Celebrated Sports Person Does Thing; Mortals Angry, Happy, Sad

LeBron James used an hour of television on Thursday night to announce to the world what everybody already knew: that he is leaving the Cleveland Cavaliers and signing with the Miami Heat.

Sorry, Cleveland fans. Bully for you, Miami fans (and watch out for that drug dealer!--ah, too late).

Everybody else? Shame on us a little bit for paying as much attention as we did to this vacuous charade.

ESPN Might Want To Just Rerun That Last Game Every Monday Night for the Next Few Seasons

ESPN's "Monday Night Football" broadcasts (just as they did when they were shown on ABC) usually turn out to be one of two things: a blowout or a sleep aid...and unless you're a fan of one of the teams involved in a blowout, they're often both. The latest matchup, before it began, appeared to be an exemplary case for more of the same, pitting the seemingly unstoppable New England Patriots, deep into a quest to become the second team in NFL history to go undefeated in a season, against the Baltimore Ravens, well out of the playoff race and losers of their previous five contests.

Lo and behold, the lowly Ravens didn't just "hang in there" against the Pats, they played like the better team for the majority of the game, controlling it on both sides of the ball and putting themselves in an excellent position to pull off an inconceivable upset...until the final minutes, when a freaking cartoon broke loose. Multiple botched chances by the Ravens to win simply by converting late in the fourth quarter...the Patriots getting do-overs on would-be game-losing failed fourth-down attempts--one of which came courtesy of a Baltimore timeout...Tom Brady being his ridiculously calm-under-pressure and handsome self all the way to a review-inducing touchdown with 44 seconds left to play...bizarre penalties from the Ravens that they're going to be kicking themselves about for a while because--even with the yardage it cost them at the start of their final possession--they came three yards short of winning the game on the very last play with a Hail Mary pass (y'know...like in Tecmo Bowl)...it was madness on a level one would not believe if it were scripted. End result? Patriots won, 27-24. And I didn't even mention the part where Ravens head coach Brian Billick blew angry kisses at Patriots safety Rodney Harrison.

As a Patriots fan (a real fan, for the record--one who still bears (pun accepted) the emotional scars of winning his third grade class' "Squish the Fish" (re: Dolphins, in the AFC championship) picture-drawing contest only to see his team be humiliated in their first-ever Super Bowl by these jackasses), I'm obviously happy with the outcome. But even if you're one of the rapidly-growing number who hate the still-perfect dominant force from Foxboro, I've got to believe that every football fan--every sports fan, even--is at least a little bit happy to have seen that, in these days of ever-compromised and disappointing professional sports, a game as dramatic and unpredictable as Monday night's can still take place.

(Ravens fans probably aren't feeling that way right now, though. They're probably going to be pissed for a while.)

UPDATE: I have no qualms whatsoever about saying I told you so, ESPN.

Pete Rose Favors Gambling Strategy Completely Opposite to That of Wesley Snipes

Perhaps having decided that his strategic upgrade from an "I never bet on baseball" stance to one of "Okay, maybe I bet on it a few times a week" did not appear to bring him any closer to the Hall of Fame over the last two years, Pete Rose has now taken a position of quite another name, telling ESPN Radio that he bet on the Cincinnati Reds "every [freaking] night" while he was managing the team.

Bold move, Charlie Hustle. Not only are you admitting to Bud Selig and Major League Baseball that you were more guilty than perhaps they had even imagined of doing the thing you were banned from the game for doing, you're trying to convince them that the very fact that you did so proves your dedication as a manager and therefore is even more of a reason that you should be reinstated.

If that rock-solid rationale should for some reason still not grant you that elusive enshrinement in Cooperstown, may I suggest a fourth, equally reasonable strategy:

Tom Sizemore, who portrayed you in the 2004 ESPN television movie "Hustle"--which tells the story of how, as a manger, you were always betting on the Reds--also appeared in the 1993 Wesley Snipes vehicle Passenger 57, a film most famous for teaching us all the important lesson to "always bet on black". This constitutes a complete conflict of interest on Sizemore's part, so it's therefore totally his fault that you're not in the Hall of Fame and you should be let in immediately.

(You can just pay me with a World Series ring or something...whatever you used to give to your bookies.)