Random Crap Monday

Less than 24 hours removed from one of the worst sports days of my life, the return of Random Crap Monday!

An abbreviated version of the crap as the Yankee game's on but 2 main stories today.



First, Donald Brashear was suspended for 6 games. 1 for messing with Colton Orr during pregame warmups, 5 for attempting to kill Blair Betts. For some reason ESPN.com decided to report that Mike Green was also suspended but that's not true. See what happens when they try to cover hockey?

And in the other news, although this apparently isn't news since it's been known for a few years but hey I just found out now, Harriet from Studio 60 (Sarah Paulson) and President Allison Taylor (Cherry Jones) are a lesbian couple. I don't really have a joke here, but this is the kind of thing that Random Crap Monday was made for.

Arg

The Rangers lost, the Yankees got swept by Boston, if you think you're getting anything more out of me today you're out of your freaking mind. I'm too busy watching Game 6 of the '96 World Series.

Gadlus of the Day

Biggest Sports Day of the Year?

I think to this point, this is going to be the biggest sports day for me in 2009. Let's break this party down:

We got the real NFL draft, since we traded our only Day 1 pick for more picks in the middle rounds, and now have 12 picks in the 5 rounds today. I highly doubt we actually make 12 picks, and actually hope we can package some of them for 2nd round picks next year. My favorite part of the draft so far has been reading the comments from yesterday on the great bloggingtheboys.com, where for the most part they tended a) to hate the fact that we didn't have a pick until 51 so Roy Williams better be awesome b) really hated the fact that most of our predraft targets got taken between picks 33 and 45 and c) my most favorite comments, wondering why the hell Wade Phillips was necessary in the war room, and commenting how it looked like he had gas. And as I type this the 'Boys are on the clock at pick 69. And we just took Jason Williams, OLB from Western Illinois. Full recap and thoughts about the draft later.

We got Game 6 of Rangers-Caps. Our great coach got himself suspended for benching Seanie in Game 5, or for throwing a water bottle at a fan, whichever story you like better. As our Rangers expert texted me last night, "he's a hypocritical loser". Maskim.

But in any event, we kind of need to win today because no one wants to play a Game 7 on the road, even if last year Washington trailed Philly in the 1st round 3-1, won Games 5 and 6 and then lost Game 7 at home in OT. As Torts said after Game 5, we need our best players to be our best players, not our kids. As great as it is that Callahan and Dubinsky continue to step up, guys like Drury (although he's hurt), Naslund and especially waste of space and crappy ex-Devil Gomez really need to step up. We know Henrik will be on his game after taking off Game 5, but we gotta score some goals on Varlamov.

In the middle of all this there are also the great NBA playoffs all day, plus the Hurricanes victory.


Of course this all leads to the main event of the evening. The Yanks. The Sawx. The 1st two games haven't exactly gone as planned but with Pettitte on the hill tonight I'm feelin it.

Side point about the Yanks: Just throwing out this completely hypothetical yet strangely possible theory. Bruney's injury turns out to be a little more serious than this 2 weeks we're being told it is. Wang figures out whatever's wrong, with some rest, some work on his mechanics, whatever. Hughes comes up Tuesday and becomes the beast we know he is, making it impossible to send him back down to not Columbus. Our rotation becomes Sabathia, Burnett, Pettite, Wang, Hughes. Joba goes back to the 8th inning when Wang proves himself ready to rejoin the rotation since he's going to have the innings limit anyway.

Anyway, today should be awesome, be back later with thoughts and recaps and YouTubes. The blog is back!

Best Video Ever?

YouTube of the Day

I promise, real blogging soon enough, but for now, during a random YouTubing session this popped up. I hadn't seen it in a few months but was quickly reminded how much I love Tyson. The last 7 seconds might be the greatest 7 second clip ever. I can watch this forever.

Freaking Wang

Let's get a win today at least. In other news, vacation over, time to get back to blogging. Even Turgel blogged apparently.

Interesting Idea

Watching Latroy Hawkins give up a homer to Alfonso Soriano led me to an interesting idea. Make a team out of ex-Yankees, and after the year see who did better, the former Yanks or the 2009 Yanks. I'd probably need to wait until the end of the season to properly evaluate the stats, maybe neutralize them to as if they played their home games in Yankee Stadium, but it's an interesting thought. Here's the team I've come up with, or should I say coming up with as I type:

C: Pudge (HOU)
1B: Nick Johnson (WAS)
2B: Alberto Gonzalez (WAS)
3B: Lowell (BOS)
SS: Betemit (CWS)
LF: Juan Rivera (LAA)
CF: Soriano (CHC)
RF: Abreu (LAA)
DH: Giambi (OAK)
Bench: Tony "Gramps" Clark (ARI), Moeller (BAL), Nick Green (BOS), Thames (DET), Mientkiewicz (LAD), Sheffield (NYM), Cairo (PHI), Navarro (TB), Nieves (WAS),

SP1: Vazquez (ATL)
SP2: Randy (SF)
SP3: Lilly (CHC)
SP4: Contreras (CWS)
SP5: Pavano (CLE)
Bullpen: Farnsworth (KC), Hawkins (HOU), Gordon (ARI), Vizcaino (CHC), Dotel (CWS), Ponson (KC), Weathers (CIN), Ohlendorf (PIT), Karstens (PIT)

So yeah, the positions don't work out so well but it's not a terrible match. In general, priority for starting positions went to guys who will play the most and were Yankees more recently and for a longer period of time. Every few days we'll check on the old guys.

Baseball Preview

I'm lazy and don't have time to go through every team as I originally planned. Suffice to say, I'm going to shock the world and pick the Yankees to win the World Series, and The Captain winning AL MVP, WS MVP and the ASG MVP. Not necessarily in that order. Who didn't see any of this coming?

Congrats to One of My Boys

With the 6th pick of the 2004 NHL Draft, the Rangers drafted the man you see above, Al Montoya, goalie from the University of Michigan. At the time all Rangers fans were very excited since with Mike Richter's career coming to a close and Dan Blackburn's future uncertain, we were looking at a future with Mike Dunham or Kevin Weekes. Not good times. But then we drafted this American goalie, a little reminiscent of our last great American goalie as they both had played very well for Team USA (Montoya in the World Junior Championship), and we all were pumped.

Of course then when Montoya was in his final season at Michigan after being drafted, some Swedish dude who was backing up Weekes started playing really well, and by last year's trading deadline King Henrik had turned Montoya from potential franchise cornerstone into a very nice trade chip. We dealt him along with Marcel Hossa for Freddie Sjostrom and some prospects and so ended Montoya's Rangers career. However he'll always be one of my boys.

Back in the summer of '05, after the lockout, the Rangers held an event at the Garden to rally the fans together. There we were able to get a free ticket voucher to a game and almost as importantly, take pictures and get autographs from such legends as Rod Gilbert plus Sam and JD. Since besides Jagr there weren't any real holdovers from the prelockout team (I think Rucinsky and Ortmeyer were the only other guys who were Rangers and played more than 30 games in 03-04, Kasparminus and Poti don't count because they sucked), they had prospects there to hang out with the fans. Those propsects were Hugh Jessiman, Rick Kozak, and Al Montoya. I had brought a puck with me and after not too much deliberation, decided Montoya was going to be my boy. We took a picture together and talked for a couple of minutes about his future as at the time he was still deciding between going back to Michigan or joining the Rangers organization. Then he signed my puck and he's been one of my boys ever since.

Why is this relevant at all? Because he just recorded his 1st career NHL shutout, as Phoenix beat Colorado 3-0 tonight. Congratulations Al.

Now Batting Leadoff

This news was talked about a few days ago, and now it's going to be how we officially start the season. The Captain will be leading off, while Johnny Damon moves into the 2 hole. While nostalgically it would be nice to always have The Captain bat 2nd, I like this move for 3 reasons.

1st of all, you want to get your best hitters as many at-bats as possible. What better way to do this than to have the greatest of all time batting 1st?

2nd, I like a lineup that doesn't have consecutive lefties (or righties but that's harder). With lefty Brett Gardner batting 9th, our lineup 1 through 1 probably looks like this: Righty Captain, Lefty Damon, Switch Teix, Lefty Matsui, Switch Posada, Lefty Cano, Righty Nady, Righty Ransom, Lefty Gardner, Righty Captain.

And finally, the 1 problem I've ever had with Jeter Christ is his propensity to sacrifice bunt. He is a tremendously humble Captain and that definitely plays a role in why I love him, but when Damon leads off the 1st with a single there's really no reason to be bunting him over to 2nd.

All in all, I like the move, and hey, look, a blog! Mid-terms are over so baseball preview time either today or tomorrow (or the next few days most likely).