Sport

BBC Five is amazing. They do live sport commentary for the Swimming World Championships—on the radio. It is not the entire meet, but they come in for the finals of some of the more well known swimmers; i.e. Michael Phelps’ 400m IM race (which he won, while I am writing this post, his seventh gold medal—he was trying for eight, but his 4x100m FR was DQ’ed in prelims due to a false start by Ian Crocker—and broke yet another world record; his fourth individual and fifth over all for the Championships). The only down point that I have found is that they do not stream the EPL matches, due to stupid broadcasting contracts. In other swimming news, Ian Thorpe has denied all allegations of doping after a sample that he gave before he retired last year was found to contain high levels of testosterone (a similar situation and possibly the same sort of test, it seems, as the Floyd Landis debacle at last year’s Tour de France). From the reports and the news conferences, Mr. Thorpe is very angry about the leaking of the test results to the press before the inquiries were finish. Understandable I think, because Ian Thorpe has always been an advocate for clean racing, and it is truly unimaginable that Mr. Thorpe would have cheated.


In other sport news: Today it Opening Day! The Twin’s season opener, however, is on Tuesday, when they play the Baltimore Orioles. We (or you, since I will not see it) will see Carlos Santana, Boof ‘because I like Boof better than John’ Bonser, and Ramon Ortiz. That leaves the rockiest part of the rotation: Sidney Ponson, our amazing Aruban tank, and Carlos Silva. I will not say anything about Silva, but if you really want to know feel free to read all about the general feelings on him here—scroll down to the posts from Thursday and Friday (29 and 30 March). Despite our shaky pitching rotation, the field starters are looking decent. The squad is strong at catcher and first base, of course, with hometown, AL Batting Champion Joe Mauer and his pal and roommate, AL MVP Justin Morneau. The rest of the infield is filled out by Luis Castillo at second, Nick ‘Piranha’ Punto at third, and Jason Bartlett at short—let’s hope that the beginning of this season goes better for Jason than the beginning of last years. The outfield is not horribly spectacular but it is solid: Rondell White in left, Torii Hunter in centre, and Michael Cuddyer in right. To fill out the twenty five man roster are Jason Kubel and Jeff Cirillo as DH options, Mike Redmond and Chris Heintz backing up catcher (third string catcher to keep Joe rested with that stress reaction in his leg), Luis Rodriguez for infield backup, filling out the Jason-trifecta is Jason Tyner backing up the outfield. The bull pen is more than solid, per usual, and is as follows: Joe Nathan, Jaun Rincon, Jesse Crain, Dennys Reyes, sidewinder Pat Neshek, and Matt Guerrier (you can choose how to pronounce that one—I prefer the French version).

In my own analysis of the roster, I have found that the Twins’ Opening Day twenty five includes ten men with a first name starting with J. This number becomes eleven if we count that Boof was born John. My own personal hopes are that Silva continues his crap from Spring Training, and that the Twins’ management quickly sees this and brings up Matt Garza, who’s only reason for not making the starting rotation, is that he pitched better this spring than three of the starting five, and Gardy wants to wait and see which will be the worst. Let’s hope for a speedy conclusion to the pitching rotation woes.

In other news, I am debating on whether or not to get MLB Radio, so I can listen to the games—most likely archived, since most of the time they will be playing while I am sleeping. I think that I might get it when I get back from holiday, since they have a five day trial period and there is no point being on that trial when I cannot listen anyway.

I am also disappointed that Florida won last night. Hence, Ohio State better do better in the basketball championship against Florida than they did in the football championship. It would be completely unbearable if Florida 1) managed the first repeat since Duke in 1991 and 2) they were champions in both football and basketball in the same season. In women’s Final Four action, an excellent match up for my family: North Carolina versus Tennessee.

I will be leaving for a week in London tomorrow afternoon. I will not be posting while I am there, and I do not know if I will write any posts to post when I return, but I will definitely be taking a ton of pictures (which is why my computer is probably coming—thought I have not decided on that front yet) which I will upload on my return next week. Until then, happy Holy Week and Easter.

PS: I could not pass up adding this image of Michael Phelps in an underwear commercial for some sort of Speedo-made underwear. My first thought on seeing this picture was: 'Speedo makes underwear?'

PPS: Have I mentioned that I had a long conversation with Michael Phelps and Klete Keller when Purdue hosted the US Open Swimming Championships last year and that we ended up going out to one of the local bars after the meet? Yeah, went out with some of the best swimmers in the world. We hung out until the wee hours of the morning. I do not know if I will ever be able to best that experience. My co-lifeguard Aprile Kasperles can corroborate this account, as she was with me when the guys asked, however, since she is not twenty-one, she was unable to accompany us.