Meanwhile, Conway has been working out with the Raiders because Janikowski is still in the hospital with an infection in his kicking foot. The Raiders drafted Janikowski and cut Joe Nedney because they wanted to upgrade their kicking game and have a stronger leg. Nedney is now with Carolina and has kicked 16 or 17 field goals and is perfect from more than 40 yards. Wheels within wheels …

By the way, the next time you hear some player or coach proclaim that a victory was important because it means that they now control their own destiny, wouldn't you like for the interviewer to ask the coach/player how that can be since destiny is pre-ordained and therefore uncontrollable?

Word is that the Chicago Cubbies will be raising ticket prices in the bleachers to $20 per game. There has to be an entire set of PhD theses in psychology waiting to be written based on studying the masochistic streaks in people who would pay $20 to sit in bad seats to watch a team that is abjectly futile. I suggest that the Cubs find a way to get the major leagues to realign into 8 divisions of four teams each and to do it quickly. That way, the Cubbies can never finish fifth again.

According to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the NFL is going to begin selling Cleveland Browns tee shirts with the inscription, "Who Let the Dawgs Out?" Enough already. This is already as tedious as "Hoot, there it is …"

It appears that the San Diego Chargers will bench Jim Harbaugh and start Moses Moreno once again. Meanwhile, Ryan Leaf remains on the sidelines with a sore wrist. Ryan was the one who said that the Chargers needed to pick a QB and stick with one of them. Based on the degree to which they have taken Ryan's advice, it looks like the coaching staff has realized that Ryan is not QB material - or coaching material either.

Leon Lett may be out for the rest of the year after a knee injury in practice. Lett is not nearly the player he was a couple of years - and one substance abuse suspension - ago, but the Cowboys' DL needs all the players it can muster. This is a franchise that is headed south and may be at the bottom for a while because they have a lot of cap money invested in aging players and they traded away two first round picks for Joey Galloway. And until Jerry Jones turns over the scouting/drafting of players to someone else, this is going to turn around either very slowly or not at all.

My Vancouver Grizzlies - remember I said they were an "over bet" in the NBA futures - have surged to a 4-1 start beating the Dallas Mavericks. I need to get my chest thumping in now because they will eventually go on a 9 game losing streak…I said they would win more than 25 games not that they would actually have a winning record.

Several sports writers and columnists around the country have written about the Darryl Strawberry situation. Tony Kornheiser who is an admitted and certifiable bleeding heart thinks the situation is tragic and wonders why there is not something available to help Darryl since the ultimate agony is to have lost the desire to live. Bob Ryan has said that Darryl Strawberry is a tragic figure who has lost many battles with substance abuse and squandered a world of talent but that the substance abuse is now something that we can understand in some terrible context. Others have said that he needs forgiveness and support now that he is in a life-threatening situation. I sort of agree with all of the above up and until that kind of thinking becomes some kind of lever to change the situation so that Darryl can go out and do what he has done before all over again. You can argue about legalizing drugs or de-criminalizing them or whatever and that is what democracy and activism is all about. But until that happens, you can't allow Darryl Strawberry's natural talent for playing baseball to be the fulcrum for a set of actions that enables him to go out and break the law for the umpteenth time.

Finally, today I have to tell you about ocean racing. There are yacht races and the Americas' Cup and all those things where rich people build boats and hire captains and crews to race them. Ocean racing involves lots of different things but one niche of ocean racing is solo racing. There is a race called "Around Alone" where people sail boats around the world in about 8 legs with no one else on board. There used to be the Whitbread Round the World Race which is now the Volvo Ocean Race. And there is the Vendeé Globe which leaves from France and sails around the southern tip of Africa to Auckland NZ and then around Cape Horn into the south Atlantic and north to Rio. These two legs of the race account for about 15,000 miles of cold and rough and dangerous sailing. The Southern Ocean is known for 30-50 foot waves and high winds and the Drake Passage off Cape Horn is supposed to be one of the most dangerous and unpredictable places on any ocean. This is the path of the racers.

So as the Vendeé Globe was about to begin in Les Sable dO'lonne in France, the start had to be delayed for a day. Why? Bad weather in the seas off this French port town. I must be missing something here.

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