At a fight, when a game broke out...

Often a fight between 2 baseball teams is just a lot of 'dancing', but that wasn't the case last night at a game between the Toronto Blue Jays and the New York Yankees at Yankee Stadium...towards the end of this video you'll see the Toronto pitcher has a sizable lump on his forehead...

The Yankee manager, Joe Girardi, is in the middle of it all, apparently trying to split it all up; he ended up with a black eye and a cut face for his troubles. Can you imagine Sir Alex Ferguson jumping in when trouble brews on the football pitch!?

The 'benches clearing' incident is actually pretty healthy for a club if no-one gets hurt; it shows the guys that the team will stand up for one other and 'have their backs', promoting a sense of unity and good team spirit as the Yankees head towards the Play-offs and hopefully another World Series Championship...

This all started because 2 Toronto hitters had been hit earlier in the game by Yankee pitchers...apparently accidentally. However, the Toronto team obviously didn't believe they were accidental, as this Toronto pitcher throws the ball behind the Yankee hitter (Jorge Posada) as a warning; eventually all hell breaks loose! The Yankees lost the game, but won the fight...judging by the lump on the head of the guy that started it!

It's a minute or so into the video before things heat up, so watch and learn how baseball is played...but it's not a good example for your kids in Little League...

Daylight robbery in Manchester upsets Frenchman

Now let me make this clear - I support Manchester United; but even I can say that Utd's 2-1 victory over Arsenal on Saturday was daylight robbery! Not unusual in Manchester may I add!

Did the best team on the day win? No, absolutely not. But Arsenal have no-one to blame but themselves, and in particular their culpable goalkeeper and centre back. The first for a needless foul that gave away a penalty and the second for the most calamitous own goal you'll see this season...Did Utd deserve to win...? No not in a million years, but win they did.

But really, do Arsenal ever lose without an excuse or a reason why the world is against them? Their manager "Arsene Whinger" (Wenger), perhaps the most accurate nickname ever, has really come up with a doozy this time - his latest claim is that Utd are 'anti-football'. Shock horror! Is this the same Utd whose sparkling brand of football has entertained and brought countless trophies to Old Trafford in the last 15 years?

The Gunners' boss launched a thinly veiled attack on United midfielder Darren Fletcher, who he claims is in the team purely to make tackles. Excuse me, but isn't that the most important part of a defensive central midfielder's role?! Admittedly Paul Scholes could never be accused of that, but his is a different job! Thankfully! Patrick Viera, Roy Keane, Nicky Butt, Phil Neville - tackling is/was at the heart of their game - what is he talking about!!!!!!!!!!!? It's well known that his 'girls' 'don't like it up 'em', to coin a wonderful English phrase, but really anti-football...? Perhaps, if Arsenal had a tackling midfielder then they may have won a trophy in the last 5 years...And I don't really like Darren Fletcher anyway - they can have him! He's not Utd class in my book.

Don't get me wrong, I think Arsenal have been playing some fantastic football this year; and with Arshavin, Fabregas and Rosicky, they have perhaps the most talented (if slightly lightweight)midfield in the country. But seriously, can Wenger once not just lose gracefully; after 12/13 years in the Premier league he really is starting to piss me off!

http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story?id=672333&sec=england&cc=5901

"Money money money, must be funny in a rich man's world!"

So John Terry has just signed a new 5 year deal with Chelsea for a reported 150,000 Pounds a week - so multiply that by 52 weeks and by $1.60 and you get $12.5m salary; add some endorsements, sponsorships and it probably comes out to, let's say, $20m a year - considering he earned $18m last year, I think he was due a rise don't you?

So anyway, all this talk of big bucks got me to thinking how that compares to the highest earning sportsmen in the world...So where else do you go but to Forbes for such fascinating information! Take a look there are lots of interesting lists on there... www.forbes.com/business/sportsmoney/

Now while all these numbers are undoubtedly large, let's put it all in perspective shall we? Let's take Tiger Woods for example; Nike alone are responsible for more than $30m of Tiger's $110m income. $110m a year is more than $2.1m a week or $302k a day, or $12,600 an hour. What do you get paid an hour? So Tiger could buy our house after a day's work (if you call Golfing work!)...not bad at all. And that is in a year where a knee injury took his prize money income down from $25m to $5m! Poor thing!

The interesting thing is that there are no representatives from the most valuable sporting league in the world - the National Football League. The NFL is the richest sport in the world. The reason: No other league has so successfully exploited new stadiums as the NFL during the past decade. Each of the top 10 most valuable teams plays in a modern stadium, or will by 2010.

Yes, England's best football team, Manchester United, is still the most valuable team in the world ($1.8 billion), but there are only four soccer teams (Real Madrid, Arsenal and Liverpool are the others) worth over $1 billion. The NFL now has 19 teams worth that much, compared with five last year and none five years ago. But the highest paid NFL player, Ben Roethlisberger of the Pittsburgh Steelers, earned (just!) $27.7m thanks to a salary cap which only allows teams to spend a set amount of their income on player salaries - an idea being touted for the Premier League in England. Mind you that's about $1.5m a game, so poor Ben is not doing too bad!

The Forbes list of the highest-paid athletes looks at earnings derived from salaries, bonuses, prize money, endorsements and licensing income between June 2008 and June 2009 and does not deduct for taxes or agents' fees. Overall, the top 20 earned $789 million, down 1% from last year. The cutoff to make the list was $30 million.

• Tiger Woods - $110m - Golf
• Kimi Raikonnen - $45m - Formula 1
• Kobi Bryant - $45m - NBA Basketball
• Michael Jordan - $45m - Basketball (Retired!)
• David Beckham - $42m - Soccer
• Lebron James - $40m - NBA Basketball
• Phil Mickelson - $40m - Golf
• Manny Pacquiao - $40m - Boxing
• Valentino Rossi - $40m - Motorcycling
• Dale Earnhardt Jr - $34m - Nascar
• Roger Federer - $33m - Tennis
• Shaquille O'Neal - $33m - NBA Basketball
• Oscar De La Hoya - $32m - Boxing
• Lewis Hamilton - $32m - Formula 1
• Alex Rodriguez - $32 - Baseball
• Vijay Singh - $31m - Golf
• Kevin Garnett - $30m - NBA Basketball
• Jeff Gordon - $30m - Nascar
• Derek Jeter - $30m - Baseball
• Ronaldinho - $30m - Soccer

Here's a thought, while I've been looking into all this for this blog, Tiger's just banked another $20k...Anyway, I'm off to look down the back of the sofa for a few bucks to go shopping, so don't feel too bad for poor John Terry not making the list!