Pre-All-Star Game thoughts

Tonight's MLB All-Star game led me to have a few thoughts to post.

- The last year in Yankee Stadium brings (hopefully) a memorable night with lots of old-timers like the night in Fenway a few years back.

- the notion of the winning team giving their league home field advantage in the World Series needs to stop. Coupled with the managers desire to play everybody it conflicts and contrasts the desire to win. Need to go back to best record at end of regular season gives homefield advantage, or, best interleague record (league overall) provides the home field advantage (AL soundly has beaten NL this year I believe).

- I read at that the ticket prices are extremely high for all of the events including the fanfest events. Shame on MLB. Perhaps with so much revenue coming in, they could give the players a huge pot of $$$ to the winning team to divide. That could go a long way to making them fight to win it

- If I have to hear about A-Rods pending divorce during the telecast I may puke. Enough.

- here is the starting lineup

Len Bias revisited

With last week marking the 22 year anniversary of the death of basketball star Len Bias, I was going to do a post and discuss the world of basketball and how it "could have been", particularily for the Celtics.

Yesterday espn.com put out an article on his death and focused more about the impact of it, how his mother has been speaking to schools etc. and less about the basketball impact.

It is a very interesting article and I recommend reading it : click here

This, for me, is one of those moments in life when you remember where you were and what you were doing when you heard the news. While not as globally important as the space shuttle disaster or the Sadam Hussein capture (amoung others) , it still stands out for me.

Miscellaneous Tuesday Thoughts

Overall the sports scene is in a 'tween mode right now. NBA finals are complete (did I mention the Celtics won?) and MLB is heading into the All-Star timeframe soon.

Some miscellaneous things to discuss:

Interleague play in MLB, good or bad, done right or done wrong? The obvious example of how it is bad is the injury to Wang for the Yankees. Their top pitcher is out for 2-4 months because he injured himself running the bases during an interleague game. Now NL pitchers run (potentially) every game they pitch so what is the big deal? The big deal is that for the number of games the AL teams have to play in NL parks, it isn't worth it to practice hitting, baserunning for the pitchers. If you accept that it is here to stay (read:revenue) then what can be done to improve it?

Do you have it play on AL rules only in all parks? That could give the AL an advantage as their rosters are built to have a DH included and the NL teams would be inserting a less than equal offensive player as their DH. There is no other solution unfortunately to make it "fair" and reduce injury possibilities for players playing by rules not expected of them for 130+ games in the schedule.

The only other solution would be to make both leagues play by the same rules all season, either DH or no DH. This would be so radical that "slow moving" Bud would never go there on his watch.

So in the end, there will be no changes, things will remain the same and discussions from those in charge will be about how nothing is broken. Whatever.

This past weekend there was coverage of the US Olympic Trials on tv. Have to admit we watched some at home. My youngest daughters were very interested in the gymnastic trials. Some diving interested them too but the interest really was in gymnastics. This is the first time we discussed the Olympics at home and I am sure we will watch quite a bit come August. Having an international family (3 of 5 kids adopted from SE Asia) we have the possibility of rooting for other countries other than the US.

Here is a quick movie file to watch, funny :

Get your DVR's ready - RedSox honor Celtics tonight

The RedSox will honor the Celtics tonight before the game with the Cardinals. The cross-team commeradarie has been great the last few years and tonight there will be a significant love-fest on display.

http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/extras/extra_bases/2008/06/sox_to_honor_cs.html

great pictures from parade

from www.boston.com

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/06/2008_nba_champs_celtics_rollin.html

Red commercial

Schilling to have surgery

Curt Schilling announced on WEEI's Dennis and Callahan show today that he is having season ending (possibly career ending as well) surgery on his shoulder.

Interesting how this ended after all the intrigue and fights over how to handle the shoulder in the offseason.