By STEPHEN BRUNT, Toronto Globe and Mail

A friend who does work for Floyd Mayweather Jr. was telling a story earlier this week, to fill out a picture of his client that even ardent boxing fans hadn't seen -- at least until Saturday night.

MONTREAL - It is the coaching Hail Mary, the classic what-the-hell move at a time when there's not much left to lose.

Of course it ought to be a mere footnote in a springtime packed with real soccer news.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia - There aren't really that many hockey nights in Canada, at least not in the way we Canadians imagine them.

Really, all that's missing is a twirled black mustache.

National Hockey League commissioner Gary Bettman, one of the biggest movers and shakers in all of sports, has become Canada's cartoon villain, the guy who controls hockey and hates the land that spawned it, who holds a big piece of our culture in his hands and is not one of us.

If he were a player, you know what people would be saying.

If he were a player with a valid contract refusing to report to his team because a lawyer or an agent advised him that it was in his best interests to remain absent, scorn would pour down from all quarters.

As the Beckham Across America tour began its final leg Thursday night with the Los Angeles Galaxy meeting the New York Red Bulls with Himself in the lineup, it has provided a few not-so-shocking insights into the workings of human nature.
Thanks to Grant Wahl's new book "The Beckham Experiment,'' we now know for a fact that it wasn't an easy fit.

Drugs couldn't kill baseball. Despite the morality plays, the kangaroo court, the mass hand-wringing about rewriting record books, the sport emerged from the steroid era having paid much lip service and offered much penance, and as a business stronger than ever.

As a small, tense drama played out in a Phoenix courtroom Thursday, a question leapt to mind.
Understanding the grave consequences, how could the NHL have allowed the Phoenix Coyotes to fall into bankruptcy?
Could it be that commissioner Gary Bettman badly overplayed his hand?

Anyone who has tracked this star-crossed centennial season shouldn't have been surprised by the latest turn of events for the Montreal Canadiens.