Interleague play, round 1

There has been much written over the years about how the AL is much better than the NL. This is mostly due to the fact that the AL is much better than the NL. Evidence is provided in the form of the AL teams stomping the NL teams annually in interleague play. After the first weekend of play the AL is still better...but it's closer. The AL took the overall record 22-19, helped greatly by the fact that the San Fransisco Giants are for some reason still considered an actual Major League baseball team. Take that sweep out of it and the NL earned a split with their AL rivals.

In more important news, the Mets swept a rain-shortened series from the Yankees at Yankee Stadium. After rain wiped away the first game on Friday, the Mets stomped the short-handed Bronx Bombers 7-4 and 11-2. In the finale on Sunday night, the Mets scored 7 runs on Yankee ace Chien Ming Wang despite having a 3-run home run erroneously called foul. Is it REALLY that hard to have the umpires look at instant replay to judge fair or foul, home run or double? It's 2008 people! We're not asking for a review of every pitch, just calls like this. Oh well.

In other news, the Penguins eliminated the Flyers in game 5 to advance to their first Stanley Cup playoffs since 1992. The Dallas Stars refuse to go away, winning the last 2 to force a game 6 in Dallas against the Detroit Red Wings, who had held a 3 games to none lead in the series. The Celtics won a tense game 7 against the Cleveland LeBrons to advance to the Eastern Conference finals against Detroit. The Celtics seem determined to prove that you can in fact win an NBA championship without winning a single game on the road, the reward for the best record of the regular season. Of course, they earned that distinction by having such a gaudy record on the road during the regular season, but now that their series with Detroit is officially tied 0-0 I guess it doesn't matter.

Finally Big Brown took another step towards the elusive Triple Crown in horse racing with a dominating win at the Preakness. You could see jockey Kent Desormeaux physically restraining Big Brown for most of the race before letting him lengthen his stride around the final turn. After taking a couple of peeks behind himself to verify no one was close, Desormeaux eased up on the throttle as Big Brown cruised to a 5 1/4 length victory. Big Brown races for the first Triple Crown since Affirmed in 1978 on June 7 at the Belmont Stakes, the longest of the three races at 1 1/2 miles.