Friday, March 25, 2005

Random Observations

First, a warning. As you can probably tell by now, I have changed the font. I've gone to Times New Roman. It's just a test. I have not yet made a commitment to it. As to other commitments, I haven't posted as much as I should lately as I've been busy at my other blog, Big Ten Hardball.

The college baseball season is well underway and keeping up over there is taking up quite a bit of time. Trying to keep up two blogs is tough, as I thought it would be, but I cannot find a way to incorporate that stuff over here.

That's more than enough of the "housekeeping"-type chores, let's move on to matters of sport.

Well, this is more sports related than actual sport. I had my first live fantasy baseball draft of the year last night. It's an AL only league with ten teams. I drafted fifth. Oh, by the way, I hate drafting right in the middle. I'm not sure why, but I just don't like it. As with 99% percent of my drafts, my first reaction is that my team stinks. However, my reaction generally changes after reviewing everyone else's club. Last night was no different.

A review of the other teams reveals that my twenty-three guys are not a whole lot worse than anyone else's. I ended up with Manny Ramirez, Mark Kotsay and Laynce Nix in the outfield. Aubrey Huff, Jorge Posada, Aaron Boone, Omar Infante and Bobby Crosby are my starting infielders. My DH is Justin Morneau.

My staff is Rich Harden, Jeremy Bonderman, Bronson Arroyo, Erik Bedard, Francisco Rodriguez, J.J. Putz, Tom Gordon, Alan Embree, Dewon Brazelton and another starter that I cannot recall. Needless to say, it isn't Randy Johnson.

The bench is heavy on prospects and Detroit Tigers. Nick Swisher, Grady Sizemore, Ruben Gotay, Carlos Pena and Kyle Farnsworth are all on my bench. I may have missed a bench player, as well, but you get the idea. My team is probably not the favorite to win the league, but unless all the wheels come off, I shouldn't finish in the cellar, either.

I intend to make a change or two before Opening Day, but I cannot reveal what those moves may be, as my fellow participants can all access this. I have several more drafts to go and I promise not to bore you with the results of all of those.

In my mailbox today, I got a friendly piece of spam offering me fantasy sports information for a low monthly fee. I plunk down far too much money on sports and sports related items as it is now, I hate to think just how far off the deep end I'll be if I start to pay a monthly fee for fantasy sports information.

If I was a Hall of Fame voter would I vote for Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire? It's just too early to tell. I expect more information to become available as the days and months pass.

I don't understand those who say that steroids were "legal" because MLB didn't ban them. MLB doesn't ban murder, either, but it's still illegal. If Bonds and McGwire were caught using steroids, it would have been a crime. You may not care about them using steroids, but you have to admit it's illegal no matter how you slice it.

NCAA hockey is having it's own March Madness. Complete your brackets and check out Inside College Hockey here.

That's all for now. I want to post this and see if I like the new font.

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