Evan-Longoria

It’s time for Wednesday Morning Quarterback, your weekly sports round-up. I don’t tend to report on tennis news, but I happened to watch various parts of the Federer/Roddick match on Sunday, so I thought I’d say a few words on it. It’s worth nothing that this is probably one of the most lopsided rivalries in tennis. In fact, the 2 wins by Roddick (of 21 matches) is so embarrassing I’m sure that he wishes people would stop calling it a rivalry so he wouldn’t have to hear that stat. ...

It’s time for Wednesday Morning Quarterback, your weekly sports round-up. Another month of baseball has passed and it’s a testament to the sport that things have gotten a bit crazy. As I write this on Tuesday, the standings look a little something like this: AL East Yankees Red Sox Blue Jays Rays Orioles AL Central Tigers White Sox Twins Royals Indians AL West Rangers Mariners Angels Athletics NL East Phillies Mets Braves Marlins Nationals ...

It’s time for Wednesday Morning Quarterback, your weekly sports round-up. What a real bummer… The biggest news since last week, if you hadn’t heard already, was the drug test that Manny Ramirez managed to fail. This is now the biggest baseball star to fail a drug test and win himself a 50-game suspension along with a black mark on his hall of fame chances. It goes like this: Manny Ramirez saw some physician in Florida who gave him a banned substance according to MLB rules. The substance, whose name I don’t totally remember and am too depressed to look up, is a female fertility drug that is also used to mask drops in testosterone following a steroid treatment cycle. Seems pretty clear cut. ...

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. ...

My brother put some more photos up. Here are some more of my faves. [caption id="" align=“alignleft” width=“500” caption=“Adam Jones evaluating his bat”] [/caption] [caption id="" align=“alignleft” width=“500” caption=“Longoria going for the catch”] [/caption] [caption id="" align=“alignleft” width=“500” caption=“The drama of the windup”] [/caption] [caption id="" align=“alignleft” width=“500” caption=“Ballgames aren’t all excitement every moment”] [/caption] [caption id="" align=“alignleft” width=“500” caption=“My brother took a lot of Longoria pictures partly because we were sitting close to him, but mostly because he’s my favorite player.”] [/caption] ...

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. ...

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. We’ve finally arrived at the last WMQ before the baseball season. Congrats are in order for us all, but I honestly don’t know how we made it so long without our beloved baseball. Here are a few quick notes about things that have been going on: ...

Everyone loves web gems, it’s an immutable fact of life. In honor of that fact, I’d like to start posting the gems of the day on the blog as often as I can, hopefully daily. I have no idea if ESPN will keep these videos up beyond this season, but until then, hopefully plenty of people will get the chance to enjoy these great plays. My favorite from today’s batch: without a doubt, Torii Hunter’s diving catch TOWARD THE WALL(!) and Evan Longoria’s smooth, clean fielding of a ball in what could even be shortstop territory. ...

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. ...

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. ...