Sports Today: Something like a happy ending to high school scandal

Joey Votto did not, but he avoided making some dubious history by walking in the ninth inning.

The American League won.

Anything else going on?

As far as dog days of summer go, this is pretty much the doggiest for this sports fan.

(And there still won’t be baseball tomorrow, either. Thanks again for nothing, Bud!)

We've already talked about whether or not the Cincinnati Reds will be jettisoning more of their players between now and the trade deadline.

We've looked at just how good (or bad) they were on the field in the first half.

With the signing of Hunter Greene, another piece of the future is secured.

The NBA offseason has transitioned into the period where guys you may have vaguely heard of find new teams, but soon there will be football.

Not soon enough, of course.

College basketball teams can do more practicing during the summer than they used to, so that’s good fodder for us scribes. There’s also more player movement throughout the year than there used to be.

And, of course, you never know when some bad injury news is going to, um, break.

RELATED: 6 things to know about Dayton freshman Kostas Antetokounmpo 

I guess we can always count on high school sports to provide drama then, right?

For better or for worse…

It looks like there will be a relatively happy ending to the bizarre incident at the Dayton Public Schools that involved an ineligible player, allegations of throwing a game (or at least briefly trying to, however half-heartedly) and of course adults bickering about all of it.

(If you haven't followed this saga, you can read up here.)

There are not really any winners here, but at least the Dunbar football coach (Darran Powell) who was according to his account of the events put in a no-win situation when his boss (former Dunbar and Ohio State point guard Mark Baker) told him to lose a game to Belmont on purpose has gotten a reprieve from the school board.

They voted to reinstate him as coach of the Wolverines last night, a move that seems fair based on public accounts of what happened in Week 10 last year and figures to be positive for the Dunbar players, who are unfairly caught in the middle of all this.

The city-wide athletics department is still going to have to deal with the consequences of probation, but at least there’s some stability for the players, a group that includes at least two highly regarded recruits in Tavion Thomas and Joseph Scates.

RELATED: Oklahoma gets verbal commitment from local star

A third with several Division I offers, Antwuan Johnson, has transferred to Wayne, but it's not hard to imagine there might have been a mass exodus if there was a coaching change.

Dunbar has been on the upswing lately, and hopefully that continues.

Hopefully some adults learned some hard lessons about how to avoid screwing things up for the players they are supposed to be setting a good example for, too.