Archive for Phillies
Let’s talk baseball
Posted by: | CommentsHello again to my gathering of loyal readers. This week will be devoted to the sport of baseball and my beloved Reds. At this writing, the Reds have lost 6 of 7 games in interleague play and have scored only 7 runs in the past 4 games. They are getting solid pitching by and large, especially from Leake, Cueto, and Arroyo. Wood and Volquez have been spotty but have had their moments. The hitting, however, has been sorely lacking. Votto and the catchers have been solid, but Phillips and Bruce are slumping. 3rd base, shortstop, and left field have yielded very little production and Stubbs strikes out too much at leadoff. With Sappelt and Cozart hitting well of Louisville, it’s time to give them a chance. Sappelt is a fast base hitter who doesn’t rely on hitting it out of the park. The Reds badly need people who just get on base to achieve some consistency.
It seems re-alignment is a hot topic these days. Two issues seem to be fueling this. One is the unfairness of the unbalanced schedule and divisions with differing number of teams. I totally agree this is unfair, especially to the Reds, and needs to be corrected. The second issue fueling this is the desire for expanded playoffs by teams in divisions stuck with perennial powerhouses such as the Yankees, Red Sox, and Phillies. I am OK with adding a 5th playoff team from each league as long as the playoffs conclude by the end of October. Realignment suggestions have mostly centered on moving either the Astros or Diamondbacks to the American League. I think the Astros would be the better choice since they have never won a World Series and would leave the NL central with five teams and balance the divisions. I am not in favor of putting all the teams together in two big leagues. It is not good for fans to have their team be in 14th place and 25 games out at the All-Star break. The only drawback to two 15 team leagues is the need for one interleague series all season long. I don’t like this but can live with it as long as the number of interleague games are not increased and the September matchups are scheduled between lower-ranked non-contending teams. Six 5-team divisions seems like the best solution to me so they will probably do something different.
Until next week, Doc.
World Series Wrap Up and No More Freedom to Speak
Posted by: | CommentsHello again to all my loyal readers. Once again we get to laugh at all the so-called experts for the baseball playoffs. Before the series started, SI online polled ten “experts” on their picks. All ten picked the Yankees and nine picked the Phillies. As of this writing, the Rangers lead 3-2 and the Giants 3-1. Once more the “experts” failed to take good starting pitching into account, but mostly I think it was a popularity choice.
Now I don’t know who will win the series, but the Yankees are the only team I know who along with their fans actually are arrogant to believe they will still win no matter how far they are behind. New York’s ego knows no bounds. I, for one, think it would be a breath of fresh air to have the Rangers and Giants in the series; although, I admit too much good pitching does lead to boring games if there are too few base runners.
This morning I heard 2 more examples of how we are losing our free speech. It seems that if you are the more powerful player, it is becoming easier to stifle the weaker player’s speech rights. Terry Meiners has now lost all of his job connections to U of L sports because he dared to criticize the seat distribution at the new arena. Liberal commentator Juan Williams was fired from NPR for commenting on The O’Reilly Factor that he personally feels uneasy if he is getting on a plane with someone in full Muslim garb. If we will admit it, I think all of us would feel at least some trepidation in this situation; but PC people don’t believe in honesty, only PC propaganda.
I see where British politicians have more guts than ours do. The Courier headline says “Britain slashes public spending to pay the bills”. They are cutting $128 billion from the budget in the next four years through welfare cuts and elimination of public sector jobs. Someday very soon we will have to get the will to do that in the good ole USA. See you next week.
Doc
