I really don’t understand the crosstown inter league “rivalries.” I am watching the Cubs-White Sox game right now and am reminded of all the talk about how these teams are long time rivals because they share a city. For some reason Chicago fans tend to hate the other team. I have a friend from the South Side who is a big White Sox fan. He regularly bashes the Cubs. When making my first visit to Wrigley a few years ago there were vendors selling all sorts of “White Sox Suck” gear after the game. What I would like to know, is what do you guys hate about each other?

The first time the two teams played outside of an exhibition was the 1906 World Series won by the White Sox. Between that Fall Classic and the 1997 season the teams had zero competition with each other on the field. I am perplexed while trying to figure out how you can develop a hatred for a team while never playing a remotely meaningful game for 98 years. The only competition between them was for fans.

Once the teams began to see each other a couple of times each season the games still were not as meaningful as most regular season games. They take place in the middle of June, when the season is under way but in no way has the stretch run began. They are low leverage games because the two are not in competition with each other. On any given day, a White Sox loss does not make the Cubs chances of making the playoffs any better or worse. The Sox are more affected by what the Tigers are doing on their West Coast road trip than what is going on in the North Side of town.

Geography is clearly not and issue. Sure, these guys share a city, but it’s a large city. The borders between White Sox territory and Cubs territory has been well established as being the South Side and North Side of Chicago respectively. Most of the people I have met from the South Side are White Sox fans, and from the North Side are Cubs fans. I could understand things if the clubs played within legitimate walking distance of each other, but there is a lengthy train ride between the two parks.

My best guess is that the “rivalry” was created by marketing, which is a poor way to do things. That creates and artificial rivalry that exists for nothing more than popularity. The hatred in one of these games is purely based on what the media tells you. Someone is telling you to hate that team, even though you have no baseball related reason to. This sort of attitude spreads like a disease. When one fan starts to hate on a “rival” other fans will join in. This spreads to the other team who starts to hate because they are being hated.

The Cubs have been my National League favorite since I was a little kid watching games on WGN. I am not a pure bred Chicago fan (in fact the Cubs are the only Chicago team I can root for), but if we lose to the White Sox in the next couple weeks I will be alright with it. I hate the White Sox, but that’s because they have this thing for pestering the Tigers, not the Cubs.

The best rivalries are created on the field. The Red Sox hate the Yankees because they have battled for the same crown for 110 seasons. The Giants hate the Dodgers because they have shared a city and a league since from 1870s to the 1950s. These guys hated each other so much that when one of them moved out west, the other had to come along to make sure the other didn’t get too far away. A rivalry does not happen because “The Man” says so. It happens from years and years of dispute on the field. You can’t have a rivalry when teams went 98 seasons without playing each other, and when they really have nothing to compete for between them.

I love ranting about how awesome I think Juan Pierre is. I was upset when he got bumped from the Dodgers starting lineup before last season and still ended up playing in 119 games with a respectable, but not amazing, .283/.327/.328 line. This season he continues to tear it up in the absence of Manny Ramirez with a National League leading .360/.421/.466 posting. Sure he has “cooled off” and is only hitting .355 in the last month, but hey, a guy can’t be on fire forever.

The only question is, what do the Dodgers do when their star left fielder returns to the lineup later this month. We all know Manny will resume his spot in left field right next to those “Mannywood” seats. They will not sit Matt Kemp, and there is no reason they should with his .304/.369/.473 performance thus far. What they should do is move Andre Ethier to the fourth outfielder spot and shuffle Pierre into right. He is versatile enough to flay anywhere in the green grass and bumps Ethier’s .271 average up nearly 100 points. Hopefully Joe Torre has enough common sense to keep his speedster in the order for as long as he is willing to produce.

Manny people will bring up Pierre’s True Talent numbers of .306/.356/.388. This does denote some sort of hot streak or luck in Juan’s favor. But that line would still put him near the top of the National League left fielders. In fact, his True Talent average is the highest among NL number sevens.

I beefed on my May prediction of a no-hitter. While I still think a no-no is on the way (Josh Beckett going 6 2/3 hitless against the Tigers on Wednesday was proof), I will change my prediction for June. My prediction is that the Reds will be in first place at the end of the month. There really is no scientific basis for this one, just a strange gut feeling.

Why can’t managers keep track of their lineups? Over the past couple weeks we have seen more lineup confusion than I have seen in quite some time. First it was the Rays putting two third basemen in their lineup and, as a result, losing the designated hitter privileges. Then the Astros copied their lineup wrong in the dugout and sent the wrong man to bat at the start of the game. Then, the Brewers, after watching Houston get confused against them, screwed up a double switch just yesterday when they brought Trevor Hoffman and Bill Hall in straight up instead of making the double switch. The best parts were that Rays skipper Joe Maddon got a contract extension shortly after his wonderful bookkeeping and that all three teams won the games they made mistakes in.

I have played, coached, umpired, and watched baseball at any level and can think of only one situation where a team has erred in the lineup to the point that it made them look stupid and it was in nine-year-old girls slowpitch softball. The “purple team” actually batted out of order twice in one game, and then a few weeks later they did it again. That’s little girl’s softball, however, not the big leagues. Teams and managers need to get their feces consolidated when it comes to one of the most basic and important parts of the game.

In other news, David Ortiz finally went yard for the Red Sox. The one bomb on the year doesn’t change the fact that he is posting a frigid .195/.301/.299 batting line. That totals a wonderful OPS of .599. That is horrid for a guy like Ortiz. I am officially saying here that he is done. Whether it is age starting to set in (he is 34) or his wrist injuries starting to become a real pain, Big Papi is simply not the threat he was before. I am not saying my boys in Beantown should start hunting out replacement DH’s, but they need to start looking for somebody who can pick up the slack for a guy who just isn’t producing anymore.

Now for something positive. I love Juan Pierre and have not been able to understand why people can’t seem to like him near as much as I do. Right now he is keeping the Dodgers light years ahead of the competition despite losing their big star power to a drug suspension. He is hitting to the tune of .385/.458/.510 in 119 plate appearances. Over the last four weeks he is rocking out a .418 average. He won’t take anyone yard (in five seasons playing a full 162 games for Florida he has no more than three homers in any season) but he gets on base, plays solid defense, and stays healthy. Last season was the first since 2002 that he didn’t play all 162 games for his team, and in 2002 he played 156 for the Rockies. The Dodgers would be wise to keep him in the game as long as he stays hot, even when Manny returns.

Also in the NL West, the Padres are on fire with 10 straight wins. Sadly for them, they are in the same division as the Dodgers and are still 7.5 games back. They had a busy week with the near trade of Jake Peavy to the White Sox. I, for one, am glad that Peavy turned down the offer. Peavy is one of my favorite players in the game today and I could not fathom him playing for my second most disliked team. Jake has made it clear that he wants to stay in the National League. I am still holding out for him coming to the north side of Chicago and joining the Cubs ailing pitching staff. Just because this offer was rejected does not mean that Friars will stop fielding offers for their ace, just don’t expect any American League teams to show up in the bidding.

The Cubbies are among a couple teams that can’t seem to buy a win lately. They have the injury bug worse than any other team and are really not living up to expectations. Blame whatever you want when it comes to their eight game skid but I look at the fact that Carlos Zambrano missed a few starts, Derrick Lee can’t stay healthy, and Aramis Ramirez is down for the count. This gives them holes in both the lineup and their infield. The Cubs need the injuries to end, they just hope it doesn’t come too late.

As a wrap up I step away from baseball for a second to tell anyone out there to watch hockey. The NHL just saw the most exciting second round in a long time with three of the four series going to seven games. The conference finals may be a blow out but that will set up for a Stanley Cup Final filled with many story lines to watch that compliment the game action. As it stands now there could be a rematch of last year’s final that went six games. Not only the rematch, but Red Wings forward Marian Hossa turned down a big money offer from Pittsburgh to come to Motown because he felt they had a better chance of winning the cup. If it ends up this way, it will be an amazing series. Put baseball on hold for a couple weeks and watch the thriller, and, most importantly, don’t fall for the NBA’s lies.

Sometimes people bother me. Rick Reilly is one of them right now. Not just because he is bashing baseball, but because he is bashing in general. I don’t like how there are writers out there who talk about how much they don’t like a sport and what they would do to fix it. It is all well and good to dislike something (anyone who knows me at all will know how little I care about professional basketball), but when you spend precious word space to bash a sport, and sound so defiant and proud of it, there is something wrong.

The media holds more weight in our society than it probably should, and when you get high profile media people, like Reilly, talking about how much he hates something, other people begin to hate it as well. When people don’t like something, they stop watching and paying attention, and the sport suffers.

When they offer some sort of solution it gets even worse. They are offering ways to fix something that a lot of people love, yet they choose to dislike. Most of these solutions are quite radical; they are suggesting a total overhaul of an already popular game. There is the old saying, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Most sports aren’t broken to the point where they require massive rule changes, so don’t try and fix them.

I firmly believe that the reason hockey has not gotten back on its feet is because ESPN personalities keep treating it like a mentally ill stepchild. If writers and television personalities stopped saying what they think is wrong with the game and focused on what was right, hockey would be back in the American mainstream.

It really goes into one of the big problems with our culture in general. We like to look down on things and expose their problems instead of shedding light on the positive side. Sports is only one area where it shows up. We bring down players, teams, and even entire games just to make ourselves feel better about ourselves. Yet we also make fun of people who are more successful in school and work. How many times have you talked smack about your boss or the smart kids in school?

This brings me back to a section of my communications capstone paper I wrote about fans and their attachment to sports teams. One section focused on fan behavior and how it relates to self esteem. One of the strategies used by fans is bashing opposing players and teams, usually ones more successful then their favorites. It is done, as I already said, to make themselves feel better about their misfortune, thus increasing their self esteem. I do not know what is making Reilly feel like crap to the point where he has to bring baseball down to his level, but my research suggests that baseball makes him feel inferior in some way, and I am quite okay with that as long as he stops bashing the things he hates, and starts writing about what he loves, and why he loves it.

The problem also lies beyond the writers. If a guy who bashes sports, teams, and players were to read this little rant he might tell me that nobody wants to read a feel good piece about what they like about something. The Don Henley lyrics will tell you that “they want dirty laundry.” They don’t want to know what’s right they want to know what’s wrong and how to make it right. That, too, is a problem, at least when it comes to subjective things about who likes what. People are entitled to like whatever they want, and just because Rick Reilly thinks that baseball is boring doesn’t make him right. Who died and made him the judge of good sports? If people stopped wanting the dirt they would probably stop getting it. It is just one of those chicken or egg things that might never end.

That also makes me wonder if Reilly was just writing this because he would get hits from lovers and haters of baseball alike. If that was the case that would make me dislike him even more for not truly speaking his mind. People want power and popularity and are willing to go to many different measures to obtain it. Selling out and just giving people what they want is one of those ways. It is the easy way out, in my opinion, and a few too many people do this. I don’t think that Reilly was doing this, just to be clear. It is just floating around in the back of my mind while writing this.

The tough part about writing this has been trying my best to avoid becoming the exact thing I am complaining about. I am pretty sure that many will read this and think exactly that. I can’t help that, however. Somebody has to say something about it to start any kind of change.

In the end, people need to speak their mind, but need to consider one thing that just about every mother has told their young children at some point: “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.”

P.S: My apologies for no Week Behind this week. I was out of town for six days and watched a grand total of about two innings of baseball between Thursday night and my going to last night’s Tigers-Rangers tilt.

There is no question what story dominated the baseball world this week. The suspension of Manny Ramirez was by far the hottest story around. This come as less of a surprise to me than it would have before. I am not really shocked that he tested positive, maybe that it happened now after how long the testing has been in place, but I am not surprised to see that Manny isn’t that clean. What surprises me even less is that he was possibly taking a sexual enhancing medication. He is getting old, and, knowing Manny being Manny, he probably likes to run around with the ladies.

One thing this does say, as many others have said before this, it really validates that baseball is serious about steroids and is willing to punish anyone who breaks the rule, even a high profile superstar like Manny Ramirez.

Now the effects of Manny’s 50 game layoff on the 2009 season will be surprisingly small. The Dodgers are already on top of the NL West by a strong margin and will only lose their star hitter for a little over a month and a half. They will have him around for crunch time, if there ends up being a crunch time in L.A.

The other large scandalous occurrence this week was the over-hyped release of Selena Robert’s book about Alex Rodriguez. The book throws out allegations of A-Rod taking steroids as early as high school and all the way up until recently. She also throws out allegations that he and other players participate in tipping pitches to each other in order to boost their statistics. I have not, and probably will not, read the book, but I have read my fair share of reviews. Based on what I have seen most of her arguments come supported by unnamed or anonymous sources. These are not exactly what anyone would call reliable. Having studied journalism in preparation for my career, I know that while some sources want to remain anonymous, they often lack the weight of a definitive source.

The A-Rod book probably is intended for no more than to stir up the soup that already exists. Whether it should be taken seriously or not is up for grabs. A good review of the book, with excerpts, can be found at Shysterball.

Now, back to the field of play.

The Dodgers aw heir home winning streak come to an end on the same day Manny got suspended. I don’t think that the news directly caused the loss, but I am sure the Dodger team was a little shaken, maybe even a bit lost out there. One thing I do like about Manny being gone for a short time is that it gives Juan Pierre a chance to play more often. Those who know me know that I am a Juan Pierre fanboy and think he deserves more time, regardless of what other more hardcore people will say.

I almost got rid of Ryan Zimmerman from The Mudville Nine for some reason. I am very glad I did no. he has ripped off a 29 game hitting streak that has moved him back into the starting role as my third baseman. These hitting streaks usually make for exciting stories. I don’t think we will be talking about the Nationals third baseman breaking Mr. Dimaggio’s holy mark of 56 games, but it is still fun to follow. I remember when Luis Castillo had the big hitting streak a number of years ago. I was still quite young and the first thing I would do during the later parts of the run was check online to see if Castillo got a hit or not.

Zimmerman’s streak is different from that one, however. Castillo was a speedy fellow who could leg out infield hits. If Zimmerman was trying to keep his streak alive the same what Castillo, or another speedster, was, he would not be approaching 30 games. Zimmerman gets it done with nice roped balls, not infield grounders that a guy legs out. Not to take anything away from speedy hitters who get infield hits, but some of them get more hits from their legs than their bats.

I also must comment about the passing of “The Little Professor.” I already brought of Joe Dimaggio and his greatness, but many people seem to forget that he had another baseball playing little brother. Dom played for the rival Red Sox and looked nothing like a baseball player. He looked more like a mad scientist. He had those big goofy looking glasses that made him look like the guys you picked on in middle school. That did not stop him from being a productive lead off man for Boston during a time where Ted Williams ruled Boston baseball. He always was living in the shadow of somebody, whether his older brother or the man hitting two spots below him in the order, Dom could never be the superstar he could have been. Some say he might have even been able to make a run at the Hall of Fame had it not been for taking time off from baseball to serve in World War II. Dom passed away at the age of 92 on Friday, and was given a tribute by the Red Sox on Saturday afternoon. Reports say that he died with the Red Sox-Rays game on in the background. He was a seven-time all star with a .298 career average.

I apologize for my tardiness, yesterday was full of shipping resumes all across the country while looking for people willing to pay me to report the news for them. That’s the trouble of graduating from college, you actually have to go find a real job, I can’t just sit and be a bum blogging about baseball forever, unless somebody is willing to pay me to do it.

The Dodgers are the hottest team right now, they are off to a 20-8 start and are an amazing 12-0 at home. This is the hottest home start in the long rich history of the Senior Circuit. Along with this 12-0 home start they are the first team to 20 wins and they play in one of the weaker divisions out there. I think the Dodgers could end up making a great playoff runs and could scrape the 100 win mark his year.

I am happy with the Dodgers hot start. I like seeing teams that haven’t won in a while jump back to the front. I know Los Angeles was just in the playoffs last year, but they have not won it all in a while and I would not mind seeing them take it all this year, that is, if the Red Sox can’t.

Interesting schedule for this week too. For the first time in my memory no team has a day off this week. There is a full slate of fifteen games every day, even the usually slow Monday and Thursday. I wonder why MLB did this after having never done it before. I like the idea of every team playing every day, but all the dinky little two game sets are kind of annoying. I have been built on the three game series and interrupting that with a couple short ones kind of gets on my nerves. This is nothing I have to get used to, thankfully, as teams do need days off once in a while. I’ll enjoy the onslaught of games while I can, though.

We have seen our first suspended game of the season as of last night. The Nationals and Astros find themselves still tied at 10 in the back end of the eleventh inning. They will remain that way for quite some time, the conclusion isn’t scheduled until July 9.

Finally, the Red Sox are off to a 5-0 start against the Yankees, getting quite the jump on the season series. Yankee fans are angry, Red Sox fans are ecstatic and trash talking at the Yankees, but everyone should hold their horses. Many a time have the Red Sox started this way, or similar, against their rivals, and many times they have ended up tanking against them late in the season. I know the cursed days are over in Beantown, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t going to bomb out.

That’s all for this week, keep it classy ya’ll.

There is a no-hitter coming. No doubt in my mind. With all the recent no-hitter threats you know there is one in the making. Last night’s Matt Garza flirt with a perfect game is just more proof. a no-hitter will be thrown in the month of May, just thought I would put that out there. That is the one prediction I make.

In fact, let’s make this a running feature. From now on on the first day of the month I will predict one thing that will happen in the month. If I am right you all win something… like a car or autographed post-it note.

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This has been a busy week for me. It was my final week of college and with that came a week of exams, papers, and a long graduation ceremony. I was not able ot watch much baseball over the weekend because of everything I had to do.

Despite all that, however, I did manage to make it out to Wrigley to freeze in the cold wind and rain while the Cubs beat up on the Reds 7-2. This was the second time I have been to the Friendly Confines, and both times I was sitting in the bleachers. Let’s just say that if the bleachers give the park’s nickname a little bit of a false reputation. The bleachers are hardly friendly to opposing players. The first time I was down there the crowd was rather mild, even though Ken Griffey Jr. was patrolling center field. The heckling didn’t pick up until the end of that game. This time was much different, right from the get go us in the right field bleachers were not Jay Bruce’s favorite people. When Bruce hit a bomb that nearly found Sheffield Ave. we decided that it was clearly a cause of us not heckling him enough. So we gave him hell the whole game.

It was a fun experience, as always, the weather could have been nicer, but I have myself to blame because I was the only lunatic wearing shorts in that whole stadium. Now I just need to get out to Comerica again sometime soon now that I am back in the Detroit area for the foreseeable future.

Anyways, by now everyone this side of the Prime Meridian, and a few on the other side, know that the Red Sox hosted the Yankees this weekend. Many people who know that I am a hardcore Sawx fan would think that I have been anticipating this weekend forever and wanting desperately to crush New York with every fiber of my being. In the past this was true as I was young and naive. Now I really don’t like Red Sox-Yankees series. They are way over-hyped. I love the Red Sox, nothing could change that, but good God the national media gives the rivalry way too much attention. The sweep of New York this time of the year means no more to the team than the sweep of Baltimore at the beginning of the home stand. The national media plays up this thing as World War III and it really does not mean anything more than any other three game series in the division.

With that said I watched ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball for the first time since opening day and had a hard time keeping the sound on. I wanted to watch the game, but I really could not stand Joe Morgan,a s usual. This is nothing new to much of the baseball world. Joe Morgan is a dolt. A couple comments stood out from Sunday’s game. First was in the third inning when Jacoby Ellsbury made it to third base on a ground ball to third base (that ended up as a throwing error). Miller, Morgan, and Phillips, spent way too long analyzing the play as a mental mistake by third baseman Angel Berroa. Saying that he did not look the runner back enough (which he did), saying that he would have had a play at second (which he did not), and saying that he was distracted by the runner causing him to make the throwing error (which means he was looking the runner back, defeating the first point). None of them cared to mention the smart baserunning play by Ellsbury. I have always wondered why runners don’t take third after the fielder throws the ball towards first. More often than not they have plenty of time to get there, and rarely do you ever see it. They spend so much time bringing down Berroa, and no time at all praising Ellsbury for his baserunning.

The other thing that aggravated me a bit was after Ellsbury stole home. Morgan made a comment that said a left hander takes longer to deliver the ball home than a right hander. How do you figure? They are both using the same motion to get the ball home, just flipped around. Morgan is an idiot, end of story. I probably won’t watch Sunday Night Baseball again until the Sox are on the again, and this time I might just mute the television.

That’s all I really have to say for this week, since I have been much busier than usual. That will soon change and I will be able o watch more baseball, and be able to comment on much more. Stay tuned for more next week.

It was a week dominated by two new stadiums opening in the Big Apple. These two new “cathedrals” opened this week with their home squads losing. I, for one, like this. I don’t like he New York baseball teams and I really think the city itself gets too much attention as a whole. Losing a stadium opener is one of those little things that I hoped would go wrong for these two teams, and it turns out it happened. I was a happy man.

Now for some brief opinions on the two ballparks so I can join the firestorm of people rating these places. First comes Citi Field. Its a baseball stadium, it was build with the same design that the Orioles used when they opened Camden Yards fifteen or so years ago. All new stadiums draw off this design, but that’s nothing new. They kept the “big apple” that they had rise from behind the wall after every Mets home run, which is a unique feature. One thing I don’t like about the park is that “homage” that they paid to old Tiger Stadium. The right field bleachers over hang into the field by a few feet, just like the Tiger Stadium. Being someone who grew up watching the Tigers and cementing my earliest memories of baseball down on The Corner, I don’t like this at all. Tiger Stadium was Tiger Stadium and the Mets and their corporate sponsorships can keep out of my history.

The Mets pulled out other stops to pull in history that does not belong to them. The Jackie Robinson rotunda, while a nice tribute to a true pioneer, does not belong to the relatively short lived history of the Mets. They Ebbets Field facade thing that parks have been making is old, and does not belong to the teams that are doing it. This borrowing of history from other teams and places shows a lack of creativity in my opinion. Ever since the beginning of the “Second Ballpark Boom” (The first came in the 1910s and 1920s when teams switched from wooded grandstands to steel and concrete “jewel boxes”) teams have been copying the same designs that have already been done and have made too many attempts to emulate old traditions.

The Yankees, on the other hand, did not steal history from other teams. They wanted a new Yankee Stadium, and that is exactly what they built. They built a park that looks almost exactly like the old one, only newer. It is a nice place, save the team that plays there, but they held on to what they had and made something updated. While there are plenty of signs that this park fits the trend of new baseball stadiums, it holds on to the traditions and history that belongs to the Yankees.

I have a slightly unhealthy obsession with old stadiums. I have always said that if I could go back in time to see anything it would be a baseball game at the Polo Grounds. These parks were built in a time when teams were not handed out money by local governments to build large palaces to play in. They were built in an era where a team’s owner had to go out and buy a patch of land and build a place to play on their own. This often forced people to be creative with the space they were given. The Green Monster at Fenway did not come into existence to be unique, it was build to keep people from watching from outside the park. Landsdowne Street made it impossible to build further out. Ebbets Field was crammed into a spot that was really too small for a ballpark, but Charlie Ebbets and his architects made it work.

Teams no longer have to “make it work” when it comes to their stadiums. They have a large sum of money and land to do whatever they want and no longer have the character flaws that make a place seem almost human. Don’t get me wrong, I like going to Comerica Park to watch a baseball game, but the place doesn’t have the personality of Tiger Stadium, or, the place I will be tomorrow night, Wrigley Field.

Alright, enough ballpark ranting for this week and on to the game inside those parks. The Marlins are hot. Sure, they are getting their asses handed to them by the Pirates right now but all winning streaks must come to an end. They obviously can’t play .900 baseball all season. There are, however, reasons that make this team seem like the real thing. One that stands out is the teams they played during their 11-1 start. They played six against Washington, who may be the worst team in the league but you have to win those ones too. They also swept Atlanta and took two of three from the Mets, two teams that they are competing with in the division. They are winning the division games which are ever so important in the Major League Baseball season.

One thing that was fun to watch in the first series of New Yankee Stadium was the Indians ripping Chen Ming Wang in about 22 different pieces. The Indians offensive explosion can be attributed to a couple theories. First, I think that Chen-Ming Wang is not himself and might need some time off to recuperate. The other can be explained by the weather. AccuWeather had an interesting piece attempting to explain the 20 home runs in the Stadium’s first four games. Apparently when the wind is blowing out to right field there is a greater effect on the baseball because of the slant of the stands behind home plate. Read the article for details, its pretty interesting.

I am pretty sure the Tampa Bay Rays phenomenon will not last. They are not off to a hot start this year at 5-8. But that does not mean the American League East is back to the normal Boston-New York dogfight. This is the best division in baseball with all five teams capable of winning the division. If you put Baltimore in the NL West they would probably come out on top. Again, it is nice to see the Blue Jays holding the fort up there, as long as they let off in the last half of the season so Boston can get into the playoffs. I would rather see Toronto up there than the Orioles or Yankees, that’s for sure.

Tomorrow comes my first big league game of the year as I travel to the Windy City for tomorrow night’s Cubs-Reds contest. Hopefully the weather holds out and allows me to watch a baseball game in the cold, cold bleachers out there. It would be a real waste of gas, $40 for the ticket, and a whole day if it were rained out. Look for a two shivering college kids in the bleachers, as if we will stand out from the rest of ‘em.