Welcome to “The Week in Sports.” your weekly run-down of the happenings and shenanigans of the sports world. Some of the stories mentioned will be more mainstream, while others will be about sports that you might not have even heard of let alone follow. I’m going to try my best to give you a broad view of the goings on of sport as a whole.
I’m going to update you on what has happened in the major U.S. professional leagues (NHL, NBA, MLB and NFL) as well as the NCAA (Mostly football and basketball, also lacrosse), but I’m also going to stray a little away from the norm for some of my content. I’ll mention world sports, such as soccer and rugby (which many Americans don’t care for and/or understand). I’ll also dabble in the worlds of Tennis, MMA, NASCAR, golf and anything else I can think of. If a competitor in the Worlds Strongest Man competition drops a 500.lb weight on his foot, you’ll hear about it.
NHL: After trailing 2-0, after two straight 3-1 losses, the Penguins rallied to the knot up the Stanley Cup Finals 2-2. After a nasty 5-0 win by the Wings in Detroit, it looked like Pittsburgh had lost any mo’ and were going to end up losing 4 games to 2, just like last year. Led by goals from Jordan Staal and Tyler Kennedy as well as 25 saves from Marc-Andre Fleury, the Penguins have sent this series to the final frontier: Game seven.
Tennis: Roger Federer not only had to defeat Robin Soderling in the French Open final, he also had to deal with an unruly fan attempting to take his hat off his head. He won 6-1, 7-6 (7-1), 6-4 to take home the title, but I still think he should have taken the fan down like Pedro Martinez took down Don Zimmer.
NBA: The Orlando Magic got thumped 100-75 in game one and pretty much everyone wrote the NBA Finals off as a joke. They barely lost game two 101-96 (in OT) and looked good, but not good enough. In a must win game three, the Magic, led by Rafer “Skip-to-my-Lou” Alston’s 20 points and Dwight Howard’s 21 points and 14 rebounds, delighted the home crowd with a 108-104 win. As they say, “It’s not over until the home team loses.” Well, it’s over. Orlando lost game four 99-91 in OT in front of the home crowd to fall into a deep 3-1 hole. I don’t see them winning in L.A.
USA Soccer: After an extremely disappointing 3-1 World Cup qualifying loss to Costa Rica on June 3rd, the U.S. team was left shaking their collective heads. What went to terribly wrong? Luckily, they didn’t have to sit and think about the game for too long, their next game was June 6th against Honduras. The Yanks took the game 2-1 in front of a packed Soldier Field to right the ship and set the course back towards the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.
MLB: The Yankees and Red Sox played this week for the AL East lead. Boston took the first game in a 7-0 dominating performancance by Josh Beckett. They followed that with close 6-5 and 4-3 wins to sweep away the Yanks to go a perfect 8-0 against New York this season. Interleague play starts this weekend. Some of the key match-ups include Red Sox at Phillies, Mets at Yankees, Dodgers at Rangers and Twins at Cubs.
Cricket: The World Twenty20 (which is like the cricket World Cup, right?) is going on right now. I know, I was wondering why nobody told me either. Let’s go to the pub and watch it. Aren’t games like five days long, though? Call me an ugly American, but I’d rather watch synchronized swimming (with sharks). India beat Ireland 112-8 (I guess??). That doesn’t sound all that exciting to me, but according the Yahoo in the U.K., it was a real barn burner!
MLS: If the MLS is still shown on ESPN, but nobody watches it, is it really even on at all? I wish I could get into it, but I just can’t. I guess I like the New York Red Bulls, I once saw them when they were the Metro-Stars, but I just don’t care. Chivas USA is carving up the opposition with an 8-2-3 record.
MLL: Major League Lacrosse is awesome and I just wanted to make sure I mentioned it somewhere on here. People need to start watching this. They show games on ESPN2. I’m not going to look up the schedule for you, though. I’m too lazy. You’ll just have to do it yourself. The Toronto Nationals (with Hall of Famer Gary Gait) are tied with the Long Island Lizards and the Denver Outlaws for the league lead with identical 3-1 records. 
*Do you like any sports that you want me to cover next week or any sports stories you want me to mention? This is your article, not mine. Have at it. Throw me an email at cosburn@thefatherlife.com.
Image credit: Kriss Szkurlatowski, SXC
30 year old freelance writer and The Father Life‘s resident beer columnist and sports editor. He also writes about fine beverages for drinkingmadeeasy.com and Chilled Magazine. On top of that, he writes about college and professional lacrosse for insidelacrosse.com. He’s also written for Genesee Valley Parenting Magazine, the Democrat and Chronicle Newspaper and ESPN.com. “Osburn on Tap” appears monthly in THE FATHER LIFE. For questions, comments, or if you have a story idea for Chris, throw him an email cosburn@thefatherlife.com. Also, follow him on twitter http://www.twitter.com/chrisosburn