EVIL~! alkeiper

I'm looking forward to this. ESPN did a good job of presenting the recent history of U.S. soccer.

"It" equals championships. Got it. Ted Williams, Ernie Banks, Billy Williams, Robin Yount didn't have "it." But quite honestly, this is a reasonable column. A-Rod has looked awkward at times and he hasn't played his best this season. Sherman simply says that A-Rod needs to come through, not that he won't.

Exactly. You've got an undetectable drug and millions of dollars at stake. This is a problem that encompasses all of professional sports.

I don't care anymore. First of all, we don't know how big this problem is. Second of all, how far back this goes. If these guy are taking HCH and steroids, let them. If they all do it, then there all on an equal playing field. The problem is that playing professional sports should not involve taking body-altering substances. It may be equal, but it's not right. There's too much contact in football to risk taking steroids and HGH. You could set yourself up for a cripplin' pretty easy or worse. Look at Lyle Alzado (probably butchered his name). If steroids and HGH make you incredibly fragile, why would professional athletes even take them? I think one would have to be VERY naive to think there are no performance enhancing drugs in football. It's a sport that rewards brute strength.

Gavin Floyd had another good outing in Scranton today, with seven innings pitched, two runs allowed, and eight strikeouts. Since his demotion, he's actually looked like a prospect.

For me at least, I think the College World Series is filling the niche that the Little League World Series used to hold.

Maybe one of you can explain this to me. Soccer teams carry 23 players. 11 players on the field, plus three substitutions make a maximum from 14 players from each team can play in any given game. What the heck do they need nine extra players for?

Explain why they are drawing crowds of 5,000 to 250,000 in over 350 venues ACROSS THE COUNTRY in one given week. IN Carolina, Ohio, California, Michigan, Tennessee, Texas, Arizona and everywhere in between. It's not a regional thing because it's popular everywhere. It's time to wake up and accept that this NASCAR thing isn't just some southern hobby for people to do over the weekend. It is a multi-billion dollar industry that is ingrained throughly with corporate america. NASCAR isn't just one event and one show per week. NASCAR isn't just Nextel Cup. It's easy to draw fans to other races when they are held on the same track on the same weekend and the tickets are sold in packages. There are Nascar races in Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Texas this week. Those are you options, Nascar fans. Yes, those races are going to attract truckloads of people. It's called scarcity. Nascar draws crowds because there are an extremely limited number of races, and they make going to a race a weekend event. To draw a comparison, last Friday MLB drew 399,000 in 13 games. On a single day. I'm not saying Nascar is not popular. But it is silly to suggest it's the number one sport in the country. Nascar has a very devoted, hardcore fanbase. But outside of that fanbase there's little interest. The most casual fan could tell you who won the NBA Title last year. How many casual sport fans know who won the Nextel Cup last year? I think the most likely explanation is that the top soccer players play in Europe. In other leagues such as MLB and NBA, the top international players gravitate here. That's not usually the case for MLS.

I'm bumping this thread for the Super Regionals. ESPN is airing games tonight. On the scroll, they listed some factoids for both UNC and Alabama. One of Alabama's alumni is Joe Sewell, who "played with Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth from 1931-33). The man's a Hall of Famer! He did more in his career than have famous teammates.

The thing with Nascar that I'd like to know is how many of the fans are repeat attendees? I live six miles from a Nascar track (Pocono International). There are an unbelieveable amount of recreational vehicles that attend the races, and I think they follow drivers from place to place. I can't see Nascar being the most popular sport, or even the most watched. It's too easy to pile up masses of fans when you have one big race a week on what is essentially a campground. It has a hardcore, embedded fanbase, but there's no real sustained buzz about the sport.

Wohlers had one more good year in '97. He got Steve Blass disease in 1998 however and that was effectively the end.

Rich Harden is back on the DL. That didn't take long.

Or use Mozilla Firefox. If I'm typing something and accidently hit back, what I've written is still here.

I traded away Thome for Hafner a couple weeks into my fantasy league. It would be a push, except my opponent insisted on trading me Brandon Webb for Andy Pettitte as part of the deal.

The Dixie Chicks were blown way out of proportion, and I think people who were honestly upset about it need to reevaluate their priorities. It was troubling for a comedian to throw away any good observational humor to pull out the same macho shit that Toby Keith does. Combine that with constant toilet humor and not only was it pandering, it also wasn't funny in the least. Larry and Co. had some great comedy, but they're becoming caracatures of themselves. I've seen the first ad. The hippies line is funny, simply because of its complete randomness. It really makes no sense and comes out of left field, and that's why it works. Someone mentioned the Geico ads. The gecko has outlived its usefullness, IMO.

That's just this year though. Furcal's hit double digit home runs the last three years, and in fact he hit two in a game twice last season.

What games are the most crucial games in a series. At times a media outlet will trot out a statistic claiming that the team that wins game one wins the series at such and such a percentage. Is that true, and if so, does that make game one an absolute necessity. A bout of extreme boredom at work set me on the path of exploring some mathematical exploration. Using a statistical model of each team having a 50/50 shot of winning each game, I caculated how much the odds of winning a seven game series changed with each situation, such as a team up three games to one or two games to zero. Here are the various situations in order from most important to least. Importance here is defined by what extent the game changes the odds of winning the series. 1. Game Seven 2. Game Six 3. Game Four when one team holds a 2-1 series lead 4. Game Three when one team holds a 2-0 series lead 5. Game Five when one team holds a 3-1 series lead 6. Game Five when the series is tied 7. Game Two 8. Game Three when the series is tied 9. Game Four when one team holds a 3-0 series lead 10. Game One In order to test this, I took a look at real life results, specifically MLB's last 45 postseason series. In the real world, teams taking 1-0, 2-0 and 2-1 series leads have won more often than we would expect. Teams taking a 3-0 lead have won less often, but that's entirely due to one outlier in 2004. Teams taking 3-1 and 3-2 leads have won almost <I>exactly</I> as often as we expect. I think the reason for the discrepancy in the first results is because when a team takes a lead, it is often because they truly are a better team, and thus are operating at odds better than 50/50. Teams that have won game one since 1990 have won the series 71% of the time. That's significant, but then again teams that have taken game two as well have won 90% of the time, and that is another huge gain. I think if you looked at the results of any game, you would see the same result (except for game seven, which would give you 100%). You can shift the odds around to develop different percentages, but the order above would remain roughly the same. I don't know if you can do anything with this, but I had it down on paper and figured I would print it.

The draft is now over and after 1,502 picks, neither Danny Almonte or Jeffrey Maier were chosen. Both are now free agents, and I think it's almost certain that one or both shows up in an independant league in the near future.

Ryan Howard just hit a BOMB, clearing the batters' eye in Arizona 413 feet from home plate.

Round 42, and still no Maier or Almonte. And some guys have gone on the basis that their dad's a scout.

Except that he had a 15 year career.

Day Two of the Draft kicks off. Both Danny Almonte and Jeff Maier are still on the board.

Listening to it now. It's more painful thus far than hilarious. Damn. It sounds like Kyle Drabek is on the fringes of mental retardation.

One final note about the draft. IF Preston Mattingly went much earlier than expected, going 31st overall to the LA Dodgers. Preston is of course the son of Don Mattingly.

As far as the draft goes, Kyle Drabek is an interesting pick. He's a risk, but he's very talented for an 18th overall choice. Luke Hochevar going #1 is a huge surprise, considering how last year's draft developed. Scott Boras should get a Christmas card every year from Hochevar.