Posts Tagged baseball

And Third Place Goes To…

June 16, 2011 at 9:10 am · Filed under sports ·Tagged , , ,

The New York Mets? Wait, what? The Mets are in 3rd place in the NL East? How did that happen? In what was supposed to be a throwaway season from start to finish, the New York Mets are 8.5 games back from 1st place. (Don’t worry, I don’t think for a one second that first place is remotely possible!) For all the trouble the Mets have been having in previous seasons and all the trouble they were supposed to be having this season, they are doing surprisingly well. This can be attributed to a lot of new, young players being called up who are performing admirably. Also, how about some of those Mets pitchers? With their ‘ace’, Johan Santana, out till mid-July, the other pitchers have really stepped up.

Ok, I think I need to come out and just say this now. I am no expert on baseball and really only casually watch it (aka my dad puts it on, there’s nothing else on TV, and I half listen/watch the game while reading a book or magazine). I find the baseball season to be too long, I find the games to be too long, and frankly, I find games to be pretty boring. I enjoy going to games, but more for the social atmosphere than because of the actual game…baseball games are still really boring when you see them live! At least when you go to a stadium, you can walk around and check out all of the cool things they have there. Anyway, I tell you this because in any future posts about baseball, they are going to be as vague and non-detailed as possible. I will talk about what’s going on with the Mets, but really, I don’t care that much. So, just be warned for future posts.

Hopefully football will be back soon and then I can really get to writing again!

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A month of Baseball in the books…

May 4, 2010 at 10:28 pm · Filed under sports ·Tagged , ,

Happy May! The baseball season has been underway for about a month now so I think it’s time to check out how the Mets are doing in the standings, and to see how the rest of the division is doing. For the sake of sticking to my topic of New York sports, this post will talk mainly about the start to the Mets’ season, with a video of how a friend of mine and true baseball fanatic thinks the N.L. East leading Phillies (for the moment!) are doing. I’ll also include a Google map of the stadiums the N.L East teams play in.

So, how bout those Mets? Heading into inter-league play the last weekend of April against the Phillies, on the road, the Mets’ were red-hot. They had just completed a 9-1 homestand and were coming in to Philadelphia to face a Phillies team that was suddenly struggling to win games. Given the pitching match-ups, this three game series should have gone to the Mets. Alas, following an explosive Friday night, 9-1, win, the Mets seemed to struggle to hit and add to that pitching meltdowns by Pelfry and Santana, the Mets lost the next two games, dropping them out of first and half a game back, putting those rival Phillies into first place.

The Mets lost again last night, this time to the Cincinnati Reds, 3-2 in 11 innings. As the Mets website put it, “. . . rather than ease back down to earth, to mortality, the Mets suddenly crashed. And now they are burning.” It seems like the Mets can’t find a consistent pattern to take. They play well for a couple of games and then crash – and crash badly. Thankfully, this crash is coming early enough into the season that there’s time to figure out why they continuously crash after playing great baseball. I think the Mets will be fine for the rest of the season. Let’s be serious here. There is no POSSIBLE way they can play as poorly as they did last year. It’s physically impossible. So, from last year to this year, the only place they can go is up!

Here’s a video with a friend of mine who is a self-proclaimed “baseball expert.” I’ll warn all you New York fans now, there may be a slight bias in this video. Blame it on the fact that I go to school in Philadelphia and grew up among Phillies fans. There are so few people in this city who even know about other baseball teams! Anyway, here are her opinions on how the season is going so far, as well her opinions on some other topics dealing with the first month of baseball.

As I was saying, here’s the map of where the National League teams in the East division play. It’s organized in alphabetical order by stadium name. Interestingly enough, this almost corresponds to location North-South. Starting with New York and working down, the stadium names are almost alphabetical but those pesky Marlins mess things up! (I’m not even sure if the stadium name has changed from Land Shark Stadium to Sun Life Stadium yet so they could be really messing things up!)

So, that’s it, in a nutshell! This is my last post for my class but I hope to continue posting beyond. Thanks for keeping up with me this semester. For your enjoyment, here’s a link to the May 4th standings from ESPN.com.

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It’s a big day for sports news!

March 23, 2010 at 4:32 pm · Filed under news, sports ·Tagged , ,

…at least as far as I’m concerned! Number one, Jose Reyes is cleared to rejoin the Mets at Spring Training! Yay! Reyes missed most of last season with a hamstring injury and just when it looked like he would be back, it was discovered he had a thyroid problem. Doctors thought he was going to miss two to eight weeks but that estimate has been reduced to a mere 15 days. This is HUGE for the Mets. After their horrible season last year due to injury after injury to starting players, they really need all their players back and healthy as soon as possible. While Reyes may not be starting, or even playing, on Opening Day he is allowed to resume baseball activity so he can FINALLY start playing again and getting back in form. This news is more for the psyche of the team. Just knowing that one of your players is going to be back weeks earlier than initially anticipated does a lot to raise the spirits. Let’s hope this news is just the start of the good news surrounding the Mets this season!

Now, on to football! In what I consider to be one of the BIGGEST rule changes in the history of modern football, NFL owners have voted to change postseason overtime possession rules. In a 28-4 vote, it was decided that the team that losses the coin toss will be allowed one possession if the team the won the coin toss scores a field goal on their first possession. Basically, playoff games will no longer be decided by a field goal in overtime. This is huge. I’ve always felt that overtime, in the regular season as well as the playoffs, needed to be changed. I don’t think it’s fair to win a game in overtime on a field goal. If you win it on a FG in regulation that’s one thing. But once you hit overtime, it’s not fair if only one team gets to touch the ball. Sure, there’s the argument that your defense should be able to stop the offense so they don’t score on the first drive. But let’s be serious. If both teams are in OT, then clearly the defense had some issues stopping the offense. Otherwise, it would be a shutout. Hopefully, the owners will decide to extend this rule to the regular season, though I can understand why it’s currently just the postseason. They may even wait a season to see how this new rule plays out before they extend it to all OT games.

Check out this ESPN.com article and accompanying video that details all of the new changes!

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Who would you meet?

March 17, 2010 at 1:10 pm · Filed under sports ·Tagged , ,

Sorry it’s been a while! I was on spring break and didn’t have access to a computer 🙂 Since it’s getting late and there’s a lot to catch up on, I’ll leave you with this question to ponder till I write another post (LT to the Jets anyone?)…if you could meet any baseball player, who would you meet and why? I asked a couple of friends…check out their answers!

As you can see, most of the answers dealt with Phillies players and many dealt with the attractiveness of the players. I guess that’s what I get for asking girls in the Philadelphia area!

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