All Star Break Check Up

Well it is that time of year again, the All Star Break. The time when Major League Baseball players go to a city and watch their counterparts hit monster home runs and just have fun playing the game of baseball. It is also the time of year for most baseball fans, bloggers, analysts and anyone else who made picks at the beginning of the season to see how they are doing. I made my picks at the beginning of the season and lets see how I am doing:

American League East:

• My pick: Boston Red Sox
• Actual leader: Boston Red Sox

American League Central:

• My pick: Cleveland Indians
• Actual leader: Detroit Tigers

American League West:

• My pick: Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim
• Actual leader: Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim

National League East:

• My pick: Philadelphia Phillies
• Actual leader: Philadelphia Phillies

National League Central:

• My pick: Chicago Cubs
• Actual leader: St. Louis Cardinals

National League West:

• My pick: Los Angeles Dodgers
• Actual leader: Los Angeles Dodgers

Well it seems that I am not doing all that bad, the Central Division is giving me a hard time but who would have thought the Cleveland Indians would be doing as poorly as they are, Cliff Lee and Carl Pavano are pitching great but the bats are not producing runs and it never helps when your best player gets hurt. Fans of the Chicago Cubs are used to losing but when they are coming off a 97 win season the expected a log more then what they are getting. However, being 3.5 games out at the break with 5 of the best players having the worst of their career is not bad considering everything else.

The second half of the season should be interesting, I am sticking with my Chicago Cubs pick but I am going to change my American League Central pick to the Chicago White Sox. I like the mix of good hitting and their dominate pitching, as long as they can stay healthy they will stay in that race. A few other stories to follow in the second half:

• Roy Halladay will be traded to the Phillies.
• Pedro Martinez will win 8 games for the Phillies and 2 games in the playoffs for them.
• The Rays will continue their charge in the American League East and make the playoffs for the second year in row but this time as the Wild Card.
• Manny Ramirez will end up with 30 plus home runs and 110 plus RBI's.
• Alex Rodriguez will continue to struggle and do nothing for the Yankees to make a run to the playoffs.
• The Pittsburgh Pirates will finish over .500 this year.

Happy Birthday America.... Mr. Davis and Mr. Steinbrenner

On this July 4th our nation celebrates its 232nd birthday while Al Davis celebrates his 80th birthday and George Steinbrenner celebrates his 79th birthday; combined they are 159 years old. All three birthday's that we celebrate today are famous for many reasons in their own way, lets take a look at the top 5 reasons we should celebrate these famous birthday's.

The United States of America:

• Leader of the free world, every country strives to be like the USA but can only hope to duplicate its power.
• One of the toughest military in the world that will never give up.
• We are stubborn because we have fought through a Depression, two World Wars, 9/11 and we'll keep on fighting.
• Families will come together to set off fireworks.
• We are free to do what we want, when we want and how we want.

Al Davis:

• The way he made the NFL a multi-billion dollar organization with the merger of the AFL and NFL.
• Hiring the first black coach in Art Shell and first female CEO in the NFL, Amy Trask.
• Making John Madden the greatest video gamer of all time.
• Knowing all the short cuts between Oakland and Los Angeles to miss all the traffic.
• Knowing that if Hollywood can not find anyone to play Freddy Kruger they can always call on him.

George Steinbrenner:

• Spent money like it was going out of style which led to baseball players making $25 million a year.
• Luxury tax!
• Corporate sponsorships no matter how big a fine the commissioner of baseball gave him.
• Creating the team that everyone loves to hate.
• Building a $1.3 billion stadium that fans can not go to since ticket prices are so high.

Happy Birthday America, Al Davis and George Steinbrenner!

Shaq and LeBron

Here is my prediction of what will happen with the Cavs after acquiring Shaq, one of these three things will happen.

1. Shaq and LeBron will win the 2010 NBA Championship. After they win Shaq will retire and LeBron will remain in Cleveland but questions will start to be asked; can LeBron win a championship without Shaq? Sound familiar?

2. Shaq gets hurt and retires after season as LeBron bolts for more money in the NBA.

3. Shaq and LeBron win the NBA Championship in 2010 and they both leave to play in Greece for a combined $2 billion!

Sports Movies

I was flipping through the channels tonight before the Indians game started and found this movie called "The Final Season." I remember seeing advertisements about it on MLB.com and remember saying that I would probably like to see that. Seeing as it was never shown on any major television station I forgot all about it, until tonight. I came into the movie about 45 minutes into it but was able to figure out what was going on very quickly. The movie is about Norway High School which was a baseball powerhouse in the state of Iowa for a near quarter century. Because it was a small school district the state decided to shut the school down and combine with a neighboring high school. The team also just lost its coach that built them into the powerhouse to the Detroit Tigers as a coach in their minor league system, so nobody was picking them to do anything. The players were down and out, but the coach brought their spirits back up and they ended up winning the state championship, so cliche! Great movie and I highly suggest spending a night watching it.

Watching this tonight got me thinking about my top 10 list of all time great sports movies:

1. Hooisers: How can you go wrong with this feel good story and it's true just like the one above.

2. Rocky: So what the hero loses and couple of times and Rocky becomes old, but just think of the message it brought to everyone.

3. Rudy: Great inspiration for any young football player or athlete.

4. Hoop Dreams: Many people probably have not seen this but it is about to Chicago basketball players who had promising careers in front of them, this movie takes you on their journey.

5. Major League: No sports movie is funnier than this one.

6. The Rookie: Story of an aging coach who tried out for the Major Leagues and made it.

7. Bull Durham: I just recently feel in love with this move, you have to watch it and then go online to read the quotes.

8. A League of Their Own: Women's baseball, great story, great actors.

9. King Pin: A 1970's drunk who takes an Amish boy to Las Vegas for a bowling tournament, classic!

10. Go Tigers, It's More Than A Game: I am biased towards this movie because it is a documentary about my high school and its football rich tradition during my senior year.

I know there are many movies that could be on this list and please let me know what I am missing or what you would put on there.

The Ultimate Sports City

Heard an interesting story this morning on Mike and Mike in the Morning. They were discussing a column that Michael Wilbon wrote in the Washington Post on Sunday about which sports franchise could be considered he best of all time. Naturally this morning it came down to the Los Angeles Lakers, Boston Celtics and New York Yankees. Mike and Mike were throwing stats left and right about all of them and made very valid points, but it got me thinking, what city is the ultimate sports city in these United States?

The ultimate sports city, the city where sports fans want to be all the time because they know that they are going to have the best experience. What exactly makes this city the ultimate sports city?

• Number of pro sports franchises
• Number of successful college sports programs
• Number of successful high school sports programs
• Number of sports bars out number the number of Starbucks
• Weather
• Tradition
• Tailgate experience
• Rivalries
• Knowledge of sports and the teams

With all these things considered there are a great deal of cities that could be up for the title of Ultimate Sports City. At first thought Los Angeles comes to mind with as many sports teams, successful college teams and high schools. The number of Starbucks may be about the same as sports bars. New York and Boston probably could be ruled out, but Chicago could be put in there as well.

Because of where I grew up in Massillon, Ohio the heart of it all I am bias to that city myself. The only reason I would not even consider it would be because of the successful pro sports teams, we are only 45 minutes from Cleveland. Do some research and let me know what you think, where is your Ultimate Sports City?

The Major League Baseball Draft

We all know that Stephen Strasburg is going #1 to the Washington Nationals, but after that can you name a single player that could be drafted without using Google. I did not think so because I can not even think a player.

Why is the baseball draft not covered the way the NFL or NBA drafts are covered. Both of those drafts have analysis from the time the college season is over. Lets take a look at some reasons why the Major League Baseball Draft is not covered as much:

• If a team does not sign its #1 draft pick from the year before they get a compensation pick in the first round, this is why the Nationals have the #1 and #10 pick this year. So in reality if none of the teams sign their #1 draft pick then there could be 60 total picks in the first round and you thought the NFL first round was long.
• How many first round draft picks are playing in the Majors currently?- 1 from 2008 (Daniel Schlereth from Arizona), 2 from 2007 (David Price from Tampa Bay and Matt Weiters from Baltimore), 5 from 2006 (Evan Longria from Tampa Bay, Andrew Miller from Detroit, Clayton Kershaw from the Dodgers, Tim Lincecum from San Francisco, and Max Scherzer from Arizona). In all over three years there are a total of 8 players out of the 90 selected in the first round playing Major League Baseball.
• The draft lasts a total of 3 days, a trip to Vegas would be much better.
• Most of the players drafted went to a college you never heard of or came from a Junior College or straight from high school.

Just make sure you wait another 3-5 years to see these players in the Major Leagues and then you can start to follow what they did.

Tickets

One day I will have season tickets to a pro sports team wherever I may be living. I say this because I am a sports fan and love going to live sporting events. However, I am saying this for another reason from an experience that I just recently had.

My wife and I are going to the Cleveland Indians game on June 13th against the St. Louis Cardinals, should be a fun game to watch. I ordered these tickets March 3rd through the Indians website which is powered by Ticketmaster. The e-mail order confirmation told me that I would receive the tickets within 48 hours of the event, but this was not my first time ordering off the website and I have always received my tickets very early. I called Ticketmaster this past Friday (June 5) and they told me that the tickets were mailed out on March 4th, I ordered them March 3rd. The United States Postal Service lost my tickets or Ticketmaster sent them to the wrong address. I am not real happy with either of them right now, especially Ticketmaster since this was the second time this has happened to me.

The first time this happened was during the 2008 baseball season, I ordered tickets for the final Yankee game in Yankee Stadium. UPS lost those tickets and because it was not Ticketmaster's fault I was out the ticket and the money that I spent on them. Thankfully this time Ticketmaster guaranteed my tickets and they are now waiting on me at will call in Cleveland.