R. Lewis must return favor to his loyal fans
I'm sure I am joined by many Ravens fans in expressing my disappointment in Ray Lewis and the ongoing negotiations in regard to his contract extension.
The Ravens have made it clear that they cannot add quality players to the team this year without gaining additional salary-cap room. The cap room cannot be achieved unless Peter Boulware or Ray Lewis renegotiates his 2002 salary and signs a longer-term deal that will reduce the salary impact on the upcoming season.
Perhaps you can excuse Boulware for adopting the typical, selfish, 21st-century sports professional attitude of putting the player's interests ahead of the team's.
Boulware has always acted with class and had to work through painful shoulder problems to perform over the years.
Maybe he deserves the additional $1 million to $2 million his agent is fighting for.
Lewis, however, should be ashamed of himself. Not only did Art Modell, Brian Billick and the entire Ravens organization support Lewis during his "adventures in Atlanta," but the entire Ravens fan base was solidly in his corner.
We stuck by Lewis when the rest of the country turned against him. Isn't this support worth a speedy resolution to his contract negotiation?
Bob Bruchey Annapolis
Ties in soccer hardly worst thing in sports
I could not help but respond to Joe Michael Cierniak's letter in last Sunday's edition of The Sun ["Reporting on soccer is a waste of space"]. It's not so much that the title compelled me to respond, but it was the sentence, "The American public has no use for a game where a tie can produce a champion."
Stepping back to look at major sports in America: Ties are very common in the NHL, and do play a major role in the outcome of a team's final standing. Ties in the NFL are less common, but can be huge in determining a playoff position because there are so few games.
Stepping back further: A NASCAR driver can conceivably win the season championship without winning a single race. More realistic would be the driver winning only one or two races and winning the championship despite someone else winning five races. What's that about?
Let's step way back: Baseball and basketball. No ties here. They play and play until someone wins. In extreme cases, the game is stopped and resumed or played over at a later date, and again they play until someone wins.
The NBA plays on like this for 82 games, and Major League Baseball does it this way for 162. The irony about all this playing until someone wins is that once a team finishes the season in first place, it has not won anything. It then must play more games (and hopefully win) against teams that were not good enough to finish first (wild-card teams) before they can be called a champion.
At least with soccer, when a team finishes first (with the help of a tie or not), it is the champion.
Joe Kaszak Stewartstown, Pa.
Despite the critics, soccer is here to stay
Ignorance is bliss, and I'm quite sure Mr. Joe Michael Cierniak of Glen Burnie is a very happy man. Nevertheless, his comments in last week's letters section deserve response.
Soccer is the most popular and passionate sport in the world. Americans, who are used to high-scoring sporting events, largely ignored soccer for years because they were too narrow-minded to understand the complexity and finesse of the game.
Soccer players are truly skilled athletes. Until you've actually played soccer, perhaps you cannot understand the great skills these athletes have. What they can do with their feet is a work of art.
Soccer has always been and always will be the world's most popular sport. It may or may not end up No. 1 in America, but soccer is here to stay and is growing more and more popular.
Mike Foudos Baltimore
Orioles should send Ponson back to Aruba
The Orioles are asking what to do with Sidney Ponson. The best thing they could accomplish would be to give him a one-way ticket back to Aruba.
He will never be the pitcher they have hoped he would be.
He needs to get that chip off his shoulder, grow up, become a major-league player, become a team player and earn his pay like the rest of the Orioles.
John W. Fox Cambridge