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A preface: The Blog hereby calls for a new standard for reporting news as "shocking" or "stunning," like, say, the news actually be shocking or stunning. Two news items from Sunday -- always a tough day for The Blog, when there's almost too much to yammer on about -- have been breathlessly described with both adjectives, even though, in the final analysis (The Blog's territory, right?) neither really was.

Ricky Williams shockingly retires from the NFL

Midway through the last NFL season, The Blog got a phone call from SI senior football writer and colleague Mike Silver from Miami, where Silver was meeting with the now-former 'Phins running back Ricky Williams.

"How's Ricky?" The Blog asked.

"He's probably pretty good," Silver replied. The Blog noticed a strange tone in Silver's voice, as well as his odd choice of words. Ever the crack reporter, The Blog pushed ahead.

"What the *$&%&*# does 'probably' mean? What are you guys doing?" Mind you, it was roughly 10 p.m. at the time.

"Well, I'm just sitting here," Silver said. "I don't know what Ricky's doing. He actually took off a while ago." More poking and prodding got the whole story: Williams had left the room while they were watching television ... and never returned. After 30 minutes, Silver investigated and discovered Williams had, in fact, left the premises. Which was odd, since they were hanging at Williams' house. An hour later, he still hadn't returned. Finally, Silver left.

Silver next spoke with Williams five days later.

The Blog recounts this story because, a) It still makes The Blog wet himself; and b) It was, for the beguiling oddball Williams, par for the course. Indeed, after learning of Williams' shocking decision to walk away from a five-year career that was equal parts rugged courage and cloying tease, The Blog's first thought was: What took him so long to quit?

Forget Williams' revelation he's lost the "passion for the game," a bite-sized cliché that is as expected as it is untrue. Actually, he lost that years ago -- if he ever had it to lose. Forget the vestiges of his social anxiety disorder, which we've been asked to believe was the reason he wore his helmet during interviews while with the New Orleans Saints from 1999 to '01. To suggest he was anything more than weirdly shy and plainly uncomfortable under the kleig lights does wrong by actual sufferers of actual social anxiety disorder. Forget his professed desire to pursue other interests, listed in Williams' career obits like the hobbies of a centerfold model; Williams did not retire just to backpack through Asia or take long walks on the beach or sit by the fireplace, idly perusing James Joyce.

No, Ricky Williams hung 'em up because, even with various residences to abandon and three kids and concentric circles of hangers-on to support, he was weary of participating in a sport so violent it would be felonious were it not the national religion. He retired because dealing with the media blows when you can't discuss anything that really matters to you (i.e. Asian train stations; the virtues of Austin; drug tests and the masking agents that defy them). He retired because a millionaire athlete's life in New Orleans or Miami was never like the good ol' days at the University of Texas, when a fawning press corps and an adoring public enabled the man-child in Williams, a gridiron Peter Pan who never wanted to grow up.

In the immediate aftermath, The Blog enjoyed two minor aspects of Williams' sayonara. The first was the mention of his reported positive test for marijuana use in May -- which, if true, would be Williams' second failed test in Miami and likely would've meant upwards of a $650,000 fine. In initial reports, Williams said his drug-test woes didn't force his hand so much as "reinforce" his decision to quit. Which, if you're cynical and skeptical and have covered the league for five years as The Blog has, could be read as one man's unflagging love for certain recreational pursuits and his resulting, inexorable difficulty with an employer that would greet him with two cups: one to protect, the other to fill. Give Williams this: At least he doesn't make you strain to read between the lines. (And they always said the man could take a hit. ...) And then there was something else Williams said: "I was never strong enough to not play football, but I'm strong enough now. Everyone has thrown every possible scenario at me about why I shouldn't do this, but they're in denial. I'm happy with my decision."

Turns out he's been working toward this day for some time. Turns out his departure from the gridiron isn't so much a retirement as it is a prison break. Turns out that even if we weren't done blindly lionizing him, Ricky Williams was through with us.

A pro athlete allergic to idol worship? Now that's shocking. ...

Armstrong wins stunning sixth straight Tour

Really, the nits to pick here aren't much -- trifles, really, but ones that do, in their little ways, detract from what many would have us believe is the greatest athletic feat of our time.

Nit No. 1: The Blog finds it ridiculous that in the collective race to genuflect before Master Lance, few folks ever mention the nameless, faceless riders of the U.S. Postal Service team, a de facto all-star squad that has teed up Tour after Tour for their boss, reeling in all those defiant breakaways and then punishing the transgressors for their affronts. Armstrong was laudatory of his minions this year -- gotta throw the guys a bone every now and again -- but The Blog never really felt the love. Sure, the boys (such as George Hincapie and, uh, those other guys) ripped through the peleton like an aerodynamic gaggle of playground bullies, keeping Master Lance upright and secure, so our hero could take a couple of mountain stages, streak triumphantly past the Arc de Triomphe, and break hearts from Paris to Provence. But based on the increasingly honeyed coverage, you'd think Master Lance won the thing while piloting a rusty tricycle, all by his lonesome.

Nit No. 2 (albeit unfounded, unproven and strictly one Blog's opinion): That all of the deifying of Master Lance is a bit much, if you wonder (as The Blog does) if Master Lance has been less than truthful when it comes to the doping allegations that have dogged his streak; that it's folly to suggest that, in a sport where so many of the elite have failed doping tests in the past, Master Lance has continued to dominate as a clean competitor; and that if the ultimate feel-good story feels too good to be true, then maybe, just maybe, it is.

Even writing that, The Blog feels like Scrooge with a keyboard -- a cynic's cynic's cynic. No one's proved Armstrong has done anything worse than romance a tired and annoying rocker, and yes, his return from a near-fatal bout with cancer to dominate anew will always be impressive. But such is life in a world of EPO and HGH, THG and BALCO, acronymic thousand-pound elephants in the living rooms of seemingly every track athlete since the ancient Greeks.

So let's just say The Blog, for one, hopes we've seen the conclusion to Master Lance's stunning streak.

As much as it pains The Blog to admit it, those looking for genuinely shocking, truly stunning sports news found it in the most overhyped sports rivalry ever, the Red Sox-Yankees series. (Is it just The Blog, or do these teams play every week?) Yep, Saturday's 11-10 Boston shocker/stunner gave us one jaw-dropping, heart-stopping, game-winning two-run jack by Boston's Bill Mueller off the Yanks' Olympian closer, Mariano Rivera -- the sort of blow that gets a team well in a hurry, and one that could make things much more interesting should the Sawx manage to claw their way into the wild card and try once more to vanquish the Bronx Bullies.

It was also the sort of moment that makes iron-willed men out of young, impressionable lads. Such was discovered when, after a whirlwind travel week, The Blog found himself with a free Sunday, which he spent on Martha's Vineyard with his in-laws, the relentlessly patient Tracey and Anil Narang and their kids: Nicolas (6), Sasha (4), and Grady (2), three of the loveliest, sweetest and most adorable unholy spawn of Satan you'll ever meet.

Now, as a boy in southern Connecticut -- technically New England but truthfully more a New York suburb -- Nicolas is at that crucial age where he must take sides in the region's eternal struggle between good and evil upon the baseball diamond. And though his folks bleed Yankee pinstripes, I'm pleased to report that Nic demanded a powder-blue Red Sox cap over the weekend, especially prescient as it meant he could roam the streets of the Sawx-besotted Vineyard free of menace. Perhaps still smarting over the previous night's dramatic blow, Tracey attempted an intervention yesterday. "When we get back to New York, you're going to have to get rid of that hat," she informed him yesterday. When little Nic innocently asked why, she replied simply, "Because we're raising you as a Yankee fan."

"But I hate the Yankees," little Nic sighed.

And Uncle Blog loves you, kiddo. ...