Thursday, June 5, 2008

Who's Up and Who's Down

I haven't done this for a while, so today, when the sun is shining and the birds are finding our new feeder (yay!!), seemed like a good idea to touch base, once again, with who's up and who's down in the world of sports.

Who's Up? :)

1. The Detroit Red Wings

2. The NBA: Gearing up for the beginning of an absolutely dream of an NBA finals between the Los Angeles Lakers (and Kobe Bryant) and the Boston Celtics (and Kevin Garnett). I'm not much of a basketball fan, but this matchup has even me excited. Two great teams with great history and great leading players - who could ask for anything more? Here's hoping they live up to all the hype.

3. The MLB Draft: Or perhaps not the draft itself, but rather a touching and fitting tribute just before the draft itself begins. Each major league team will draft one surviving player from the Negro Leagues this afternoon in advance of the "real" draft, as a tribute to the many excellent ball players who never got a chance in the major leagues because of the colour of their skin. The part of me that believes that Josh Gibson was probably the greatest baseball player of all time gets all teary-eyed at the thought of it.

Neutral Ground:
I can't decide where to put the the US Open: I saw an article announcing that Tiger Woods (#1) and Phil Mickelson (#2) and Adam Scott (#3) will play together for the first two rounds of the US Open at Torrey Pines this year. While this is entirely an exciting announcement, and will, I'm sure, produce lots of intrigue and story lines and excitement, I just hope that TV stations find some time to cover other players as well, while they're following these three around the course like greyhounds after a rabbit.

Who's Down? :(

1. Hockey Night in Canada: Canadians are very attached to their hockey (duh), and more specifically, to their hockey traditions. In that spirit, I would like to say: "What the hell?"

2. The Seattle Mariners: I know I have Seattle-based bloggy friends out there... what the heck is going on over there? It's not good folks; it's not good at all.

3. I'm struggling to come up with a third one this week, so the New York Yankees, just because I can.

5 comments:

Jan said...

You know a lot more than I do about all these teams. Glad to get informed.

Annie's Mom said...

Thanks Jan! It's probably just an indication that I spend too much time on the internet...

Stealthy Dachshund said...

Oh no you did not just dis the Yankees for fun.

Shalom said...

I know. I have NO freaking clue what's happening with the Mariners - it's a spiral of doom. How can we have ruined the entire season before June? How? How? Gaah.

Anonymous said...

My company does video news stories on great people with awesome attitudes -- they don't get much better than some of the Negro League players who broke barriers in baseball!

You can see a video we did at MLB's recent symbolic draft of Negro League players, which includes Millito Navarro, Peanut Johnson, Charley Pride and Bill Blair as well as Ken Griffey and Dave Winfield.

I hope you enjoy it!

http://growingbolder.com/media/Sports/Baseball/Righting-a-Wrong-155775.html