Currently on a twelve baseball stadium tour in twelve days. Just completed first leg in Milwaukee and now in Minneapolis about to head to the twins. Follow along at 12in12.ipeat.com.
Category: Sports
Matt Millen Erie Connection?
Did anybody hear the Football Today Podcast on Oct. 9th? Jeremy Green was talking with Bill Williamson about the Raiders. When they got to the subject of possibly hiring a general manager, Matt Millen’s name came up and Jeremy Green said quote.
Its a long flight from Oakland back to Erie, Pennsylvania
So my question is this does Matt Millen reside here in Erie, PA and what is his connection here?
New Faces at the Aussie Open
Both Federer and Nadal lost their semi final matches in the Australian Open to Novak Djokovic and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga respectively. This ends the long time domination by tennis’ top two players. For Djokovic who has been nipping at their heals for the past year, he could claim his first Grand Slam title from the relatively unexperienced Tsonga.
Is this a movie or am I dreaming
If you haven’t been paying attention the Colorado Rockies have made it to the World Series on a winning streak, 21 of the last 22 games, that makes you feel like you are watching a movie. What is their secret do they have a tyrant owner trying to sell the team to warmer climates or maybe an orphan kid is seeing some heavenly beings lending the Rockies a hand so that he can be with his dad again. What ever it is they have not been getting the attention the usual under dog gets. This is something you normally only get in the movies yet no one seems to care. Which puzzles me because America usually loves the underdog. Plus this is an obvious sign of league parity that baseball has been trying to accomplish. Parity gets attributed to the success of the NFL, NCAA tournament, and NASCAR all the time. But it seems whenever analysts talk about any of the lower rung sports NHL NBA MLB and one of the big markets aren’t involved all of a sudden there isn’t any national interest. Why then has MLB been working toward league parity if the nation loses interest when the yankees are involved? I think this all just cover up of a greater loss of interest in baseball.
AJSPS
Technorati Tags: MLB, Rockies, league parity
Iron Mark
Mark Martin is just some 200 odd points out of twelfth after yet another top ten finish. While this may seem trivial remember that he has started five less races than the rest of the field. And now that Kyle Busch has signed with Gibbs and Earnhardt goes to Hendricks next year, this makes the semi-retired Martin DEI biggest commodity and they are trying their hardest to get him to run a full season next year. As well as fueling the speculation that Martin will be in the 8 next year. I personally don’t see it; Mark is just having too much fun racing each race without the headache that go with running a full season.
Technorati Tags: Mark Martin, DEI, NASCAR
Dan the Man Majerle hits two improbable shots before pregame show
I loved following Majerle when he was playing with Barkley and KJ. And he is still entertaining us.
AJSPS
Technorati Tags: Dan Majerle, PTI
Twitter Draft Solution
If you really get into the NFL Draft but don’t want to waste 10 hours in front of the boob tube or a computer waiting for your teams’ pick. Give twitter a try. I found this NFL Draft Twitter today. Not sure if it for real but I am going to give it a try. Also, there seems to be a Steelers, Browns, Bills, and of course Dolphins Twitters as well. Not sure who set them up but if enough people start following them maybe the will start posting.
AJSPS
Technorati Tags: Cleveland Browns, Miami Dolphins, NFL, Pittsburgh Steelers, Buffalo Bills, Miami Dolphins, Twitter
Bye Bye Mare
In prep for the upcoming draft, I took a visit to the Miami Dolphins page. Sadly, I found that on April 3rd Miami had traded their Kicker Olindo Mare to the Saints for a sixth round selection. As a long time Dolphins fan this is a sad moment for me Mare has been a rock for the Dolphins and rescued them the disaster that was Nedney. Unlike the horror I felt when they traded away Stoyanovich to the Chiefs, Feely is a proven kicker. Plus although a few years ago Mare was challenging Vanderjagt for the most accurate kicker in the past couple years his performance has fallen off a little. So good luck Olindo Mare you will always have a place in this Dolphins fan’s heart but for now the Jay Feely era beings.
AJSPS
Technorati Tags: Jay Feely, Miami Dolphins, Olindo Mare
No Ring, Small Cars, iPod Dilemma
Yesterday on Salisbury and Rosenbloom, they discussed an article on askmen.com, Top 10 Athletes Without Championships. And of course on the top of the list my favorite football player Dan Marino. Of course this spurred the discussion of who should have been on the list included on the list were Charles Barkley and Karl Malone. Left of the list NBA stars John Stockton and Patrick Ewing. I think I know why I dislike the NBA so much now none of my favorite teams or players ever won a championship. Other names I think they left off Dan Fouts and Fran Tarkenton.
GM to preview a trio smaller designs at the New York Auto Show this coming week.
GM’s bread-and-butter Chevrolet division will unveil the three Korean-designed minis—named the Trax, the Beat, and the Groove—in a play to prove that it can make stylish, fuel-efficient cars just like Honda (HMC) and Toyota (TM). The big picture for these small cars: Chevy wants to show that its brand stands for more than just trucks like the brawny Silverado pickup and gas-guzzling Suburban. Business Week
I don’t mind small; I just don’t want to see another round of 80s bland boxes.
A previous co-worker of mine just recently purchased his first iPod. He bought the all out 60 GB version. Two days ago I got a call from him while driving home. Let me just say his experience thus far has been anything but enjoyable. Upon receiving his iPod, he installed iTunes on his Gateway laptop (not going there.. yet). He had been previously using Windows Media Player. Loaded all his music into iTunes and began the long painful task cleaning up his music library, downloading album art, and inserting album artist to get around the featuring issue that crops with the mainly hip hop music he listens to. Much to his astonishment on the iPod when he went to select his favorite artist he got not one but many tupacs.
This surprised me as well seeing how I have a nano, my entire music collection won’t fit. I use a sophisticated system of genre and rating based smart playlist and live my life on shuffle. Hence going to find music by artist would be pointless because I never know who maybe on my ipod at any given time.
Back to the story though to make things worse if he open media player it would screw up changes he had made in iTunes because they were still sharing the same files. To solve his artist issue he began the tedious task removing any featuring artist form the artist field in his some 4800 songs. About when he got half way through the hard drive on the gateway decided to crap out. That is Gateway equipment for you. So then he tried installing iTunes on his desktop. iTunes’ typical install searches your entire computer for music well he had his external hard drive plugged in as well and it pulled in everyone of his songs twice, those on the desktop and his backup on the external drive. Now is that an ordeal or what? He is on his way now but I just can’t believe that Apple hasn’t enabled the ability to add album artist on the iPod. It just seems so obvious.
AJSPS
Technorati Tags: Dan Fouts, Dan Marino, Dan Marino, Fran Tarkenton, iTunes, John Stockton, Karl Malone, Patrick Ewing, General Motors, iPod, Salisbury and Rosenbloom
NBA insanity, MNF mixup, Tennis powers
Van Gundy has suggested that to solve the non-problem of teams dumping games to get more balls the lottery system, that all NBA teams should be entered into the lottery with equal amount of balls.
“I think every team should have an equal chance at winning the lottery, from the best team all the way down,” Van Gundy said. “I don’t want to accuse anyone of anything. I would say to take away any possible conflict of interest, everyone should have an equal chance at the top pick all the way down. That way there would be absolutely no question by anybody about anything.
“If it’s better for the game, they should do it. I never quite understood why losing is rewarded, other than (for) parity.” Houston Chronicle
What? The NBA already sucks (granted the latest in fusion of talent has helped). The season is too long, too many teams make the playoffs, and lottery system is just plain stupid. The reason the NFL draft gets so much attention is one it is america favorite sport but more importantly we haven’t had any football for two and a half months and then not again until August. The NBA holds its breathe for all of what three months. It is like they say lets take a look at what the NFL has done to be successful and do the exact opposite. The NFL takes four less teams to the playoffs and has two more teams than the NBA yet no one mentions NFL teams dumping games. Instead of putting balls in a lottery system, cut the playoff teams in half that would make the entire season more interesting, give the playoff teams a rest and do a one and done draft tournament with the remaining 22 teams the lower ranks get byes and home court advantage it would be like the NBA NIT.
ESPN has announced that Joe Theismann is out and Ron Jaworski is in as Monday Night Football Announcer. Thank God I don’t know what ESPN’s previous obsession with Theismann has been. His commentary rarely makes sense and I am tried about hearing about his injury. I don’t mean to be cold it was a tragedy and one of the most gruesome events on NFL films, but I don’t need to hear about it every week. Jaworski on the hand is always insightful, does his research, and actually thinks before he speaks. It will be nice to actually have someone who knows what they are talking about on the MNF crew. Jaws says it best
“I’m an ‘Xs-and-Os’ guy. I love breaking down the game. I love the strategy of the game,” Jaworski said in a conference call. “That’s the beauty of what I will bring to the table is that insight of ‘Xs and Os.'” ESPN
This week Roger Federer lost to same player two tournament in a row for the first time since Nadal and after tossing out some racist trash Serena Williams made mince meat of Maria Sharapova. Was going to write more but I am tired this is a pretty good rundown. Scotsman
AJSPS
Technorati Tags: Joe Th, Maria Sharapova, Monday Night Football, NBA, Roger Federer, Ron Jaworski, Serena Williams