Thursday, April 9, 2009

Bad Start for Baseball


Never, ever again start a baseball season on a Sunday night, especially in a cold-weather city like Philadelphia.

Always start the season in Cincinnati, or Washington with the President throwing out the first ball, as tradition says.

The President wasn't even available this time, so it didn't even matter that the Washington Nationals started the season on the road.

The Yankees got bad opening starts by CC Sabathia and Chien-Ming Wang, before this afternoon's fine start by A.J. Burnett. At least the bats are working so far.

And now, three games into the season for most teams, an active player has died. Nick Adenhart, just hours after pitching six shutout innings for the Angels, was killed in a car crash. He was only 22 years old.

To make matters worse, I'd never heard of him before. I hate when that happens, on top of feeling awful upon hearing of someone's death. Rest in peace, 1986-2009.

And seeing "1986" as the date of birth for someone who's died was also pretty chilling.

*

Congratulations to the University of North Carolina for winning another National Championship of college basketball. Roy Williams is a class act.

My college basketball picks are usually awful, but of my Final Four picks, two didn't make it, but the other two met in the Final, and the one I wanted to win it all, Carolina, did, over Michigan State.

Didn't you wish that Michael Jordan would suit up for the Heels and Magic Johnson for the Spartans? Just for a few minutes? Just for fun?

Yeah, right, as Jordan suggested in his Hall of Fame acceptance speech, for him, "fun" is all about fueling his competitive juices. Maybe his post-playing reputation hasn't taken the hit of, say, Pete Rose's, but his halo is tarnished.

I'm going to the Devils' regular-season finale on Saturday. After winning 22 of 27, they've now dropped 8 of 10. Not encouraging for the upcoming Playoffs, but at least they'll go in as Atlantic Division Champions and get a good seed.

Have the Nets given up on Brooklyn yet? The Devils and Seton Hall would love to have the Nets join them on Mulberry Street.

Do the Jets have a quarterback yet, or is the drive to clone Namath on yet?

1 comment:

Paul said...

Well Mike, it must have been encouraging to close out the season with a win against your first round opponent. At least now that everything is set I won't have a three-way conflict today - Celts and Sox are both at 330 and the Bruins are at 430, but that's a meaningless game now. Realistically I'll watch the Sox - other sports are more to pass the time until baseball comes around.

Have a Happy Easter (if you celebrate it).

Cheers!

Paul from Boston