AROD, and my year end Baseball awards

Well I see ARod got his first ever hit in a World Series last night, by upstaging the clincher of the World Series by announcing that he would opt out of the last three years of his deal with the Yankees. I hope when ARod does make it back to the playoffs he chokes miserably like he has every other year. If I was running a team I know what free agent third baseman I would be going after and it's not ARod, It would be Mike Lowell the MVP of the series....(Please Mark Shapiro bring him to Cleveland!). And heck while were on the subjectof MVP I would have given it to Pedroia or Ellersby. The Red Sox have a very bright future.

Well now that the season is over:( it's time for my year end awards.

Playoff MVP- Dustin Pedroia- from game 5 of the ALCS on he was the spark the Red Sox needed, between him and Youkolis they were constanltly getting on base for Ortiz and Manny.

Pitcher of the Playoffs- Josh Beckett- 4-0 in the post season with a 1.20 ERA, he is the one pitcher that I would want to pitch for me in a big game.

Regular Season MVP American League- Sorry ARod but my pick goes to Maglio Ordoniez of the Tigers who was really the only productive bat in the lineup in the second half after Shefield went down.
National League- Matt Holliday of the Rockies hit 340 with 36 HR and 137 RBI, and singlehandedley helped carry the Rockies into the playoffs.

Cy Young AL- CC Sabathia, had a career year in leading the Indians back to the playoffs for the first time since 01. He went 19-7 with a 3.21 ERA and threw 241 innings and came up big all year for the Indians.

NL- Jake Peavy, the only pitcher in the NL with a ERA under 3. He also had a career high in wins (19) and innings pitched (223.1)

AL Rookie of the Year- Astrubal Cabrera, call me a homer but when the only other option is DiceK or Alex Gordon, I can't pick either one of them, when Cabrera was inserted into the everyday lineup in August the Indians went on a run, he gave them a huge spark offensively abd defensively and was one of the reasons the Indians won the AL Central.

NL Rookie of the Year- Troy Tulowitzki, the Rockies rookie short stop only made 11 errors all year, and on his defence alone should win the ROTY, his offensive numbers weren't to shabby either .291 with 24 HR and 99 RBI.

Thoughts.....

Playing in a Slopitch tournament this weekend....the best thing about it is getting to play. I started out in May playing coed and really didn't care for it, quit the team in June, and played a couple tournaments, before working out with the fastball team in my village ( Mount Elgin Mets). And played in a year end tourney in September, well I got the itch this week to play ball, well I ended up finding a slopitch team that needed guys to play so i get at least one last weekend of playing ball. I enjoy fastball over slopitch because it's alot bigger challenge, but I use playing slopitch to have fun and use it as practise. the first game today proved to me why ball is one of the few sports that anything can happen the team we played led pretty much the whole game , we were able to tie it in the bottom of the seventh, and traded runs back and forth untill the temth inning when we finally put them away. The up's and down's and total momentum shifts is why Ball is my favorite sport to play.

Ah So Close- Thanks for the ride!

1 win, thats all that was needed for the Cleveland Indians, It was all for naught. Yes it was dissapointing, but in the scheme of things a learning experience. In all reality they were lucky it went 7 games, Carmona looked awful in his 2 starts, Sabathia looked awful in game 1 and got outpitched by Josh Beckett in game 5. It also didn't help that Grady Sizemore and Travis Hafner couldn't produce when it counted. Huge props to Jake Westbrook for gutting out 6 innings last night, and should have come back out for the seventh the way he had found the grove the last 2 innings, he kept the Indians in the game and gave them a chance. It should have been tied going to the bottom of the seventh when Third base coach Joel Skinner held up Kenny Lofton on Franklin Guettierez single down the left field line, It felt like a let down at the time, but the final blow came on Dustin Pedroia's 2 run shot in the bottom of the seventh off of Rafy Betancourt who picked a fine time to blow up.

Thanks for a great year and a great run, I know I didn't even expect they would win the division in April. They played hard all year and in the end collapsed in the bright lights of October, hopefully next year will be different.

GO TRIBE!!

The Tribe, Manny and Dion

Huge props to the Indians offence last night putting up a 7 spot in the 5th, on thier way to a 7-3 win. Paul Byrd was brilliant, along with Jensen Lewis and Raffy Bentancourt. Hopefully C.C Sabathia can have his best outing of the year tommorow night as the Indians look to finish off the Red Sox and advance to the World Series for the first time since 1997.

Manny Ramirez, I can only hope that when the Indians face you next season Carmona or C.C buzz a 95 mph fastball up around your chin for your little show boat act last night. You're home run didn't mean shit. Or was that Manny being Manny.

Cudos to Liberal leader Stephan Dion for deciding that now is not a good time to force a election, hopefully you're advisors told you that your party would get wiped off the map in a election, not that it would be a bad thing.

2 wins away!!!!!!!!

who would have thought that the best pitching performance in the ALCS for the Indians would come from someone not named Sabathia or Carmona. Jake Westbrook pitched brilliantly tonight pitching 6.2 innings and only allowing 2 runs, the defence came up big for the Indians tonight with 3 double plays and even weasling thier way out of a bases loaded nobody out situation in the second.
Huge props to Kenny Lofton who started the ball rolling with a 2 run homer in the second, he looks like he's in his twenties, not forty. And how bout Joe Borowski working a 1-2-3 ninth, keep that up and us Indians fans won't have to worry about close games.
The Indians send Paul Byrd to the mound to face the knuckle baller Tim Wakefield as the Tribe look to go up 3-1.

GO TRIBE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Atta Boy Trot

Funny how a guy can go from being a goat most of the year to the hero in one swing, With the Tribe and Red Sox tied at 6 in the top of the 11th and Grady Sizemore at second and Astrubal Cabrera at first Trot Nixon had easily his biggest hit as a Indian, hitting a Javier Lopez pitch into center to score Sizemore from second. The Tribe would go on to score 7 runs in the inning capped off by a Franklin Guietierez 3 run homer over the monster in left. With the series now tied I like the Indians chances with the next 3 games at home, and hopefully Sabathia can return to Cy Young form for game 5.

The College Football season just keeps getting more interesting by the week, who would have thought that the top 2 teams would get knocked off this week. If this trend keeps up the folks that decide who gets to play in the national championship game would be better off at drawing names from a hat. It's been that kind of year in college football.

Baseball playoffs and other thoughts

Well that sucked, I never thought that the Red Sox would light up Indians starter C.C Sabathia like they did tonight, the only good thing about it is it was only one game and the Indians do have Fausto Carmona going Saturday night in Fenway. As for Sabathia he has now given up 11 runs in 9.2 innings in the playoffs, not what you would expect from a Cy Young contender, at least his next start will be in Jacobs field for game 5.

I'm watching the NLCS and the thought occured to me, could TBS not have found better announcers than Chip Carey, Bob Brenly, Tony Gwynn and Craig Sager. As for Sager one has to wonder who the hell picks out his suits that he wears, they are freaking hideous. Give me the Fox broadcast team doing the ALCS over these guys any day of the week.

Conflict of Interest??- Election night I went to Ernie Hardeman's (PC- Oxford) victory party, slowly one by one all his competitors come in to congratulate him, the last one to come in was Family Coalition Party candidate Leonard Vanderhoven wearing a poll official badge on his shirt, which begs the question how can a candidate that is running beable to also work at the polling station on election day, there is just something that seems a little off about that. Or maybe it's just me.

Ontario- Post Election and other musings

Well another 4 years of Dalton McGuinty, it really could have been different had John Tory run even a good campaign, Tory screwed the pooch with the funding of religious schools idea in the PC platform, he should have just left it alone and focused on giving more funding for school's, Tory's idea of funding religious schools put him on the defensive from the start of the campaign and in reality stopped him from bringing up the real issues like health care and education. John Tory made his bed and now will have to face the facts that his days as leader of the Ontario Conservatives are over, I'm hopefull that the party will elect a leader that will take the party in a new direction (more towards the Mike Harris days).

As for Dalton's promises, he came out today in announcing a new stat holiday in February, I personally don't like the idea of another holiday in the winter. It should only be a matter of time before he comes out with the speed limiter legislation on trucks, in reality they really should limit all vehicles to 110 kmh, I can only hope that common sense prevails on this issue, but I somehow doubt it.

My last election night thought, thank god the people of Ontario had enough sense to reject the MMP proposal, If your party can't win a riding why the hell should they get a seat in the first place.

The Baseball playoffs resume tonight with the LCS in the National League, I likie the Rockies in this series, I love thier offensive lineup and thier never quit attitude, I'm picking the Rockies to win in 6 games.....In the American League I like the Indians who have 2 stud pitchers in thier rotation, thier lineup is equal to Boston the only edge I would give Boston is thier Closer Jonathan Papelbon who doesn't scare the hell out of me like Joe Borowski does, having said that the Indians should win in 7.