Hit Batters, Win Streaks, and More [Wednesday Morning Quarterback]

It’s time for Wednesday Morning Quarterback, your weekly sports round-up. Like all sports, baseball has its unspoken rules regarding conduct and retaliation on the field. It all more or less boils down to: you do something stupid or mean, the pitcher on the other team is going to drill you with a pitch. Everyone knows this, but the key is that it’s supposed to remain unspoken. The few times this year that idiots have brought it up, they’ve been suspended or fined. ...

June 17, 2009 · 3 min · el33tcapitan

The Truth Behind Yankee Stadium? [WMQ]

Whoa, what? Two WMQ posts in one day? I couldn’t ignore this story by Rob Neyer about why the new Yankee Stadium gives up so many home runs. Back from reading it yet? Those Yankees are a sneaky bunch of sneaks (what? I used up all my good writing in the last post) shortening the walls like that and pretending like everything was ok! It’s like Rob said, don’t they realize that the Internet Age means that any secret you think you have will eventually come out? ...

June 10, 2009 · 1 min · el33tcapitan

Draft Time - Stephen Strasburg [Wednesday Morning Quarterback]

It’s time for Wednesday Morning Quarterback, your weekly sports round-up. I wonder if I should change that to reflect that by sports I mostly mean baseball and college football… Speaking of baseball, it’s time for the MLB Draft! Ah, the MLB Draft. It’s got everything the other drafts do…except people who are interested in it. It’s a problem addressed briefly in the wiki page, but it mainly stems from the fact that drafted baseball players tend to not see action for sometimes two to three years. In extreme cases, they never make the Bigs at all. Here’s Rob Neyer with some more on that vein. ...

June 10, 2009 · 3 min · el33tcapitan

June Results [Wednesday Morning Quarterback]

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 ...

June 3, 2009 · 3 min · el33tcapitan

Not Quite As Predicted [Wednesday Morning Quarterback]

It’s time for Wednesday Morning Quarterback, your weekly sports round-up. I think it’s safe to say at this point in the season that things aren’t quite going as I predicted. It’s not the end of the world to be five games back in late May, but it just isn’t coming together for the Rays who are behind the Red Sox, Yankees, and Blue Jays in the AL East. Fortunately for the Rays, the Blue Jays seem to be choking against even the most trivial of AL East teams :cough: the Baltimore Orioles :cough:, but the fact of the matter is that the Rays have to start playing better to keep it alive. ...

May 27, 2009 · 3 min · el33tcapitan

Rays and Marlins Update and Punch-Out!!? [Wednesday Morning Quarterback]

It’s time for Wednesday Morning Quarterback, your weekly sports round-up. The Rays finally managed to hit the .500 mark two days ago only to lose last night against the Athletics in a heartbreaking game that remained scoreless until the 11th. You can’t really say that the Rays have been on a tear, but they have won six of their last ten, which should continue to edge them upward in win percentage if they can continue. Two more games against the Athletics will be followed by three against the Marlins in their interleague series and we’ll see how that turns out. The Rays are three games back from the Yankees and that needs to change. Unfortunately, the Yanks are playing the Orioles, so unless the Rays start capitalizing on the fact that they’re playing a weak team in the Athletics, things are going to just get uglier for them. They’re both good teams, but I think the Rays tended to edge out the Fish last year. Interleague games: the only time I root against the Tampa Bay Rays ...

May 20, 2009 · 5 min · el33tcapitan

Manny Being Manny [Wednesday Morning Quarterback]

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. ...

May 13, 2009 · 2 min · el33tcapitan

MLB News [WMQ]

I was totally supposed to do some MLB news yesterday and I spaced and forgot. The Marlins dropped three straight to the Pirates to end their road trip 6-3. The Fish are off today, but starting tomorrow they take on the former World Series champs, the always challenging Phillies. If they do as well as they did against the Mets, I won’t worry, but if they pull a Pirates against these guys…this season could start getting dicey soon. Honestly, I’m not too concerned with the sweep at this point, it’s one of those math things where the team that’s just won so many straight can’t continue doing it. Hopefully the bats get swinging and the pitchers start dueling hard tomorrow. ...

April 23, 2009 · 2 min · el33tcapitan

More Photos [WMQ]

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] ...

April 16, 2009 · 1 min · el33tcapitan

Standings and Predictions + Pics from Os vs. Rays on 10 April [Wednesday Morning Quarterback]

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. ...

April 15, 2009 · 6 min · el33tcapitan