One inning down eight more to play

A baseball season is a pretty long time. In order to put it in perspective, I put it in bite size chunks. The 162 game schedule lends itself to dividing it up in these chunks. In the past I have thought of it in 6 segments of 27 games each. This has been pretty easy to do as the season is spread over 6 full months (April to September) and each team plays around 27 games each month. This year I am dividing the season into 9 18 game units. I have done this, because baseball games are divided into 9 segments called innings.

I will now analyze the Chicago White Sox in their first 18 games. I hope to breakdown the Cubs and the leagues themselves in the next few posts.

When 7-11 and the Sox decided to end their affiliation with each other this year regarding their starting times (The past two seasons they vegan their home nights games at 7:11. I didn't think it was because they were going to start sponsoring their record. Yet, after the first 18 games the ChiSox find themselves at 7-11 and not for the Slurpees!

The Sox started the season out with a beautiful 6-0 slaughter of the Cleveland Indians at home they then dropped the next 4 games (two to the Tribe and Two to the Twins) before beating the Twinkies to end their initial 6 game Home Stand. It looked as if the White Sox were getting back on track after splitting 4 games in Toronto where they had not won for years. Unfortunately, they left Toronto on a losing note and then got swept by the Indians in Cleveland. The Sox came home on the right note beating the Tampa Bay Rays then dropping the next 2 games to them. They ended their first inning of the season with back to back walk off homers against the Seattle Mariners bringing them to a not very respectable 7 and 11.

Here are a few reasons Sox fans should be concerned.

• In their first 13 games the White Sox sustained 2 four game and 1 two games losing streaks while only putting up back to wins on 2 occasions.
• The Sox are second last in the AL in Hits, last in doubles and last in batting average.
• The Pale Hose did not win their first series of the Season until April 24th. As of that date they have won 1 series tied 1 lost 4 including being swept once.

Here are a few reasons no one should jump off the ship quite yet:

• It's still early! 18 games does not a season make.
• Every team has one or two bad patches a season. There is something to be said about getting one out early.
• The Sox are tied for first in the American League in Home Runs and Stolen Bases. They are tops in the AL in Strikeouts.
• The Sox generally play well against the AL Central where they are now an awful 2-7. They have yet to play the Tigers and Royals who have they fared well against in seasons past. There is every indication they will play near the .550 mark they have had in the Central over the past two season. The Sox are currently above .500 against the rest of the league. If they can maintain that while they catch up in their own division, there is hope they can get right back in this.

I'll be back in 18 more games to give you a second inning synopsis.

As Another Begins

I posted earlier this week about the end of college basketball season. Major League Baseball was getting into full swing (pun intended) as the NCAA tournament winded down. The tournament , anation obsession, is giving way to basbeball, the national past time.

Hopefully it will be a good season for both sides of Chicago. The Sox have started 1-1 and the Cubs have faltered out of the gate so far at 0-2. That's 2 down and 160 to go. Much too early to draw too many conclusion. I will be posting my musings each week as the season progresses.

One Season comes to an end

Today signified the end of Men's college basketball season. What started as a field if 65 a few weeks ago was down to 2. When the tournament brackets were announced, My wife and I filled out our brackets as we do every year. We were pretty surprised to find out that her pick to win it all and mine were squaring off in the final game.

That's right, my wife picked Butler to win the NCAA tournament. She picked a 5 seed, whereas I went with perennial power house and #1 seed Duke.

What a game it was. If Butler would have made that desperation half court shot, they would have won. The shot was very close. It seems like every other year, I pick Duke to win it all, it just so happens that this year I was right.

They Ain't the Aints no more!

The New Orleans Saints won Super Bowl LXIV by a score of XXXI to XVII. I mean if you are going to talk in roman numerals, talk in roman numerals!

This Saints won in their first ever Super Bowl appearance beating the Indianapolis Colts. The Colts seemed to be favored by almost every prognosticator out there. However, if you look at my post from yesterday, I picked the Saints after a lot of hemming and hawing. What can I say?

A Colts victory would have evened the annual AFC NFC grudge match to 22 games a piece. The saints pulled the NFC to a 23-21 mark with the win.

A brief history of the Super Bowl shows that the AFC won 8 of the first 11meetings, the NFC won 7 of the next 11 and 9 of the 11 after that. In the past 11 games the resurgent AFC have won 7, losing only four.

New Orleans Quarterback Drew Brees, a former standout at Purdue, was the bane of the Hoosier state tonight, completing 32 of his 39 passes for 288 passing yards and 2 touchdown passes.

Are You ready for some football?

I have been meaning to come back here and give my Super Bowl pics.

The game is tomorrow, so I better get to it.

I have not been following the past two NFL seasons as much as I have done in the past. There are probably several reasons for this, but the main one is that I no longer work outside the home.

When I worked outside the home, I would listen to sports radio on my way to and from work. Even though I did not watch the game s over the weekend (We only use our t.v. to watch videos and d.v.d's I would get a pretty good idea of how teams were doing by listening on the radio. Now, I can certainly tune in the radio and listen at home, but I don't. This means I am no longer as knowledgeable about the NFL as I once was.

This doesn't mean that I don't have anything to say as to who I think will win.

Since my favorite team is in the NFC, I generally lean towards the NFC. However, there are some AFC teams I like (Steelers, Colts) and other NFC teams I dislike (Cowboys, Falcons, Vikings). I also tend to pick against teams that have won it all recently in favor of teams who have not.

So, I have been not sure whether to pick the Colts, whom I like, and who are on paper the superior team or embrace the Saints as the feel good story of the year. I also can't help over thinking the choice as a vote for the Saints is a way to express my dissatisfaction that the Colts last Super Bowl victory was at the expense of my beloved Bears.

I am going with the Saints. Much of the reason why I liked the Colts was because of former coach Tony Dungy who I have been a big fan of since his time with the Buccaneers. I also have a hard time rooting for the team that stuck it to the Bears.

While my heart says Saints, my head would not be surprised at all at a Colts victory.