I don’t know about any other baseball fans, but I’m getting a bit tired of the all talk - no action trading season we’ve had this year. And realistically there’s no reason why I should really expect any more than that; well except of course for the fact that Mark Teixeira’s name pops up 8 times a day in trade rumors. But the reality is that we are not likely to see a blockbuster deal and the best first baseman traded this year could be Ty Wigginton.

I think one of the reasons are that the typical teams who sell out their farm system for rent-a-players (namely San Francisco and New York) aren’t in the position to make such a trade this year and honestly, do you even think Brian Sabean can go against every fiber in his being by trading FOR a prospect?

And maybe this is because with the massive amounts of information out there teams are much better and more diligent at drafting and protecting their prospects. You look at recent drafts and in my mind, an unusual number of picks make it to the Show sooner than it typically has. I really don’t recall so many consecutive seasons with projected aces have made their debuts.

This is also a bit of the bug that has caught on with other pro sports like basketball and hockey and that’s that GM’s no longer put together teams to win titles: they put together teams to be competitive over a period of time. Increasing player salaries are probably the biggest factor in this when it’s infinitely cheaper to hold out for a guy like Phil Hughes than sign or trade for a guy like Javier Vazquez or Dontrelle Willis.

So to sum it up, it’s not that I don’t understand, but it’s more that as a fan, I like to see a busier trading market; especially since that’s the only way my Oakland A’s are going to and have been able to be successful.

It’s funny what money has done to our sports, and the mentality of the teams.

Interesting to note that Barry Bonds’ mistress will appear in the November issue of Playboy… which for some reason hit the shelves on October 1. Wouldn’t that make it the October issue? Oh well, she’ll be in it and make a quick buck off of her former lover.

What she’s telling Playboy is nothing we don’t already know, which makes it impossible to justify buying the mag for the “article”. Funny thing happened though on the way to 756; after what Michael Vick is alleged to have done and after the fact came out that that cornhole of an NBA ref was shaving points Barry somehow looks a lot better now. In the end, his record will be broken, and the People’s champ Hank Aaron will still be remembered as the true champ. Bonds will end up in the Hall of Fame eventually, and why? Because he didn’t gamble. I think that somehow people will forgive Bonds in the long run because even if we prove, with cold hard facts that he was on the juice we are still left with the question: who else was juicing? Or better yet, who wasn’t juicing?

So what’s that leave us with? A migraine, a d-bag on his way to making history, and a waste of paper in the November Playboy. Ah, modern day professional sports. I think I liked it better when the drugs guys took inhibited performance…

Parents: do your kids get in the way of your enjoyment of sporting events. Here are two sure-fire ways to enjoy your sports after you become parents… oh, yea, and you’ll probably wind up in jail too. No biggie.

Bring ‘Em With

Earlier this month, a man was caught dragging his 10-year old son through the running of the bull in Spain. How’d he get caught? The newspaper my friends… the damn paper:

The youngster’s mother complained to police after seeing a newspaper photograph of her ex-husband leading their son by the arm just a few feet in front of the bulls, El Mundo reported on Tuesday.

Dad didn’t go to jail in this case… but he did lose visitation rights so this 10 year old’s last memories of Dad will always include a fresh warm load in his underpants.

Leave ‘Em At Home

I really can’t explain the actions by these two Packers fans… its just mind-boggling… especially when you consider the fact that one of the parents was a former youth counselor. Maybe now we know why its “former youth counselor” and not current.

A couple who admitted locking a 7-year-old boy in his room with a bucket for a toilet while they watched Packers games at a casino received jail sentences Monday. Circuit Judge Jeffrey Wagner called the couple’s actions “abhorrent” and ordered them to undergo psychological screening.

First off, psych testing is probably a wise move here. Second, if you have a son, why wouldn’t you want to share the enjoyment of the Packers with him? Now this kid is going to grow up with an unnatural hatred of Brett Favre. Nice going mom and dad.

• Judge punishes dad who took son bull running (Reuters)
• Couple locked up boy during Packers game (AP)

If they have moral victories, they must also have moral defeats, right?

Well, if that’s true, last weekend’s victory over Japan in the 3rd IFAF World Football Championships would qualify. Maybe we really shouldn’t even bother competing in this one, because anything short of three consecutive blowouts will be considered failure. So am I happy about Team USA’s 23-20 overtime victory over Japan for the World Title? No.. not particularly, but we did win, so I’ll drink to that.

Really, its not a great situation to be in at all. Either we as a county put out a better effort and completely humiliate other nations and make the entire competition futile, or we lose face. I’m all for complete and total annihilation but not really all that enthused about the possibility of losing the world title unless we are actually putting out our best. Kind of a dilemma when it comes time to selecting next year’s team; maybe a few more D-I players will solve such a mess?

• TEAM USA GOES HOME GOLD!! (3rd IFAF World Championships)

Moving to a new place this weekend… no time for the website. Sorry folks; back to normal on Monday.

I’m tying to stay away from the whole Mike Vick story right now. I love pit bulls and my fiancee is in vet school right now so needless to say I’m not exactly all that tolerant of what Vick is alleged to have done and to be fair he hasn’t been convicted of anything just yet. Nonetheless, Jon Stewart does raise a humorous conclusion on what to do with Atlanta’s troubled star.

I personally would not recommend this on a rainy day. My buddy in high school once spent the Dodgers-Giants game hancuffed to a chair for goin over the fence on the to players’ side of the field.

If you ever found yourself playing ball in Japan though, and the pitcher/ catcher decides to be a punk ass; knock said punk ass in the head.

Let it be known: I still don’t think Ichiro is worth the money the Seattle Mariners will be paying him. While I think this though, I also think that Ichiro negotiated a masterful contract… and you have to give the Mariners their proper credit too for being a little crafty with their money.

For a few years, I’ve told people I know that I don’t understand why more athletes don’t defer large parts of their contracts for their retirement. Too many times you see someone sign a huge deal worth millions of dollars, and three years after retirement (forced or optional) have no money left. So, if they set aside chunks of their deals for later, not only would it give them a salary upon retirement, it also discounts the salary in terms of the official yearly totals for the team… slipping some needed room under the salary cap or avoiding costly luxury tax. If the Yankees used this method they could save millions of dollars each year in luxury taxes. Millions.

Seattle will pay $12 million in salary each year and defer $5 million per season at 5.5 percent interest. Suzuki, who turns 33 in October, will receive the money in annual installments each Jan. 30 starting with the year after his retirement from the major leagues.

I’m just really taken aback by this one… smart, ahead of the curve thinking in the Seattle front office? I know. I’m scared too guys… I think this is officially the second sign of the apocalypse. The first sign of course being Pauly Shore movies.

• Mariners to defer $25 million of Suzuki’s contract, money to be paid through at least 2032 (AP)

Quote of the day coming from the mouth of Tony Reali after Mike Wilbon was foolish enough to state that the average pro rugger compares in size with David Beckham. Its obvious from that quote that Wilbon, in all of his experience and sports wisdom, doesn’t know the first thing about rugby. This whole conversation of course started with discussing the fact that Brisbane’s Ben Czislowsk found out that he has had a tooth embedded in his head since a collision on April 1 this year, after which they stitched him up… tooth included.

This of course leads me along a completely un-smooth transition into the meat of my post: South Africa wants their own haka. For those of you not in the know, the haka is a dance/ ritual that the New Zealand All Blacks perform before the start of every match. It’s based on a Maori warrior challenge to an enemy, and it changes a little bit every now and then… I guess to keep things fresh (here is an example of one). But after this year’s Tri-Nations tournament, in which the Sprinkboks crushed the All Blacks, South Africa wants to have a haka too.

“History books show the 1926 Springboks performed a Zulu war dance in major matches on their tour,” [Springboks coach Jake] White said.

Okay, sweet. So they did some dance a few times 80 friggin years ago and now they want to bring it back. Whatever, you want to dance… dance. But let’s put this into context. First of all, this in my mind would be comparable to one of the teams in the NFL deciding to do a Native American war dance before kickoff. How well d’ya think that would go over here in the US? Yea, not so well.

Second, let’s really not get too carried away here and why don’t we call the haka what it really is: choreography. Seriously, it’s a choreographed dance that grown men perform before playing a game at the highest competitive level. A dance. If South Africa is allowed to bring their own haka to the field, then why not everyone else? I’m sure that even the English can conjure up some strange Dark Ages traditional battle dance. And then before we know what happened, rugby will have turned into grown beasts of men acting out their own ridiculous version of the movie You Got Served before every game.

Just for fun though, I’d love one day to see a team, totally unannounced, bust out some steps to Young MC’s Bust a Move in response to the All Blacks and really point out how trivial the whole thing is. Sure the All Blacks would tear their heads off as soon as the game started, but it’d be fun to see nonetheless.

• Springboks aim to unveil own haka (BBC Sport)

[Editor's Note - It's probably a little weird to hear a former rugby player and current rugby fan diss the haka at all... I just think it's overdone and too often the only part of rugby America gets a chance to see... and I am personally not a fan of New Zealand so I hate it.]

You know, my preseason MLB predictions are so far off - mainly because I B.S.’d them for the most part - that I decided a newer, better prediction needed to be made. So I visited Baseball Prospectus (BP), which is essentially the holy land for baseball geeks. BP has a system set up to predict playoff winners, called their “secret sauce”, which was written up in Sports Illustrated last week. It’s obviously a good system, but I wanted to know who might get into the playoffs, not who is going to win the whole thing. The one stat that BP offers but does not include in their calculations is luck.

Baseball is fun for guys like me for two reasons: 1) you get to play around with numbers all day long to see if you can’t calculate your prediction rather than just pull it out of your ass and 2) luck and chance make it completely and totally impossible to make an accurate prediction from data. Call it the Yin and Yang of sabermetrics.

Anyway, according to BP, here is a breakdown of the five luckiest, and five most unlucky teams in baseball as of 7/15/07:

Whatever you do, don’t change your socks… never change your socks when you’re lucky:

• Detroit Tigers
• Cleveland Indians
• Boston Red Sox
• Los Angeles Angels
• Philadelphis Phillies

Time for new socks, underwear… well, just burn your shit in front of the duguout.

• Houston Astros
• Pittsburgh Pirates
• Chicago White Sox
• Oakland A’s
• St. Louis Cardinals

First of all, obviously the NL Central is the most unlucky division in baseball: 4 teams out of the 7 un-luckiest. Many people might think that being a lucky team would be a great thing but nay… I argue it is not. Luck tends to even out over the course of a season. So in my thinking, teams with poor luck should have catch some breaks in the second half and those who get every lucky hop known to man will soon get frustrated by slumps and bad voodoo. So that’s why for my second-half predictions I counted bad luck as a positive stat, since blue skies are bound to come. So with the current standings in mind, and my crazy, completely and totally unreliable mathematical model here are my predictions for how things wrap up this year:

AL East - Boston
AL Central - Minnesota
AL West - Los Angeles
AL Wildcard - Oakland

NL East - New York
NL Central - Chicago
NL West - San Diego
NL Wildcard - Los Angeles

AL Winners - Boston beats Los Angeles
NL Winners - New York Beats San Diego

MLB Champ - New York Mets