There can never be too much sports

This past weekend not only proved to be one of the busiest sports weekends of my lifetime, but also a very diverse one.\nThere were not only so many sports to watch, but most every event featured something historic.\nWilliams Mania\nThe French Open offered morning viewing right after waking up. With all due respect to first-time Grand Slam winner Albert Costa -- he hadn't won any tournament since August 1999 -- the real story of the French Open were the Williams sisters. Serena beat Venus to earn her first Grand Slam since the 1999 U.S. Open, but the real story is that they are now the top two players in the world with Venus rating slightly higher. Never have they dominated like this before. \nThe French Open is played on clay, by far the toughest surface for both sisters. One could imagine them playing each other in any Grand Slam final but the French Open, where neither had even made the semifinals.\nThat changed.\nJennifer Capriati is now third in the world, but she might as well be No. 103 because she and everybody else is nowhere close to the Williams sisters. Sure, Zina Garrison and Lori McNeil had their moments, but the U.S. has never had one African-American woman ranked so high since Althea Gibson in the late 1950s. Now we have two, and they happen to be sisters.\nTiger Woods might be more marketable, but the Williams sisters are only getting started, and their story now looks even more amazing.\nTyson's Finale\nThe Tyson-Lewis fight was unfortunately not so amazing. Tyson fought his way through eight rounds, but Lewis chopped him up with a flurry of jabs and follow-up right hands. Tyson's reach disadvantage kept him from getting in an effective jab of his own, and long ago, he abandoned a body punching style that might have proven effective against such a bigger fighter. Nobody seems to know what to make of Lewis, a boxer who likes to play chess in his spare time, speaks in complete sentences, stays out of jail and declines to eat others' children.\nWe can judge Tyson though: He will never be heavyweight champ again.\nRules? What Rules?\nThe World Cup can entertain in the middle of the night, especially if you have insomnia or if you don't like to leave your favorite sports bar until last call. Any complaints that soccer stinks because of lack of scoring are now completely absurd as Stanley Cup playoff games are about as high scoring as a typical World Cup game. \nAlso, can somebody please explain the the offsides rule? If Randy Moss beats his coverage and gets behind the defense, should Daunte Culpepper be forbidden to throw the ball to him? Comparatively speaking, that seems to be the rule in soccer.\nBeating a dead horse\nThe rules are simpler in horse racing, thankfully. Had you been watching Saturday afternoon, you saw Sarava become the biggest longshot ever to win the Belmont Stakes at 70-1 odds. He paid $142.50 for a simple $2 bet. NBC's coverage was absolutely terrible, filled with frothy melodrama and boring features, (Sorry, but I couldn't care less to see War Emblem take a bath). The horse racing novice could not have learned much of anything about the sport, and Tom Hammond sounded like he was going to burst into tears or worse as he hyped to death War Emblem's shot at a Triple Crown and then saw War Emblem trip out of the gates, fade badly late and finish eighth. Frankly, who cares about War Emblem trainer Bob Baffert when the horses and the jockeys do all the hard work?\nNHL to the rescue\nThe third game of the Stanley Cup Finals proved to be a welcome relief. Gritty and nail-biting all the way, the triple-overtime thriller ended with Detroit's Igor Larionov taking a pass from Steve Duchesne, who had just taken a puck in the mouth and was bleeding somewhat profusely just a couple minutes prior, beating Carolina's prone goalie Arturs Irbe high-side. No hype was necessary to explain it, and finally Detroit's star players came through with the 41-year-old Larionov, who goes for denture fittings with Jesse Orosco, scoring twice and Brett Hull scoring the game-tying goal late in regulation on a fantastic tip-in.\nInterleague hype\nThe other stuff seemed to obscure the first weekend of baseball's interleague play. Interleague play doesn't offer much, and no matter what Fox Sports' Joe Buck tells you, the Giants and Yankees can't possibly have a "rivalry" if they have not played with anything on the line since the 1962 World Series. However, interleague games seem to draw better attendance based on its novelty, and weird things seem to happen, like Alfonso Soriano's error on Saturday against the Giants or the Cubs actually holding their own against the Mariners.\nTennis, horse racing, soccer, hockey and baseball -- it definitely made for a varied weekend for viewing, and thankfully we can take it for granted that it's all on television.\nBut as for the NBA Finals, just like this past weekend, the Nets season is over.