Sunday jibber-jabber

(Or: How I avoided yard work on an early Sunday afternoon.)

▪▪ A couple of weeks ago, Tom Zografos wrote on SportsInferno.com that no one seems to care about Steve Yzerman right now. Well, if Yzerman keeps playing as he has lately, he won't be ignored. (And if he gets 700 goals before he retires, that would definitely get noticed. But he'd have to maintain a torrid scoring pace for the remaining nine games on the schedule.)

However, I do think there's still quite a bit of apathy remaining from last year's NHL lockout. Plus, Detroit fans know how this hockey thing goes: the playoffs are what matters, right?

Ultimately, this is classic Yzerman. He doesn't want the questions about his retirement to overshadow the rest of the team, which has the best record in the NHL. He'll get all the praise and care he'd ever ask for after the curtain finally closes on his career.

(Via Abel to Yzerman, here's a piece on Yzerman from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.)

▪▪ I'm not sure if it's due to so many good baseball blogs being available, writing some baseball stuff for Motor City Sports, or just having a sports blog this time around, but I am really excited about baseball season. And I think I got carried away with the additions to my blogroll. I tried to get at least one blog from each MLB team in the sidebar. (If you give it a browse, and I think I missed any good ones, please bring them to my attention.)

▪▪ Watching Barry Bonds on TV (such as his childish, surly "Because I'm an adult and I don't have to react to anything if I choose not to" interview with ESPN's Colleen Dominguez this morning) could sap some of my excitement if I let it. Big Al already covered ESPN's glaring conflict of interest in giving airtime to Bonds' exercise in narcissism, so I'll refer you there.

Meanwhile, I hope ESPN allows its "Baseball Tonight" staff to ignore the show, and conduct themselves like analysts and journalists, and am rooting for "Bonds on Bonds" to become the lowest-rated program in the recent history of the network. And yes, I might still believe in the Easter Bunny.

▪▪ Hopefully, this isn't the beginning of a trend for the 2006 Detroit Tigers. Uh-oh. Not a good way to start the season.