Sports Notes, 7/30/07

OK, so it’s a day late. Still, three postings last week and now a notes column? It’s almost like I’m running a blog or something …

-- To all you White Sox fans out there, hope you enjoyed Steve Stone.

-- It would be easy to pick on Lance Briggs, who just signed a one-year, $7.2 million contract for recanting on his pledge not to play for the Bears this year. Easy, but shortsighted -- the fact of the matter is, Briggs saved some face with the Bears’ concession not to use to franchise tag that so offended him when the deal is up. This is a team that went to the Super Bowl last year and could easily dominate the weak NFC again this season; it looks like maybe Lovie Smith is a bit too smart to let an important piece of the puzzle just walk away.

-- That said, it’s also fun to pick on Lance Briggs, so here goes: Nyahh, nyahh, look who came crawling back!

-- By picking up the Bills’ Darwin Walker to replace Tank Johnson, now the Bears are signing other people’s disgruntled holdouts too!

-- It doesn’t matter how bad they are, it’s always fun to beat the guys in the Cardinals uniforms. Especially when the Brewers can’t.

-- What a shame that the Sox had to dump Tadhito Iguchi. With him on the team, they definitely would have finished the season fewer than 20 games below .500.