Been a few days since I’ve blogged…
So, in no particular order:
* I really had a great time on Monday night at Free The Birds 2. Even though my attorney has advised me to NOT share the videos from Monday night, rest assured they will pop up at some point, somewhere. Just the still photos of how EMPTY the stadium was would be astonishing. There were not 2,000 people in the stadium Monday night.
* It’s amazing how MASN shoots the Orioles games and you’d "almost" not know how empty it is down there.
* The Ray Lewis-Jamal Lewis matchup this Sunday is intriguing. You must admit: through three games, Ray Lewis looks more like the No 52 of 1999 than the one from 2005. I’m wondering if he can play like this for 16 weeks, but Ray Lewis is one special football player!
* Am I a pervert, or does the fact that Tina Louise being in town mean something to you, too? Nothing wrong with Mary Ann (and I did meet her once at the Harford Mall with Gilligan and the Professor), but at heart I’m a "Ginger" guy.
* The Van Halen reunion gets sorta local on Monday and Wednesday when David Lee Roth and the boys roll into Philly. I am SO tempted to check out the tour, but I’m also sincerely concerned about Roth making me want to vomit between songs with his goofy act. I think the band would be better if Roth could actually sing. But the temptation is almost too delicious to resist. The youtube videos have done nothing to inspire me to spend an evening a few hundred bucks on this "reunion" tour.
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* Isn’t football season great? The Ravens are 2-1, they’ve almost blown the two games they actually won, and the one that they lost was basically stolen from them. Of course, they were two missteps away from being 0-3. As Bill Parcells said, "You are what you are." The Ravens are 2-1 with Cleveland, San Francisco and St. Louis coming. I have no reason to feel downbeat about the 2007 season just yet.
* My concerns about the Ravens and football observations for the week:
1. The "two QBs" thing seems to fail more than it works: but I do remember the Hostetler-Simms, Woodley-Strock, Lamonica-Stabler, Grogan-Eason Super Bowls. It CAN be done, but it’s walking the tightrope. True, the Ravens need both Steve McNair and Kyle Boller, but they shouldn’t WANT them both to play.
2. I think the fourth quarter against the Cardinals goes much differently if Trevor Pryce is on the field. Just my two cents. They’re gonna miss him as long as he’s out. You don’t know what you’ve got, until it’s gone…
3. My confidence level in Jon Ogden’s toe is very low. For ANY player — even one who weighs 185 pounds like Deion Sanders — it’s a rough injury. For a guy with 360-plus pounds on it every moment of every day, I’m gravely concerned. It would be an incredible story if J.O. can come back from this thing and play the way he’s capable of playing. And for all the great things he’s done here in route to Canton, I’d hate to see his last "statement" as a Raven be the one we saw in Cincinnati two weeks ago.
4. When I see teams like Arizona come to town — and then peruse their roster — I really gain even more respect for Ozzie Newsome, Eric DeCosta and the scouting crew. The Ravens win because they front office clearly just picks better people and better players than most teams in the league. Even in the fourth quarter on Sunday, I was STILL trying to figure out who some of these guys in maroon jerseys were.
5. Ken Whisenhunt is a class act.
86. Amazing that the Michael Vick thing hasn’t "rubbed off" on the NFL in general. The league is like Teflon! Nothing sticks to it!
7. Commissioner Roger Goodell is doing a phenomenal job policing the league and its problems, but Bill Belichick should’ve been shown the pine for a few weeks for his gutless work on the sidelines over recent seasons. Cheating and dishonesty is the biggest problem in sports today. If people lose confidence in the games being on the "up and up," it’s over for all sports.
* The baseball pennant races have completely sucked me in this week.
Between the Orioles and Devil Rays fighting for last place in MLB, and the Red Sox and Yankees doing their usual back and forth, it’s been a great few weeks for seamheads like me.
The National League race has been delicious as well, even though I can’t name three members of the Colorado Rockies.
Am I the only one who hasn’t heard of Fausto Carmona?
I will be wearing my old-school San Diego Padres hat all weekend in honor of Milton Bradley. (Wow, is that the CRAZIEST thing that has happened in sports this year?)
8The Phillies are playing their most meaningful baseball games in almost 15 years this weekend at home against the Washington Nationals. The Mets just look like their Adam’s apples are bulging.
If we put together a night of "baseball playoff watching" at a local bar, would anyone come?
Just wondering…
Off to Cleveland on Sunday…
I promise to blog more next week…just a lot going on at WNST.net!
