EVIL~! alkeiper

I swore to myself no more Aybar subtitles, but this merited it.

HOLY SHIT!

Reyes with a bottom 9th throwing error. What is with Mets and competition?

Despite the draft folder, I'm sticking this here because this is of primary interest to baseball fans on this board. I referenced this in the Fantasy Sports subfolder, and now it is time to get it off the ground. This is going to be a straight draft, rather than serpentine. The reason for this is that I have a format that will get this thing completed in about a month. We're going to run a round a day on weekdays, completing five rounds each week. Each drafter is going to take a 20 minute window, and will make a pick every day at that time. This portion of the draft will be 25 rounds, players only. We will draft managers and venues in a separate draft running an opposite order, running concurrently. I'll hammer out the details in a bit, but let's open this up to signups. Claim a signup window as well, either :00, :20 or :40 minutes after any hour. I'll update this post to show who is drafting where. 7am: Gert T 8am: Canadian Chris 9am: Agent of Oblivion 9:20am: Bored 12pm: Pinjockey 1pm: 909 3pm: Smartley Pretty 4pm: Smues, who had to add himself despite Al adding people who posted their times after him. Alaska Coast Bias. 6:20pm: Brooklyn Zoo 8pm: JHawk 8:20pm: Treble 9pm: HarleyQuinn 11pm: Beast

Including me we've got 11 so far. I know there are more people than that. Signups through Thursday, then we'll kick off round one on Friday.

Gino's a great pickup. I'm going to try and create my entire roster on Fire Pro Wrestling after this thing.

Today's Games: Italy vs. Venezuela, 5pm ESPN2. Winner advances, loser eliminated. Dominican Republic vs. Netherlands, 6:30pm MLBN. Winner advances, loser eliminated. Cuba vs. Australia, 10pm MLBN. Winner advances, loser faces Mexico tomorrow. I love that four games of Pool 1 next round will air at 11pm ET. God forbid anyone in this country sees Cuba play.

And it's official. I'll be damned. Was anyone demanding this? Really? Having some fun with kayfabe results. Koko was 1-10 at PPV's, and that one win came in a Survivor Series match in which he was eliminated. He was 1-5 at Saturday Night's Main Event. He never held a title. He was a good worker, not great. He never had a memorable match. I mean, what the hell?

Italy/Canada and Netherlands/PR going on now. The Dutch have Marlins' prospect Rick VandenHurk going tonight, another upset advances them to the next round.

Getting mercy ruled is embarassing. The Aussies have a good team though, most of their talent is at least AAA caliber. No games outside the MLB Network today. Netherlands/PR at 6:30, winner advances out of that one. Italy/Canada in an elimination game at the same time, that one will draw interest on this board. Mexico/South Africa at 10pm in another elimination game. Now if Mexico loses, THAT will be a major embarrassment.

The Olympics are far worse with ringers. The only team that really exploits it here is Italy.

You're right. We can't risk players traveling to Spring Training. They might get hurt on the way there.

Nice play Jeter.

The idea is to discuss dvd content after the dvd comes out. For example, the SNME thread in General Wrestling. That sort of thing.

"Remember when Jeter ran into that chair with his face?" Oh for fuck's sake...

Yup. Grand slam Jorge Vazquez, and it's 5-3 Mexico.

And Victor Zambrano. Why couldn't Steve Phillips broadcast this game?

Trent Oeltjen singles. Luke Hughes homers. Chris Snelling (!) homers. Craig Anderson isn't pitching any better for the Aussies.

Rick Sutcliffe can't make it through a single half inning without mentioning Derek Jeter. It's amazing.

The Netherlands have a professional league. Absolutely they should be there. Ditto Italy. Now the presence of ringers is a side issue, but the Dutch don't really have that. I think South Africa and Panama are the only teams that don't have professional leagues of some sort.

Kmart's running a huge WWE sale this week. Cena, Edge, Hell in the Cell, DX, SNME dvd sets are $15 apiece. Wrestlemanias 20, 22 and 24 are $13. And if you buy $50 worth of WWE merchandise, you get $10 off Wrestlemania 25 on PPV.

Eleven pitches. My god. Will Cueto ever survive the strain?

No more expansion!!!!!!!!!! Baseball just tried contracting two teams 5-6 years ago. There are already a ton of talent on the Major League level who should still be in the minors. We do not need another 50 more. Contraction was a bullshit move to push cities for stadium money. Attendance is strong, and I maintain that those who contend that there is not enough talent really do not know what they are watching. I watch more AAA baseball than anyone on the board, and I can tell you that there are certainly 50 guys who can hold down major league jobs.

The point of the WBC from the American side isn't "us versus them." It's to expand baseball into other countries in hopes of further cultivating the talent pool. For other countries it matters because their players are viewing a talent pool bigger than usual. For Cuba for example, this is absolutely huge.

I'll take a flyer on 3B Brett Wallace.