Initial Thoughts

First, congratulations to the Kansas City Royals for sweeping the Evil Empire. Maybe if the Yankees had listened to Costanza and stuck with the cotton uniforms, things would have worked out differently. No World Series rings since the Subway series of 2000. All I need to make the picture perfect would be for Jim Leyritz to die suddenly from "Overrated Dickhead" syndrome (a very rare mental disorder occuring mainly in below-average Yankee role players who managed to get a couple of lucky hits in big games. See Chad Curtis and Shane Spencer).

Significantly more importantly, the England/Bangladesh cricket test series resumed this morning in Durham (England, not North Carolina). For those too busy to check the score, Bangladesh are currently 70/6 just after lunch on the first day. Exciting stuff!

With football season fast approaching, allow me to be the first to predict that my very own Atlanta Falcons will be crowned Super Bowl Champions in 2006. Good upgrades on defense, and Michael Vick will continue his progression towards consensus league MVP and demi-god.

Back to baseball. Can someone PLEASE explain to me how friggin' Nomar Garciaparra is the leading vote-getter at shortstop in the National League for the All-Star game. Never mind that he's out for the majority of the season; he was only batting .157 when he got hurt with 0 home runs. As of right now, the All-Star lineups should be as follows:


Catcher: AL - Jason Varitek; NL - Ramon Hernandez

First Base: AL - Mark Teixeira; NL - Derrek Lee (tough to not vote for Pujols, but Lee deserves the start this season, and Pujols can DH because the game is in an AL park).

Second Base: AL - Brian Roberts; NL - Jeff Kent

Shortstop: AL - Miguel Tejada; NL - Jimmy Rollins

Third Base: AL - Alex Rodriguez; NL - Troy Glaus

Outfield: AL - Gary Sheffield, Manny Ramirez, Ichiro Suzuki; NL - Bobby Abreu, Miguel Cabrera, Carlos Beltran

DH: AL - David Ortiz; NL - Albert Pujols

Finally, before I sign off from my first official blog post, a quick cricket score update. Bangladesh are now 90/8 and are at sixes and sevens.