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| Mid West Baseball tripA few weeks ago I went on my second baseball road trip. This time I went to the Midwest
and visited 7 stadiums. I also got to
see Notre Dame in Indiana, and Madison
Wisconsin, Ann Arbor Michigan,
the Ford Museum
in Dearborn, a lot of down town Chicago, Fort
Pit in Pittsburgh,
the Capitol in Springfield Illinois,
The St. Louis Arch, and Kansas State in Manhattan. I also visited some friends, Steve and
Tiffany in Michigan, and Ed and Jenn in Kansas. I posted more pics on
face book, put here are some highlights:
PNC park in Pittsburgh,
one of the best stadiums I’ve been to and one of the two best skyline views.
I met Eric from the last season of Survivor. He lives just north of Ann Arbor Michigan.
Me and Steve at Comerica
Park in Detroit.
“The Bean” at Millennium
Park in Chicago, one of the coolest
places in my favorite city in America.
US Cellular Field in Chicago
Wriggly Field Chicago, my favorite place to see a game.
Miller Park in Milwaukee.
Busch stadium in St.
Louis. It has a
great view of the sky line and the Arch
.
Kauffman Stadium in Kansas
City
In total I went to 8 States, 83 counties, and 7 air
ports. I saw 12 homeruns, 64 runs, 487
batters, and 1838 pitches, 2 complete games, 2 walk off hits, and 5 fire work
shows.
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| Spring Well, Spring is finally in the air. I love spring. I love wearing shorts and flip flops, walking around in the sun shine in the day, and still being warm outside at night. One of the signs of spring is how crowded the gym gets. Second only to the short new year burst, spring is when a lot of people start working out. I guess after the first few warm weekends when people are out at the beach or the pool, the look down and think about how they need to tone up a little. But working out takes constancy, so I don't know if many of these people will get results if they take the whole winter off. Another one of the things I most associate with spring is, of course, baseball. The season started only a month ago, but the trade rumers and post season prognostications are in already starting. I'm also planning another baseball trip. Last year I went to six games in six days on the east coast (Washing DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York(2), and Boston.) This year I'm planning a trip to the Midwest that will be 7 days (Pittsburgh, Detroit, Chicago(2), Milwaukee, St. Louis, and Kansas City) I'll get to see a few friends while I'm out there, and spend some more time in Chicago, which I visited briefly about 3 years ago, and have always wanted to see more of. It will be at the end of May. That's mostly it. I hadn't written in a while, so I just wanted to drop in. But I have one more unrelated topic: Today I got my economic stimulus check. Hopefully you all know about this. The government is giving every one (or most adults at least) $600 in order to help stimulate the economy. So I'm taking an informal survey: What are you doing with yours? I'm not doing anything in particular with mine. I don't expect every one will just go out and spend the whole thing like some are hoping, but saving or investing it helps the economy to right? (Of course weather or not the government spending another $150 billion helps the economy is debatable, but that's a topic for my other blog.) So, what are you doing with yours? |
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Finally, some one made Science
Fiction cool. I just got done watching
the first 3 seasons of Battlestar
Galactica, and it seriously awesome.
Not the campy one from the ‘70s.
This one is dark and gritty. The
characters are flawed. They don’t always
work together, and don’t always like each other at the end of the episode. It’s superbly acted. And unlike most sci-fi, the problems have to
be solved by the characters, not the ships computer or some fancy piece of
technology. In fact, there isn’t much
technology at all. They’re not far beyond what exists today, except they travel
through space. And also unlike most
sci-fi, there are no aliens in space (a common source of cheesiness). It’s just humans and what they’ve created. There are also religious themes, ethical dilemmas,
some politics, and a ton of personal demons and relational conflicts.
The fourth season starts tomorrow,
and it should continue to be great. I
would recommend the series to any one, not just sci-fi fans.
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This is opening weekend for baseball, so I’m making my
predictions. The team predictions are
pretty straight forward
NL West: Diamond Backs.
They improved their pitching this winter and the young guys should get better.
NL Central: Cubs.
They picked up a big Japanese import, Fukodome, and look to have
comeback performances from a few players.
NL East: Mets.
Despite last years collapse, I think this is the team to beat in the
league, especially now with Santana.
NL Wild Card: Philadelphia. They should be as good as last year when they
broke their 13 year post season drought.
AL West: Angels.
Their division is pretty weak, so they could wrap it up pretty early.
AL Central: Detroit. This offense is loaded. They should top 1000 runs.
AL East: Red Sox.
It’s basically the same team that won it all last year.
AL
Wild Card: Indians. They have a young
core that will be pretty good.
World Series: Mets
over Tigers in 7.
The individual predictions are more of a shot in the dark:
NL MVP: Albert Pujols
NL Cy Young: Johan
Santana
AL
MVP: Miguel Cabrera
Al Cy Young: Josh
Beckett
As a Giants fan, things don’t look good this year. They look to match their ’96 season, when
they went 68-94, or maybe their lowest mark of my life when they went 62-100 in
’85. I’m going to predict they will
slightly better that and scratch out 65 wins.
The pitching should be all right, but this team will struggle to score
500 runs this year. Their attendance
will probably fall below 3 million for the first time since opening their new
stadium in 2000. Every team goes through
cycles, so I hope they can use a few years to lay a foundation for the future
Another note worthy event; This is the Dodgers 50th
year in LA, so they’re playing an exhibition game against the Red Sox in the LA
Coliseum, home of the USC Trojans, and temporary home of the Dodgers when they
first moved to LA. I wanted to go to
this game when I heard about, but just didn’t get it together, but now I wish I
did. It may be the most highly attended
baseball game in world history, with around 115,000 fans.
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First off, Today is Ginger and my 6 month anniversary. Yeah!
Happy half-year sweetie!
Yesterday we went to Balboa Island, and we went to the famous Banana stand.
It wasn't as funny as it's fictional rendering on Arrested Development, but still tasty.
On another topic, Baseball season is right around the corner, so there are
several things that I need to get done before then. (1) make my yearly
predictions, which will be posted before opening day (2) watch Major League. (3) draft my fantasy
baseball team.
I’ve already drafted for one of my two leagues. This is the eighth ear of this league that a
bunch of us started in college. It’s 12
teams, so we had to dig pretty deep for some of the players. My second league may only have 4 teams which
means all of them will be star studded.
I’ll post that after it’s complete
The 2008 line up for Survivors
VIII:
C: Ivan Rodriguez
1B: Mark Teixeira
2B: Robinson Cano
3B: Alex Rodriguez
SS: Edgar Renteria
LF: Carlos Lee
CF: Vernon
Wells
RF: Jeff Francoeur
Utl: Aaron Rowand
SP: Roy Oswalt
SP: Carlos Zambrano
SP: Brad Penny
SP: Barry Zito
SP: Gil Meche
RP: Bobby Jenks
P: Troy Percival
Bn: Ken Griffy Jr.
Bn: Willy Taveras
Bn: Garrett Anderson
Bn: Scott Rolen
Bn: Frank Thomas
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