Today, the sporting world lost arguably the greatest owner in all of sports. George Steinbrenner was eighty years old, celebrating his birthday just over a week ago on the Fourth of July. Not everyone liked Steinbrenner; there is no denying that he was a loud, no-nonsense guy at times, who exhibited very little patience with his managers and players. However, people who knew him well were exposed to his softer, more compassionate side that made him a very likable man. Regardless of which side you saw, you can agree that the man was always about winning. These days, it seems like owners that are only about turning a profit, even at the expense of their team’s performance, are dime-a-dozen. However, Steinbrenner would readily dish out an obscene amount of money to pick up a player he felt he needed in order to win. The saying goes “you have to spend money to make money”, and make money he did. When he bought the Yankees in 1973, Steinbrenner spent about 8.7 million dollars. Now, the Yankees are worth about 1.6 billion dollars. Some people called his tactics bad for the game, but the fact of the matter is, you knew every year when The Boss pulled out his checkbook that his chief motive was to try to put the best possible baseball team on the field. You can’t really fault a guy for that, and that is why Steinbrenner will be missed tremendously in the entire baseball community. R.I.P., George.
Even more bad news has hit the city of Cleveland, and no, it’s not that owner Dan Gilbert has to pay a 100,000 dollar fine for his remarks about Lebron James. No, it’s that center Zydrunas Ilgauskas will leave Cleveland and sign with none other than the Miami Heat. Not only does this mean that Cleveland has no one worth mentioning on their roster, but now it almost assures that the Miami Heat will be the preseason favorites to win the NBA Championship in 2011. The reason that I heard being thrown around that the Heat may have trouble winning with only the Big Three was that they didn’t have enough to deal with the tandem of Lamar Odom, Pau Gasol, and Andrew Bynum in Los Angeles. However, with Ilgauskas now in Miami, the tables have been turned. How is Los Angeles going to deal with those two monsters (Ilgauskas and Bosh) down low?
The Tour de France hasn’t been getting too much attention on this blog, and here’s why it probably won’t be getting much more after this; Lance Armstrong, the only reason Americans have really had any interest in the Tour for the last eleven years, has announced that his chance of winning the Tour is pretty much gone. The sad part is that it wasn’t really his fault, either. In Stage 8, he got caught up in three crashes, losing valuable time to the leaders during a stage in which he put time on the rest of the pack in previous Tours. Lance is still better than ninety percent of the riders in the race, but I think that this will be his last Tour de France. The great ones never accept defeat when they know they still have enough left in the tank, and Armstrong has accepted defeat.
The All-Star game is currently being played, with the AL holding onto a slim 1-0 lead over the NL in the bottom of the 6th. If they can hold on for the win, it will be their fourteenth consecutive win over the NL in the All-Star game, which is quite a streak. However, is the streak really that great since it is technically still an exhibition game? Let me know your thoughts in the comments section, or email me at aroundthecornsportsblog@gmail.com. Thanks everyone.
– K. Becks
