Daily RoundUp- Tuesday, February 24th

As Spring Training heats up, a team in turmoil takes a page out of the New York Giants playbook and decides that R & R is required.

I read about this kind of thing in Coaching 101, chapter 17: how to earn the trust of your players. Just kidding. There is no manual in coaching anywhere other than the playbook, everything else is all subjective. So if you feel that Alex Rodriguez needs a gofer to get his coffee to make him feel better, then sometimes you have to let the gofer, that looks like a body builder, who also brings him the shady bottle of pills he calls “special Tylenol” get him coffee. But that’s all up to the coach.
Girardi came in with the reputation of a drill sergeant much like Tom Coughlin did so the idea to show a different side was a pretty nice touch. However, I don’t think it will work with this infield that are collectively earning salaries that can fund a small country. There are different animals working within this environment but for one day if all A-Roid had to worry about was lining up the 8 ball in the corner pocket then it was a day that was worth it. But, just in case, better check A-Rod’s pool stick for any foreign substances.

While the team of the inflated salaries continue to make headlines for all the wrong reasons, in Mets camp, their biggest star is walking around like a nobody writes Joel Sherman.

These are the articles you want to read about your ace pitcher. A guy who wants the ball when it matters, when his team needs him to pitch and when a team needs a victory. A guy who can block out mental distractions like pain to will his way and his team to victory. These are all things the Mets envisioned when they broke the future and the bank to obtain Johan and so far, he has not disappointed. The window for him as an elite pitcher is starting to go on the opposite end and the trend is for him to start getting worse not better. But with Johan being such an exceptional athlete, its easy to see why there’s hope that he continues on the solid path he’s been paving for himself.
That little tidbit about him tutoring Oliver Perez also gets me excited considering that there are plenty of people in the organization who believe that Ollie has the best natural stuff in the clubhouse so if he ever gets focused, he can be a lockdown number 2 and that does wonders to the rotation who did not do all that awful last year.

A case is going in front of the Supreme Court that could be of great interest to those of great faith. Praying in huddles may be banned for good and there’s a lengthy report in the Tennessean written by Mike Organ that is pretty interesting and pretty lengthy.

A lot of times religion and sports have mixed in this country and the results have been rather dicey. People feel uncomfortable talking about their faith in such a wide open arena. Fans of sports feel awkward since they feel as though a sporting venue is not the proper place to be discussing their faith which is each other’s prerogative.
The case is really symptomatic of this country’s belief that all things being equal, the word free is more important than anything and thus people are free to believe what they want and in the manner in which they want which means that if players want to get together at half court and pray and do the Lord’s prayer after a game then they should be given the right to. It is of no business to anyone else how they perform their acts of faith so long as its not disturbing anyone else and I’ve never seen the Lord’s prayer disturb anyone except the already disturbed.

DEEEEEEETROIT Basketball is in trouble says Drew Sharp and Sunday’s lack of performance against the Cavs went to further show how much of a fraud this group is.

What kills me about Detroit is not just their 2003 draft bomb in which out of the group of Carmello, D-Wade, Chris Bosh, they chose Darko which will forever be a debilitating decision, the Pistons have been trying to outgun that decision for a while and they just can’t seem to be able to do that. When they swept the Lakers in 5 games it was a great moment because it was the beginning of the retooling for the Eastern Conference after the Western Conference had clearly gained dominating status within the league for a few years. The Pistons trade for A.I. is nothing more than a gimmick to sell tickets and sell the public on a better tooled team once the free agents come thru in 2010. However, if they don’t go in full scale rebuilding mode, it won’t really matter will it?

To end abruptly (thanks to a malfunctioning alarm clock), here’s a pretty cool tale about making it to the bigs for one day, and one at bat. Realizing a dream by Clark Spencer.

The story is something most big leaguers can relate with but few of us truly understand. To be there for a minute probably had him smitten and considering all the other options he had, just having a taste of it made the decision to go with baseball seem like the right one.