Easter Is For Sports

An uncomfortable loss for the Giants saw them swept at home by Atlanta. Sigh. Fortunately, the only friend I know who lives in Georgia is not a baseball fan particularly, or maybe she doesn't feel the need to trash talk. Then again, I haven't talked to her in about a year or two, so she could very well be trash-talking in Georgia, drinking non-alcoholic mint julips and throwing cotillions, or whatever it is they do there. Anyway, that's my fear.

But oh well. Tuesday is another game, on the road versus Pittsburgh. In the meantime, here are some random sports thoughts, for the purpose of typing more on my new MacBook Air. I'm addicted to typing on this baby.

1) Why would anyone pitch to Albert Pujols? I mean, I'm glad they do, because it would be boring if they didn't, but still. So much for baseball being ruled by statistics and probabilities. Then again, even good hitters only succeed roughly 1/3rd of the time, and pitchers are competitive cranky people, or so I would imagine.

2) I hope Albert Pujols stays in St. Louis. The Giants can't afford him, so let him stay where he is an icon. If he goes to New York or Chicago, that would just seem wrong. The Cubs would be more acceptable than the Yankees, but still.

3) Oh, Arsenal. Once again, they play pretty football, but fall short, can't quite keep up with Manchester United and Chelsea. Not quite enough functioning firepower for Arsenal, ironically. But please, oh please, don't let Barcelona play the big bad wolf again this summer, huffing and puffing and trying to pry Cesc Fabregas away from London. It just looks tacky.

4) A draw with Manchester United and another draw with Blackpool seems to have put Newcastle in solid shape to stay up. They are seven points up on the third-from-bottom team, with four games--and a maximum of twelve points--still on the table. But the draws didn't do much for my fantasy team, with no goals or assists for Shola Ameobi.

5) The NFL Draft is coming up again on Thursday. Again, they are now showing it in "Prime Time", which means the first round opens at 5 p.m. on a Thursday evening on the Pacific Coast. This means that most of the really exciting stuff would be done before people out here could get home to see it. Lame east-coast pandering. I used to love watching day 1 of the draft on Saturday mornings, meeting Vaughn for coffee and/or breakfast beforehand. One more bit of nostalgia and enjoyment for the league now threatening a tacky lockout goes pfft.