Who's Up and Who's Down

Let's see what we've got this week...

Who's Up? :)

1. Ichiro Suzuki, who reached 3,000 hits this week, a feat he accomplished over 951 games with the Orix Blue Wave in Japan's Pacific League and 1,224 games with the Seattle Mariners. The achievement itself, and the relative rapidity with which he accomplished it, speak to his consistency, strength and longevity. And I'm relieved that the feat is being celebrated as an interesting and unique accomplishment because it occured over two leagues on two different continents, rather than being minimized because the first half of it didn't happen in the Majors. I think that North American sporting leagues are starting to realize, finally, that there is true legitimacy in many of the leagues elsewhere. (Side note: The NBA is starting to learn this lesson too.)

2. Chez Reavie. Who?? That's what I asked, anyway, when we heard that Reavie was leading the Canadian Open after 36 holes. I made the cardinal mistake of allowing the fact that I'd never heard of the guy to cloud my judgement about whether he could win or not, and I bet my husband a dollar that Reavie wouldn't be at the top of the leaderboard at the end of the weekend. Well, of course, he proved me wrong, hoisting the trophy for his first PGA win. It's ok though, I took the dollar off my husband's dresser...

3. Toronto and Edmonton, which were just announced as the only two stops on next year's Indy Racing tour. Canada has a lot of knowledgeable racing fans, so it's good to hear that those fans will continue to be rewarded with races on Canadian soil.

Who's Down? :(

1. Michelle Wie, who is skipping this week's major tournament (the British Open) on the LPGA tour to play yet another men's event, at which she has only the bare minimum of chances of making the cut. Let me be clear that I have no problems with women playing against the men, and a number of women have done it very successfully (a certain Billie-Jean comes to mind...). But I think that you should prove yourself on your own turf first. Wie has yet to win an LPGA event, and was disqualified at her last event for failing to sign her scorecard. She has, with astonishing rapidity, gone from becoming a young, exciting golf prodigy to an embarassing punchline. And I can't understand how she doesn't see it, how she doesn't see that working hard to qualify and play at the LPGA level is the only way for her to get her reputation back on track. And that it's really, really time for her parents to get out the picture, as far as her career management is concerned.

2. Anybody involved in the ugly fiasco of Brett Favre's "un-retirement," up to and including the star quarterback himself. I hate it when this happens, when a great career gets over-shadowed by stupid and selfish behaviour. My bottom line is that if he wants to play, he should show up at training camp and earn it, like everyone else. And if that means that he plays back-up, then he should embrace that opportunity, mentor Aaron Rodgers, and keep his mouth shut about it. And the Packers should really stop this ridiculous trade talk, because I don't think any good comes from Brett Favre playing in anything but Packer colours. I think we may be too far gone for either of those options to still be possible, which is so sad.

3. Baseball's mid-season trade deadline, which should really be a very exciting week, dominated by stories like the Braves' trade of Mark Teixera to the Angels. But instead, we get more of Manny Ramirez, more of Barry Bonds (no, seriously). In other words, rather than the pages being full of interesting and strategic moves intended to set teams up for the rest of the year or for next season, we get stories about disgruntled stars wanting out of their teams, or disgruntled former stars wanting on to any team... and I find it all distracting to the onset of serious playoff races, especially when those stories are the SAME stories we read last year.