One of the first National Football League teams to begin their training camps for the upcoming 2010 season was our own Dallas Cowboys.

The reason for the early start is because the Pokes will be involved in the first game of the exhibition season—the Hall of Fame Game on Aug. 8 in Canton, Ohio against the Cincinnati Bengals.

The baseball people called him “The Boss” and for a good reason—that’s the way he ran whatever he owned. George Steinbrenner was the man in charge—and everybody knew it. The secret to his success came from opening his mouth and his wallet.

In 1973, after failing in his bid to buy the Cleveland Indians, Steinbrenner headed a group of investors that bought the New York Yankees from CBS for $8.7 million.

The struggling franchise began to turn things around when Steinbrenner began to acquire some of the top names in the game at the time—Reggie Jackson, Graig Nettles and relief pitcher Sparky Lyle.

As the 2010 major league baseball season nears its halfway mark, Houston Astros’ observers wonder whether this miserable season can be salvaged in the second half.

The addition of four young non-pitching prospects to the team’s roster last week was somewhat encouraging as they got plenty of playing time and produced some better-than-average offensive statistics. We’re referring to third baseman Chris Johnson, outfielder Jason Bourgeois, catcher Jason Castro and shortstop Oswaldo Navarro.

“Those dollar signs are breaking up that old gang of mine,” ought to be the theme song for the proposed break-up of the Big 12 Conference that seems to be like some real-life soap opera taking place right under our noses.

As if things weren’t going badly enough for the Houston Astros by being the National League’s worst team and having the major league’s worst offense, last week they were hit by a bombshell when word got out that Bob Garber, the agent for Astros’ star pitcher Roy Oswalt, phoned team owner Drayton McLane Jr. requesting the team trade the three-time All-Star.

While scanning through last weekend’s edition of The Wall Street Journal we ran across an interesting article about how the lack of water in certain parts of our country is really taxing the golfing industry.

The lack of rain in Southeast Texas over the past five weeks is a good indication of how these parts of the Southwest, California, Arizona and Nevada are year-round as far as annual precipitation is concerned.

If there was one thing consistent with watching Orange’s Earl Thomas playing football during the past half-dozen years—it was always very exciting.
It didn’t matter whether he was wearing the silver and blue of the West Orange-Stark High Mustangs or the burnt orange of the University of Texas. When Earl Thomas was on the football field, it was very exciting to watch him play the game.

There used to be a weekly television series a long time ago entitled “That Was the Week that Was” which reviewed some of the news-worthy happenings of the last seven days.

The National Football League’s 2010 draft is less than a month away and for the first time in quite a while there is a distinct possibility of two Southeast Texas football players being taken as No. 1 draft choices.

It seemed as if we came within a whisker of not having a Big 12 Conference any more. Although most college football addicts in this part of the country survived the breakup of the old Southwest Conference back in the 1990s, would the same be true if the Big 12 went away just like the SWC?

The holiday weekend filled with fireworks generally is the Fourth of July and not Memorial Day. But anyone watching the Houston Astros play at Cincinnati last weekend would swear it was the Fourth of July the way the Reds provided the offensive fireworks for the fans watching the Great American Pastime at the Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati last Friday and Saturday.

In those two days the Reds scored 27 runs on 39 hits and smashed nine home runs and took a two-game lead over St. Louis in the National League Central Division standings.

We decided to take a few days away from the drought conditions that had held a grip on Southeast Texas for the past month or so and decided on an excursion to Biloxi, which we had last visited before Hurricane Katrina.

Last weekend the month of April ended without any of its needed showers while May began with its usual flowers if one is referring to the Run for the Roses.

Ever since Orange’s Earl Thomas played in what proved to be his final college football game in early January and declared that he was going to become eligible for the NFL draft, he’s been preparing for that giant leap to the next level of the sport.

For the 2010 Houston Astros, many things have changed while other basic matters remain the same.

The Astros began the new season Monday with a new manager in Brad Mills and several youthful faces on the 25-man roster.

We decided to take a little break from the continuous diet of college basketball in the NCAA Men’s Tournament which began Thursday morning and lasted all that day,