UP AT 6: CUBS WIN! CUBS WIN! (BYAAH!)

It's too hot to sleep. What, you were expecting a punchline?

• The Chicago Cubs are in first place. The Milwaukee Brewers have lost 8 1/2 games in the standings in less than six weeks. No one has lost momentum like that in the Midwest since Howard Dean ran in the Iowa primary.
  
  (Howard Dean... now that's topical!)
• CBC and the Raptors have a deal on a 10-game package for next season. It's a year too late, frankly. It would have been trippy to see Brian Williams try to explain what a zone defence is, and what it's for. That would require at least a 90-minute pregame show. Just saying.
• Scott Carefoot at RaptorBlog has a good take on the Celtics' deal for Kevin Garnett, writing the Raptors still have a bigger "championship window" than Boston, whose opening is two years, tops.
  
  As Carefoot notes, the Raptors have their own trinity: It's just that T.J. Ford, Chris Bosh and Andrea Bargnani will be 24, 23 and 22 years old respectively on Opening Night -- and one of them is actually a point guard. That's eight years per man on Boston's KG-Ray Allen-Paul Pierce triumvirate.
  
  Keep this in mind next year if the Raptors are struggling to match last season's easily achieved 47 wins and the media gets ornery.
• The bridge disaster in Minneapolis is obviously not a sports story, except for the fact it occurred near a stadium on a night the Twins were playing. It's probably ghoulish to wonder about it. Since most sports fans have a morbid streak anyway, if the Twins call off a four-game series against Cleveland, they still have a three-game series in August and an early-September matchup. There would be time to squeeze in a lot of September doubleheaders.
• Isn't it odd Sportsnet Connected gave so much play to Alex Rodriguez going for his 500th career homer last night when the same network which has the same parent company as the Blue Jays didn't even show the game when Frank Thomas hit his 500th?
• Someone watched a little too much FIFA U-20: A Peterborough Examiner scribe sewed up the Least Original Lede Award with this beaut: "The world is coming to Trent University and organizers of the 2007 IFWLA World Under-19 Field Lacrosse Championship are ready." That's outdoor women's lacrosse, but you knew that already and probably have Scotland in the office pool.

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.