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08/27/2007: "Oh No ... Not Another Sports Rant!"

Good news - I'm fishing next weekend, so no Sports Rant. Bad news - you get one today ...

- There was a professional sports team from Los Angeles in a league championship match this weekend. What - you didn't know? Probably because it was Major League ... Lacrosse. Lacrosse? They have a professional league for lacrosse? Yep - and the Philadelphia Barrage defeated our hometown Los Angeles Riptide to take the title. In front of an "announced crowd" of 5,000, too. Go figure.

- Is there anything as dangerous as a sports superstar in the wake of a comeuppance? Last week, Elaine Youngs and Nicole Branagh nipped the world's #1 beach volleyball team of Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh, marking only the second time all season someone other than May/Walsh got to hoist the big check. Big mistake. Misty nearly missed her opening match when her plane back from visiting with husband Matt Treanor of the Marlins was late, but she didn't let that - or anything else - stand in her way. They marched through the draw without so much as a ripple of trouble, and were rewarded with a rematch of last week's final. The results were much different this time, though, as May/Walsh delivered a 21-18, 21-16 beatdown to EY and Nicole. Any thoughts that the miles might be getting to the defending Olympic champions were left in the Brooklyn sands ...

- With all the controversy that surrounds Major League Baseball these days, it's easy to forget that it was once the American Pastime - that game we all played as kids. We were delivered a reminder this weekend with the finals of the Little League World Series in Williamsport, PA. Already a classic with extra inning games and clutch hitting, it became one for the ages in the finals as two undefeated teams - Warner Robbins, GA and Tokyo, Japan - met in the final game. Keeping with the tone of the series, this one went to extra innings, and in epic fashion was won by the US team when 12-yr old Dalton Carriker hit an opposite field walk-off home run.

"I felt like I was flying, like Peter Pan," Carriker said. "I didn't know what I was doing."

Remember that the next time you watch those spoiled bastards in the MLB ...