BASEBALL

This year’s Home Run Derby has a different format.  Up to this point, the competition has featured the best sluggers in the game duking it out over different rounds all to see who can hit the most homers in the final match-up.  Now, they’ve adopted a new fantasy draft type format.  Each league (AL and NL) will have one representative pick the three sluggers he wants on his team.  Last year’s champ, Prince Fielder of the Brewers will represent the National League and David Ortiz will represent the American League.  Fielder has selected the Cardinals Matt Holliday, the Dodgers Matt Kemp, and the Brewers Rickie Weeks.  Fielder said he wanted someone from the hometown Arizona Diamondbacks, but had to play it safe in order to compete with a tough AL roster of David Ortiz, Adrian Gonzalez also of the Red Sox, the Blue Jays Jose Bautista and the Yankees Robinson Cano.  It should be an exciting contest.

With the All-Star game approaching, Yankees ace C.C. Sabathia isn’t feeling so great about being snubbed.  And when gigantic pitchers get mad, they tend to throw some mean pitches.  Against the Indians last night, Sabathia struck out 11 batters in seven shut-out innings.  It was truly a dominating performance, and gives him 12 wins on the year. And, in that same game, Derek Jeter got two clutch hits to bring him within just 4 hits of obtaining the 3,000 hits milestone.  This is a very difficult feat to accomplish, but it looks like Jeter will do just that in a few games.  Plus, the Yankees went on to crush the Indians.  New York Yankees 9, Cleveland 2.

BASKETBALL

And finally, a coaching change in the NBA.  Last year, the Pacers fired their head coach Jim O’Brien halfway through the season.  The Pacers hadn’t made the playoffs in 5 years, and the team just looked disjointed.  After releasing him, Frank Vogel, an assistant coach, took over for interim head coach.  Under his reign, the Pacers vastly improved, started to jell, made the playoffs, and even gave the #1 seed Chicago Bulls a real run for their money in the first round.  One of Vogel’s main changes was giving the former North Carolina star, Tyler Hansbrough, many more minutes.  And we got to see what he could do.  He can score and rebound like a mad man.  Former coach O’Brien sat Hansbrough most of the game, thinking he was too soft for the NBA, so you have to admire Vogel for recognizing such talent at the pro level.  Things are only getting better for the Pacers, especially after they nabbed Spurs point-guard George Hill in the off-season.