Ode to UGA VII

I may be a Bama fan, but I’m also a dog lover.  So I was extremely saddened to hear of the passing of UGA VII so unexpectedly yesterday.  One thing I have always enjoyed about SEC football is checking out the live mascots on the sidelines, and of all of them Uga has always been my favorite.  He’s got that bulldog face that only a mother or a true fan could love, and when he starts slobbering at the camera, or he’s sitting outside his dog house on a bag of ice looking so regal and important,  my heart always melts a little.

I have particularly liked Uga VII.  I was interested to see him at his first few games last season, and he looked (to me, at least) like he had a bit of his own personality.  I remember watching one game where they were trying to lead him out to midfield or somewhere else before the game, and he went a little ways and then just sat down.  He also seemed to like to stay in his little dog house with his bag of ice and just survey his kingdom.  He was great.

I can’t imagine how the Seilers are feeling right now; it’s hard enough to lose a family pet, but to lose one at such a young age and so unexpectedly must be extremely difficult.  My prayers are with them during this time.  (And for those of you non-dog lovers who just rolled your eyes, you must have no idea how much of a family member your beloved dog can become.)

So in memory of Uga VII, I dedicate my newest favorite song to him, courtesy of Norah Jones and her new album, “The Fall,” which I highly recommend (and I really did try to find a link to a Norah Jones website with the lyrics, or any website that had the correct lyrics, but couldn’t find one):

“Man of the Hour” (lyrics presumably by Norah Jones)

“It’s him or me”
That’s what he said
But I can’t choose between a vegan and a pot head
So I chose you
Because you’re sweet
And you give me lots of lovin’
And you eat meat
And that’s how you became
My only man of the hour

You never lie
And you don’t cheat
And you don’t have lots of baggage tied to your forefeet
Do I deserve
To be the one
To feed you breakfast, lunch and dinner
And take you to the park at dawn?
Will you really be
My only man of the hour?

I know you’ll never bring me flowers
Flowers, they will only die
And though we’ll never take shower together
I know you’ll never make me cry

You never argue
You don’t even talk
And I like the way you let me lead you
When we go out and walk
Will you really be
My only man of the hour?
My only man of the hour.
My only man of the hour.

Mid-Season Report (Okay, so it’s a little past mid-season)

It has been entirely too long since I’ve posted anything here on my blog, so I thought I’d shoot a few quick thoughts to get things going:

1)  Was I right or was I right about Ole Miss?  Sorry, Col. Reb, but you’ve got a long and storied reputation of choking under pressure.  Keep working on it, though, and maybe you’ll be able to shake that reputation in a year or two.

2)  Speaking of Ole Miss, I am thoroughly looking forward to “The Blind Side” coming to a theater near me, if for no other reason than to see Coach Saban’s acting debut, and to hear Sandra Bullock say that she finds him attractive.  Not my personal taste, Sandra, but I can see where one would think that. . . .

3)  So maybe the Heisman isn’t Colt McCoy’s to lose after all.  At this point, I figure it goes to either Tebow or to Mark Ingram, and the winner depends on which team prevails in the SEC Championship game.  I still hate that the Heisman voters seem to make their choice based on who is the best player on the team expected to win the national championship, but far be it from me to complain about the possibility of seeing it cloaked in Crimson this year.

4) SEC officials–man, I’m beginning to feel really bad for them.  For those of you who think a conspiracy theory is afoot, how does that explain all the questionable calls that have taken place before this season?  Look, blown calls are nothing new, and they certainly aren’t new in the SEC.  It’s just that Slive took a little too long to crack down on the coaches who are complaining, and he’s had to come down quite harshly, and there has been a spotlight placed on the situation.  It comes with the billion dollar contract that the SEC negotiated with ESPN.  Spotlights tend to show both the good and bad that the conference has to offer, including but not limited to blown calls.

5) Injuries seem to be extremely serious this year, or at least more of a highlight is being placed on those as well (see Javid Best, Tim Tebow, Sam Bradford).  This is what I’ve got to say to college football players, though, in light of the Javid Best injury: when you try to make SportsCenter with your dazzling play, you might end up making SportsCenter being carried out on a stretcher.  What’s the deal with these guys trying to hurdle other players to get in the endzone?  While I appreciate the fearlessness, at some point your fearlessness looks foolish.  Don’t try to hurdle a player who is standing up straight, even if you’ve got the vertical leap to do so.  If you do, you might end up with an oxygen mask attached to your face as you’re carted off the field.  Harsh?  Maybe so, but it needs to be said.

6) Twitter has changed the way I watch football games.  I really like scrolling down throughout the game and reading snarky comments from various sportswriters about what’s going on.  And it proves immensely helpful when you end up at a concert during the Bama-South Carolina game and you want to know what’s happening while Mat Kearney is setting up on stage (despite how much fun the concert–and the company–might be).  So thanks, sportswriters, your tweets are not going unheeded.

7) Charlie Weis–out.

8) Terrence Cody for Heisman–or President–or Nobel Peace Prize.

Mistakes CFB Coaches Make

Granted, I’m a girl.  And I will more than likely never be a college football coach.  Heck, I went to a school that didn’t even have a college football team.  But there are a couple of things that I think that even I, a lowly girl who didn’t even go to a college with a football team, can say “Hey, that’s a mistake.”  Here are a few of them:

1) When you get named as a college head coach for the first time in the premier league, don’t trash talk the National Champions in your initial press conference.  It’s a few hours before the UT-UF kickoff, and poor ole Lane Kiffin has looked like a deer in headlights all week.  This is a stark contract to the cocky attitude he took in his first month as a first-time head coach at UT, where he called out Urban Meyer, Nick Saban, and whoever else he could think of as a coach who had superior skills to his.  I watched an interview with him on GameDay a few minutes ago, and Kiffin looked positively terrified.  Note to new head coaches: you run your mouth early, and you end up on the bottom of the cleats of the best team in the East.  Is it bad that I am relishing this game?

2) You might want to get your back up QBs some experience in case you lose your Heisman winner in the first half of the first game.  I feel soooooo bad for Sam Bradford.  I think he’s a kid with high character and amazing talent who did what many consider to be unthinkable by turning down a truckload of money to return to college for one more year.  (And kudos to the football players who do this, and decide to spend one more year just being a kid and enjoying the college experience before coming into all that money and pressure.)  And he goes down in the first game.  But you know who I felt worse for?  The kid on the sidelines who gets tapped to come in for Bradford.  Poor kid!  He’s probably back there on the bench getting  a head start on his weekend homework when he hears the unthinkable: “Bradford is down and is coming out of the game.”  I’m willing to bet that he threw up at some point during that game.  From what I can tell in my (extremely limited) research, he had not one bit of college playing experience before he went into the game–you know, the one where OK got beat by BYU.  Poor kid.  Granted, he had a great week last week, but he had a chance to get prepared.  So here’s the lesson: I know it’s great that your QB puts up 700 yards passing/game, but is it worth the team loss to get your QB1 those amazing stats?  Something to think about.

3) Don’t play to not lose the game.  Granted, I didn’t watch the OSU-USC game last week, but I did watch some highlights.  And when you put in a really conservative offense to attempt to protect the ball and run out the clock, you run the risk of having your opponent score lights out wiht a passing game and putting you in a bad spot.  So now people are calling for Coach Tressel’s firing/resignation because once again OSU played a high profile game and they just couldn’t keep up.  Should he go?  That’s not my call (besides, I’m not a fan of the Big 10.)  But as a fan, if my coach kept installing schemes to keep my team from losing rather than taking a chance from time to time to actually win the game, I’d be peeved, too.  There were several Bama games wherein the coach decided to go for 2 at the end of the game to go for the win rather than for the tie, and even when it didn’t work, I still admired the gutsy call of the coach for doing so.  Sometimes, even if you risk losing, your fans want to see you go for the win rather than trying to avoid the loss.  Just something to think about.

Ellen’s CFB Predictions

On this College Football Eve, I present my predictions for the upcoming season (you know you wanna read them!):

1)  Colt McCoy will win the Heisman.  Barring significant drop off or injury, I think this is a sure bet.  Last year’s race was way too close between Bradford, Tebow and McCoy.  Since McCoy is the only one of the three missing the hardware, I think he’s a shoo in.

2)  Rich Rodriguez will get fired from Michigan for breach of contract, barring immediate and overwhelming success early this season.  I mean, have you ever heard of your own players reporting you to the NCAA for possible violations?  People in Ann Arbor aren’t too thrilled with him after last season.  And rumor has it his contract has a little clause allowing the school to dismiss him for cause if he gets the school in trouble with the NCAA.  If anyone’s on a hot seat this season, I’m thinking it’s him.  (Oh, and Charlie Weiss, but that’s another story.)

3) The 2009 SEC Championship game will be a rematch of 2008.  Sorry, Ole Miss, but you’ve got too long of a storied history of choking when the pressure is on.  LSU gives Bama the best run for its money, but I think that Bama tops LSU and wins the West.  (And I think there’s no question that Florida will top the East.)

4) Lane Kiffin will do better than we want him to do.  He’s been shooting off his mouth nonstop since he arrived in the SEC, and fans of every other school are salivating at the thought of him bombing his first year.  But he will have some success, thanks to the talented assistant coaches he has stolen hired and thanks to Eric Berry.

5) All other conferences will continue to hate on the SEC and its dominance.  When the #1 team in the WAC beats the 8^th best team in the SEC and wants to brag that our conference is falling off, those of us in the SEC can just chuckle, because . . . .

6) The SEC will win the national championship again this season.  It will probably be another SEC-Big 12 matchup, and it will be well worth the price of admission.  And while many will think that the Big 12 offense will run away with the score, I point out the old adage that while offense may win games, defense wins championships.  But . . .

7) There will not be an undefeated national champion again this season.  I know, poor ole Utah, beating up on Bama in the Sugar Bowl (which I still refuse to acknowledge as reality and like to think of more as a nightmare), going undefeated, and not even being considered as a possible national champion.  Times are tough, Utes.  (And did we ever decide what a Ute is, anyway?)  Tough schedules = tough wins = sometimes tough losses = rewards when you survive mostly unscathed.  So even if Utah does happen to make it through yet another season undefeated, it still won’t seriously be considered for a national championship.  I realize that this is not news that Florida fans want to hear, either, but nobody would have predicted that UF would have fallen to Ole Miss last year, either.  They’re called Trap Games for a reason.

So let’s suit up and go play!!

Future Inductee to the Fantasy Football Hall of Fame

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything, but that doesn’t mean I’ve been out of the loop in the sports world!  (Did you see the girl who knocked in the go-ahead run for Canada in the Little League World Series the other day?  Little Wendie all over again!)  At any rate, I’ve been busy trying to make room for my trophy for winning the Fantasy Football league that our church’s youth group has just set up.

Now, I know that last sentence has raised several questions for you, so I’ll try to answer them in order.

1.  Your church’s youth group has a fantasy football league?  Answer: Yes.  Thanks to our fabulous new youth minister (and one of my favorite college buddies), Patrick, we have our first annual fantasy football league on ESPN.  We ARE the Rockin’ Rhinos. (It’s a private league, though, so sorry you can’t look it up and see how it’s going.)

1.a. How much money is going into that league? Answer: none.  C’mon, people, it’s a CHURCH league.  And it’s made up mostly of minors.  I can just imagine how interesting that church business meeting would have been had we decided to buy into the league.

2.  There’s a trophy?  Answer: Not so much a “trophy” as a “coveted cookie sheet.”  And I mean, really, does it matter what the prize is?  Because it’s totally mine.  This leads to . . .

3.  So you entered the draft?  Answer: Absolutely!  Because that’s the kind of youth Sunday School teacher I am: supportive . . . nurturing . . . oh, who am I kidding, I totally did it to see if I could win!

So we had our draft this past Tuesday, and my team rocks, thankyouverymuch!  This isn’t just my opinion; I compared my team to a co-worker’s team from his own draft (a co-worker who’s done this before and faired pretty well), and we had several of the same players.  But in talking to him, and after participating in Tuesday’s draft, I have discovered that there are 3 types of FFB players:

The first one is the guy who seriously wants to win.  He’s been scouring the boards for months and creating mock draft boards, complete with back-up selections (and back-up selections for his back-up selections).  I call him the Frank Wren of the FFB.  He’s ruthless.  He’s on the hunt for the best mercenary his money (or draft pick selection slot) can get.  And he’s usually pretty good at it.  This is where my co-worker falls.

The second type of FFB player is the nostalgic player.  He’s got his favorite college team(s), and his picks mostly revolve around selecting players from his team/conference.  He’s not going to deliberately tank his team, or pick up a player from his favorite team who would legitimately hurt his chances, but you will find that many of his players played together or against each other in college.  We had two of these people at our draft (and yes, I was one of them). (And no, I didn’t pick Brodie Croyle as one of my QBs, because I am predicting that he will get broken again before the season’s mid-point.)

The third player is the one who is playing totally for fun.  He might not know anything about the sport.  He might only know what he hears on the highlights from ESPN.  So he has either an unusual strategy or no strategy at all for picking his players.  We had some of these at our draft (i.e., the only other female at our draft, who decided at the end to select the players left who had the best names, like Tuiasusopo.  But she also got Tom Brady AND Phillip Rivers, so don’t feel too sorry for her.)

So at this point, you’re probably asking Question #4, which is, Who did you pick?  I can’t remember everyone off the top of my head, but I can tell you that I picked Ben Roethlisberger in the 1st round, and the Ravens defense/special teams in the 2nd.  My 4 RBs all hailed from Bama or Arkansas, being Le’Ron McClain, Darren McFadden, Felix Jones, and Glen Coffee (don’t give me grief about Coffee; I’ve got high hopes for him!).  I also have Hines Ward and Ryan Succop to round out the SEC love.

So we’ll see how it goes.  And I’ll keep working on the perfect place for that coveted championship cookie sheet. . . . .

How About an Ethics Discussion?

You know, some people get defensive/offended when someone suggests an etihcal debate raging in the sports world, like sports should be kept far away from anything remotely having to do with what’s right.  And I guess I can see why they think that, to some degree: we all want our teams to win!  And sometimes the drive to win takes over every thought, leading us to unfortunate positions when ethical discussions come up.  So to those people who feel that there is no place for ethics in sports, I say: Get a grip; ethical dilemmas permeate each and every aspect of life, and sometimes the ethical thing to do gets in the way of what you want to do, which is win.  So with some of the news that’s been going around the past few days, I wanted to address some sports/ethics issues:

1) Rick Pitino.  Wow.  I mean, I always kind of had this feeling that there was some type of mafia-Godfather-type mentality going on, but seriously? The part that gets me most about that story is the allegation that he made the equipment manager marry the woman with whom he had this tryst.  Bad decisions everywhere.  Kevin Scarbinsky wrote this thought provoking article about the situation.  (Yeah, I know–who knew Scarbinsky could be thought-provoking without making me want to scoop out my eyeballs with a spoon?)  But I think he makes a good point: Louisville’s president had the opportunity to really make a statement about this type of behavior, but he chose to go the “oh, he’s been good for the community” route and give Pitino the (dreaded) seal of approval.

So here’s the question: Say you’re the president of a university with a successful sports team, and a story like this comes out about your star coach.  What do you do?  Does it matter if the team looks like it’s going to have a down season this coming year?  Does the record matter at all?  What if you’re at a private university v. a public one?  What if you’re having a discipline problem with those players in the first place?

2) In Alabama news, Ezekial Knight has been cleared to play at Stillman this season.  I remember this kid playing at Bama–such a great head hunter on the defense.  (My brother calls him SpiderMan because of this one play wherein he almost took off a guy’s head, and Zeke ended up horizontal in the air mid-tackle. I can still see that play in my head.)  But he got benched due to health related issues, and then word started trickling out of Tuscaloosa that he’s got heart issues . . . then he’s being sent all over the place for testing . . . he’s had to have heart surgery . . . he’s not being cleared to take the field.  Such a sad story.  But from this article in the Huntsville Times, it looks like he had such a tenacity for the game, he wasn’t willing to take No for an answer, and finally got medical clearance to play and will suit up for Stillman this season.  And it turns out the kid had a stroke and a blood clot and all sorts of medical problems you never envison for a 20-something year old top-caliber athlete.

So here’s the question: you’re the coach of a major sports program, and you’ve got this crazy good player, and he starts having all sorts of unexplained medical issues.  You’ve sent him to multiple doctors, and 2 say he’s good to go, and 2 say he shouldn’t be cleared to play for your team.  Do you let him or not? Does it matter if you’ve got depth at that position? Does it matter if you need to cut some scholarships to make room for the incoming class?  Does it matter if you’re on the verge of winning a conference title that year?  What do you do?

What if you’re the doctor who’s been asked to evaluate a player with medical issues that are in such dispute other top doctors in your field can’t agree on whether he should play sports?  Do you go into the evaluation leaning one way or another?

What if you’re the player?  Your family isn’t rich.  Before all this started, you were projected as a future NFLer.  Do you keep pushing the envelope? Do you keep going out for the sport, taking the risk that you won’t have another blood clot that could debilitate or kill you?

I admire Zeke, and I wish him nothing but the best.  But I pray for his health, and that he is able to do what he wants to accomplish without any adverse health issues.  God bless him for his drive.

3) Michael Vick.  So he’s out of jail now, supposedly reformed, and he’s got a heavyweight in his corner: Tony Dungy.  (What a man, that Dungy; I can’t think of a better mentor for Michael Vick.  I hope he listens and follows this man’s advice.)  So say you’re the general manager of a struggling NFL team.  Would you suggest to the owners that you should look at him? Does it matter what your most ardent sports fans are like? (i.e., Pittsburgh fans v. San Francisco)  Does it matter if you’ve got an anemic offense?  And if you do take him, how are you going to treat him–will you let him be his own man, or are you going to baby-sit him a little more than you normally would?  How would you handle that situation?

I can’t answer any of these questions, but thought that they made for good debate.  I hope Pitino gets a clue; Zeke stays healthy and has a great year for Stillman; and that Vick decides to toe the line and stay out of trouble.  But I think that each of these stories makes us wonder whether winning truly is the only thing.

What’s the deal with Ole Miss?

Okay, so color me skeptical, but what in the world is up with all the Ole Miss love in the preseason polls?   (And what color is ”skeptical”?  Green? A burnt orange?  Things that I think about . . . .)  Anyway, Ole Miss is, in fact, a team that went 9-4 last season (not a bad result, mind you).  They were the only team to beat eventual national champions Florida, certainly.   But c’mon, it’s Ole Miss!  Do we seriously think that they’re going to take the SEC West this season?  Let’s look at a few facts, shall we?

Fact #1: Sure, Ole Miss beat Florida last year.  But this was the same team that came into the Florida game at 2-2, having lost to the only ranked team that it had played that season (Wake Forest).  (FYI, other loss was to Vandy.)  They went on to lose to Bama, and then beat LSU.  So against ranked teams, Ole Miss’s record was 2-2 in 2008.  This is pretty much common place for Ole Miss, isn’t it?  Play up to the good teams and down to the bad ones.

Fact #2: In the 17 years that the SEC has had 12 schools, Ole Miss has appeared in the SEC Championship game a total of 0 times.  That’s 0, and no, that is not a typo.  They have yet to rise to the top of their own division of the conference, much less win a championship.  They didn’t do it when Eli Manning was QB1 for them, and he was the Great Hope for Ole Miss since Eli’s daddy had donned the Rebel blue.  So Jevan Snead is going to do what Eli couldn’t?  Maybe. . . .

Fact #3: Ole Miss may have a fairlylight schedule, with all their toughest opponents coming to Oxford this year.  But they still have to play LSU . . . and Arkansas . . . and let us not forget Bama.  Yeah, LSU is coming off a less than stellar season, but anyone who thinks LSU is a gimme game has another thing coming.  Arkansas isn’t going to be a slouch this year, either.  And Bama–well, let’s just say that I doubt Bama is going to be a gimme, either.  So Ole Miss is going to run the gauntlet against these teams?  I suppose they could, but . . .

Look, I think I know what’s behind all of this.  Last year, a few prognosticators liked what they saw in Bama, and they looked like absolute genuises after the Clemson game, and even more so after the Georgia game.  The other journalists who didn’t pick up on the signs were jealous, so they’ve spent all offseason scouring statistics and winter news to come up with the new hot team this season.  And they’ve landed on Ole Miss.

Actually, I guess this happens almost every season.  Some team is a trendy pick, and suddenly everyone thinks that there’s no way that team can lose.  It happened to Georgia last year–and Clemson.  How did the season work out for them, again?

So to all sports writers everywhere, I caution you to be wary the trendy pick.  Don’t you realize that your own polls make no sense when you rank Ole Miss over Bama, but you pick Bama to make it to the Championship Game again?  Oh, but I guess asking for a little common sense might be asking for a little much in the preseason, huh?

I might be wrong, but I officially go on record now as saying that Ole Miss is going to be the Trendy Team To Go Bust for 2009.

The Cardinal Sins of Fans #3: The Coach Fan

Our third installment of the Cardinal Sins of Fans takes us to the Coach Fan.  You know this guy.  He’s also known as the Armchair Quarterback.  He’s the one who played jr. varsity football in the 9th grade when the legendary coach of your local team was coaching varsity, and this experience alone gave him the most comprehensive understanding of the intracacies of football ever known to man.  Brett Farve did a hilarious take on this guy during a MasterCard commercial several years back (still one of my all time favorite sports commercials, right along side Terry Tate, Office Linebacker).

You hate watching games with this guy.  Every time a play goes wrong for your team, he jumps up and yells, “Why is that guy still in the game???”  “Why are they still throwing to that guy??”  “Why haven’t they put in [insert name of 2nd string QB here]?”  He always knows the play that would have been more successful to run than the one that just busted.  He always knows which bench-rider that could have made that play in his sleep over the 3rd year starter.  Sometimes he even starts sentences with “If Coach would just give me a call, I’d tell him that. . . .”

Here’s a tip for the Coach Fan: don’t quit your day job just yet.  Before you don the knee length shorts and the whistle and head on down to the practice field, keep in mind that there’s a reason that Coach Saban makes $4 million a year and you don’t.  Sometimes coaches run routes as a decoy to set up a big play later.  Sometimes coaches want to give a kid another chance or two to see if the kid can shake out of whatever it is that’s keeping his head out of the game and break a big play.  And although it’s only a rumor, I’ve heard that some coaches actually develop a game plan ahead of time that has different variations based on what the other team does throughout the game.

So, good luck to you, Coach Fan.  Maybe one day Coach Saban will pick up the phone and call you to find out your incredibly keen insight into how he should prepare the troops for the SEC Championship and how to shut down Tebow.  But I wouldn’t hold all of my other calls in anticipation if I were you.

Thoughts on SEC Media Days

Can you smell it?  It’s the scent of excitement in the air.  Anticipation.  Downright giddiness.  You know what that means: SEC football is right around the corner!  With fall practice starting in the next few days, here are some of my random thoughts following SEC Media Days:

1) Poor Spurrier.  He had to hate it, knowing that he wasn’t going to speak until the last day, and watching every other coach get grilled about whether he was the one who didn’t vote for Tebow.  I really do think that this was an oversight on his part, and not some nefarious way of getting back at Florida or Urban.  He looked genuinely embarrassed, and I thought the fact that he actually apologized to Tebow was a nice thing to do.

2) Poor Tebow.  He gets asked a question about his virginity, and suddenly the media is blowing up over it; some who can’t believe the answer, and others who abhor that the question was asked in the first place.  I saw that Tebow told some members of the media afterward, “I was more prepared for that question than you were.”  He knows he is a role model.  He knows that people are curious about his faith.  God bless him for always being prepared to give a reason for the hope that he has.  (Sidebar: I have a whole other post in mind dedicated to Tebow in the coming days.)  And God bless him even more for saying that if he hadn’t played for Urban, he would have gone to play for Shula.  This kid makes it harder and harder for me to dislike him.

3) Poor Kiffin.  “Oh, I meant to do that.”  Really? That’s what I said when I took a header off the curb at church and sprained my ankle: ”Oh, I meant to injure myself and ruin my favorite pair of shoes.”  Whatever, Lane.  You meant to make a bunch of noise (along the lines of “Full of sound and fury signifying nothing”), but you didn’t mean to incur the backlash that resulted from you running your mouth in the offseason.  And while you were running your mouth about putting up a fence around Memphis, Saban went in quietly and picked off one of your state’s most coveted recruits.  Oh, wait, I forgot; you meant to lose that kid, too, didn’t you?

4) Poor Saban.  Sorry that your team doesn’t want to see you in the film about the Oher story.  I, for one, will definitely be buying a ticket to see that, if for no other reason than to hear you utter that line about the window treatments!

5) Poor Jevan Snead.  You’d think he was chopped liver the way that everyone reacted to someone picking him as part of the All-SEC team.  He’s not a bad QB, members of the media.  I would have thought you would have picked up on that already.

What is it, 40 days until kickoff???

Random Thoughts: Baseball Edition

Sometimes when a person watches sports, random thoughts crosses his/her mind; not so much a thought that warrants much discussion, but an interesting thought that could stir up some discussion/debate.  I share some of my random Baseball thoughts with you now:

1. The greatest name in baseball today has to belong to one Jarrod Saltalamacchia.  Now, I know that some people are thinking, are you forgetting Pujols? Texeria? Jeter?  Yeah, when I said “greatest name in baseball,” I didn’t mean “who has the most clout;” I meant “who has the most fun name to say.”  And while Texeria is pretty fun to say, nothing rolls off the tongue quite like Saltalamacchia.  It’s awesome!

2.  Is it just me, or does Tim Lincecum look less like a jock and more like some kid who just left his smoke-laden room where he had been listening to Nirvana and playing with an ouija board?  Great pitcher, but not exactly the career you would have guessed for the goth guy down the street.

3.  When a Brave hits a homerun or scores a run at Turner Field, they sound this siren that sounds not unlike a tornado siren.  Seriously?  C’mon, people, we’re in the South.  That sound does not make me jubliant; it unnerves me.  Even if it’s sunny outside without a cloud in the sky, whenever I hear that sound I automatically look to the window to see if I can visualize the tornado that must be headed directly for my house.  I’m sure there’s some other type of happy sound that could be played for good plays, right??  Something that makes me think, “Yea, we scored a run!” rather than, “Oh, we’re about to die!”

4. As much as I hate to say it, maybe I was wrong about Francoeur’s exit from the Braves.  The boy is playing extremely well with the Mets (outside of Atlanta, that is).  Maybe the change of scenery is exactly what he needed.  Still miss him, though.

5.  Worst nickname: Mannywood.  Really?  Remember, LA, dude failed a drug test.  Do you really want to idolize that kind of behavior?  Oh, wait a minute, I forgot that I was talking to LA, where that kind of thing wins you street cred and awards and such.  My bad.