Our long national nightmare is over in Florida. The Tampa Bay Devil Rays needed a two-out, three-run homer in the bottom of the ninth to do it, but sixteen was the charm for them to finally end baseball's longest losing streak. Unless, of course, you count Darryl Strawberry, in which case the Devil Rays weren't even close.

The NBA playoffs are back, and the Boston Celtics and Detroit Pistons are playing in the best series of the year, as long as that year is 1992. The Celtics scored sixty-six, and still won this week. I haven't seen scoring that difficult since that party at A.C. Green's house.

Even in what was probably their last game, the Charlotte Hornets drew a sub-standard crowd against the Nets on Sunday. The Hornets will soon be called for traveling, and move to New Orleans. I'm not sure if the New Orleans basketball experiment will work. Let's face it, the Big Easy has one of the best music scenes, America's biggest open air party, and that handy Mardi-Gras-beads-for-nudity exchange. I'm not sure people are going to even notice a basketball team in town unless they're leading a parade.

Mike Tyson this week said he wished Lennox Lewis was dead, and that he wished he could kill Lewis himself. This means only one thing. Iron Mike is finally learning to communicate better. He doesn't like Lewis, so he wants to kill him. He didn't offer to eat his children, or make Lewis his girlfriend, or anything like that. He simply expressed his opinion. This is what we call a "breakthrough," sports fans.

Michael Schumacher won the Austrian Grand Prix this weekend, but was later upset upon learning his teammate was ordered to let Schumacher pass to get the win. After finding out what happened, Schumacher was not very happy about the circumstances of his victory. He'll probably be even less happy when he finds out he's supposed to drop the Grand Prix title to Hulk Hogan at the big pay-per-view next weekend, too.

And finally, after being injured last year, Edgerrin James is staying away from Colts minicamps and their off-season workouts. James wants his contract renegotiated to turn some of those pesky performance incentives into easier cash. For my money, there's no better way to signal your employer you're a real team player than by asking them to rework your paycheck so you get paid even if you're not doing anything. That's like Tom Green trying to renegotiate his contract based on his track record.