Pete Rose Division Preview

Inspired by one of my fantasy league competitors who released a division preview for the Mickey Mantle Division of our fantasy baseball league on ESPN, The Battle of the Blogs, I have decided to brief you all on my division, the Pete Rose Division (don't tell anyone how much I'm betting on the Perpetual Blogging Co.)

Hot Stove Philly-I personally love this team. Between Manny Ramirez and Ichiro Suzuki, this team has some of the best pure hitters in baseball. Add that to the powerful bats of Adam Dunn and Dan Uggla and one of my favorite underrated players in Cody Ross and they seem to have a great shot on the offensive side. The pitching is no slouch either behind Roy Halladay and Josh Beckett. This pair of aces backed by the always injury prone yet high ceiling Ben Sheets give Hot Stove Philly a great chance in our division.

Five Tool Prospects-I think that this team, which is led by Albert Pujols, has the potential to be well-rounded if Rich Harden and Jake Peavy can return to the form that we all know they will eventually. On offense, this team will have a lot of home runs with Pujols, Joey Votto, and Ryan Ludwick. Also, behind Chone Figgins, Brian Roberts, and Shane Victorino, the Prospects will outrun almost any team in the league. With a solid performance from Peavy and Harden, this team will be serious competition.

Sports Page Network-I love the fact that this team is led by the twin sluggers from the Twin Cities. Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau will definitely pace this team on offense with solid contribution from Ryan Zimmerman. This team is one of the few that can claim to have amazing bullpen pitching with Francisco Cordero, Bobby Jenks, and Matt Capps. I think that the key to success for this team will be behind Ricky Nolasco and Gavin Floyd. If these two guys can put up solid ERA and wins, this team will be able to win any category on any given week.

Babes Love Baseball-I think that the first major issue this team will need to address is the second baseman as Freddy Sanchez is on the DL and there is no backup on the bench. Other than that though, this team is going to live or die on the youth movement. Behind Matt Wieters, Cameron Maybin, and Jason Heyward on the offense, this team could be very exciting as well as high scoring with Prince Fielder anchoring first base. Dan Haren anchors a pitching staff that hopes to lead this club to the playoffs and beyond.

Perpetual Blogging Co.-I like my team, but there are definite parts that need improvement. I also went young with my offense anchored by Justin Upton and Troy Tulowitzki. However, I think the strong point of my team is my relief pitching with Mariano Rivera leading the charge supported by Jon Rauch who I hope is going to get a ton of either holds or saves now that Joe Nathan has fallen. I really need Chris Carpenter to stay healthy and team up with Ubaldo Jimenez and drive my team full speed ahead.

I hope you enjoyed this preview of my division. Please support all my competitors' blogs as well as continuing with mine!
Photo by by Ed Yourdon

Bracket Busted

Choosing a bracket and be a humbling experience. ESPN gives you the ability to choose up to 10 brackets, so you can choose many different combinations and still have the potential to mess them all up. Surprisingly, even though my brackets did horrendously, I guess most of America did bad as three of my brackets were in the top 10% on ESPN now my absolute best was in the 97.9% percentile. Here is a link to my best bracket (I hope it opens). I guess you can tell the Ohio University kind of ruined the fun I would have had if Georgetown could have gone all the way. However, to console myself, I opened up the best bracket on ESPN which was chosen by Matt Walker. Here is a link to his bracket. It makes me feel better that nobody could have accurately chosen this entire tournament like they do some years. However, it was amazing that Matt had the Final Four as well as the championship perfect. So, congratulations Matt, nice job, but I was not particularly consoled!

On the same note, how many people wanted Butler to knock off Duke? I'm sorry to all my friends who are Duke fans, but I wanted to see a Hoosiers type story. The small school from Indiana knocking off the perennial powerhouse from the ACC would have made a great sorry that newspapers would have been talking about for the next few months. However, if it wasn't meant to be, I guess it wasn't meant to be. Nevertheless, I wish I could root for the perennial powerhouse, but I can't. There's something in my mind that urges me to root for the underdog regardless of if they have any chance of winning. I like Kansas, and I chose Kansas to win the national championship in many of my brackets, but I had to root for Lehigh when it looked like they might potentially give Kansas a run for at least the first few minutes. Apparently, I'll have to wait for next season to see the 16 seed knock off a number one seed (unless the NCAA is totally mindless and expands the tournament to 96 teams; I guess you know my opinion).

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Off to the Races

It is finally Opening Day! Almost all the ice has melted off the reservoir and we barely have any snow in our yard! What is better than that? The Phillies pulled off, or should I rephrase blasted off with, an opening day victory versus the Washington Nationals. After watching President Obama throw out the first pitch, Roy Halladay owned the mound just like we are hoped he would when we allowed Cliff Lee to be shipped off to Seattle. On top of that, Placido Polanco already has regained the loyalty of Phillies fans in his second stint on Broad Street after he was shipped off in favor of Chase Utley. While this was the right move for second base, I always thought we should have kept Polanco to play third base instead of the piece mail system that was in place with David Bell, Wes Helms, Abraham Nunez, and Pedro Feliz. I liked all of these guys, but none of them seem to be able to live up to the high expectations demanded by fans who want nothing less than perfection. I just want to remind all of the baseball fans around; the Phillies are not going anywhere this season. The only thing that I could possibly see as a hindrance would be the injury bug which has crippled the great teams before.

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Pursuit of Excellence

I was watching the girls' basketball All American game earlier today, and I was not so amazed to hear that three of those players are headed to the University of Connecticut. The team that already has the most probable number one picks in the WNBA draft also has a relatively large percentage of the best incoming freshmen in America. Connecticut will essentially have as much talent coming in as going out. It is amazing how one team can become so dominant for such a long period of time. However, how does a team go about establishing this image of dominance that is alluring enough to draw so much talent? I think that there are some main points as to why Connecticut has been able to do this.
• Excellent coaching
• Excellent reputation
• Excellent players currently
• Excellent fan support
• Excellent media coverage
• Excellent facilities
• Excellent academics
Do you notice a trend? If you want to be the best, you need to have a commitment to excellence. Excellence in and of itself does not ensure becoming the best, but in order to be the best, excellence is a prerequisite. With its commitment to excellence, the University of Connecticut has become dominant, and I think Baylor and whoever they might be playing in the finals will be up for a tall test.

Now, a few orders of business before I end tonight. First, for any of you have not figured out my April Fools' Day puzzle, look at the first letters of each word in the first two sentences in my April 1 article. What do they spell? Finally, happy Easter to all of you; remember why we have this life-changing holiday.

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Power Soccer Practice

Most of you will probably know that I like to have a routine. I don't mind changing that routine, but I like to at least have some idea of where I am going. This being said I have found it very valuable to see where I want to be going in power soccer as well. By watching the US national team, I have seen where I want to elevate my game and how I can keep improving. After playing again today with some great competition, I've thought about how really I need to rearrange my thought process in order to succeed.

The first thing I realized was that if the ball goes towards your back left tire, you should not turn to the left as you normally would to attack face on. The reason for this is that, assuming that you were moving towards your goal while attacking, when you turn to the left, the ball will hit your chair or guard and bounce back towards the other goal. Obviously, you don't want to allow the other team a fast-break like Nate took on our team today (although it is awesome to see tenacious defense from other members of my team since I'm not really the most aggressive player on the court, and I need someone to compensate for my shortcomings). If you pivot around to the right, you'll be able to use the right side of the guard to send the pass back towards whatever teammate sent you the pass and keep the ball moving forward. Intuitively, I should want to turn left, but I'm attempting to rearrange my thoughts so that I will be able to get my guard on the ball and push it up the court quickly.

Another important thing I learned is that the only way to hit a spin shot is to get a backing start before swinging around and hammering the ball. When I first started playing, I knew that it would be easier to just turn into the ball. However, that did not give me enough momentum to hit the ball with any force. By gathering the velocity of backing up and then converting it into the turn, I was able to hit the ball much harder. Also, it is very important to make sure that turn acceleration is maxed out. My mechanic Eric maxed out my chair on to help me ram the ball and put it in the goal.

So, I'll try to keep you updated on some stuff I'm learning while playing power soccer, and I hope that I will always be able to show the game to a bigger audience.

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Back to Alternate Reality aka Fiction Friday

As I sat in my office working on my latest advertising campaign, I have to admit that neither my heart nor my head were really into it. I love my job; I love trying to figure out what turns people on and how I can play off of that and motivate them to buy a product. I realize that this might sound slightly creepy as if I am some mad scientist trying to achieve mind control; however, I am not that evil. I find it as a particular challenge to try to convince people; I never hooked them up to any creepy machine to mess with their brain waves.

Anyway, enough justifying my confusing mind. I was sitting at my desk attempting to develop some way to market frozen waffles. Honestly, I was drawing a major blank. Sure, I'd marketed food products before, but that was a long time ago. Recently, I had become a quasi-specialist for our company whenever a high-tech client came and needed me to saturate the Internet. I had viral marketing on my mind, and honestly there was no hope of shaking it. However, advertising on Facebook and utilizing other social media outlets did not seem like a good way to advertise frozen breakfast products, but that was all I could think about. I grabbed my head and figured that I just needed to step back and remember all I learned in business school.

As it always seems to happen, right when I was on the verge of some amazing idea that would develop into potentially the greatest campaign I had ever developed, I heard the very distinct bass beat that begins John Bon Jovi's classic anthem "Livin' on a Prayer." I realize that this song is relatively popular and could be heard in many different places included in an office that always had the radio on, but how many reasons are there for John Bon Jovi echoing out of your coat pocket? I all but dove at my jacket and clamored for my iPhone which, as always seems to happen when you want something, got stuck on the way out. I stubbornly refused to give up and answered.

I don't want to bore you with a word for word transcription of our conversation, but I will tell you that I hadn't gotten the job... yet. I had to fly back to San Francisco for a second interview. Great, I thought, how am I ever going to tell my boss that I need another week off to interview for a job that is threatening to steal me away? However, I knew I had to do it, so I headed to the symbolic as well as literal corner office that was inhabited by my boss. After knocking and being admitted, I began what was apt to be a very awkward conversation.

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Why the Phillies Rock

Heard about Phillies Phever? Your authentic Phanatic rivals intense Liverpool fans, obsessing over losing seasons, dreams, and yesterday. Can any other franchise claim such loyalty, such devotion, and such recent success as the Phightin’Phils? Don't you want to catch the Phever and become a Phanatic? If you don't understand yet why the Phillies are the team to follow and love, I hope I'll be able to convert you by the end of this potentially persuasive argument.

First, as I have talked about before, society loves the underdog. There is some aspect within our psyche that likes to see the favored party fall. Perhaps we would like to think that even the people who are the best players are capable of being reduced to our level for at least one game, month, or season. Because of this tendency, you have to love the losingest franchise in professional sports history. The Phillies remain as the only team to record 10,000 losses in franchise history. This means that the Phillies have essentially lost enough games to have over 60 completely defeated 162 game seasons. If you can't love that image of an underdog, I don't even know how we could say that Cornell was an underdog in the NCAA tournament. The Phillies have lost almost half of their games over the years spanning 1883 through 2009; you have to feel the need to cheer for them.

If you're one of those cruel fans who won't support the underdog, let me now present the opposing argument. The Phillies are one of the best franchises in Major League Baseball right now. With the addition of Roy Halladay to anchor a pitching staff that has been admittedly shaky over the past few years being paired with the run producing ability of Ryan Howard and Chase Utley, the Phillies have a legitimate shot to make a run at their third straight National League championship. If you can't love the Phillies because they are one of the most underachieving franchises in history, you at least need to respect them now as legitimate contenders for the World Series again. (I do realize that in New England we like to think that the Red Sox and Yankees are the only teams in existence because obviously nobody else deserves to be on that level. However, believe it or not, some Vermonters like myself do not have a particular bias towards either team.)

I hope I've convinced you to at least respect the Phillies as perhaps on the same level as the Red Sox and Yankees. I guess the only way to prove that they deserve this respect is to play hard all year and continue to prove themselves. If you still haven't figured out how this relates to April Fools' Day like I promised it would, read my first two sentences very carefully. If you figure it out, post this fact in the comments, but don't tell what it is. Everyone needs to figure it out for themselves. I'll post the answer Sunday.

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