I'm going to head into the Herald office for the night shortly, but there a few big stories from the last 24 hours or so that I wanted to rant about.

• First, Manny Ramirez made his long-awaited return from suspension last night, appearing in a game with the Dodgers' Triple-A club, the Albuquerque Isotopes. Manny went 0-for-2 with a strikeout, but the fact that he was simply playing has created a lot of controversy. Look, I have always been a Manny fan. I liked him on the Indians and loved him on the Red Sox (though I am now pretty much obligated to root against him, being a Diamondbacks fan). Personally, I don't really care what he's putting into his body. But, rules are rules. He got caught and accepted his penalty. Fine. What I'm not undestanding is how he can still play minor league ball. I understand it's a loop hole in the drug policy. But really, how was that not considered back when drawing up the plan? And to those that argue that it's not technically Major League Baseball, I simply say, "Really?" Is Minor League Baseball not a part of Major League Baseball? Because last time I checked, it was the lifeline for the Majors. And are you telling me it works both ways? That if a minor leaguer got caught with the same stuff Manny did, would he be allowed to jump up and play at the major-league level while his minor-league suspension was in effect? I seriously doubt it. Come on MLB, fix this.

• Yesterday my Minnesota Timberwolves traded away two-thirds of their backcourt from last season, essentially to gain another lottery pick. Randy Foye and Mike Miller were shipped to Washington for the No. 5 overall pick and a trio of bodies (Darius Songaila, Etan Thomas, Oleksiy Pecherov). That leaves Sebastian Telfair as the only guard on the Minnesota roster who saw regular time last season (sorry Bobby Brown and Kevin Ollie). After the trade, Minnesota now holds the No. 5, 6, 18, 28, 45 and 47 picks in the 60-player draft. In other words, one-tenth of all the selections tomorrow night. So needless to say, Minnesota will dictate a good portion of the draft. As a T'wolves fan, this both excites and scares me. I'm excited because, should new President of Basketball Operations David Kahn hit some home runs, the team will be in position to contend in the next few years with a young, exciting team. Should he whiff, as us T'wolves fans have become accustomed to with Kevin McHale in charge, we'll be in for a long few seasons. The rumors suggest Kahn is trying to package No. 5 and 18 together to get No. 2 from Memphis, with the intent, I gather, of taking either Hasheem Thabeet or Ricky Rubio. To be honest, neither excites me all that much, but if I had to take either, I'd probably go with Thabeet. His shot-blocking is rare, and we wouldn't need him to score, just block and alter shots. We could address the backcourt with No. 6 and 28, as this is a guard-deep draft. I should have a final mock draft up tonight or early tomorrow, so stay tuned for that.

• Finally, I'll admit that I'm not the biggest soccer fan. However, I've gotten more into it over the last year, having covered high school soccer, a New England Revolution game and the SoccerPlus Connecticut Reds, a high-level amateur soccer club that plays its home games in New Britain. So I have followed the Confederations Cup a little bit. As I write this, the U.S. leads Spain 1-0 in the 72nd minute, so this game is headed toward a close finish. It's amazing enough that the U.S. is still playing. The series of events – the U.S. defeated Egypt 3-0 and Brazil beat Italy 3-0 – that simply allowed the U.S. just to survive was amazing enough. If they actually pull off the upset and defeat Spain, it would just be icing on the cake. I might update that later on as well, after I see how the game goes.

• UPDATE: U.S. just scored again, now up 2-0 in the 74th minute. Looks like they will win. Wow.