In a sign of gratitude to all those who’ve generously contributed to Haiti’s relief effort, Indianapolis Colts wide receiver Pierre Garçon floated the Haitian flag at the end of his team’s 31-17 win over the New York Jets in the AFC championship. Garçon and the Colts are en route to Miami, home to the largest Haitian-American diaspora in the United States.

Long before a 7.0 magnitude earthquake ripped through the Caribbean island’s impoverished capital, Garçon’s official Website proudly displayed a giant Haitian flag. Since Port-au-Prince was reduced to rubble, his site has become a magnet for Haitian-American sports fans who want to know how Garcon prepares for his first Super Bowl appearance as he tries to locate missing relatives in his parents’ homeland.

“I am still in disbelief with the situation going on in Haiti. The most painful image was seeing the Palace (our White House) crushed into pieces, that is always the very first place I go visit when I land in Haiti and now its (sic) all gone!” he bemoans on the site.

The young wide receiver was a game-changer for the Colts throughout the playoffs, especially against Baltimore. The Ravens’ strong defense intercepted a pass. Garçon turned around right away, chased All-Pro safety Ed Reed, punched the ball out of his hands to help the Colts recover the ball and shift the momentum back in their favor.

The Jets went into the AFC championship with a simple game plan: Stop Dallas Clark and Reggie Wayne. The Colts adjusted by throwing the ball to Garçon and Austin Collie. Garçon finished the night with 11 catches for 151 yards and a touchdown.

The story goes that shortly after baseball great Babe Ruth had settled into the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo while touring Japan in 1934, there was a knock on the door. He opened it to see a Japanese man in a kimono. ”Sign baseball,” the man said.

As soon as the Babe autographed that baseball, the man pulled another out of his kimono. Then another. And another. And another.

If Japanese media coverage of home-grown players plying their trade in the United States is anything to go by, Japan’s love affair with baseball is alive and well.

In 2001, Major League Baseball’s decision to allow All-Star voting in Japan helped Ichiro Suzuki lead all players in voting for the All-Star Game. That same year, Ichiro won the American League Most Valuable Player and the Rookie of the Year awards, becoming only the second player in MLB history (after Fred Lynn) to receive both honors in the same season.

Last fall, Hideki Matsui of the New York Yankees became the first Japanese-born player to be voted World Series Most Valuable Player and the first to win it as a designated hitter.

Despite its pompous name, the World Series only involves North America. But that may soon change.

Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig has held talks with his Japanese counterpart, Ryozo Kato, about changing the World Series format to pit the best team in MLB against the best team in Japan.

Japan has been playing top-flight baseball for quite some time, but few in the U.S took them seriously until about 20 years ago. In 1990, journeyman Cecil Fielder triumphantly returned to the U.S. after a stint in Japan. The hulking slugger wowed Detroit fans with 51 home runs and 132 RBIs.

In 1995, Dodgers pitcher Hideo Nomo was voted rookie of the year in the National League. In the late 90s, Hideki Irabu helped the Yankees win two World Series. Today every MLB team scours the Far East for all the top talent they can sign.

PHOTO: New York Yankees Hideki Matsui (L) greets Alex Rodriguez during introductions before Game 1 of the 2009 Major League Baseball World Series against the Philadelphia Phillies in New York, October 28, 2009. REUTERS/Mike Segar

“It was neat,” Boston defenseman Derek Morris said. “We were trying to yell and scream to each other, but you couldn’t hear yourself it was so loud. It was amazing. We wanted to win that game for the fans. It’s a fairy-tale ending. It was pretty special.”

While backyard and frozen pond hockey are ubiquitous parts of the Canadian winter landscape, the NHL borrowed the concept from U.S. college hockey. The 2001 “Cold War game” between arch rivals University of Michigan and Michigan State University set the world record for the largest crowd at an ice hockey game at 74,544.

In 2003, the NHL played its first regular season game outdoors in Edmonton. It featured the Edmonton Oilers and the Montreal Canadiens. The event was later re-branded “Winter Classic”.

After Fenway Park, the old Yankee Stadium in the Bronx seems like a logical venue, but the Mets have expressed a great deal of interest in hosting the event at Citi Field, in Flushing Meadows.

“I’ve had several conversations with Commissioner (Gary) Bettman and have informed him that we’d love to have the game,” Jeff Wilpon, Chief Operating Officer for the New York Mets, told the New York Post.

“Gary has told me that he and his team will come out and do a site visit early in the year, so I know that we are going to be under consideration.”

TV network NBC, whose partnership in the endeavor has been a significant factor in the Classic’s success, is rumored to have cold feet over presenting a single-market game between the New York Rangers and New York Islanders to a national audience. The 2000 World Series, a subway ride battle between the Mets and the Yankees, was one of the lowest rated in baseball history, according to Fox sports.

“We’d like to have an experience like they had in Boston, where we’d have a few hockey events and open the rink to the community for a couple of weeks,” Wilpon said. “We think we’d put on a great show for the NHL, for hockey, and for the city. We have great interest in having the game at Citi Field.”

PHOTO: REUTERS/Brian Snyder Philadelphia Flyers center Blair Betts chase the puck in the second period of the NHL’s Winter Classic hockey game at Fenway Park in Boston, Massachusetts January 1, 2010.

The NFL’s response was to point to the limitations of that telephone survey, saying its own study on the long-term effects of concussion would provide a much better picture, but facing growing criticism from outside experts, the players union and members of Congress, the League’s stance now appears to be somewhat different.

On Sunday, the NFL said it would support research by its most vocal critics and said that concussions can have lasting consequences.

“It’s huge that the NFL actively gets behind this research,” Robert Cantu, the co-director at Boston University’s research program, told the Associated Press. “It forwards the research. It allows players to realize the NFL is concerned about the possibility that they could have this problem and that the NFL is doing everything it can to find out about the risks and the preventive strategies that can be implemented.”

There have been several stark examples of NFL retirees suffering problems in this area.

A post-mortem on former Pittsburgh Steelers lineman Justin Strzelczyk in 2004 concluded that his depression and dementia were exacerbated by chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a neurodegenerative disease known to cause cognitive decline, behavioral abnormalities and ultimately dementia. CTE is usually associated with athletes vulnerable to head injuries such as boxers. Strzelczyk was only 36, but his brain looked like that of an 80-year-old.

In another case, neuropathologists concluded that former Philadelphia Eagles player Andre Waters’ depression and suicide in 2006 were the result of concussions.

Last week, the National Hockey League tackled a similar problem during a meeting of its board of governors in Pebble Beach, California. Neuropathologists at Boston University say tests on the brain of Reggie Fleming, an enforcer who delivered and absorbed thousands of bare-knuckles punches to the head during his 12-year NHL career, also suffered from CTE.

So far, the NHL has refused to expand the discussion beyond so-called predatory hits while avoiding the issue of fist fights altogether, an aspect of the game that consistently brings the crowd to its feet.

Before Fleming’s death last summer at 73 years old, his son Chris posted a series of videos on Youtube where he explains how his father started experiencing manic depression in his 40s, drank excessively and exhibited short-term memory problems by the time he entered his 50s.

Photo: Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger is secured to a stretcher after being injured during the second quarter of their NFL football game against the Cleveland Browns in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, December 28, 2008.  REUTERS/ Jason Cohn

(PHOTO CREDIT: Rush Limbaugh pictured in a file photo. REUTERS/Micah Walte)

In one of the most anticipated games of the season, in two rabidly partisan Midwestern states, Brett Favre has gone from beloved icon of the Green Bay Packers to leader of the hated Minnesota Vikings. The dislike reached Hatfield-McCoy proportions Monday night when Favre triumphed 30-23 over the team he proudly represented for sixteen years.According to the New York Times, the showdown attracted an average of 21.8 million viewers, the biggest audience in the history of cable television, exceeding the 18.6 million who watched the Philadelphia Eagles-Dallas Cowboys game in September 2008 on ESPN.In an interview to ESPN, Chicago Bears quarterback Jay Cutler said Favre is the best quarterback in the NFC North. “[Favre] played really well,” Cutler said. “I think we kind of would have liked to have seen Green Bay beat him to even out the conference a little and give those guys a loss, but he played fabulous from start to finish. It was a good game.”These days, the aging Cajun plays with the allure of a fine French wine: the older he gets, the better he gets… at least early in the season. Favre who turns 40 on October 10th has a perfect 4-0 record, and his surgically repaired right arm seems to have new life.A medical team performed surgery on Favre’s biceps last May, cutting the partially torn tendon to alleviate the pain that prompted him to prematurely announce his retirement for a second year in a row before signing with the Vikings.Last year, Favre’s season with the New York Jets started well; in week four he threw six touchdowns against the Arizona Cardinals, a personal best and one fewer than the NFL record. By week 12, the Jets had compiled an 8-3 record, including a win over the previously undefeated Tennessee Titans.However, the Jets lost four out of the last five games of the season including the final game against the Miami Dolphins, who had acquired Chad Pennington after he was released from the Jets to make room for Favre. In those five games Favre threw eight interceptions and only two touchdown passes, bringing his season total to twenty-two of each.In an interview Dr. Anthony Romeo, section head of shoulder and elbow surgery at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, said “Brett Favre’s probably going to get stronger and stronger as the season goes on,” “The chances for this deteriorating are far less.”

Rose protested his innocence for years, but eventually admitted to gambling on baseball games in his 2004 autobiography, “My Prison Without Bars“.

Former Philadelphia Phillies slugger and Hall of Fame inductee, Mike Schmidt wrote an opinion piece recently saying his former team mate is having to sell his autograph to make ends meet while steroid cheats are raking in millions of dollars.

“Pete bet on his team to win and has been banished for life. (Others) bet that they would get bigger, stronger and have an advantage over everyone and that they wouldn’t get caught. Which is worse? Does the penalty fit the crime?”

Should Brett Favre come out of retirement…again?

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PHOTO: New York Jets quarterback Brett Favre leaves the field after throwing an interception against the Miami Dolphins during the fourth quarter of their NFL football game in East Rutherford, New Jersey, December 28, 2008. REUTERS/Ray Stubblebine