I'm surprised Hamilton would go to a place where the temptation on his sobriety would be arguably the greatest.
Thank you, Josh Hamilton (and to a lesser degree A-Rod being out), for giving me a reason to actually root for the Yankees for the first time since moving here.
The Mets are apparently on the verge of trading R.A. Dickey to the Blue Jays for Travis D'Arnaud and Anthony Gose, with some additional players involved, possibly on both sides. I'm sure most Met fans will be upset, and as much as I love R.A. Dickey, this is exactly the sort of trade the Mets should be making. They haven't been .500 since 2008, they have multiple glaring holes in the team, they're simply in no position to be sentimental about their players. I'm kind of worried about the whole "additional players" thing, but we'll see. Amazing.
The deal was just finalized and formally announced, the Mets are trading R.A. Dickey, Josh Thole, and Mike Nickeas for Travis D'Arnaud, John Buck, Noah Syndergaard (Toronto's top pitching prospect) and Wuilmer Becerra (17 year old international signing who had a handful of Rookie League at bats last year). Dickey is easily my favorite pitcher in baseball, but that's a pretty awesome haul for a 38 year old and a couple of spare parts. Amazing.
One thing's for certain. The Blue Jays are going to have a lot of scrutiny on them this next season, and expectations will be high.
Ryan Freel was my favorite MLB player, the ultimate hustle player and human highlight reel. His Web Gems were legendary to me as a kid, and he could do it at any position. I remember once he dove headfirst into a chain-link fence for a foul ball...caught it...and hopped up like it was the most routine thing in the world. In fact, whenever something amazing happens while my Dad or I am playing softball, we still refer to it as a "Freel play." My dad, who broke the news to me this morning, and cried. I'm glad the Bengals won today, because we got to celebrate that in the midst of Freel's death. But he was always an inspiration to me, and that's something that didn't die with him.
Incredibly sad & heartbreaking to hear about. Unfortunate that he wasn't able to get the help he needed to get through his problems.
http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/8772294/strange-true-feats-2012-mlb-season http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/8774920/strange-true-feats-2012-postseason One of my favorite columns to read every year.
Right after the season ended, work was begun on improvements for Dodger Stadium that will be done in time for the start of this 2013 season... came across this photo today via my FB news feed: The biggest changes (this is a rendering of what it will be like) here are to the outfield scoreboards, which will now be in HD. **** yeah!
Those will be a major improvement over the old ones. Tunes I'm talking my wife into letting me take a west coast baseball trip with my brother next summer. Gonna try and hit the Dodgers, Angels, A's, Giants, Padres and D-backs if we can swing it. If it actually happens we should catch a game.
It just lacks personality IMO. The Great Hall is cool. But everything else seems so static and blah. It's missing that feeling the old stadium gave.
