NCAA Tourney & MLB Opening Day

Hello,

The season has started with Major League Baseball and the NCAA tourney is winding down after two weeks of quality play by the best teams in the US.

1st thing is with the NCAA tourney. It is the first time that we have 4 of the #1 seeds in the Final 4 and after Kansas almost suffered a bitter defeat to Davidson we have what everybody wanted. I have been disappointed that we have not had any surprises or Cinderellas like we usually do. Davidson is not considered a Cinderella to me mostly because they have played big schools throughout the season and played well against them. I was rooting for Louisville against UNC but they fell short to the Tarheels in North Carolina. Some problems I have to point out...first thing is that UNC plays in North Carolina throughout the tourney until they get to the Final 4 and then the head coach Roy Williams has the audacity to say that the game in North Carolina is not a home game. I am not a major in Geography, but I'm smart enough to know that he is closer to North Carolina then say Louisville. I loved Rick Pittino's response to Wiliam's dumb comment. Rick said that if Williams thinks it is not a home game that they should play the game at Louisville's home gymnasium and see if that's a home game. I agree with that and understand that UNC is the #1 overall team in the tourney but this is ridiculous. It's not like they need anymore help than they are getting by playing driving distance from their campus.

Another problem has to be with Texas playing in Houston, TX when playing the Memphis Tigers which was a #1 seed. Memphis had to play a road game against a lower seed which baffles me really. Texas got destroyed by Kevin Rose and the Tigers and Memphis is ready to take the title but it still does not make sense to have a higher seed play a road game against a lower seed. Duke got embarrassed by West Virginia and Bob Huggins and everybody knew it would happen when their 3-point shots finally started to miss the mark. Georgetown had a disappointing tournament this season with all those talented seniors and after the game I thought John Thompson III was going to cry. I wouldn't worry about it that much if I was JTIII because he has a slew of talent coming off of the High School train.

The last 4 in the tournament is:

• Memphis Tigers
• UCLA Bruins
• Kansas Jayhawks
• North Carolina Tarheels

I see UNC and Memphis in the Finals and UNC taking the title with their talented point guard Ty Lawson. Memphis will beat UCLA because they have more offense than the Bruins and UNC will beat Kansas because they have more veterans.


MLB has officially started finally after way too many preseason games. I won't talk about this anymore than I have to because I think there are too many damn games during the season (120+) and don't really watch baseball until we get to the playoffs. I think the Boston Red Sox will do the same thing they did last season because of their offense and bullpen (which is better than last season). I think the LA Dodgers will be really good this season with their new manager Joe Torre from the Yankees. Torre got a raw deal in New York and am glad he could get out of that chaotic situation as well as he did. I have to pick the Sox to win it all once again with the amount of young good talent they have. Joe Garardi of the Yankees won't last too long with NY mostly because he has problems with authority like when he was with the Marlins in Florida.

Golf Testing for Steroids & Floyd Landis Positive for Steroids

The PGA Tour will start to randomly test its players in the spring as part of an unparalleled attempt to jointly coordinate screening and policing policies worldwide. 10 substances will be banned including anabolic steroids, street drugs, blood-doping agents and artificial hormones. The European Tour, LPGA, PGA of America, U.S. Golf Association, Royal & Ancient Golf Club and Augusta National Golf Club will all be testing for the same thing as golf will try to make the testing a worldwide policy. "This is very good news for us that all of the bodies are on 'side' including the four majors," the European Tour commissioner George O'Grady said.

The testing procedures and punishments will not be set in place until at least November, but the players will most likely be tested during the season and also during the offseason like other large sports do. Golf decided to do drug testing "so we can demonstrate our sport is clean -- and we can keep it that way," Peter Dawson said, the executive director of the R&A. Peter helped lead the need for standard global testing.

The testing will cost around $1.5 million to run over the next two to three years. It was inevitable for golf to join onto the random steroid testing that most of the large sports do now. Until there is a test for HGH (human growth hormone), steroids will stay out of reach and out of our control. A good example is a new sports story that came out today (Thursday). It was about the American cycling star Floyd Landis. Floyd's 2006 Tour de France title was taken away after he tested positive for synthetic testosterone, a type of anabolic steroid that was found in Floyd's 'B' sample. The ruling, handed down nearly four months after a bizarre and bitterly fought hearing, left the American with one final way to possibly salvage his title - an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

The decision was 2-1 to maintain the results of the positive drug test. "Today's ruling is a victory for all clean athletes and everyone who values fair and honest competition," U.S. Anti-Doping Agency CEO Travis Tygart said. Landis will now take a huge blow because for months he consistently stated that he never took drugs and that the French anti-doping agency screwed up the tests.

Obviously, Landis had something to say, "This ruling is a blow to athletes and cyclists everywhere," Landis said. "For the Panel to find in favor of USADA when, with respect to so many issues, USADA did not manage to prove even the most basic parts of their case shows that this system is fundamentally flawed. I am innocent, and we proved I am innocent." If Landis does not appeal this case, then he will be the first cyclist in the 105-year history to lose a title because of a doping offense.

This only shows even more that it doesn't matter what professional sport it is, steroid use will not slow down until an iron fist comes down and general testing is done like what the Olympics do with their possible athletes. Everybody knows that the Olympic committee is the harshest when it comes to steroid testing and they are very successful with it. We have MLB and their bullshit way of testing baseball players and how they turned their head when they knew that players like Sammy Sosa and Mark McGuire were "juicing" up when they were hitting 60 + homeruns. The NBA still has not used random drug tests with their athletes and who blames them, they already have bigger problems than the NFL and MLB combined. They have NBA refs betting on games and players running up into the stands and taking swings at fans. David Stern will never get the Detroit/Pacers game out of his history…the NBA will be tainted because of the game where Ron Artest was suspended for the whole NBA season without pay.

The next sport to test for drugs will be tennis, mark my words because they will be pestered by the media until they do it also. People will start to second guess tennis stars like Roger Federer and Rafael Nedal and ask if they "juice" like Jason Giambi.

Yankees Creeping Up on Red Sox

At one point in the MLB season, the New York Yankees were 14 games behind the Boston Red Sox for the AL East title. Now after a couple of months, the Yankees caught fire and now are only 2 1/2 games behind the Sox. The hot streak hit a high when the Yankees played Boston at Fenway park this last weekend and took two out of three from the Sox. At that point, the NY was only 5 1/2 games behind, but the Sox weren't sweating yet. Now, after the Sox have lost 3 games in a row and after losing to the Toronto Blue Jays, the Yanks are only 2.5 games back and are making the Sox sweat. If the playoffs started today (Wednesday), the Yankees would play in Los Angels (or Anaheim) and the Sox would play in Boston against the Cleveland Indians. The Sox will pull thru but the real question is if Manny Ramirez can come back and be a force like he was at the beginning of the season after coming back from a strained oblique muscle. If Manny can be Manny after his injury, the Sox will be just fine because their bullpen is the best in baseball (except for Eric Gange).

The AL West and Central are pretty much taken care of with under two weeks left in the season. The Indians are up 7.5 games on the Detroit Tigers and the Angels are up 9 games to Seattle. The really tight one is in the NL Central with the Chicago Cubs and Milwaukee Brewers. In that race, it isn't who wants it but who can actually win games for more than three days. I like the Cubs in that race mostly because Milwaukee is too young and inconsistent.

The New York Mets are dropping games like they are dropping baseballs. The Mets have lost 5 in a row and in the last ten are only 4-6. The Mets in two games, one against the Phillies and one against the Nationals had a combined 10 errors. Philadelphia is only a game and a half behind the Mets and have won 6 games in a row and are 8-2 in the last 10 games. I like the Mets, but if they cannot start winning baseball games, they are going to be done in the playoffs and maybe in the wild card race.

In the NL West, the San Diego Padres are only a game behind the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Padres have won 5 in a row and are 7-3 in the last 10 games to where the Diamondbacks are only 6-4 in the last 10 games. Contradicting the streaks with both these teams, I like the Diamondbacks in that race mostly because of their dominate pitching they have had throughout the season. The Padres will not feel left out in the end either because they are on top of the Wild Card race in the National League. The Yankees are 5 up on the Detroit Tigers and don't look like they are going to slow down.

That is your update on the baseball playoff race with 10-11 games left. The playoffs will be a good one with really talented teams. Here are the matchups if the playoffs started today:

(AL) N.Y. Yankees @ L.A. Angels
(AL) Cleveland Indians @ Boston Red Sox
(NL) Chi Cubs OR Milwaukee Brewers @ Arizona Diamondbacks
(NL) San Diego Padres @ N.Y. Mets

Yankees-Red Sox Series This Weekend

The New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox meet this weekend in Boston at Fenway for a large series that could mean so many different things. First of all, the Sox come into the series with the best record in all of baseball and have been for most of the season. The Yankees started out this season about bad as it could have been for Torre and the team, but has rebounded and is now set on top of the Wild Card standings for the American League. If the Yankees do indeed make it into the Wild Card for the AL, they will most likely play the Angels of Anaheim in Los Angeles. Unfortunately for NY, they have not done well against the Angels in the playoffs specifically in past years. The big issue for the Yankees (like every year) is their pitching in general and if it can hold up in the end and their starting pitching is the worst mostly because of the aging arms in the starting position and then their bullpen before they get to Rivera is pretty shaky. I personally hope the Sox can win 2 out of the 3 games in this series to give them confidence going into the playoffs (assuming Manny Ramirez will come back from a sore side).