When Matt Kemp sat on Monday with a hamstring strain (that landed him on the DL, much to my fantasy team’s chagrin), it snapped a streak of 399 consecutive games played. That was the longest active streak in baseball.

What’s up with that?

This season, by my unofficial count, only two first basemen have played in every one of their team’s games: Adrian Gonzalez and Joey Votto. That’s first base, one of the least taxing positions to play next to designated hitter, which I’m sure Gonzalez might have played a few games at. There are probably fewer than 40 players that have suited up and played every night for their team.

While players like Cal Ripkin and Lou Gehrig were both one-of-a-kind type players, what happened to guys like Miguel Tejada or Craig Biggio? Both held incredibly long iron man streaks with little notice, but at least they cracked a thousand games apiece.

Baseball has become a bit wussified in this regard. We’ll never see another true iron man like Gehrig or Ripkin for a couple of reasons.

First, players seem to get injured a lot easier these days. Despite having better training and medical staffs than ever, we seem to have more and more guys land on the DL every year. If you can make it through an entire season without a trip to the DL, that’s a badge of honour.

Second, managers try to get everyone rest every once in a while. I can understand this for pitchers and catchers, but majority of time guys are just standing around on the baseball field. This is like soccer where players are constantly moving, I’m sure the average third baseman doesn’t need a day off after playing seven games in a week.

Also, managers can be tempted to sit a guy if he’s in a bit of a slump just to take the pressure off the player. I don’t believe this works at all. Wouldn’t you rather have your guy try to work through his issues rather than sit and think about it?

It’s all these reasons that Cal Ripkin’s record of 2,632 games played in a row may now be one of the hardest records to ever break. It’s certainly right up there with 30 wins, a .400 batting average and a 56-game hitting streak. Just add one more to all of baseball’s unbreakable records.

With Manchester United playing against a Sunderland table firmly entrenched mid-table and looking like they cared more about the night’s new episode of Game of Thrones that awaited, the Red Devils easily came away with a 1-0 victory. Sir Alex Ferguson’s side had done its part to try to wrest the title away from favoured Manchester City, would it be enough?

On paper, it should have been a cakewalk for City. They were playing at home – where they hadn’t lost all season – against Queen’s Park Rangers – the team with the worst away record in the EPL. But the thing was that QPR was fighting for its EPL life and an animal with its back against the wall is most dangerous – just ask Joey Barton.

With the score tied 1-1 after some uncharacteristically shoddy defending from City, Barton saw fight to throw an elbow into the face of Carlos Tevez. That earned him a straight red card and QPR would now have to fight on a man short.

Even better, Barton kneed Sergio Aguero in the back after being sent off and nearly caused the insane Mario Balotelli to come off the bench and fight him. Now that would be a Pay-per-view event I would pay $49.99 to see.

But now with all 10 Rangers parked just outside their box, the Blues had a really rough time breaking them down. Even worse, hitting on a counter attack, QPR scored to take a 2-1 lead. City fans feared for the worst; many fans were seen holding their heads, crying about a title they bungled away to their oft-superior rivals.

This lasted until the 91^st minute at Etihad Stadium, when United were already celebrating their victory and counting down the seconds to their latest title triumph.

Then something incredible happened: Off a corner from David Silva a minute into injury time, Edin Dzeko headed in the ball to even the score 2-2. Two minutes later, Mario Balotelli gave Aguero a return pass, he dribbled past one QPR defender and scored the title-winning goal with about 30 seconds to spare.

Any sports fan – except for United fans – should have leapt for joy at what was one of the most exciting two minutes that soccer has ever seen. To comeback and win from 2-1 down in injury time during a normal game is thrilling enough; to win a title that way – the club’s first since 1968 – was even better.

It also turned out to be the first tie-break victory since 1989, when Arsenal won the league on goal differential. That was also years before the Premier League even existed in its current state.

Many have quarrels with City’s massive payroll, backed by a middle-eastern oil Sheikh, but was as pure of a victorious joy that there could have been and we should all applaud their tremendous effort this season.

United’s 89 points were also the most ever by a runnerup, although it does stand to reason that the title could have very easily theirs had the ball bounced any different way for City on Sunday.

And, fittingly, with Bolton’s 2-2 draw against Stoke City, QPR stayed up anyway.

With the Champions League final between Bayern Munich and Chelsea on Saturday, we should see a thrilling conclusion to what has been a tremendous season of league football.

For our May 8 edition, we’re not even talking about the fact that it feels like these playoffs have been going on forever and we’re not even halfway done with them.

No. This time it’s because a person who is part of one team’s ownership group is the lead man in an ownership group trying to purchase the Phoenix Coyotes. Even better, Greg Jamison, the man we’re talking about here, serves on the board of the San Jose Sharks — who play in the same division as the Coyotes!

Has this league never heard of something called a conflict of interest? How can you own pieces of two companies that are competing against each other?

Granted, the NHL can’t be picky with buyers. They’ve had plenty of tentative owners come along during their two-plus seasons of running the team and every one of them has fallen through. So, this isn’t a certainty to go through. But the fact that a deal like this can be struck is just plain sad for the ice hockey league.

So, once again, the NHL is a joke.

*This isn’t even mentioning that Bell Canada now owns parts of the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Montreal Canadiens — two teams I’m sure any person would be happy to invest in.*

So who were this year’s athletes and teams that stood out?

-It’s fairly obvious for anyone to see that soccer is the sport is the highest paying team sport. Out of the teams with the top 10 average weekly pay, seven were European soccer clubs. Helped by the fact that there will never be a salary cap in such a global game, most of the teams also increased over last year’s numbers. Barcelona’s average salaries went up 10% to almost $8.7 million a year. Manchester City’s average salary went up an astounding 26%, moving them from 10^th to third overall.

-Despite Barcelona having the highest average salaries, super-duperstar Lionel Messi isn’t the highest-paid Argentine. That title belongs to Sergio Aguero, who transferred to City during the summer. He’ll pull down a cool $16.6 million this year.

-Think a soccer player is England’s top paid athlete? Will guess again. It’s actually boxer David Haye, who remarkably made more than $24 million for one fight with Wladimir Klitschko. Simply stunning.

-Spain’s top paid athlete isn’t a footballer either, it’s F-1’s Fernando Alonso, who made a mind-boggling $40 million in 2011. Even more astounding is that the F-1 champion Sebastien Vettel wasn’t Germany’s top earner, losing out to Dirk Nowitzki at $19 million.

-But if you thought that was outstanding, Italy’s highest-paid athlete races on two wheels. Valentino Rossi, a Moto GP racer for Ducati made $20 million to top that country’s chart.

-Then there’s the sad state of Canada’s athletes, being topped by Jason Bay’s albatross of a contract. At least Joey Votto, a more respectable player will top this list soon.

-The NFL’s highest paid player wasn’t anybody you would expect it to be. Not a pretty boy QB like Tom Brady, not a diva receiver like Megatron and not a star running back like Adrian Peterson. It was Charles Johnson, who thanks to a massive signing bonus and front-loaded deal, made $34 million from the Carolina Panthers last year.

-Have you ever wondered how much fringe sport stars make compared to their mainstream brethren? Well look no further. Sean Rash made $140K in bowling prizes, Phil Taylor made nearly a million in darts. Joey Chestnut won $205K in Major League Eating, a quarter as much as Emmanuel Mutai made in distance running prizes ($815K). The lowest top dog made only $50,400, but also got a truck for his troubles; it was Dallas Seavey, winning of the Iditarod.

In Manchester, the game wasn’t as exciting as the result. The chances were few owing to some good defence although the lone goal did come thanks to some shoddy marking on Chris Smalling’s behalf.

Smalling’s inclusion in the lineup was thanks to a late injury to Jonny Evans, but the something’s-off managing from Sir Alex didn’t stop there. Instead of the red-hot Antonio Valencia starting on the wing, or even Ashley Young, Ji-Sung Park was afforded his first league start since January. In the back four, Phil Jones took over for usual starter Rafael – who did take part in United’s 4-4 draw with Everton.

It was interesting that Ferguson would dramatically change his lineup on such a big stage. Even his substitutions, like inserting Danny Welbeck instead of Chicarito, weren’t all that conventional.

The most riveting part of the game may have been a near altercation on the sidelines between Ferguson and Roberto Mancini. After Mancini hauled off Carlos Tevez for Nigel de Jong, the bowling ball of a midfielder proceeded to go in for a harsh slide tackle on Welbeck, a move that surprisingly didn’t injure the United forward. A lot of finger pointing and yelling went on – probably deserved since de Jong has a history of that sort of foul.

But, like I said, this wasn’t about the game, it was about the result. With their victory, Manchester City is now atop the Premier League by virtue of goal differential. United will have to either hope that City stumbles in the last two games of the campaign, or rack up a ridiculous goal differential in getting two wins.

United has a game at home against Swansea and then a visit to Sunderland on the last weekend. City has to travel to Newcastle – a really tough game – and then host QPR, a sure win.

Of course, anything can happen in English football. We could see either team lose any game or we could see a stunning final day.

Anything’s possible, after all, the English FA did just name West Brom’s Roy Hodgson as manager of the national team. This came only two days after Tottenham’s Harry Redknapp – the previous favourite for the job – led his team to a victory and shed his awful losing ways.

Stranger things have happened in English football.