mike

Parts are somewhat funny. Other parts are pretty weird. Check it out though. Don’t worry that you are watching the wrong one if there is an odd Tom Cruise opening, I don’t understand it.

Stumbled over to Athletics Nation today and they had some pictures of the new proposed Athletics stadium. The outfield features look very cool. I guess there is no skyline to look out on in centerfield so they filled that in with something a little different. In left field its similar to what’s in centerfield, somewhat similar to Petco.

For all sorts of other stadiums goodness, reguardless of the sports. Always check out ballparks.com. They don’t have these latest pictures, but I’m sure they will soon enough. They have pictures of stadiums past, present, and future plus all sorts of facts.

10.05.05, Flyers return to the ice against the Rangers. I can’t wait. This free agent frenzy over the past week has been tough to follow. I’m not going to have any clue who is on what team. I do know we will have a solid lineup with Forsberg. I was sad to see Roenick go but Forsberg is a definite upgrade. Just need to re-sign Gagne, Esche, and Johnsson and I guess thats it. But who knows what Clarke is up to. Last week Sports Guy had a great article about the new CBA and some suggestions he had. For some reason a lot of people said he was bashing hockey, which doesn’t make sense if you’ve read the article.

ESPN has been doing a decent job at covering all the signings. About the same level of excitement that they had before the lockout. I need more info that they are providing and decided to check out TSN. Their NHL section has all sorts of information, including up-to-date daily transactions and team-by-team rosters and salaries to see where everyone stands with cap space. Apparently TSN is Canada’s version of ESPN, they also run an NHL channel, that needs to be available here in the States.

One other bit today was the NCAA banning Indian mascots in the postseason. The teams can still use the mascots during the regular season. This makes sense because this was the most pressing issue facing the NCAA. Its amazing how every decision they pass down is the wrong one. No playoffs in football, not letting Mike Williams return to USC, and they go on and on. How does this even make sense? Is it offensive? Are the Montreal Canadians offensive? What about The Americans? Ray Ratto on ESPN has an excellent article pointing out how ridiculous this really is. If we continue this line of thought mascots should be eliminated entirely as to not offend anyone.

From now on when I have a thought or idea I should just put it up here. Then, when it comes true the proof will be right there. What am I talking about? Bobby Abreu of course.

First it was the home run derby. I couldn’t believe no one was picking him to win it. I figured he was going to hit all 10 off the fence and not get any homers or figure it out early and blow everyone away. Turned out he put on the best home run derby performance ever.

During his first round as he was knocking ball after ball out of the park I thought to myself that this is going to have some serious effects on his swing, he’s probably not going to do anything after this. Up until today he had no homers and 4 rbi since the derby. Today he hit that first inning grand slam, hopefully getting back to his normal self. This morning there was an article in the Inquirer about how the derby messed up his swing and he’s finally starting to get it back. Now they write about this, I thought about it a month ago when it was happening, if I could only manage to crank out more than a paragraph on any subject then I could work for the Inquirer and hang with my buddy Stephen A.

Speaking of Stephen A. you may know that I’m not a fan. He drove me nuts on Dream Job and most of his other appearances on ESPN. However so far I’ve enjoyed his new show. Monday was the first episode, an hour-long interview with Allen Iverson. Not fair to judge the entire show on this episode because I would watch a monkey interview AI as long as the monkey just let AI speak. But if there is someone on that I want to hear from then I’m defitely going to tune in. Stephen A. doesn’t get in the way and asks a lot of solid questions.

Back to the Phillies. Tuesday night’s game finally did me in. I wasn’t the only one to give up. This blog from Balls, Sticks & Stuff explains everything I was thinking. Its one of my favorite Phillies blogs that I manage to check out everyday. I did give up last night, of course missing one of the craziest endings to a game in years. But they had to screw things up to get to that point and they won by a mistake, so I would have pulled just as much hair out as the night before. Today they were back with a day game so I really had nothing better to do. Bobby’s 1st inning slam roped me in and it was one of their better games in a while. Myers got another win with Pratt behind the plate. I’ve been saying all year that Pratt should ALWAYS catch Myers. He just pitches better with Pratt behind the plate. Also on Pratt I think he might be our most consistant hitter. Everytime he plays he seems to go 1-4. In those three outs he looks like he’s never been to the plate before but he usually gets that one hit. Today it was a homer but he crushed the ball in two other at-bats.

I’m going to enable comments for this one. I’ll do that from time to time if the post is the kind that might get comments. I’m sure it won’t, but someday. This is another new system so I really don’t even know how commenting works.

The time is almost upon us. Tonight was another sign on the path to Opening Day, the annual Fantasy Baseball Draft. This year’s version was thankfully completed prior to the first pitch being thrown, which can’t be said for every season. This season has a much different fell than any other I can remember.

The last few pre-seasons have been filled with hope, the hope that we would finally topple the Braves and return to the post-season. At the very least we would be able to grab the wild card and see at least one meaningful October game. Prior to these recent years we knew we were down right terrible and didn’t give a second thought to those wild hopes. After all the failures I haven’t been all that excited.

Each of the other teams in the NL East has improved in some way. The Braves got Tim Hudson, my favorite pitcher up until the day he was traded. He was even the ace of my fantasy staff until tonight when I traded him. The Mets signed Beltran and Pedro, overpaying both but paying $100 million for something worth only $50 million still yields something worth $50 million. The Marlins got Carlos Delgado, and who knows if playing somewhere with a little more exposure than Toronto will have a positive or negative effect on him. Then there are the Expos/Nationals who don’t have any players but getting out of Montreal and not having to play in Puerto Rico has to be worth 15 wins.

That leaves our beloved Phils to sign Jon Lieber. Trade for Kenny Lofton. And? So essentially we have the same team as last year, just with a new coach. So it could go either way. My feelings have been that it will be a middle of the road year. The Braves will lead the way possibly chased by the Marlins or Mets with one of them staying behind to make a race for third somewhat interesting. I do however love stats, and predictions, especially those so mathematical that I can only assume that they make sense to someone. This is where Baseball Prospectus comes in. This site is for the Baseball nut even possibly above my level (not just meaning willing to spend $40/year, I’m not there yet). They have been leaking out some of their season preview during the week and strangely enough they have the Phillies winning the division. Now this gives me hope, their predictions are the best. Its possible that they are just doing this to get me to pay for the year subscription. So I’m not getting to excited. But there must be some reason that they came out on top. I guess I’m going to have to watch and find out.

The first weekend of the tourney is done and I’m sitting in a comfortable 3rd place in the pool I’m in. Plus, I’m the only one left with all my Final Four teams left. I’ve only lost Maryland and Kentucky from my Elite Eight. I’m able to live with the Kentucky loss since so many people had them in the Final Four, plus it was the most exciting game of the first two rounds.

I think every year back to the first tourneys that I remember. Back before the internet and continuous bottom line. Every year on Selection Sunday I would scour the house for graph paper to make my brackets in time so that I was ready to fill them in. They always said them so fast that I couldn’t write them all down. Then when the games started and they would only occasionally update the score, instead of the constant updates, and I would miss some and my Mom was supposed to catch them for me but she would drop the ball. Now its all about the picks and thinking that since you followed the NCAA pretty well this year the picks should be no problem. Then you lose a Final Four team or two the first weekend and want to kill yourself. I can’t really say which time I like better, but the first one doesn’t happen anymore.

I’ve got my Spring Break pictures formatted and just got Evan’s so I will have to format his then work on the write up, shouldn’t be much longer now.