BASEBALL

The St. Louis Cardinals were making a big late run to try and get into the post-season as a wild-card team.  They’re hot right now, but still needed to win every game in the remainder of their schedule.  Thursday they took on a hapless New York Mets team in a must-win game.  The Cards got up 6-2 going into the 9th behind some clutch hitting from Yadier Molina.  But, to the Cards suprise, the Mets put on an amazing rally (or the Cardinals collapsed depending how you look at it).  The Mets tied it up at 6, and then Willie Harris had a clutch hit to drive in 2 runs to win the game.  Wow!  With the loss, the Cardinals post-season hopes suffered a major blow.  They’re now 2 games behind Atlanta and will need a miracle to get into the playoffs.  St. Louis 8, NY Mets 6.

Also in baseball, for most of the season the Boston Red Sox were dominating baseball.  However, in the past month they have been in a serious slump.  One so dangerous that it might knock them out of the playoffs.  The Red Sox will face the Yankees this weekend, and the Yankees actually have a shot to officially eliminate them from the post-season.  This is made more interesting by the fact that Yankees catcher Russell Martin has come out and publicly said, “I hate the Red Sox, and would love to see them not make the playoffs”.  Everybody knows about the rivalry, but rarely do the players comment on their ‘hatred’.  Either way, it’s true, although Yankees manager would prefer that Martin not fan the flames of the rivalry any hotter than they already are.  It should be an interesting series this weekend.

BASKETBALL

Finally, some bad news for NBA fans.  This is typically the time of year when NBA players report to training camp.  However, yesterday the NBA announced that they would be postponing training camp.  It was Day 84 of the lock out, and when they postpone something like training camp, that’s a pretty clear indicator that the season won’t start on time.  Then again, the two parties do plan to meet, but most likely nothing will be resolved any time soon.  Plus, some of the players have signed some contracts overseas that DON’T have an opt out clause (mainly some of the Denver Nuggets).  That means that if they do say, “Ok, there’s a season”, those players are still contractually obligated to play overseas.  We’ll see how this pans out over the next few weeks.