Random Fives

Let's wrap up the week with some completely random lists of five.

Five TV Shows I Am Perfectly Happy To Have Never Seen
1. Glee
2. Desperate Housewives
3. Any televised dancing show
4. Any show where some woman talks to ghosts or dead people
5. Ugly Betty

Five Great TV Shows I Watch That Deserve More Attention Than They Are Getting
1. Community
2. Parks & Rec
3. Party Down
4. Parenthood
5. Chuck

Five Bands That Are Apparently Cool That I Heard At Least One Song From and Didn't Like At All
1. MGMT
2. Wilco
3. Arctic Monkeys
4. Vampire Weekend
5. Phoenix

Five Singers/Bands I Do Like (might surprise some people)
1. Taylor Swift
2. Ke$ha
3. Katy Perry
4. Fergie
5. Paramore

Five Guys Currently Really Underachieving on my Fantasy Team
1. Raul Ibanez
2. Wandy Rodriguez
3. Clayton Kershaw
4. Hideki Okajima
5. Victor Martinez...hopefully the bomb last night is the start of something

Five Teams I Will Always Hate, No Matter What*
1. New York Yankees
2. Los Angeles Lakers
3. New York Jets
4. New York Knicks
5. University of Arizona Wildcats
* Unless A.J. ended up playing for one of them. Which is a blog for another day.

2010's first Joe Morgan blog

It's the second inning of the season opening Red Sox-Yankees tilt on ESPN2 and I have decided that a healthy way for me to deal with my ongoing Joe Morgan related rage issues is just to blog about it. So that's exactly what I'm going to do, with no plan at all.

* In the first, a fly ball was caught for an out in front of the 379 foot sign in left-center. Hall of Famer Joe's crack analysis? "That's the deepest part of the park (beat)...as far as left field goes."

* Top of the second, Jorge Posada clanks a cheap homer off the Pesky Pole in right. Joe describes the swing using the term "hands" roughly 37 times. Then he speculates what the distance might have been. My son A.J. is three and I'm pretty sure he knows that it's 302 down the line in right at Fenway. As for the pole itself, Morgan actually asks out loud if it is nicknamed for former Red Sox shortstop Johnny Pesky. First trip to Fenway Park, Joe? Just a reminder: this is a Hall of Fame player on the number one baseball broadcasting team for the largest sports provider in the known universe.

* New Yankee center fielder Curtis Granderson absolutely crushes a home run to dead center field, over the bullpen. "That's why they got him, for his defense and his speed on the base paths," observes The Village Idiot. I would almost think he's making fun of himself but there is a zero percent chance that he is that clever.

* Okay, I have a little bit of a hard time not being able to root for a big, beefy, 6'7" dude named C.C. But I'd be lying if I didn't say I'm absolutely looking forward to that wide load blowing out a knee or a shoulder sometime over the next season or two. I'm sorry, but it's true. I'd root against my own mother if she wore the pinstripes.

* Underrated side ESPN broadcast pet peeve: Jon Miller's obnoxious pronunciation of Latin names. Everyone else calls our new third baseman Adrian BELL-tray. Miller? Bel-TRAY. Annoying.

* Joe just explained that beginning one's Yankee career with a home run is preferable to going "0-for-10 and looking for that first hit." He is getting paid a lot of money to tell us insightful things like this. Really.

* Morgan made it to no outs in the bottom of the third before working in his first Cincinnati reference. Pay the under! Meanwhile, Jon Miller is making an actual case for the second Red Sox game of the year to be "Opening Day," for the people that don't like opening night. That game will be after this one, which, you know, opened the season. And it will take place roughly 40 hours from now. Opening Day...really?

* Mike Cameron just got doubled off first on a routine line drive that wasn't hit very hard. In a related story, I think I need a drink.

* How many hits do you think you'd get Googling "Joe Morgan Is An Idiot?" I'll give you a hint: more than 12 million.

* I don't want to say this game has gone completely to shit but the Yanks just swiped home on a first and third double-steal and Joe convinced himself that he somehow made a great call related to this. Just kill me. I'm on board for this "Opening Day on Tuesday" idea now. Let's do it.

* Quick question: how much interest am I really supposed to show when my wife starts asking me about kids' bedspreads that she's showing me online? I think it's a trap. I'm positive she just showed me the same one twice and asked which I like better.

* Sox fan buddy embedded in NYC checked in on Twitter to let me know how good I have it with Joe and Co., since he is stuck with the Yank-jazeera broadcast on YES. And yes, that's definitely worse.

* Joe just stated a Sabathia statistic that was blatantly incorrect (he was off by 300%), then referred to an Albert Pujols-Big Papi conversation about hitting, then disavowed any knowledge of any quote in there when the actual quote was placed on the screen with a graphic. Morgan practically pulled a muscle running backwards screaming, "Don't mind me, I'm just talking out my ass again!" Oh, and the Red Sox still have exactly one hit tonight.

* Marco Scutaro just made some new friends at the Fens with a two out, RBI single. I think Boston might love this guy this year. Worth mentioning: Yankee left fielder Brett Gardner completely airmailed the throw back in, and for the life of me I cannot understand why the Yanks didn't spend a few extra bucks to keep Johnny Damon, and I really hope it bites them in the ass this year. How bad does a throw from left have to be to make you think that Damon could have done a better job? Yikes.

* YOOOOOUK! Makes it 5-4 with a two run triple to right, thanks to a horrible angle taken by Nick Swisher.

* Sox tie it up, only to give it back with a weird kind of regular season bullpen move I have learned to live with from Terry Francona: he leaves Ramon Ramirez in to face Tex and A-Rod, who each get a solid rip. Enter Okajima. Why not do that to start the inning if you're going to pull the move with no outs?

* Apparently Chan Ho Park is still in the majors because he is now pitching for the Yankees. I'll go ahead and feel good about this. Chan Ho Park is their 7th inning righty set up guy? Honestly?

* Park just fanned Jacoby looking on a big, loopy curve. Ellsbury has done nothing good tonight, and I'll go ahead and say it: I don't like the uniform number switch either. He looks smaller.

* Dustin Pedroia knots it with a bomb over the Monster. This now feels like a game we should win.

* Wild pitch, wild pitch...8-7 lead. Watching the wheels come off like this for the Janks is quite enjoyable. "I still think he should have caught it," notes Morgan, referring to a ball that missed the plate by about ten feet. And now Joba's coming in. We've got plenty of time left for a brawl, folks.

* Clinging to a one run lead heading to the 8th and yes, I'm already preemptively sweating over Papelbon time.

* Okay, it took him nearly eight full innings but I think Joe Morgan actually said something relevant, raising the possibility that the Yankees middle relief might be a problem. Granted, this was after watching Chan Ho Park and Damaso Marte enter, pour gasoline on the infield, and set it alight, but still...a cogent point from Joe!

* Daniel Bard in the 8th is going to become really reliable and fun to watch.

* However, Steven Tyler in the 7th and Neil Diamond in the 8th is a little much for a Sunday night in April. Honestly. Meanwhile, my wife said that this comment makes me sound like my father. Which is ridiculous, because there is no way he stayed awake for either one tonight.

* In addition to the soft, gaping underbelly of the Bronx bullpen, it also warrants mentioning that anything hit up the middle between Jeter and Cano is a base hit. Any. Thing.

* Pap wraps it up in the 9th to finish off a lovely, come from behind Opening Night win. It wasn't pretty, and neither was the color commentary coming from the Big Red Idiot in the booth, but I'll take it.

Poor little A-Rod is tired

Slumping A-Rod to be sidelined two days with fatigue

Honestly.

That headline is pretty much the story. The guy's season in the majors started on May 8. So in less than six weeks of playing baseball, A-Rod has become so tired that the Yankees need to sit him down for not just one, but two ballgames.

Well, he did have surgery, so you may ask yourself, Is he sore? "No, he's not sore," said Yankee manager Joe Girardi from his spot on the hot seat.

Is he injured? Nope. He has played every game since his return.

Does he just suck now? A ha! We might be on to something. He is hitting .145 in June. He's 0 for his last 15. And for the season, he is batting a robust .212. This is probably as good a time as any to mention that his salary this year is $32 million, which doesn't include the $1 million portion of his signing bonus he received this year. I would calculate what that is going to cost on a per game basis, but that's tough to do since I don't know how often he will be too tired to go out and play nine innings of baseball.

The moral of all this? If you're a major leaguer that does 'roids, you deserve every single bad thing that happens to you.

A-Rod: Still lying and cheating

It turns out the liar and cheater is an even bigger liar and cheater, including lying about cheating. Am I surprised? Not even a little bit.

A-Roid Book Bombshell

The significant details are that he's been juicing from high school until he was a Yankee, putting to bed the ridiculous notion that he "only" cheated for a few years with the Rangers. Now, I don't usually wish ill on other athletes, even ones I hate. But A-Roid deserves every bad thing that happens to him forever. He was an incredible athlete who had no need to cheat, and yet he did it anyway*. He blatantly lied about the cheating, even after he was caught dead to rights. I also love the Yankee fans who couldn't forgive him fast enough. "It's okay, because he admitted it!" was an actual Facebook post I read from a Yankee fan. Is it still okay, pinstripers? What more does he have to do to prove that he is a vile, despicable human being? Where's the line? Everyone should be done with this chump. Everyone.

* Or maybe he wasn't actually any good to begin with. This was always my biggest gripe with Barry Bonds roiding up--Bonds was a phenomenal baseball player before he ever touched drugs. If he stayed clean and played out his career, there is no doubt that he would have been regarded as one of the top five players of all time. Sure, maybe he would have ended up with "only" 600 homers if he didn't hit the juice. But he could run, he could field, he could do it all...he was the epitome of a five tool player. And he threw that all away just so he could turn the McGwire-Sosa "chicks dig the long ball" spotlight squarely on himself. I can understand why a guy struggling to make a roster would consider trying to get an edge. That at least makes sense on some level. But Bonds? Why? I don't get it. Which brings us back to A-Roid, whom I thought was in the same situation, which would have made his cheating just as stupid, if not moreso, depending on the time table. But now comes word that he has been doing this since high school, in which case he might never have been good enough to begin with. Maybe Chem-Free Alex is a fringe major leaguer, just a utility infielder. Obviously his massive, bordering-on-mentally-ill mind and ego never could have handled that. But now one thing is clear: we will never know the whole truth about A-Roid. And that's fine, because he is 100% dead to me. He's a mincing, prancing, self-obsessed, cheating phony, and not trading for him is the best transaction the Red Sox have ever been near. Getting him would have been worse than trading away Bagwell.

(P.S. I would be remiss if I didn't mention the fact that his own Yankee teammates apparently nicknamed him "Bitch Tits" because the chemicals caused such an absurd change in his pecs. This is unfortunate, because it is a really horrible moniker and it is one that is absolutely going to be hurled at him from many places and people, including drunken fans at Fenway Park.)

(P.P.S. I think my favorite part of his comments today is the genuine enthusiasm he musters at the current Yankee two game "winning streak." Do I need to mention that their payroll is once again north of $200 million? Ladies and gentlemen, the third place finishers in the AL East in 2008, and on pace to be entrenched there once again...your New York Yankees!)

Boo!

Teixeira Expects To Be Booed At Fenway Tonight

No shit.

The Boston Globe proposes another idea: that fans simply turn their backs and give him the silent treatment. While this sounds different, and is some attempt at taking the moral high road, I'm not interested. Sports is the last place in which booing is thoroughly acceptable, and if I had a ticket tonight, I would boo Teixeira until my throat was raw. He's a fake, overpaid, money-grubbing douchebag who acts like the Red Sox somehow did him wrong during their courtship of him, when apparently he, or at least his wife, had every intent of simply signing with the Yankees all along anyway. Just like A-Rod, this seems to be a case in which I wanted the guy at the time, but was then ecstatic that the Sox didn't end up with him. He enters tonight hitting .222, for the record, despite the fact that balls have been flying out of the new Yankee stadium at a record pace. By the way, there are plenty of really good seats available to see last year's third place finishers in the AL East if you are so inclined. Have I mentioned that Teixeira has never finished in the top 5 for MVP voting, has never been out of the first round of the playoffs, and still got $180 million? Nice.

But I digress. The booing. It's not just for Doucheface. It's for anyone that puts on the pinstripes, period. And I mean that. If my own mother discovered that she has a nasty slider and is death on righties and the Yanks signed her as an 8th inning relief specialist, I would boo the hell out of her if she came in to pitch a tie game at Fenway. I love you, Mom, but I totally would. If any of my friends played for the Yankees? BOOOOOOOOO. The only scenario I can come up with that might even provide the slightest hint of conflict is if my son got drafted by them. And honestly, I don't know what I would do then. Demand a trade, probably.

But anyone else? There is no high road. If you're in the pinstripes at Fenway, you are the enemy. Period. I wish that booing was socially acceptable in lots more situations: poor service in restaurants, when the blackjack dealer keeps pulling five card 21s, and pretty much any trip to the DMV, just for starters. But I feel no need or inclination to make some highbrow attempt at being perceived as a "better" fan. Mark Teixeira led us on with no intention of ever signing with us in order to extract the most cash that he could, and then he signed with our hated rivals. If that's not worthy of our vocal derision at the ballpark, then nothing is.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

Baseball auction recap

Fantasy baseball geekery of the highest order ahead; proceed at your own risk.

On Monday night I had an auction draft for a first year fantasy baseball league. Actually, it isn't my first time playing with these guys. Most of them are friends with my wife from college and I've been playing in their leagues for a few years now. But this was the first time we switched from heads-up scoring to straight Roto, and more importantly, the first time we did an auction instead of a draft. All good things. We also use not just four, or even five, but six categories each for hitting and pitching, adding OPS and holds to the standard 5X5 format.

I didn't come in with one firm plan in mind, because that can often be a road to ruin if your fellow owners don't cooperate. Instead, I thought there were two likely scenarios on how this would go with a bunch of guys that have never participated in a baseball auction before: either people would be gun shy, and there would be great buys early, or they would throw money around like drunken sailors on shore leave during the draft's early moments.

It was mostly the latter.

I had designs on grabbing one of the top three players on my board: Hanley Ramirez, Albert Pujols, or David Wright, and I was prepared to spend $40 of my $260 budget on one. That didn't happen, as each name was thrown out very early and they sold for $42, $45, and $43 respectively. Jose Reyes, Ryan Braun, and Miguel Cabrera quickly joined the $40 club as well, and I bought none of them. Time to adjust the strategy on the fly. I had a master list of top hitters broken up into two tiers. I was immediately shut out of my tier one guys, but many of my stud tier twos remained. I entered the draft planning on getting at least three of them. I proceeded to happily double that.

Who would have guessed that my first purchase would wear the dreaded pinstripes? For $34, come on down, Mark Teixeira. Sure, I hate him, but he is going to rake balls into that short porch in right and he will post elite numbers in five categories. Next up: Astros 1B Lance Berkman for $33, an outright steal at that price compared to what his slugging brethren were fetching. I don't expect steals in the high teens again, but as long as he is mostly healthy he will fill up all six offensive categories nicely. My third acquisition was Dodgers OF Matt Kemp for $26, and that's the last time for a long time that he will be going for sub-$30 in any league. He hits, his power is ticking up, he swipes bags (35 steals last year) and now he will be in a lineup with Manny Ramirez for an entire season. Kemp is also all of 24 years old. Boom.

I grabbed Evan Longoria shortly thereafter, loving his upside at the hot corner for $30. I gritted my teeth and watched my beloved Dustin Pedroia go for the same price. I love Dusty--I mean, he's a Sun Devil and a Red Sock, come on!--but I just couldn't pay the frieght on that. I really hope he proves me wrong. Diamondbacks starter Dan Haren became my first pitcher, and the key to my staff. I planned to load up on cheap pitchers later and did exactly that, but I needed one reliable guy. Haren fit the bill.

Steals are often a tough category to manage, and if you don't come away with them on draft day they can be particularly difficult to acquire, so I had every intention of coming away with a number I thought would put me in the top 3-4 in the league. I did that and then some, grabbing Dreamy Jacoby Ellsbury and soon-to-bounce-back superstar Carl Crawford. Those two alone should tally over 100 combined thefts this year. I grabbed some great cheap speed as well: Rangers rookie Elvis Andrus and Astros' 2B Kaz Matusi should combine for over 50 and they cost me just a buck each.

Everything sounds great so far, right? Not so fast. In the early and mid-early rounds, I kept grabbing offensive studs at reasonable rates. Kevin Youkilis, come on down. Jason Bay with a full season in Fenway? Yes, please! This was all great, but before I knew it, I was down to less than $20 with about 16 spots to fill. In a way, I had hoped that this would become my strategy all along, for a few reasons. First, I was prepared for the "$1 endgame" of the draft, and that worked out as well as I could have hoped, as the only thing close to a $1 reach was my backup catcher--I got both of my backstops for a buck each, in fact. But at the end, there were plenty of players left that I would have been happy to add to my squad, exactly as I thought there would be. I cornered the market on the Red Sox 5th starter slot by grabbing the entire trio of Brad Penny, Clay Buchholz, and John Smoltz for a buck a pop. I'll shelve Smoltz on the DL and maybe stash Clay on my bench for a bit to see how things play out. He has been lights out this spring, and his upside if he grabs a full time rotation spot could be a gigantic difference-maker. Some of my end game $1 pickups that I think will be worth much more than what I paid: Chris Ray, Juan Rivera, Hideki Okajima, and Damaso Marte, to name a few.

I predicted that middle relievers would be undervalued, even with holds as a category, and they were. Does it really take much to figure out that closers have less value than ever when saves are only 1/12th of a team's score? I guess it does, because mediocre closers went for double and triple the prices paid to great middle men. I only have one legit 40 save closer right now, but I plan to play the waiver wire like a harp, stream pitchers on and off my roster all season, and trade some steals for what I need in mid summer.

It will be a fun league and an enjoyable season. My team is not an impregnable juggernaut like I thought it might be, but I certainly have strengths to work from. I'll be in the money, and if things break right, I make timely additions, and I swing a key trade or two I think I could be in position to win the whole thing.

A baseball headline that makes me giddy

Joba's Fastball Still Losing Heat

Obviously I hate Joba Chamberlain. That pretty much goes without saying. But I think he may have set the record for shortest amount of time it took me to outright despise an athlete. Granted, the pinstripes alone got him halfway there, but he was instantly in my "top five hated Yankees" group almost as soon as I knew his name, thanks to his bush league continuous head hunting tactics. It's unreal. This is not like Pedro dusting people off the plate. Joba enjoys throwing the ball as hard as he can at the heads of Red Sox players. If Vegas offered a prop bet on "2009 is the year Kevin Youkilis finally charges the mound and beats Joba Chamberlain within an inch of his life," I would be all over that action. And Josh Beckett would probably be the first one off the bench to help. Aside from seeing A-Rod get destroyed--which I waited for a long time--this is probably the only remaining potential Sox-Yanks brawl that I am actually actively looking forward to. And it's going to happen...assuming Joba can still throw hard enough to make someone angry.

28 awesome things from 2008

There are always tons of "best of" lists right around New Year's Day. Here is one more. Instead of a Top 10, or a Top 100, or anything so rigid and structured, here are just 28 things from 2008 that were awesome. They are not comprehensive, and they are not in any order. But they are awesome.

• Season four of Lost, especially on Blu-Ray.
• The 2008 World Champion Boston Celtics.
• The Dark Knight, especially Heath Ledger's brilliant performance.
• Season three of Dexter.
• Metallica: Death Magnetic and LIVE at Alltel Arena.
• Dustin Pedroia: Sun Devil, Red Sock, and AL MVP.
• Iron Man.
• Tropic Thunder.
• The Robert Downey Jr. resurgence in general.
• Rock Band 2.
• My second straight Chatham Bluefish Diamond Mind baseball championship.
• Scream Queens on VH1.
• Terra Naomi's acoustic hair band covers.
• The fact that a new GNR album actually came out, and it's good.
• Friday Night Lights, and the fact that it is still on TV at all.
  
• Survivor and The Amazing Race still being fairly entertaining.
• Pretty much everything AJ McC does, including his hilarious exploding vocabulary.
• Sierra Mist Free Cranberry Splash. Try some with vodka and thank me later.
• ZaZa pizza in Little Rock. The huge high heat woodburning oven is the key.
• The fact that a new movie theatre (with an Imax screen) opened right down the street, even if I don't get to go there as often as I'd like.
• That a guy who kind of rocks won American Idol.
• The Brass Verdict by Michael Connelly.
• Tina Fey, both on 30 Rock and SNL.
• Van Halen LIVE at Alltel Arena.
• Catching my first Red Sox game in way too long, with a rooftop table under the Budwesier sign.
• Two Vegas trips, an AZ fire up, and a Cape Cod vacation (with the Boston trip in the middle of it).
• Lots of cool shows on the Food Network. Seriously.
• WiiFit.

And eight things that were not so awesome:

• 18-1. Still pisses me off.
• The ASU football season. An entirely different kind of letdown.
• The Sox losing game 7 of the ALCS when they clearly could have been champs again if just a couple of guys stayed healthy.
• Watching shitty teams flounder in the 2008 NFL playoffs while the superior Patriots sit at home. Sickening.
• The economy, including our old house still being on the market.
• The disgusting New York Yankees offseason spending spree.
  
• Heroes. Season one started great, and since then it's been pretty bad. And yet, I continue to watch.
• The complete tabloidization of the American media. Didn't CNN used to be a respected news outlet? Now they are People magazine with some news thrown in. Go ahead, check the website right now. What's on there? A video of Harrison Ford getting his chest waxed, apparently. And network news shows are just as bad. I cannot do it. I basically hate the news, now. I really do. Thankfully technology exists that lets me consume only what I want, for the most part. Okay. Rant over. I hope everyone has a great 2009.
  

The greatest moment in Yankee Stadium history is...

...a convincing win by the Boston Red Sox!

Farewell and good riddance to this place. Obviously it was a house of horrors for Red Sox fans essentially until 2004. I've only been there once and I was blown away at how little I felt about the place, though. I went in expecting to feel like Luke Skywalker entering the bowels of the Death Star. Instead, it just felt like another ballpark--sure, one with more obnoxious fans, but there was no mystique, no aura, and really nothing magical about the place at all. And I'm not just saying that as a Sox fan. I just didn't feel anything...that is, until I heard Pedro start warming up in the bullpen after a two hour rain delay. He was pounding the mitt so loud that it was crystal-clear from our seats in the bleachers. We won.

But I really love the fact that the final signature moment in that old park is the Sox winning the pennant there, and that in the stadium's swansong the Yankees won't even be going to the postseason. It's a great time to be a baseball fan.

I love even the idea that this might be true

Report: Worker tries to jinx Yanks with buried Red Sox shirt

This is really, really genius.

Fun headline of the day

Clemens booed off mound after giving up eight runs

Hahahahahahaha...

Dirt for sale

I was just flipping through the channels and the Home Shopping Network was selling some sports memorabilia so I stopped to watch for a while...and then they started selling dirt. Not even very historic dirt, but a "Dirt Collage" featuring dirt taken from the home plate area at Yankee Stadium this year on opening day. There was also a photo (not autographed by anyone) and a reproduction of the lineup card. It was $149.97, plus $14.99 for shipping and handling. I figured that they'd be a lot better off selling A Rod's bat from the playoffs this year. After all, it was barely used and should be in mint condition.

Funny poll

ESPN.com runs many different polls on their main page, and lately they have started bringing up a color-coded map of the U.S. to reveal how each state voted. Tonight, their question is who deserves the AL Cy Young award and frankly, I find the color-map comical in its clarity this time: New York and New Jersey picked Mike Mussina, all six states in New England picked Jonathan Papelbon (even with Schilling on the ballot), and the rest of the nation picked Contreras. Of course, leave it to the New Englanders to get it right.

ESPN.com

Opening Day

I love the opening day of the baseball season, and I have long felt that it's one of a few sports days that should be a national holiday. So, in honor of that, here are a few random thoughts on the upcoming baseball season.

I can't believe how sick I am of Barry Bonds and any story about him. We all know he cheated, and eventually he'll go down for something. ESPN's continued Bonds hype is getting sickening. I realize that they have a "reality show" called Bonds on Bonds or some such thing that they need to hype, which is despicable enough. But to give him his own color-coded updates on the ticker scroll with "CHASING RUTH" even when he does nothing, like tonight, is downright shameful. It's appalling, and frankly, I expect more from the self-proclaimed worldwide leader in sports...I don't think that Jimmy Rollins' hitting streak should continue this year. I like him, he's a solid player, and I even drafted him for one of my fantasy teams, but I just don't think that a hitting streak should continue from one season into the next. At the very least, if he does match or break DiMaggio's record, Rollins' mark should stand alone and separately as "longest hitting streak over multiple seasons."...Speaking of fantasy leagues, I have both A-Rod and Johnny Damon on one team and it makes me sick. I named that team "Slappy & The Traitor," but it still pains me to take any kind of joy from their success...I have no idea if the tougher steroid penalties will have a big effect on the game or not, but I hope so...watching baseball in HD is just incredible. Compared to the crappy regular feed it's night and day...I think the Red Sox will be a lot better than a lot of people do. Their defense is greatly improved and they have one of the deepest rotations in baseball--six guys that could potentially win 15 games as starters if needed. Keith Foulke is still a question mark in the bullpen but even if he falters, there are fallback options in Timlin and Papelbon. In fact, every spot on the roster with any kind of a question mark has a contingency plan in place. I think they'll win around 95-100 games and probably the AL East title. How experts continue to blindly pick the Yankees is beyond me, given the state of their pitching staff. They are one injury away (Randy Johnson? Mariano Rivera?) from a potential third place finish...Joe Morgan continues to be one of the most self-aggrandizing and annoying national baseball broadcasters in the business. I've always said that you can at least make watching one of his games enjoyable for yourself by making it a drinking game: take a sip anytime he mentions himself and two any time he references a former teammate on the Big Red Machine. Case in point: I flip on the White Sox-Indians opener on Sunday night for a little bit and Eduardo Perez crushes a home run to left. Now, I don't have a drink in front of me, but I can just feel the first Morganism of the season coming. And he delivers: "I saw a lot of homers just like that one playing with his father, Tony Perez." Absoutely irrelevant to the game at hand, and vintage Joe Morgan.

I root for the laundry

I know that as a fan of teams that have delivered me four World Championships since 2002 I have no room to complain about anything, but that doesn't change the fact that typing this list below kind of makes me sick.

Adam Vinatieri, Indianapolis Colts
Pedro Martinez, New York Mets
Johnny Damon, New York Motherf***ing Yankees
Willie McGinest, Cleveland Browns
David Givens, Tennessee Titans
Ty Law, wherever
Bronson Arroyo, Cincinnatti Reds

I could go on and on. Sure, it's the nature of the game, and everyone on that list brought me so much happiness that I could never thank them enough. But now I can't really root for them. Sure, there are degrees...I still pull for Pedro almost every time out. But Johnny Damon is now deader to me than Fredo Corleone to his brother, and the mere notion of having to openly yell "miss it, Vinatieri, MISS IT!" just turns my stomach.

I don't have a point. I just needed to vent, I guess. It's a sad day for me.