As many of you may or may not know, the Dodgers celebrate 50 years in LA this year. As such, they have quite a few meet n' greets planned for the year. Luckily I was able to attend one of them in the LA Collectors Expo '08 this last weekend, and the highlight was the chance to meet one of my childhood heroes, Steve Garvey.

The Garv was the honest to god nicest of all the guys I met this weekend. I told him that i grew up actually watching him as a
Padre (as we had season seats when i was a kid along 1b about 3 rows back). When i told him that he had a huge grin -- He then wrote on my Jersey a whole mess of inscriptions, and some of them are from his Padre years! (NLCS MVP 1984, etc). You were supposed to pay extra to get 1 inscription, but he really signed all over the jersey -- for free nonetheless! What a great guy.

The Loot.
I ended up getting my Garvey jersey signed, a 8x10 of Don Newcomb signed, a signed 8x10 of Saito, a signed Billingsly, Kent, Martin, Loney, and Furcal ball as well as Orel Hershiser, Kirk gibson, and Rick Dempsey autographs on my Dodger Stadium Seatback. I had to remove the "Record Setting Infield" Plaque (it was just a sticker) but I think It’s worth it to make that seatback just full of signatures.

Yes, i'm ready for baseball season.

I used to hate a lot of teams, but as I have gotten older it seems I only have teams I like, teams I kind of like, and teams that I am indifferent or don't really care about.

I used to REALLY hate the SF Giants, A’s, Yankees, the Raiders, Oregon State, but now, while I still root against them, I could really care less. It would be real easy to hate the Patriots right now however.

When I try to think about what I dislike about certain teams, it ends up having nothing or very little to do with the team itself and more to do with bandwagoners, frontrunners, crazy fans, media coverage, or just being sick of hearing how great they are. (see Patriots, Raiders, Yankees, BoSox, etc).

The Patriot phenomenon is interesting because no one is REALLY a Pats fan. Unless you are from the area or have family there, or are under 20, you can't be a Pats fan imo. The history of excellence is not deep enough from a time frame perspective for them to be considered a "National" team that would have fans everywhere yet.

Likewise I can see how you'd be able to go into any good size mall in America and find a Yankees, Cowboys or A Raider fan -- but the Pats?

Really?

The generation coming up may be chock full of Patriot fans, but it's lost on my generation.

I am a firm believer that if you are a sports fan, your favorite team in each sport should be one of the teams that was either a.) really good when you were between 8 and 12 years old, and/or b.) your local team.

Furthermore, I could argue who you "hate" will be whoever that team's rival was during the same time.

If that makes sense?

¾ prediction wise for the playoff weekend isn’t bad. It’s a shame I didn’t predict the bolts, but who knew the roster was that deep – Backups performing as good as their full time counterparts? Wow. Great football.

The Bolts defiantly deserved that win, no question about it. Would I choose them against the Pats? Hrmm. I think thats the end of the line for them unfortunately.

Crazy things I’ve seen in LA this past week:
1. A dhl truck was just cruising down the 405 south with the rear end completely engulfed, flames, smoke everywhere… the driver had no idea. He had a huuuge smoke trail and was just cruising along like 75+ mph completely clueless.

2. When I made a exit off the 105, I saw ~12 cop cars, doors open, with the police guns drawn, pointing at the driver of an El Camino. The driver had his hands out of the front drivers window. I'm driving towards the guy, and all the police have their guns pointing at me, so naturally I made a quick u turn and drove it like I stole it out of there.

The cops were pointing at him obviously, but if they shot, and missed the bullets would have flown right at me. Crazy.

This may have to be a more regular posting for me if this keeps up.

So the Playoffs are here, and the Bolts are a part of it. Stupendous. I do have a few issues with how things have been handled lately by the team however. Allow me to elaborate:

On Rome is Burning today....Rome ripped on the Chargers for celebrating like they won the Superbowl and looked like they were going to bust out the "wild card weekend winner" t-shirts… I agree, it's funny how absurd the Chargers looked celebrating a sloppy win against a mediocre team this weekend, yet completely berated the Patriots for doing the same thing to them last year.....

I think San Diego teams do have a way of celebrating over absolutely nothing. Now if the Bolts beat the Pats or the Colts, then by all means throw a party, have a parade, etc.

Anyways, here’s my predictions for this weekend’s football games, and how I see them panning out:

Chargers vs Colts - Bolts get blown out by 2 td or more, LT is contained, has minor impact in game overall, Gates [if active] would need to come up huge to make this close. Rivers under pressure is horrid. Postgame, Shane Spanos says “The Chargers just didn’t play well”

Giants vs Cowgirls - Giants pull it off. Closest game of weekend (and best). Eli proves his worth, comes of age.

Seattle vs Greenbay - Close for 1st 3 qtrs, in the 4th GreenBay pulls out the W. Win by 1 TD or 1 FG.

Jaguars vs. Pats - Pats by 17, Jags get blown out.