Watching and reading various sports outlets yesterday, I felt like I needed to comment on a few sports stories.

First…Albert Haynesworth.  Well, if you don’t know, this guy plays football for the Tennessee Titans.  Yesterday, during the Titans/Cowboys game, while an opposing player was on the ground with his helmet off, Haynesworth stepped one the guys head not once but twice with his cleated foot, causing gashes on the guy’s head that required 35 stitches to close.  Haynesworth was suspended for 5 games without pay by the league and fined an undisclosed amount of money.

IMO, Haynesworth should’ve been suspended for the rest of the regular season.  To me, this is akin to what happened in hockey a few years ago when that guy slammed the other guy’s head into the ice and got suspended for the rest of the year.  If Haynesworth had done something like that in the real world, he’d have been arrested for assault and battery and charged with a felony.  Why should the punishment be less because he’s a football player?  If anything, it should be more.

And secondly…Joe Girardi is getting the rawest of deals in Florida…in his first year as a major league manager with his first club, he’s handed a team basically stripped of all his veteran talent (outside of one pitcher and one position player) and handed a team with more rookies on it than any other team in baseball.  Not only do they overachieve (in most everyone’s opinion) by playing around .500 baseball for the entire year, because of the state of the National League, they were in the Wild Card chase for most of the 2nd half of the year.  They had a payroll of 25 players that was combined less than what 5 different Yankee players make by themselves, and they were nearly in the playoffs.  If things are right about this, Girardi should (and probably will) get NL Manager of the Year…instead, he’ll be looking for another job.

Yep, apparently Florida management didn’t like the direction the club was going in, so they are looking to hire a new manager for the 2007 season, apparently Braves 3rd base coach Fredi (pronounced Freddie) Gonzalez.  Now I’m happy for Fredi who is a good guy and a great up and coming managerial talent, but this is really wrong of the Marlins to get rid of Girardi like this.  My first thought is that Girardi will probably be a little bitter, but then again, probably not because he won’t be unemployed for more than a week tops.  He’ll have his pick of jobs to choose from, probably the Cubs, Giants and Seattle will all line up for his services, and perhaps even more before it’s all said and done.

The baseball playoffs start today and since I don’t start my new gig for a few more days, I’m looking forward to sitting back and catching some baseball in HDTV on ESPN today.  Hopefully Justin will be able to get together and do another edition of CSR this week, with the playoffs here, it’s time to look back and see who was right and who was wrong…I’m probably wrong.