It seems there is some kind of natural link between sports and music. Every athlete wants to be a rock star, and every entertainment personality seems to want into the world of sports. Boston Red Sox pitcher Bronson Arroyo released a CD last July that was surprisingly good. There was no original material on it, but he showed some musical range, leading Sox fans to wonder if he's going to turn out to be a singer that pitches a little, or a pitcher who also sings.

Back in the early 1990's White Sox pitcher Jack McDowell fronted his own band; Red Sox GM Theo Epstein fools around in a band when he's not quitting his job and sneaking out of Fenway in a gorilla suit.

On the other side of the coin, Jon Bon Jovi has part ownership in an Arena Football team, and you can't swing a nine iron without hitting a TV or movie star who is into the celebrity golf scene. Bill Murray, in addition to the golf thing, has had a stake in minor league baseball for years.

That said, the 2006 entrants into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame were inducted last night in Cleveland, and it seems only fitting to take a moment to acknowledge these historic entertainment/sports figures. The roster of inductees is as follows, with a summary of the artists' achievements taken from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's own website.






Black Sabbath - "Enormously influential, the group's songs dealt with black magic, satanism, apocalypse, death and destruction." Left unsaid, but equally as important, were the themes of uncalled penalties, unreviewed plays and unscored touchdowns that played such a large part in the Blackest Sabbath of them all....Super Bowl XL.










Blondie - "...Flirted with salsa, funk, disco, reggae and rap and their 1979 Parallel Lines record featured the hit, 'Heart of Glass." The bio neglects to mention Blondie's other big hit, "Shooter of Bricks," and the fact that this particular Blondie flirted with just about anything breathing and maybe even some things that weren't.









Justin Leonard Skynyrd - "One of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed Southern Rock groups..." Leonard Skynyrd picks up his one or two victories every year and makes a more than comfortable living, but like the rest of the PGA tour, has yet to solve the mystery of the Beatles, also known as Tiger Woods.









(Frequent Flier) Miles Davis - "One of the 20th century's most creative artists, changing the sound of popular music many times during his six decade career." In addition to changing popular music, this free-thinker changed locations as well, breaking the hearts of Raider fans in Oakland, only to to do the same thing to new Raider fans in L.A. a few years later.










Sex Pistols- "The Sex Pistols released a single album...that ranks as one of the most important rock albums ever released." The leading sex pistol, of course, has to be the immortal Wilt Chamberlain, who, among the many scoring records he held, estimated he slept with as many as 20,000 women over the course of his life.












Herb (Marv) Alpert and Jerry (Randy) Moss - "These two visionary men founded A+M Records...Alpert and Moss built one of the most successful independent record labels in the world." Additionally, Alpert never succumbed to the backstabbing tendencies so common in his field. The occasional backbiting, yes, but no backstabbing. Moss, of course, is an incredible story, building such a successful business while taking so many plays off.