The Rays somehow made the play-offs this season and are close to Costner's heart if not his house, which is in California.

That's no excuse for the plodding song - "It's All Up To You" - being almost as tedious as three hours of Dances With Wolves, another Costner epic.

The benefit of the mp3 of the song here is that you can thankfully skip through it faster than a DVD of the Costner-directed movie. Warning: Don't click on it. You will regret it.

Sample lyric:

"You got to swing for the fence, give a hundred percent,
Dust yourself off, get up and do it again.
You're the only one that can make your dreams come true.
You're the only one, it's all up to you."

We can only imagine what band Milan goalkeeper Christian Abbiati would write a song for.

Perhaps he could play tambourine for French pseudo-metal band Ad Hominem, a musical outfit of no significance except for songs with not very catchy choruses like:

"Auschwitz rules over the Torah,
Auschwitz rules over the Koran,
Auschwitz rules over the Bible… "

You get the picture.

Despite their awesome rhythm section Ad Hominem are thankfully largely irrelevant.

The same cannot be said for Abbiati who is a goalkeeper for one of the biggest and most popular football clubs in the world. Recently, he unfortunately revealed:

"I am not ashamed to proclaim my political beliefs. I share the ideals of fascism, such as the fatherland, and the values of the Catholic religion. Within Fascism, I disagree with racial laws, allegiance to Hitler, and the war but I like the capacity Fascism had to secure law and order."

Perhaps, he likes to organise his defence.

Memo to Abiatti: Fascism is not something to be flippant about. It is not a tattoo, hairstyle, or flashy new car that you show off.

Fascism is not a good idea. If it was, we may have avoided a little thing called World War Two we had in the middle of the last century, an event that sent a seismic crack through the entire planet.

Regardless of political persuasion, sport often has the opportunity to lead societies in how they view themselves and others.

It is one reason why football leagues around the world have launched campaigns urging respect to referees and anti-racist organisations like Kick It Out.

Last month, football world governing body FIFA, fined the Croatian Football Association the rough equivalent of $30,000 for the racist behaviour of some spectators at a World Cup match.

This followed a smaller fine from UEFA during this year's European Championship for racist chanting.

That's just this year.

Obviously, fining national associations minimal amounts doesn't seem to have any affect.

Maybe there's a use for Kevin Costner and his band after all.