Ken Griffey Jr gets traded to the Chicago White Sox to end Major League Baseball's annual trade deadline.
Griffey's post-Seattle career has closely followed another athlete, but not in MLB. The NBA's Grant Hill has similar issues, except worse. Hill has been injured his entire career, despite all his talent. Griffey in recent years has a similar problem.
This however does put Griffey with a good team that has a shot at the World Series. I think many people are rooting for Ken here.
Those of you the DC area may or may not have heard about "Redskins Nation", a show that started a couple of weeks ago on Comcast Sportsnet Mid-Atlantic. I'm a Redskins fan that owns lousy premium seats. I'm at the top of the waitlist for real season tickets. So it comes with sadness that I report "Redskins Nation", the show, sucks.
Who knew that in all these years of Manny saying he wanted out of Boston that he actually meant it this time? Boston sent him to the LA Dodgers and got Jason Bay from the Pittsburgh Pirates in a three way deal.
So this was an interesting move. How will Bay mesh with the Red Sox lineup? Is Big Papi David Ortiz protecting him, or is he protecting Ortiz¿
Well, it's time for the rankings to come out. What, why would anyone put out an NFL pre-season rank before some teams have opened training camp?
Come on, I'm not talking about the NFL. It's the men's college basketball rankings! But only since 84/85. Extra-special Terrapin enemy edition with Duke and Georgetown bookending the rankings at 1 & 10 respectively.
Goes to show how the dog days of summer are. ESPN is now analyzing some teams who's players have played, won championships, moved on to the NBA and retired. Overall, I can't fault them on their picks. Duke and NC are obvious contenders. Yeah ACC! Boo Blue Devils and Tarheels!
Will Steve Bartman ever be left alone? Through a friend, he has rejected a paid appearance at a sports memorabilia convention.
With the leaders of Major League Baseball standing as they are now, I'm rooting for the Cubs. That way we can all finally leave Bartman alone.
Busy day with the Washington Nationals.
Ryan Zimmerman returns after a stint on the DL. While nobody is expecting a Nats run at the playoffs, this should help the team get on track and put together a decent run in preparation for next season.
Next, Jon Rauch gets traded to the Arizona Diamondbacks in exchange for second baseman Emilio Bonifacio. Bonifacio has been designated the Nats 2B of the future and will spend time at AAA Columbus until then. Obviously this puts pressure on Felipe Lopez to keep his job.
Finally, Cristian Guzman signs a new contract with the Nats. This event alone does not really mean much itself, except that the Nats are assured that shortstop will not be on their shopping list for next season. However, in combination with Zimmerman, and the Lopez/Bonifacio 2B, most of the infield is set. All we need is Nick Johnson to stay healthy for longer than a week or Dmitri Young to step up his defense, and the Nats have a pretty solid overall infield.
Updated July 21, 9:30 AM
Jason Taylor now plays for the Washington Redskins. Taylor was traded for the 2009 second round pick and the 2010 sixth round pick. This appears to be a great deal especially since he told the Redskins that he did not need to renegotiate his contract and would play it out with the two years remaining on it.
The bad news is that this was necessary to replace Phillip Daniels who was injured on the first day of training camp. Although I was there, yours truly did not see this happen.
Still the trade appears to help both teams. Bill Parcells and Taylor never saw eye to eye. Reports were that he ignored Taylor when the Dolphin tried to introduce himself to the Tuna back in the spring. Later Parcells said he didn't know Taylor was there. Kind of hard to miss a big defensive end, don't you think?
Update: Would have provided this sooner, but my lovely cable ISP decided to shut down for the past 12 hours. The Redskins also lost DE Alex Buzbee for the season. Makes more sense why they got Taylor. After all, last year Jon Jansen was lost for the season and no big trade/free agent signing came in to fill the void.
It's here. The 2008 season and the Zorn-Era has begun. The Redskins opened training camp this morning in muggy Ashburn, Virginia, home of Redskins Park. It still seems odd tha the team called the Washington Redskins has offices and practices in Virginia and plays it's games at Fedex Field in Maryland. Anyways, this the first training camp I have attended in person. They started all those years in Pennsylvania and I didn't think about going in recent years. Why, I'm not so sure. Probably should have done it while Gibbs was still coach.
Although I arrived just after 8 AM, the team was already on the field practicing well before the 8:30 announced time. And hundreds of people beat me there. It was interesting, but less organized for fans as I imagined. Refreshments were not quite as expensive as I thought they were to be. There was the heckler in the front row who yelled at every player. BTW - The Sports Freak would be happy as he was wearing a Rock Cartwright jersey. It also appears that some Giants fans took a wrong turn. "Leave the Holland Tunnel, head south on I-95 until you see Burgundy & Gold?"
All this can be viewed in the pictures here. I did not edit them, so heads and caps can be seen in some pictures. Hey, when the Redskins set a separate bloggers section, I'll be able to get better shots.
Months ago, we were pleased to hear of the departure of Bryant Gumbel from NFL Network broadcasts. Now we find out about his replacement. Bob Papa will be the new play by play man in the booth next to Chris Collingsworth.
Being a life-long Washingtonian, I don't know Papa. Maybe our friend Bob can give us more insight on him. I do have to say it would be tough for Papa to be worse than Bryant Gumbel. Gumbel was just not tolerable. while Papa is a Giants broadcaster, at least he's not a Cowboy or Eagles puppet. Sorry, that's all I can say about the man. We'll see on November 6, which is his first NFL Network game.
For more then a generation Billy Packer was the voice of College Baskeball analyzing the games including the Final Four and Championship Game. CBS officially severed ties with Packer Billy Packer. Whether it's a point in time where you love or hate Billy Packer everyone should respect the voice that helped define college basketball for so long.
As Big Money Tony wrote earlier this week, we took our first of a two part journey to NYC to close down Shea and Yankee Stadium. This past weekend's trip was both fun and memorable. We started our trip via the metro to Union Station before taking Amtrak to Penn Station in New York.
Big Money Tony asked me if Amtrak was still the Wild Wild West of security. Having taken the train more recently than Tony I replied yes. Walk yourself and your bags onto the train throw them up top and walk to the dining cart for some food and drink and just hope for the best. It's the honor system. BMT brought up a great point about Amtrak. Where else can someone just hop on a train and while it's moving then go around checking tickets.
I enjoy watching the annual Major League Baseball Home Run Derby the night before the All-Star Game, but there are two things that usually come up regarding the players who compete in it that I am tired of hearing about. First is that competing in the derby ruins a player’s swing. Professional golfers need to be able to hit a driver and a 9 iron and that’s much more of a dramatic difference in a golfer’s swing than one night of a baseball player aiming for the fences. The second thing I am tired of hearing about is that the winner of the derby is jinxed and will not have good power numbers for the remainder of the season. Players get hot, players get cold. It has absolutely nothing to do with winning the home run derby.
The Sports Freak and I are on the road in New York City to catch the New York Mets in the last season of Shea Stadium. And boy did we pick a great game. Mets won, 3-0 by beating the Colorado Rockies. This should have been a great game, given one of the contenders for the NL East Division hosting the 2007 NL Champions. Instead we get a bottom barrel team visiting a still contender, but only after firing their manager.
Every NFL fan, except maybe Minnesota Vikings fans, has rooted for Brett Favre. Until maybe now. Except for my unconditional support for the Redskins, despite coaching debacles, or should I say coach recruiting debacles, Favre is one of the players I root for. He's been on fantasy teams of mine. When the Skins play at 1 and Green Bay plays at 4, I'm probably watching Green Bay on DirecTV.
This ongoing saga of his "unretirement" is bugging me to say the least. Now there is word he is asking to be released by the Packers.
The above headline comes from an article in Monday’s Baltimore Sun which highlights the Baltimore Orioles current promotion for today’s game against the Texas Rangers. "If the Orioles defeat the Rangers Sunday, the ‘We Win, You Win’ promotion will reward fans with a complimentary ticket in the same seating category to any future non-prime game." The reason for this promotion is because the O’s have a record of 1 win and 12 losses this season on Sundays. But I wonder if the promotion would draw more fans if instead of rewarding the fans for a win if it served as sort of a money back guarantee, meaning if the O’s lose then each fan in attendance would get to go to another game as sort of a refund for having to suffer yet another loss.
Uh, I'm not sure how this came around. I'll admit, I'm not a big Capitals guy, but I'm at least aware of the names in play. This one seems to have surprised many as Jose Theodore signed with Washington today.
