RANDOM PARTICLES OF MATTER

Wily Mo Pena: his
almostdecapitatingtheoldguyinthefrontrowoftheMonsterseatshomerun
the other day was just sick. It was still ascending when it hit the concrete and bounced back practically to the infield. That ball could have gone 600 feet!

Bronson for Wily Mo looks better everyday eh?

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Javy Lopez? At least it is only a 2 month rental. I will always be grateful to Javy for saving my fantasy league season in 2003 when I picked him up off the trash-heap and was rewarded with 43 home runs and a 1.065 OPS that season.

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Jacoby Ellsbury cannot get to Fenway soon enough. This kid is going to be special. A timeline of Fenway in 2008 is the latest I forsee.

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Enjoy it now, Yankees fans. Enjoy it now, because come September 15 the Yankees will be frantically chasing after the White Sox for the Wild Card.

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I hate writing bad things about my favorite sportswriter and basically the inventor of the Sports Blog. I tried to, but I just hated the Bill Simmons article comparing Big Papi to Larry Bird. Not the time in the life of David Ortiz to start comparing his clutch-ness to a guy who was retired for the past 15 years.

Here is one frustrating example:

Ortiz isn't even one of the top five baseball players of the past 25 years.
What? We rank him behind A-Rod & Jeter? Bonds, Sosa, & McGuire? Manny? Carlos Beltran? Other than maybe Albert Pujols, who else in the past 25 years would Simmons want pinch-hitting for Papi? Not one single freaking other player. Yeah. That is what I thought.

But, hey, it inspired discussion, and that is the name of the game. Of course, I think if Simmons pops in his Red Sox 2004 Championship DVD before writing the article it would be a whole different story. Larry was great, but he falls behind Bill Russell on my list of great Celtics.

What really ticked me off was Simmons pulling out the steroids accusation with Papi:


As for Big Papi, he's playing in a sport where every power hitter always comes
under suspicion; his head is the size of an overpacked suitcase; his power stats
keep getting better and better; and everyone seems content to attribute his home
run jump to the fact that Tom Kelly was a moron for telling him to hit to all
fields in Minnesota. He also has chance to become the first AL batter ever to
hit 62 homers. Personally, I don't think there's a chance in hell that he's
using anything. But you never know. And I would have been a complete homer if I
didn't bring it up. Don't blame me, blame baseball, a sport that didn't care
that players were compromising the game until it was too late. Now everyone is
guilty until proven innocent. Good times.

Gee, he could have wrote that Bird was probably hopped-up on cocaine because half the NBA was coked-up in the early eighties, but since his mind was made up going into the article, he had to find something to trash Ortiz about. How dare he accuse Papi. Even a Yankees fan who has been enjoying the roids run by Jason Giambi would not sink so low as to accuse Papi of being juiced. Just plain despicable.

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What Simmons missed out on was that Larry Bird and his back issue was a problem brought on by Bird not taking care of himself, not getting himself in shape, and not training in the off-season. He squandered another four or five years of stardom.

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I am not that old (at least I think so), but one trip to ESPN.com reminds me that I used to have no Internet, no SportsCenter, no all sports stations, just Gil Santos in the AM on WBZ Radio and sarcastic Bob Lobel on the six oclock news. I remember listening to scratchy 660AM the FAN just to get a score from the previous night for the St. Louis Cardinals. Why the Cardinals? Because in the early 80s the Red Sox were transitioning from the power hitting late seventies powerhouse to the Ralph Houke led bandof idiots. Heartbreak was a common occurrence back then. The Cardinals were my adopted team. I needed someone who would win once in a while, and they had to be a National League team because I could not root against the Sox. But what a crew they were: Whitey Herzog, Ozzie Smith (no hit, great field: just like me! Except he was graceful and I was clumsy. And he was personable and beloved, and I was shy and introverted. Oh forget it.), Tommy Herr, George Hendricks, Jack Clark, Darrell Porter, Willie McGee, Vince Coleman, Terry Pendleton, Lonny Smith, John Tudor, Joaquim Andujar, and Bob Forsch.

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I should have jumped on this story, but fortunately Chad Finn wrote a fantastic piece about Captain Intangibles of the Yankees and his perfume (I mean, cologne). Check it out here: Chad Finn -Touching All the Bases.

Personally, I would love to see Major League Baseball put out a bunch of different perfumes (I mean, colognes):

BigMoFoxy: Smells like, what else when talking about the SoxDawg, but the inside of a strip club.

Johnny Number 19: Smells like money and flashbulbs.

Eau de A-Rod: Come on, this is too easy. It smells like Hamburger Helper.

SFLuvsBarry: I am not sure of the smell, but it comes in two varieties: the clear and the cream. Also, the cologne causes gigantism of the head, shrinking of the genitalia, and unnatural fits of rage.

Brand Hillenbrand: Wear it, and it is a reverse Tag Body Spray: guaranteed to make everyone hate you after a while.

21Rocket: Strong. Too strong. But still the best out there.

Maddux & Marigolds: The smell is nothing spectacular, but it lasts forever. Once you think it is done, it is back as strong as ever.

Bellhorn Smellhorn: Smells like, well, Mark Bellhorn (rumor has it that he was not a big proponent of personal hygiene).

I could go on, but as my wife always says when someone is foolish enough to laugh at one of my jokes:

Do not encourage him!


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