Braves bats showing signs of life

The Atlanta Braves have at least made it interesting in the wild card race (the division might be out of reach). Yunel Escobar and Martin Prado are on fire and if they can get middle relief help while keeping this up things should stay interesting.

MLB All-Star Game

Does ANYBODY still care about this thing?

UFC 100 lives up to hype

The Ultimate Fighting Championship was banking on their 100th pay-per-view event to be the most loaded card in their history, and they struck gold, even if they went off the air with a giant gaffe from now undisputed heavyweight champion Brock Lesnar, hurting at least his own image while not doing the company any favors. Despite Brock lashing out at opponent Frank Mir afterwards (along with turning his back to him before the fight when traditionally they're supposed to tough gloves to show sportsmanship), poking fun at Bud Light (the promotion's biggest sponsor) and promoting their competition ("I drink COORS LIGHT because BUD LIGHT doesn't pay me!") and even flipping off the crowd, it probably only hurts his image personally, and not the company or sport as a whole.

Still, the most memorable moment of the night will always be Dan Henderson's brutal knockout of Michael Bisping, a fight with more personal animosity between the fighters than even Lesnar-Mir had. A few have tried to throw Henderson under the bus by calling his flying punch to a downed Bisping after he was already knocked out, but before the referee had actually stopped the fight. Henderson pulled the punch significantly but admitted it was mainly to "shut him up," but he really did nothing wrong. It's the referee's job to stop the fight, and the fighter's job to keep going until he does so.

The welterweight championship fight between champion Georges St.-Pierre and Thiago Alves further cemented GSP's status as a pound-for-pound top three (at least) fighter in the world. Alves was on his back most of the five rounds and had no answer for GSP's outstanding wrestling and takedowns. Alves's only real offense was a takedown in the fourth round where he had GSP on the ground for a little over a minute and landed a few punches. There's nobody left at welterweight for St.-Pierre, as Alves was likely the best competition he was ever going to have in that division.

The next challenge for him could very well be a fight with Anderson Silva, who is moving up to 205 to take on Forrest Griffin at UFC 101 next month. When commentator Joe Rogan asked him about it, GSP danced around the question and said he was simply going to work on putting on weight (which might as well have been "yeah, it's probably going to happen"). If the UFC is able to follow up this card and what should be a good event next month (BJ Penn vs. Kenny Florian in addition to Silva-Griffin) with an announcement that GSP and Silva are set to clash, the hype will go on longer than any contest this sport has ever seen.

NBA Winners and Losers

The NBA's free agency period was destined to be a pretty dull one with the controversy around Kobe Bryant's status as a Laker dead in the water as of the moment they pulled off the Pau Gasol trade and the looming spending spree teams are preparing for next summer. Several teams have come out of this period (including the draft) looking better, others just confusing.

Winners

The Los Angeles Lakers: Mitch Kupchak is born again. The guy gets Pau Gasol handed to him, then turns Trevor Ariza into Ron Artest.

The San Antonio Spurs: The acquisition of Richard Jefferson doesn't exactly help them defensively, but add him to a lineup with Tony Parker, Manu Ginobli and Tim Duncan and the West is going to be fun to watch at the top.

The Memphis Grizzlies: Yeah, I can't believe I'm saying it either. But, turning Darko Milicic into Zach Randolph, finally adding another scoring threat down low to complement the emerging Marc Gasol and the defensive presence of recently drafted Hasheem Thabeet is a pretty good move for this franchise that doesn't have a long history of them.

Cleveland Cavaliers: They gave up a guy on the verge of retirement (Ben Wallace) and Sasha Pavlovic to get an apparently rejuvenated Shaq. 

Losers:

Minnesota Timberwolves: How many point guards does this team need? Maybe they were better off WITH Kevin McHale calling the shots than without.

Hedo Turkoglu: He may win financially, but have fun in Toronto after Chris Bosh leaves next summer.

Boston Celtics: I'm still slightly on the fence about this because I like Rasheed Wallace, and the Celtics are still top three in the East, but it's probably not a good idea to add another older player to an already "experienced" squad and let rumors leak that you were trying to make a trade involving Rajon Rondo, your franchise point guard.

RIP Steve McNair

There isn't much I can say about Steve McNair that hasn't already been said by other media figures, ex-teammates, those affected by his charity work, etc. All that really needs to be said is he represented everything about Tennessee Titans/Jeff Fisher football that people in this city as well as older-school football fans find appealing about this team.

NHL Free Agency starts off with a...huh?

The Chicago Blackhawks made the first big splash of the free agency period for the second year in a row, giving Marian Hossa a 12-year, $62 million deal, after giving an 8-year deal for $56.8 million to Brian Campbell last year. This would be a great value addition (as the $5.2 million cap hit basically replaces the oft-injured Marty Havlat's salary) if this and the Campbell signing didn't imply that the Blackhawks seem to have completely forgotten that they still have some nobodies named Patrick Kane, Jonathan Toews, and Duncan Keith with one season left before they have to be re-upped and none of them will be cheap. As it stands right now, their cap space going into this season is looking to be around $9 million, depending on the value of the contracts given to Dave Bolland and Kris Versteeg (who is looking like won't be that cheap either). They're gonna have to work some magic to be able to keep all of their newly developed talent, starting with figuring out a way to unload Cristobal Huet's $5.6 million a year. Good luck.