Monday's six-pack
Our weekly look at baseball's statistical leaders........
BA-- Morneau .344, Cano .343, Beltre .341, MCabrera/Hamilton 339.
HRs-- Bautista 21, MCabrera/Hamilton, Konerko/Pujols all with 20
RBI-- Guerrero 70, MCabrera 69, Wright 64, ARodriguez 62.
OB%-- Morneau .437, MCabrera .419, Youkilis .416.
ERA-- JJohnson 1.82, JGarcia 2.10, Wainwright 2.24, Jimenez 2.27
Ks-- Weaver 124, Wainwright 123, Gallardo 122, Lincecum 121.
************************************************** ******************
Monday's List of 13: Random stuff on the 5th of July.......
13) If I ran the LA Clippers (and the sad truth is, they'd be better off if I did), I'd offer Lebron James the position of player/coach, or player/GM. Not sure if it would've worked, but for damn sure it would've gotten his full attention, and that wouldn't be bad for the Clips.
Dave DeBusschere was player coach of the Pistons from 1964-7, at ages 24-26; they used it as motivation for DeBusschere to quit pitching for the Chicago White Sox. He lasted 222 games, but eventually got traded to the Knicks, where things went a whole lot better for him, winning two titles.
12) You hire Lebron as coach, then bring in a veteran NBA coach with no ego to be the main assistant (really the head coach) much like Stan Albeck was for Wilt Chamberlain for San Diego Conquistadors in the ABA. This would work, because players would want it to work, and its the Clippers, so any success they had would be met with overwhelming giddiness.
11) From the Its-Not-What-You-Know, but Who-You-Know department, 76ers hired Quin Snyder as an assistant coach, as former Duke assistant is hired by Doug Collins, whose son Chris was coached by Snyder at Duke. Guess it beats coaching in the D-League.
10) Joey Votto's absence from the All-Star team is so stupid its comical; Votto leads NL first basemen in batting average, OPS, runs scored, is 3rd in RBI, 2nd in HRs. The Reds are in first place; Votto might be the MVP of the league. There isn't room for three 1B on the NL team? My ass.
9) I say this with Ryan Howard playing on my fantasy team; he doesn't deserve to be on the team ahead of Votto. Now, all three deserve to be on it, but if you're taking two, you must take Votto. Its not even debatable.
8) Managers need to be relieved of the responsibility of choosing subs for this game; that way, the "He's my guy" defense that Charlie Manuel used for choosing Howard isn't needed. Hey, if I'm Manuel, I do same thing, as it makes my life easier, but simply, it isn't the right thing to do-- at some point, doing the right thing has to enter into the equation, doesn't it?
7) Four pitchers on the NL All-Star team have had Tommy John surgery, further proof that whichever doctor pioneered this surgery deserves to be in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Who has done more to help baseball?
6) Jon Lester is 12-0, 2.00 in 15 career starts against the Orioles.
5) Texas Longhorns' football program made a profit of $65M in 2008-09 season, thats 65 FREAKIN' MILLION DOLLARS!!!!! Ohio State made a $35.8M profit. Duke used its basketball profits to make up for a deficit of $6.7M its football program built up.
I'll repeat myself; the Texas program made $65M. They only play 14 or so games a year; 12 in regular season, then Big 12 title game and a bowl. No wonder they held most of the cards in conference expansion talks.
4) You wonder why Clemson is playing Presbyterian this year? Because no matter who the Tigers play, 80,000 fans are coming to the stadium for an all-day party, and if its an easy win, so much the better, especially as Auburn/Miami are the two games after that.
Its too bad all I-A teams didn't have to play other I-A teams in all their games; a weak Sun Belt or MAC team would still be an easy win.
3) Umpire Jim Joyce was once a pitcher for the Bowling Green Falcons.
2) If the baseball playoffs started Monday morning, they'd look like this:
AL-- Bronx-Detroit-Texas-Boston (Tigers/Twins are tied, really)
NL-- Atlanta-Cincinnati-San Diego-NY Mets.......There are five teams in NL Wild Card race within three games of each other.
1) NBA is getting lot of publicity with all this free agent stuff, but seems like not that much of it is positive, just mostly half-baked guesswork that makes the agents/players look greedy, the owners dumb. Is it worth it?
