They're going to end up with Adrian Gonzalez next off-season, don't worry. Lowell and Ortiz will be gone, and perhaps Beltre as well, so they'll not only have the roster space but additional money freed.

In a related story, I will now light myself on fire.

I've heard reports that Theo may make a move for Gonzalez right before spring training.. I don't see it happening though.

I'm proud of what Ortiz did for us.. but if he doesn't spring back this year..the mans gotta go.

please take a vid of the blaze.

Andre Dawson makes the Hall of Fame. 78% of the ballots.

Bert Blyleven and Roberto Alomar fall just short: 74.2 % (five votes short) and 73.7% (eight short) respectively. No one has ever received as many votes and not eventually made the Hall.

Complete voting...BBWAA.com: Official site of the Baseball Writers Assn. of America.

1) Barry Larkin deserved FAR more votes. He's one of the great shortstops ever and should eventually make it.

2) Tim Raines saw his totals jump to ~30%, and may be on the Dawson path: he deserves it, too.

3) If Edgar Martinez was a mediocre defensive first baseman instead of a DH, he would be getting more votes. I just know it, and that's very sad.

4) I love looking at the guys who just received a couple (generally undeserved) votes. I know that when I become a voter and I have room on my ballot I would throw a couple votes in that direction.

5) Reports are that five ballots were returned blank, and that Jay Marriotti has admitted to being one. Disgraces to their profession, those five are.

Jay Marriotti is a douche.. always has been.

Did everyone forget about America's Pastime? Opening Day came and went and the season has started. I'm really excited about the new season.

Forgot about the thread, but not opening day. Glad to see the sox destroy the skanks bullpen in the first game of the season.

How about that play by Buehrle? Fucking amazing, and probably a lot lucky.

Big Z stank it up, that's for sure.

Some things just never change do they?

My Opening Day doesn't start for another 30 minutes :p

But between Buehrle and Heywood, and getting to yell "We want a pitcher, not a belly-itcher" at our president on TV (:D), yesterday was pretty good, too.

The Red Sox suck.

It might be early in the season but to me it's already apparent that Theo went the wrong way on the people he acquired. The one exception is going to be Lackey.

Big Papi has turned into Big Baby. Time to send him out west.

Sigh, my Indians dont disappoint. Yet another year.

Seattle Mariners announce Ken Griffey Jr. retiring - ESPN

What a sad day, and not just because this makes me feel old. He is truly one of the greatest players ever, and even though it's a shame how the second-half of his career went down, he deserves to get all of the praise such an honor deserves. If anyone will (assuming a couple morons die or relinquish their votes), he will be the first unanimous Hall-of-Famer.

And it's even better that he chose a day where absolutely nothing else happened. Nope, nothing went on that would remotely overshadow something like the retirement of a player like Griffey. Nothing at all.

Nothing historically controversial at all.

In all seriousness, MLB needs to act quickly and decisively on the 28 out perfect game. They need to reverse the call. It has no impact on the records or the outcome of the game but it has great historical significance.

Spoiler alert!

Spoiler: The Orioles are 9-2 under Buck Showalter. Seven of the wins have come against the Angels, White Sox and (tonight) Rays. Ten of the games have been quality starts (and the other was still a victory), and the offense has averaged just under five runs a game over the stretch. They play 30 more games against teams presently within six games of their division lead; everyone but Minnesota.

Am I overexcited over a small sample size and a likely hard fall back to Earth soon? Yes. Do I give a shit? HELL NO! :hyper:

After watching the umpire in today's Orioles/Angels game call Josh Bell out at the plate when the catcher missed the tag by about 18 inches, and watching the umpire in today's Texas/Taiwan Little League game use replay to overturn a similar call at third base, I'm convinced that MLB's refusal to put a real instant-replay system into use is close to becoming a worse stain on the sport than steroids. At least they did something about steroids.

What a complete embarrassment. I hope people start letting Bud Selig know that the growing focus on bad calls is going to be his legacy now that the issue of steroids is starting to fade towards the background.

How sad are we? No posts through the pennant races? No comments on the division series or LCSs?

Hell, we just had Game One of the World Series! Giants 8, Rangers 4.

And Tony Bennett sang "God Bless America" (which was the only thing Fox could have done to keep me from changing the channel; I hate that part of every game).

I used to love baseball, but it's not as interesting to me these days. It's too slow, I guess.

Anyway, the actual score of Game 1 of the 2010 World Series is San Francisco Giants: 11, Texas Rangers: 7
Rapid Reaction: Lee, Rangers fall 11-7 - Dallas Texas Rangers Blog - ESPN Dallas

I only got to see the second inning, but I enjoyed what I saw, mainly cuz I'm a Texas boy.

Go Rangers!

Yeah, I missed the end of the game, so I missed the extra scoring without my fact-checking instinct kicking in :p

And yeah, you picked a good inning to see. Better than the fifth at least...

2nd Game of the World Series:
Giants: 9
Rangers: 0

::le sigh::

Congrats on the long overdue World Series championship win, Giants fans.

Great try, Rangers. Maybe next time.

Nice game, congrats SF.

Big time congrats to SF :thumbsup: The fun thing about the Giants run is I don't think anybody thought they were going to go all the way (well maybe SF fans) up against the Yankees juggernaut the red hot Rangers and Phills, the solid Reds and Twins they seemed to just get lost in the shuffle...I would have said only the slumping Braves would have been a worse pick.

Anyway fun series and it was refreshing seeing some new blood in the fall classic, next year lets see if we can make it a Royals/Nationals world series.