1. Another mulligan on my baseball picks (although my NL picks are unofficial)…With Eric Gagne undergoing another round of elbow surgery, I don’t see the Dodgers as possessing a deep enough bullpen to adequately get them through 2006. For that reason, I think the NL West is the division of the great unknown. While we can comfortably rule out Arizona and Colorado, the Dodgers, Padres, and Giants all have reasons why they could win their division and enough reasons as to why they can’t. As they say in combat, “Welcome to the suck.” And that’s exactly what the NL West is…
2. The 2006 NFL schedule was released yesterday and something on the Giants schedule caught my eye. The G-Men will have a bye week in Week 4 of the season. Is there no way that the NFL can re-think the timing of bye weeks? Can’t bye weeks begin a little later and include more teams? What on earth is the purpose of giving four teams a week off after only three games? The end of September hardly seems like a good time to just take a week off and interrupt the flow of the season. It seems to me that a league full of smart guys can come up with a plan that doesn’t include vacation with 81% of the season left to play.
3. The Mets are joining the Yankees in new-stadium heaven. The new stadium certainly won’t be called Shea but it will pay homage to Ebbets Field, the old home of the Brooklyn Dodgers. While the architectural renderings look great, two problems will plague Mets Stadium 2.0: (1) it’s still sited right near LaGuardia Airport which means jet engines roaring overhead every few minutes and (2) it’s in Queens. No matter how you cut it, the stadium will not be overlooking a city skyline (Pittsburgh), a beautiful bay (San Francisco), splendid mountain views (Colorado), or a quaint little neighborhood (Chicago). This stadium is still facing Flushing Meadows and the industrial warehouse wasteland that currently surrounds Shea Stadium.
4. William Rhoden, a longtime sports columnist for the New York Times, wrote a piece comparing Barry Bonds to Jack Johnson, the turn of the century heavyweight boxer who was the first African-American to win the heavyweight title. While I agree with Rhoden that the witch hunt being conducted in baseball against Bonds greatly resembles the government’s creation and targeted enforcement of the Mann Act (a shameful federal pogrom perpetrated on Johnson), I simply refuse to accept Rhoden’s argument that the Mitchell Investigation is racially motivated. This investigation is the half-baked idea of Bud Selig, who is fearful that members of Congress might do some pleasure reading during their summer vacation and will react harshly after reading the lurid details of steroid use in baseball. I just don’t see the racist motive in play here. Nice try at race baiting, though, Willy.
I’d post the link to the article but NYTimes.com has gone the way of ESPN.com and has made access to columnist articles a subscriber-only service.
2. The 2006 NFL schedule was released yesterday and something on the Giants schedule caught my eye. The G-Men will have a bye week in Week 4 of the season. Is there no way that the NFL can re-think the timing of bye weeks? Can’t bye weeks begin a little later and include more teams? What on earth is the purpose of giving four teams a week off after only three games? The end of September hardly seems like a good time to just take a week off and interrupt the flow of the season. It seems to me that a league full of smart guys can come up with a plan that doesn’t include vacation with 81% of the season left to play.
3. The Mets are joining the Yankees in new-stadium heaven. The new stadium certainly won’t be called Shea but it will pay homage to Ebbets Field, the old home of the Brooklyn Dodgers. While the architectural renderings look great, two problems will plague Mets Stadium 2.0: (1) it’s still sited right near LaGuardia Airport which means jet engines roaring overhead every few minutes and (2) it’s in Queens. No matter how you cut it, the stadium will not be overlooking a city skyline (Pittsburgh), a beautiful bay (San Francisco), splendid mountain views (Colorado), or a quaint little neighborhood (Chicago). This stadium is still facing Flushing Meadows and the industrial warehouse wasteland that currently surrounds Shea Stadium.
4. William Rhoden, a longtime sports columnist for the New York Times, wrote a piece comparing Barry Bonds to Jack Johnson, the turn of the century heavyweight boxer who was the first African-American to win the heavyweight title. While I agree with Rhoden that the witch hunt being conducted in baseball against Bonds greatly resembles the government’s creation and targeted enforcement of the Mann Act (a shameful federal pogrom perpetrated on Johnson), I simply refuse to accept Rhoden’s argument that the Mitchell Investigation is racially motivated. This investigation is the half-baked idea of Bud Selig, who is fearful that members of Congress might do some pleasure reading during their summer vacation and will react harshly after reading the lurid details of steroid use in baseball. I just don’t see the racist motive in play here. Nice try at race baiting, though, Willy.
I’d post the link to the article but NYTimes.com has gone the way of ESPN.com and has made access to columnist articles a subscriber-only service.
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Now that the cat’s out of the bag (read below), I’d like to wish my good buddy and verbal sparring partner my heartiest congratulations. Hitman, you’re one of my closest friends and I’m really happy for you. Congrats on your engagement. Hopefully our Texo-Canadian friend will make an honest man out of you…or at least get you to realize that you’re just a wacky Chicagoan rooting for crap teams. Either way, cheers to you!
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