World Baseball Classic

Another gigantic surprise.  The Dominican Republic, one of the most dominant teams in the tournament, fell to the Netherlands a few days ago.  To put this in perspective, the players on the Dominican Republic earn a total of over $80 million per year, while the players on Holland earn 0.4 million per year.   Plus, the Dominican Roster has 23 Major League Baseball players, the Dutch have two.  Baseball is just not Holland’s sport.  But, last night, they beat the Dominicans AGAIN to knock them out of the tournament.  That’s why we play the games.  This is practically the baseball equivalent right now of a college team like Gonzaga knocking off the Lakers. It’s just unreal.  Netherlands 2, Dominican Republic 1.

NFL

The situation in Denver just keeps getting worse.  Earlier this month, Denver tried to initiate trade talks to get Matt Cassel from the Patriots.  No big deal, except, how did they think it would make their quarterback feel?  He was offended, and yesterday, in a conference between the Broncos execs and Cutler, Cutler apparently got even more frustrated — especially at new head coach Josh McDaniels.  It’s possible that the Broncos might deal Cutler just to be rid of this thing, because you don’t want an agitated QB at the beginning of the season, and Cutler wouldn’t want to play his heart out for a team that doesn’t want him.  We’ll see how this progresses.

Elsewhere in the NFL, the St. Louis Rams have cut their former #1 draft pick Orlando Pace.  Pace represents the true essence of how the league should work.  The Rams drafted him with the #1 pick in 1997, and over the subsequent 11 seasons, he put in his best effort and nabbed 7 Pro Bowl appearances.  He was also a HUGE component in the “Greatest Show On Turf”, allowing Kurt Warner and Marc Bulger to bomb passes without much defensive interruption.  And lets not forget about Marshall Faulk’s success.  Yep, Pace was a big deal there too.

COLLEGE BASKETBALL

And finally, a bit of a feel good story in college basketball.  If you compete in NCAA tourney pools, you notice you see some of the same “teams you’ve never heard of” every year.  The reason for this, however, is that those teams are reigning terror over their conferences, winning every year.  And the only way for another team to get in that tourney — beat goliath.  Well one of those teams is Butler.  And last night, they were knocked off by Cleveland State, who hasn’t been in the tourny in 23 years.  Cedric Jackson led the way with 19 points, and the Vikings get a ticket to the big dance.  However, Butler gets to go too as they are a ranked  team. Don’t pencil in Cleveland State to go too far though.
Cleveland State 57, Butler 54.