There's also a video (click here).

And while Roy likely will be healthy for the start of the season, there is reason to be concerned. Maybe that's because the expectations are so high, the plan is so well thought out. Improve a little bit this year and reach the playoffs; reach the conference finals the following year; win a championship by 2011. The pieces are in place, and it all seems so perfect. Yet it also seems so fragile.

Greg Oden missed all of last season and has yet to play an NBA game. The reports are glowing, but who really knows how healthy or how good he's going to be?

Roy had knee surgery in college (click here); missed 25 games as a rookie, mostly due to a heel injury; and now has had another knee surgery.

LaMarcus Aldridge has had a heart problem (click here).

If everybody can remain healthy, there's every reason to believe the Blazers can compete for a title in the next couple years. But that's a mighty big if, and it points out just how difficult it is to win a championship. And just how fragile the process can be.

Boldon was talking about Usain Bolt breaking the record that Michael Johnson set at the 1996 Atlanta Games, and in the process Boldon did a great job of putting the feat into perspective. Look at it this way: At the 1968 Olympics, Tommie Smith set the world record of 19.83 seconds; that stood for 11 years until Italy's Pietro Mennea ran a 19.72 in 1979; that stood until Johnson ran a 19.66 five weeks before the 1996 Olympics (click here).

So, when Johnson seized the record in 1996, it was a record that had been broken once in the previous 28 years. That is a glacial pace in track terms. Then Johnson went to the Olympics and ran a 19.32, utterly shattering the previous mark (click here). It was one of the defining Olympic moments of my lifetime, a moment that sent chills down the spine when time came up on the screen.

Boldon finished third in that 1996 race, so he has a unique perspective when he says he thought the record would stand for decades. And that was a perfectly reasonable perspective -- until Bolt came along (click here).

Consider what Bolt has done: He has become the first person since 1979 to hold world records in both the 100 and 200; he has joined Valery Borzov and Carl Lewis as the only athletes in the past 50 years to sweep both events; and he has become the first sprinter to set world records in both races at one Olympics. And on Wednesday, he broke a record that already was one for the ages.

>>>Chris Chase of Yahoo! Sports' Fourth-Place Medal reveals one of the secrets of the Olympics. Well, it's a secret to NBC: Indoor volleyball is better than beach volleyball (click here).

>>>Wisconsin man buys lottery ticket; wife buys ticket from different store using the same numbers; they both win $350,000 (click here).

>>>The New York Daily News takes a look at the inevitable: "If he's handled properly over the next four years, he should generate in excess of $40 million" (click here).

>>>Here's one just because a friend of mine asked about it the other day: Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Brian Jones, Janis Joplin and Kurt Cobain all died at the age of 27 (click here). Thanks to Fark.com for the link.

>>>Toronto Sun columnist to the CBC: "Stop sugar-coating the stink" (click here): "If there are 50 ways to leave your lover, there must be even more ways to say we lost and the CBC has used them all."

>>>Another headline from Fark: "Today there IS crying in baseball." Star of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League dies at 84 (click here).

>>>Sports Illustrated has the frame-by-frame finish of Michael Phelps' most amazing victory (click here). Thanks to Fark for the link.

>>>Here's an update on the phony Bigfoot (click here). Thanks to Fark.

>>>TheSportingBlog.com brings you a marriage that is based on mutual love and respect ... for the Portland Trail Blazers (click here).

>>>And finally, Fark brings you the majesty that is Dread Zeppelin performing "Immigrant Song" (click here). Which led us to Jack Black begging the Gods of Rock to let him use the song in "School of Rock" (click here). Which led us to the real thing, by the greatest band ever to walk the earth (click here).

>>>OK, we're all linked out. Hope you enjoyed it.

There is precedent for Sabathia winning the Cy Young. In 1984, Rick Sutcliffe went 16-1 in 20 starts with a 2.69 ERA after being traded from the Indians to the Cubs on June 13 (click here). He was a unanimous selection as the NL Cy Young winner (click here).

Part of the reason Sutcliffe won the award was a dearth of other candidates. Dwight Gooden was second in the voting, after going 17-9 with a 2.60 ERA; Joaquin Andujar was fourth, after going 20-14 with a 3.34 ERA and leading the league in wins. But the main reason Sutcliffe won was that the Cubs captured the NL East and reached the postseason for the first time in 39 years (click here).

For Sabathia, those are the keys to winning the Cy Young this year. He must continue to pitch lights out, and the Brewers absolutely have to make the playoffs. Sabathia likely has about seven more starts, maybe eight or nine if Milwaukee is in a pennant race. He won't win the Cy Young if he's 13-2 or even 14-1. He probably won't win it even if he's 15-0, considering that Brandon Webb already has 18 wins and Aaron Cook and Edinson Volquez each have 15.

As for the MVP, no pitcher has won the award since Dennis Eckersley in 1992 (click here). No starting pitcher has won since Roger Clemens in 1986. No NL starting pitcher has won since Bob Gibson in 1968.

Karolyi has blatantly called the Chinese cheaters, declared a judging decision a ripoff, and blasted various decisions by officials. The best part is when Karolyi says something accusatory and Bob Costas grimaces like somebody just gave him a wedgie.

So what should it be? Should Bela host "America's Next Mary Lou" or maybe "America's Got Bela" or maybe "Bela's Apprentice?" Or perhaps he could star in a remake of "Who's the Boss?" and be some family's wacky housekeeper. This much we know: American TV needs more Bela.

>>>Elizabeth Merrill of ESPN.com has an interesting story about U.S. goalkeeper Hope Solo (click here):

Solo never seemed to get distracted. Not when her dad, a homeless Vietnam veteran, stood in the corner of the field before every Huskies home game, watching her warm up. Not when the average teen might've been embarrassed to claim the rumpled man who occasionally was accompanied by a foul whiff. Her teammates, for the most part, didn't know that Jeffrey Solo was his daughter's best friend and that she'd go to the woods and visit him, feeding him macaroni and cheese.

>>>Jamaica, according to this link from Yahoo! Sports, is planning a monument to honor the accomplishments of its Beijing Olympians (click here). OK, I'll say it, because somebody must: What do they do with the monument when it's revealed that those accomplishments are tainted?

Usain Bolt's domination of the men's 100 meters was one of the most awesome athletic feats I have ever seen. He goofed around for the final 15 meters, throwing his hands out to the side and then thumping his chest, and still he broke the world record. Bolt is an absolute freak of nature; track and field has never seen anything like him.

But the real eyebrow-raiser is the women's 100, where Jamaica swept the medals. You mean a country with 2.8 million people has the three fastest women in the world? That strikes me as quite a coincidence.

>>>Bill Fitzgerald of Yahoo! asks: "Why can't we give them all a medal? And a hug?" (click here):

Listen, if you want to know why  the United States is losing in the gold medal count (last I checked, USA had 25 and China had 42), it's because the  "we're all winners" attitude has overtaken the American sports culture.This is sports. It's the Olympics. There is a winner and a loser. The winner gets the gold medal. The loser gets silver, bronze or memories. Thanks, you've been great, see you in four years, if you're good enough.

>>>And, finally, we bring you the story of the Chinese man who cycled 800 miles, towing his 98-year-old grandmother in a pedicab to fulfill her dream of attending the Olympics (click here).

Kara Patterson's first trip to the Olympics ended after three throws in the preliminary rounds of the women's javelin early today (Monday night PDT).

The Skyview High School graduate placed 22nd in her qualifying flight with a best throw of 178 feet, 5 inches.

The top 12 throwers from the two preliminary flights advanced to the javelin finals. Patterson, who had a career-best mark of 202 feet earlier this year, was unable to approach that mark in Beijing. She opened with a throws of 177-2 and 165-2. Her best throw came on her final attempt, but that was well short of the lowest qualifying mark of 197-3.

"I was kind of surprised at the tears that came into my eyes after my third throw," Patterson said. "I can't be disappointed with being in the Olympic qualifying round, but that emotion shows me how competitive I am. I'm really excited to do a lot better in the future. I felt really good today, really good on the runway. It just didn't work out."

Patterson, who is entering her senior year at Purdue University, is still several years away from the age at which most javelin throwers reach their peak. Here's guessing she's already looking ahead to the London Games of 2012.

Cavic was inches from the wall while Phelps was 3 feet away, but Phelps took a half-stroke and beat him by .01 seconds. Don't know how long it will be up there, but a photo from Getty Images on ESPN.com's front page pretty clearly shows that Phelps did, indeed, finish first (click here). Some of the subsequent replay angles reveal the same thing.

Simply. Freaking. Amazing.

Phelps now has seven gold medals in these Games, matching the record set by Mark Spitz (click here). Two of those golds have come by the length of a fingernail. Just for kicks, I looked up Spitz's winning margins in 1972: .43 seconds; .95; 3.30 (relay); 5.91 (relay); 1.29; 2.16; and 3.96 (relay). All seven of Spitz's gold medals came in world-record time.

Spitz on Phelps: "His brain put him in first place; that's where it took his body."

>>>Here's why women's volleyball is better than men's volleyball. We're talking about real volleyball, not the aberration that is played on sand. Watching the U.S. men play China on NBC's broadcast Friday night, I kept track of a span of 22 points. Of those, 17 included a serve and no more than one return of the ball over the net.

Like tennis, men's volleyball is all power. If a team gets a good swing at a ball, the point is over. It's amazing athleticism; it can be boring competition. The women's game has many more rallies and is more entertaining.

>>>According to the Bangkok Post, young women seeking a role in the Opening Ceremonies had to get naked when they applied (click here). How much more creepy can these Olympics possibly get? Thanks to Fark.com for the link.

>>>The Baltimore Sun reports that iPod is to Michael Phelps as hair is to Samson (click here). Thanks to SportsByBrooks.com for the link.

>>>Peter Gammons of ESPN.com suggests that Cubs catcher Geovany Soto should be considered for National League MVP (click here). Says Soto: "I know we win with pitching, and what I contribute offensively is secondary. Hey, it's all about winning, not stats." Thanks to Fark for the link.

>>>Mongolia wins the first gold medal in its history (click here). Used to work with a guy whose favorite trivia question was, "What is the capital of Mongolia?" The answer: Ulan Bator (click here). You know, just in case it comes up at a cocktail party or something.

>>>Mike Hargrove says his passion is back, and he wants to manage in the big leagues again (click here). Gee, think he would want to return to the Mariners? (click here).

>>>ESPN's ombudsman, Le Anne Schreiber, writes about the perception and reality of the network's East Coast bias (click here).

>>>Update on the proof of a "Bigfoot:" "One of the two samples of DNA said to prove the existence of the Bigfoot came from a human and the other was 96 percent from an opossum" (click here).

>>>And finally, we bring you the story of 30 men who lifted a bus off a woman, allowing her baby to be born before she died of her injuries (click here). Thanks to Fark.

>>>But wait, there's one more: Man wins $3 milliion in lottery, credits poor eyesight (click here). Thanks again to Fark.