It’s time for Wednesday Morning Quarterback, your weekly sports round-up. Poor Cole Hamels can’t catch a break. A poor spring training with injury leads to two starts where he’s beat up, another start where he’s hit by a batted ball, and another where he rolls his ankle and lands on the DL again. Hopefully his luck starts to turn around soon, a month of the season has already passed us by. ...
It’s time for Wednesday Morning Quarterback, your weekly sports round-up. It doesn’t take a sports guru to know that a seven game losing streak is a BAD THING. Back the Marlins up to 19 April and you see a team five games ahead in the AL East with a record of 11-1. Just ten days later the team is sitting half a game up on the Phillies with a 12-8 record. Yeah, it’s been that kind of week for me, haha. The Fish were FINALLY able to bang together a win last night against the dreaded Mets, but will this momentum start to carry the team forward? They face Johan Santana tonight on the mound, a guy with a sub 1.0 ERA and who they only managed to beat last time thanks to a Daniel Murphy error in left creating two unearned runs. Luckily for the Fish, they’ve got Josh Johnson to trot out onto the mound, but he’s not gonna be able to do much unless he gets some run support. ...
It’s time for Wednesday Morning Quarterback, your weekly sports round-up. 15 April may mean the tax man is coming around, but I like to think of it from a better perspective: Jackie Robinson Day. That’s right, on 15 April 1947 Jackie Robinson debuted for the Branch Rickey’s Brooklyn Dodgers, finally breaking the color barrier in baseball and paving the way for civil rights in America. Jackie Robinson was a hero and I’m glad that baseball honors him each year on this day by allowing players to wear Robinson’s league-wide retired #42. ...
If you hate the Yankees and love baseball, I’m sure you’re running around telling everyone you know about how ridiculous it is that the Yankees have lost two straight to a team that everyone expects to sit right at the bottom of the AL East. You might be mentioning to all their friends that it seems that all the money in the world can’t buy baseball skill or pointing to the Rays or Marlins as teams whose low salaries still yield success. You might wanna slow down a bit there. ...
When Schneider tagged me in her version of this I almost pulled a Linus Torvalds (http://torvalds-family.blogspot.com/2009/02/25-things-about-me.html), but instead I decided not to do one at all. Then I came across two “25 Random Baseball Things” articles and fell in love with the idea as a way to release pent up excitement about the upcoming baseball season. Hope you enjoy it.. 1. Baseball was the first team sport I ever played. To this day I don’t really understand what motivated my father to sign me up for the game. My grandfather is afraid of playing catch due to an incident where he got beaned, my dad is mostly apathetic toward sports in general, including baseball, and my older brother hated little league baseball. My best guess is that we were living in the mostly Cuban (at the time) Hialeah where little league baseball is the predominant sport. ...
You’ve probably heard the saying that hindsight is 20/20 on Monday morning, so just imagine how well I can call ’em two days later on Wednesday. That’s right, it’s time for Wednesday Morning Quarterback, your weekly sports round-up. Listening to the Baseball Today podcast, it becomes very apparent that half of this World Series matchup doesn’t make sense. TV execs were hoping, nay, wishing for a Dodgers/Red Sox World Series. Torre vs. Francona. New Manny vs. Manny’s old team. Two huge market teams going at it for all the glory. Heck, they would have even settled for a Phillies/Red Sox series, with all those big names and big guns on both sides. Not to mention a Cubs appearance on their lucky 100th year of losing. ...
The Rays have finally gone and done it. In order to make the series more interesting, they let the Sox tie it up at three games a piece, but in Game 7, Matt Garza and the Rays showed the world that they were capable of going to the series and beating Boston in their 25th showdown this year. It started out looking a bit rough for the Rays with a Dustin Pedroia homer that put the Sox up, but it started to turn around with an RBI double by Longoria, RBI single by Baldelli, and a homer by Willy Aybar, putting the Rays up 3-1. There was also that dicey moment where the relief squad kept the Rays safe in a bases loaded situation, all combining to bring the Rays their first world series berth ever. ...
How the Rays managed to lose a 7-0 lead to lose the game on Thursday against the Sox, I do not know. It’s really a shame that they couldn’t hold on for the pennant. Now it comes down to the game tonight (or the next game). In better news, Longoria smashed another one out of the park. He’s unstoppable.
Well, they’ve done it for the first time since 1993. The Phils have won the NL pennant. Their victory came at the expense of sloppy play by Rafael Furcal and the Dodgers in general. In the end, it didn’t matter that Manny Ramirez was batting .500 coming into the last game. It didn’t matter that the Dodgers had Joe Torre manning their ball club. It just mattered that the Phils wanted it more, were a more solid team, and took it in five. ...
You’ve probably heard the saying that hindsight is 20/20 on Monday morning, so just imagine how well I can call ’em two days later on Wednesday. That’s right, it’s time for Wednesday Morning Quarterback, your weekly sports round-up. 13-4. I don’t think anyone expected that at all. Tim Wakefield used to be dominant against the Rays. Now, in the past two games, he’s been hammered. Evan Longoria set himself a rookie record by smashing in five homeruns in the post season. The Rays are now 3-1 over the Red Sox. It’s only a matter of one game. Could be over as early as Thursday when Daisuke will try to stun the Rays again like he did in Game 1. ...