Has anyone bothered to watch any of the NL west games? What a joke this has been. Which team will be the last to throw the game away? LOL
I watch these games just to see who chokes the biggest. The Dodger game the other night was a prime example; a wild pitch flew past the catcher, and 2 Dodgers (1 from 2nd base, and 1 from 3rd) ran in to score.
After watching that I realized that there is a good chance the 2005 NL West winner will be a sub .500 team, and that is pathetic. Someone needs to distance themselves as much as possible from the other garbage in that league, to prevent being lumped with them.
In related news, we now have tix to the Mariners vs. Angels, the Elusive and SOLD OUT Yankees vs Angels, and the soon to be sold out BoSox vs. the Angels. Good times to come.
Allow me a moment of baseball-geek joy: Last night Gammons and Kruk acknowledged the Angels as the "best team in the AL", having "all the right parts" and being "the most complete team".
It's nice to finally get some recognition from those blowhards...but I'm not sure we want it. As good as it feels to finally get some spotlight, I kinda prefer the team sailing beneath the radar so I can rant about East Coast bias.
It does strike me as ironic that Gammons and Kruk proclaim the Angels as the best in the American League after a game in which McPhearson is on the DL, Cabrera is on the DL, B. Molina is on the DL, Finely is on the DL, Escobar is on the DL.
What kind of a jaugernaught have the Angels created when 4 position players and the number 2 pitcher goes down and they are anointed as the gold standard of baseball?
The Angels are sweeping away the competition and they are playing rookies and bench players. What will this team be like at full strength?
1. NL East
2. AL Central
3. AL East
4. AL West
5. NL Central
6. NL West
With five teams all hoovering around .500, the NL East is the most competitive division in baseball and probabaly the best, although the top is not as strong as the top of the AL Central, AL West, or NL Central.
The AL Central will probably produce the AL Wild Card, and they sport three very good teams (ChiSox, Min, Cle) one very competitive team (Det) and one lousy team (KC).
The AL East has four teams in the hunt with Bos, Bal, NYY, and Tor. Only TB is horrible.
The AL West is down this year. Both Oak and Sea are not very good. Tex lacks pitching.
The NL Central is also in a down year. Hou is not what they were last year. StL is playing exceptional baseball and is probably the class of the NL. ChiCubs have been very tough, but can they overcome the Cards or play well enough to capture the Wild Card? Mil is a very exciting team, but they are young and still a few years away. Pit is just bad.
The NL West is very weak. SD is leading the division right now, but they have not exactly been setting the world on fire. They had a nice run in May, but have been horrible in June. Ari and LAD will make the division competitive. SF and Col are both awful. Will 85 wins take the division? Only time will tell.
The "Battle for Los Angeles" didn't turn out to be a battle at all. The Halos swept the Dodgers right outta the stadium. How the Padres lost to the Dodgers 2/4 at Petco is beyond me. It's incredible how the Padres are still in first place with that horrible record. Although the last NL games i've watched have been based on what team makes the least amount of errors *sigh*.
Anyways, the Angels are in first place, and have held it for almost the entire season so far. 'Nuff said. They are now a cushy 6.5 games ahead of the Rangers.
Meanwhile, the season is now nearly 1/2 over, and the Yankees still look terrible. As a matter of fact, Espn's power rankings don't even list the Stankees in the top 10...
Also, ESPN's RPI standings which compare a team's record to the strength of its schedule currently rank the Angels 2nd in all of baseball behind only the White Sox, and show that our .600+ winning percentage was compiled against the toughest schedule in baseball to this point. Not to mention the Angels have the lowest team ERA in baseball... Good times to come for this Angel ballclub.
So, after a temporary winning streak, The Yankees have resumed their course to the bottom of the division, losing three of three to the lowly Royals, then losing series against St Louis, Rays, and now 2 in a row to the bottom of the barrel Mets. Laughable.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/20...s.ap/index.htmlI'd love to hear comments from you Yankee lovers... Let’s hear the excuses now...
Oh, and good luck with your next series against the Orioles!
Bwahahahahaha
So I was reading online about how
GM is offering an employee discount on all vehicles. I guess they're so desperate, they're essentially taking a loss on all vehicles for a month! An acquaintance mentioned a great business analysis article that illustrated the problem nicely:
- Toyota, Honda, and the other imports test their cars for the Southern California market (hipper, more car savvy, etc)
Whereas in direct contrast:
- GM has long based its car models on what people in Michigan want.
The results are basically a ton of completely unattractive cars that the typical NASCAR dad loves and no one else really wants. Hence the Monte Carlo still being built, and not the Camaro, etc.
Its totally true too. You barely see any American vehicles here in socal, except for trucks and those are mainly driven for construction purposes. I myself would never own an American vehicle (except for *maybe* a truck). Something to think about...
Buy his house for $700,000 more than its market value.
It's always curious how some people succeed wildly in one line of business and then fail just as miserably in another.
A fine example seems to be that of Mitchell Wade.
Wade is the owner of MZM, Inc., a defense contractor, which says on its website that it has "Offices in Washington, D.C.; Baltimore, Md.; Charlottesville, Va.; Tampa, Fla.; Martinsville, Va.; San Diego, Calif.; Seoul, South Korea; Stuttgart, Germany; and Baghdad, Iraq."
Back in November 2003, Wade was apparently looking for a house to purchase and 'flip' in the San Diego area. So he purchased the San Diego home of Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R), a prominent member of the House Appropriations Committee's Defense Subcommittee, for $1,675,000.
But pretty much from the start Wade dealt himself deep in the hole because he turned around and put it right back up for sale at about the same price. As you can see, here Wade severely constrained his ability to profit from reselling the house because he was offering to sell it for the same price he'd just bought it for.
But things only got worse from there.
As this article in today's San Diego Union-Tribune explains, the house sat unbought and unoccupied for 261 days. And Wade had apparently seriously overestimated the value of the property. When the place finally sold, it went for only $975,000, thus saddling the unfortunate Wade with a loss of some $700,000.
I guess it goes without saying that that experience probably soured Wade on the real estate game for good.
But at the same time as all this was happening, according to the article, Wade's defense contracting business started going like gang-busters. In the words of the article, "Wade, who had been suffering through a flat period in winning Pentagon contracts, was on a tear – reeling in tens of millions of dollars in defense and intelligence-related contracts."
(Cunningham is also a member of House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.)
Now, it seems some pesky government do-gooder types are asking whether something might not have been quite above board about all this. When the Union-Tribune tried to get in touch with Wade, it turned out he was "traveling without access to a telephone." But MZM official Scotty Brumett explained that -- contrary to what I had assumed -- the purchase was not part of a money-making venture but the company's effort to raise its profile in the San Diego area: "We were looking at expanding our company presence in San Diego. We looked at the property and thought it would work for us. But after we bought it, we realized that it did not meet our security or our corporate needs."
Meanwhile, Cunningham told the paper that "My whole life I've lived aboveboard. I've never even smoked a marijuana cigarette ... I feel very confident that I haven't done anything wrong."
Cunningham told the paper he couldn't discuss the contracts he'd helped MZM land because they were "very, very classified."
As a side note, I actually have met Randy "Duke" Cunningham at campaign headquarters in San Diego when a friends dad was running for congress a few years back. He actually provoked an arguement between himself and my friends father believe it or not.
