Calm Before the Storm

In about 10 days, the college football season will kick off and bring a breath of fresh air into this slowly dying blog session. Right now, the MLB season is on its last turn of the regular season and in a couple weeks they will be in “down the stretch they come” mode. But for now, no such thing exists. Basketball isn’t even in sight yet, and Hockey… well, it’s summer time, so don’t even consider ice to be relevant by this point yet. This is definitely the calm before the storm, especially since the 3^rd week of preseason is just next week when we can actually start watching some starters make a real impact on the outcome of games. You know when Adrian Peterson hasn’t showed up in a preseason game until the 3^rd one that it really doesn’t matter until the third game, hence why next week we can actually blog about some football and with that let’s head into some topics of the past week.

The only real news to report this week is about major league baseball, especially with the idea of reporting that instant replay will be available starting in the 2014 season. I think this move to establish such blasphemy has come a little too late, but considering the amount of technology that is out there these days, it’s almost preposterous not to include it into the game now. This game has been around since before the  invention of cars, airplanes and before the telephones were even an idea and over the years, major league baseball has become needy of these inventions to help get teams from game to game unlike back in the 1800’s when they got to games by horse back. If there is one thing that will get me a boner when it comes to sports, it’s baseball history. The richness of this sport trumps anything outside of the world of soccer when it comes to their tradition which is especially true when it comes to American history. This was a profound week with the installation of this new technological advancement and it did come a bit late, but I feel it came at the perfect time with baseball hopefully moving its way out of this era of heavily used P.E.D’s. We’ll now see playoff games decided in a much more accurate fashion and see regular season baseball games last 5 hours when they should have lasted 3 and a half. We’ll see more commercial breaks than ever before, and we’ll get to see (the best part) red flags thrown onto a field instead of old timers running out and yelling in an umpires face because of a horrible call. I’ll miss that part, especially considering the great managers such as Lou Pinella who constantly walked the fine line of crazy and entertaining. The game is changing everybody, and it will eventually become more technological in another 30 years by some form of societal phenomenon, but for now, the history has been written. Camera’s will help the game out in a way we may never realize from here on out and for the rest of time when it comes to this great American pastime.

Charlie Manuel got fired this past week from the Philadelphia Phillies. The saddest part is knowing that he is one of the old timers that really made baseball a more happy go lucky, calm, and seductive sanctuary over the past 20+ years. The man won over 1,000 games as a manager this week and then got fired instead of receiving an award from the Phillies on the great accomplishment. Knowing the persona of Charlie Manuel, they guy won’t sulk in his own bath of sadness because of the situation. If anything, he’ll go about his way, live his life in the calm and happy manor, and find great joy in something other than baseball. 1,000 wins is nothing to sneeze at, which is why this man should probably be in the hall of fame for making the game of baseball a much more enjoyable product to stomach.

The Los Angeles Dodgers have been the hotter than an Iraqi summer for the past 51 games. 42-9 has been the Dodgers record in that span which was putting their name at the levels of teams back when the sport of baseball was just becoming a national headline. The run that the Dodgers have been in should be put into perspective by just merely looking at the standings and gawking at the  fact that they have almost made a mockery of the NL West going into these now late stages of the regular season. Yasiel Puig has made a serious case to be considered as the NL MVP while Clayton Kershaw is now the clear front runner to win the NL Cy Young award once again. The only thing I worry about with the Dodgers is that they have been hot for so long that hopefully they don’t run out of steam once October rolls around because the last thing they need to be is front line fodder for the L.A. Times to bash once they choke their season away in a 5 game series. I don’t see that being the case as of now, but then again we are about 6 weeks away from playoff baseball. Anything can happen in between that time.

The NCAA preseason rankings are now out and a shocker… Alabama is at the top spot starting the 2013 regular season. This will be the final year in which the lowly BCS will be in place to decide college football’s national champion making this year the final year the regular season will mean everything for every single game. I still think 2014 will be a solid season with all the hype focused around the playoff scenario, but the regular season may dwindle when it comes to popularity or importance. Either way, let’s enjoy this season and enjoy the irritation that the BCS will allow us for one final time. I hope Stanford can pull through with their #2 seed and face Bama so the irony of this terrible system can rear its ugly head one last time.

So here’s some Spam on Spam on Spam! I will be putting these blogs up on Monday starting next week because of the adjustment to College football rankings and the NFL starting in a couple of weeks. So be aware of that change here in the next week. Also, I will be writing a new blog in October strictly for Basketball and only basketball. It will be called, “One Hoop, One Ball, One Dream.” I will mostly be talking about inspirational basketball stories, my own personal basketball workouts, blogging about the greatness of this sport, my fantasy basketball updates, my NBA 2K14 experiences, talking about the NBA and NCAA Basketball, and anything else related to basketball. It should be fun and considering my love for the game you definitely do not want to miss out. I’ll try to keep it updated as often as I can and it will eventually become my regular/daily blog.

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I should have my NFL Preseason prediction Blog up by the end of the month. Keep an eye out for that too. It should be extremely in-depth and be a really awesome read!

Anyways, that’s it for this week everybody. Fox Sports 1 is now up and going, so go and check it out. See you next week on Monday night!