Ei
?
I don’t understand.
Ha! I was reading the boards on my phone last night. I must have pocket dialed the thread. Sorry all.
That’s funny right there.
I’m also enjoying the fact that the last 25 posts or so have been about who’s going to be left out of the Yankees’ post season rotation. Come on Opening Day!!
Yeah, Pettite was a pretty darned good pitcher back before he retired and was pumping HGH or whatever it was. Now he’s two years removed from throwing a pitch in anger and they’re going to test the bejeezus out of him. His ALCS MVP in 2001 means absolutely squat as to how he’ll do now.
Methinks someone forgot to look south. Though I suspect there might be some problems with a Mexican team due the Mexican League. What about San Juan, though?
For the first time in my life as a baseball fan (about 35 years) I’m going to Opening Day!!! D-backs vs Giants. Then, the next week I’m moving across the country to Chicago and I’ll be living close to Wrigley Field.
Going to be a very interesting season of baseball firsts for me!
I was assuming Mexico wasn’t a go-to choice for MLB, for a variety of reasons.
San Juan is somewhere between 400,000 amnd 2 million people - I cannot quite understand where they’re drawing the boundaries, bu the 2 million figure appears to include almost the whole of Puerto Rico.
The main drawback to a Puerto Rican team, of course, is that Puerto Ricans are much poorer than the people of any American metroplex.
The Expos played part of two seasons in Puerto Rico, and if the MLB had been blown away by the fan response and convinced that the money would work, they might’ve stayed. Since they didn’t, I think it’s unlikely a team will go there any time soon. I see Monterrey also tried to get Expos but obviously they lost out to a U.S. city that has already had and lost several teams.
Excellent, enjoy both. I love Wrigley though I only got there twice.
I am totally jealous. I hope you enjoy the heck out of it. I will count myself lucky if I make it to one game this year. Thinking of trying to get to Citi Field for the Mets Dodger series, but the timing is wonky and I don’t know if it will work out. MLB.TV is my friend.
Chipper is retiring after this season. It’s the end of an era. He’s the last guy left from all those Braves teams that won those division titles. He’s also like Cal Ripken and Tony Gwynn in that he played all his games for one franchise, so very rare these days.
The previous mayor of San Antonio made a fairly quixotic run at attracting the Marlins to relocate back around the middle of the 00’s, when the local Powers That Be sorta got swell heads when the area generally well supported the Saints during their relocated Katrina-season.
San Antonio already has a long running AA Texas League franchise which it mostly ignores. The team nearly set an all-time league record for winning percentage last year and few people in town paid much attention. The town built them a stadium on the cheap in the 90’s on plot of land that’s only conveniently located for the airmen doing basic training at Lackland AFB. Despite the fact it is still pretty new, the place is a dump in comparison to most of the other parks in the Texas League and I doubt the area would be considered suitable for the construction of a MLB-level stadium.
The Astros’ local radio affiliate is a very low powered FM station that is generally a second-tier right wing talk station, no matter where I am in town, the signal seems to be half static. The Rangers have one of the 2 sports talk AM radio stations listed as an affiliate on their website, but I’ve only ever heard them broadcast playoff games. Once the Spurs season ends, the local sports talk guys shift their primary attention to Longhorns football and the Cowboys (and recently they’ve begun to recognize that Houston has an actual NFL franchise again).
So…San Antonio does not seem to be a baseball town, lest anyone think otherwise. I have a feeling Austin could be a baseball town even though it is smaller than San Antonio, it is generally wealthier and does support the UT Longhorn baseball team pretty well.
I don’t think the Yankees were expecting much from him, but Joba Chamberlain will probably miss most of this season after he suffered a severe ankle injury while playing with his son. He had surgery yesterday for a compound dislocation.
I don’t know, this is kind of a big hit for the second half of the season. I think every team expects some player problems during the season and the Yanks were pretty sure they had a great mid-season replacement getting ready in the wings if you would. On the other hand this is probably kind of good news for some of the kids in AAA, as it means they’re more likely to make the team now as the season plays out.
If Joba Chamberlain isn’t the funniest player in MLB, I don’t know who is. It’s like he’s a great big teddy bear who keeps unraveling. Seriously, a trampoline injury. I find it hard to imagine Chamberlain has a child, when he himself is this ultra coddled pitcher who can get hurt just by looking at him wrong. He’s much like a little kid who keep scraping his knee. He’s even covered in baby fat and has a comical, childlike name. He looks and sounds like a cast member from “The Goonies.”
The real shame is that 20, 30 years from now, people will look back at Chamberlain’s stats page and career and think he was just another pitcher who was a flash in the pan and flamed out, like hundreds of others. The true, pathetic and hilarious story of Joba Chamberlain will be largely lost to the average baseball fan.
I have to agree with all of this.
I’m not an expert on the MLB collective bargaining agreement. Is a player’s contract money affected in any way when he suffers an injury not related to the performance of his baseball duties?
Do they draw a distinction between routine activities (playing on a trampoline with your son) and more risky activities (skydiving, skiing, rock climbing, etc.)?
My understanding is that it depends on the individual player’s contract, and that risky activities like contact sports are prohibited - which means if you get hurt doing those, you don’t get paid. I assume this wouldn’t qualify, so Joba would still be paid. The Yankees had to deal with a similar situation a few seasons ago when an infielder named Boone hurt his knee playing basketball in offseason. His contract prohibited basketball, although I am not sure how that issue was worked out exactly. (I see the team said he was only entitled to 30 days’ severance after he was waived.) In the end the Yankees had to pick up a new third baseman named Rodriguez.