A Little Customs Tailoring

The best ritual in all of sports is the postgame handshake line in the NHL, which has the humblest players in the four major professional leagues--suggesting that a firm grip on reality begins with a firm grip. So let's require handshake lines in every sport. Shaq , Kobe. Kobe, Shaq .

But why stop there? Let's take every great custom peculiar to a sport and make it mandatory in all sports.

Baseball will benefit from soccer's system of promotion and relegation, as the Royals and the Pirates get demoted to Triple A next spring, replaced in the big leagues by the Charlotte Knights and the Round Rock Express.

Soccer players kick the ball out of play when an opponent is hurt, knowing that the injured player's team will give the ball back on the ensuing throw-in. This quaint notion--that it's more sporting to tend to the injured than to take advantage of them--carries lessons for the world, not just the World Cup.

Adopt golf's match-play courtesy of conceding putts, and we'll save time by conceding dunks (to LeBron James ), second-service returns (to Roger Federer ) and NFL stars (to Paris Hilton ). Pick that up. It's a gimme.

Every league should distribute the oversized novelty paychecks presented to the winners of professional tennis tournaments. It's the most appropriate way to pay A-Rod his average biweekly salary of $484,615.39.

Let's follow the lead of the Indianapolis 500 and toast all great victories with a milk bath, not a champagne shower. It's good for the skin, and milk allows teetotalers, like Heat guard Dwyane Wade , to fully participate in their team's celebration. You just gave 110%, enjoy a gallon of 2%. (The lactose-intolerant are on their own.)

Speaking of the Heat: After winning the NBA Finals last week, they didn't cut down the nets--as champions do at every other level of basketball--because a two-dollar nylon necklace doesn't quite cut it when you have a platinum gong on a gold rope in a locker room lockbox. From now on, all teams should celebrate titles the way they do at lower levels of the sport. This means World Series winners will go to Dairy Queen in full uniform.

As for full uniforms: Put one on, Bill Parcells . Why are baseball managers the only coaches who wear what the players do? If Dusty Baker requires wristbands to manage the Cubs, we should also have to endure Coach K in a tank top, Andy Reid in skintight stretch pants and Bela Karolyi in a star-spangled singlet.

If the Kentucky Derby teaches us anything, it's that all postgame interviews--in every sport, no matter the venue--should be conducted by a woman on horseback.