I Am Known To Do The Wop. Also Known For The Flintstone Flop.

It’s About Time

Every single year the Astros keep pushing back the start of their real season. If you hadn’t noticed the real season has begun and the boys are rolling along the sorry National League. The Pirates are the worst the league has to offer, but the Astros took care of business in all facets of the game. Seven wins in their last nine games and the Astros are just 2.5 back in the wild card. The way things have gone as of late Roger has to be happy he’s not back at Fenway. The Sox may have Big Papi and Manny, but the Astros have Big Puma and Willy. In a week’s span not only did Brad Ausmus hit a grand slam, Willy Taveras smack a home run for the first time since we found out what a Papelbon is, but Roy Oswalt went deep for the first time since high school. That my friends is what we call rolling! The next team to get flattened should be the Padres followed by the Cubs. The Reds next six are against the Phillies and Cardinals. Advantage: Houston. I’m not forgetting about those West teams, but they’ll just continue to beat up on each other…hopefully.

--For the lovely cool month of August Luke Scott is hitting .438. Lance- .400. Willy T. is hitting .378. Aubrey is at .367. Roy Oswalt’s 4 RBIs match Berkman’s total this month.

--Make it two years straight for Roger Clemens holding the opposition to three or fewer earned runs in his first 10 starts. The only other active pitcher to do that was Pedro who did it three years straight.
Roger and his boy Joe Perry.

--Even in this homer happy era the Twins have gone 19 years without a player hitting 30+ bombs. Justin Morneau hit # 30 on Wednesday. In 1987 Kent Hrbek, Tom Brunansky and Gary Gaetti all did it.

--As dominant as the Mets have been this season they just completed their first 3-game sweep at Shea this week.

--C’mon Paul Lo Duca and all those other gamblers out there. No one believes that you only bet on horses. As for cheating on your Playboy model wife, well that’s just dumb. I mean she was easily the highlight of 2000’s Playboy: Lusty Latin Ladies and now you want to cheat on her before her acting career really takes off?

--Bronson Arroyo started 9-3, but doesn’t have a win in any of his last 10 starts.

--Since July 4th Ichiro is hitting just .242 and an Ausmus-like .157 in his last 12 games.

--On Thursday Curt Schilling gave up 9, 9 doubles in a loss to the Royals. That’s the most doubles allowed by one pitcher in nearly 50 years. The 10 extra base hits he allowed were the most given up in 37 years. Those 10 Kansas City extra base hits were the first 10 hits K.C. had.

--Sportsbook has released odds on the Cy Young and MVP races. I’ll give you three guesses to name the player who has the second best odds behind Brandon Webb. Not Tom Glavine. Not Carlos Zambrano. That’s all the guesses you get, it’s Billy Wagner. The lefty is 3-1 to win it. The 3-1 favorites in the AL are Joe Nathan and Roy Halladay. So where does Lance Berkman come in for the NL MVP. 7th of course. Whatever if I had the money that’s where I’d put it. Big Puma is 10-1. Albert Pujols is the 3-1 favorite followed by Carlos Beltran and Alfonso Soriano. Chase Utley, Andruw Jones and David Wright round out the candidates before Puma. You can actually get a decent 4-1 on David Ortiz. He’s the AL MVP favorite. Justin Morneau right behind him.

--The Cubs lead everyone in both walks and strikeouts. The last team to do that was the 1989 Rangers. They had that washed up Nolan Ryan who struck out 301 batters. He was one of three starters that walked 90+. Also in that rotation was 24-year-old Kevin Brown (12-9 3.35). In the ‘pen was another 24-year-old Kenny Rogers (3-4 2.93).
Never gets old. Eat it Robin!

Quick Hitters and Random Thoughts

--There’s no way that talentless, but stacked Virginia is going to win Hell’s Kitchen, right?

--How meaningless are these preseason games? LaDainian Tomlinson has a whopping 14 carries combined in his five preseasons!

--I’m quite sure you missed it, but the final 10 minutes of the FC Barcelona-Club America game at Reliant was just insane. Not much longer until Premiere League play is on. So start getting ready for your fantasy draft. By the way, apparently the new English coach is booting David Beckham from the national team.

--Brock Lesnar is going into Ultimate Fighting?!
Guess that didn't work out so well.

--Have no fear The World Series of Darts is off ESPN the Channel.

--Jenna Jameson and Dave Navarro?! Jamie Foxx and Carmen Electra?!

--Thankfully HBO has finally gotten Larry David to agree to a sixth season of Curb. Next summer or fall we should have a new batch of episodes and that’s a very, very good thing.
What Would Larry David Do...What a fun world this would be.

--Writing of HBO there’s a wee bit of controversy over a Best Supporting Actress Emmy nomination Ellen Burstyn received for Mrs. Harris. Apparently she’s onscreen for a whole 15 seconds and has 3 lines of dialogue, which she must’ve knocked out of the f’n park.

--More HBO…Daniel Baldwin on The Sopranos?! He’ll play himself in Christopher’s horror movie. No role for Johnny Drama. C’mon HBO, you’re missing out. You know he’s doing a pilot with Eddie Burns, right? So he’s not good enough for Christopher Moltisanti?

--That hardcore reputation New Hampshire has is even harder now. An 18-year-old girl and a 14-year-old one started running smack at each other on MySpace. Big shock. So the two were ready to throw down at this park. The 14-year-old didn’t have the sort of fight experience that only 18 years in The ‘Shire can bring. The older girl actually hid razorblades in her hair in the very good chance that hair pulling would be central to the brawl.

--Gotta love that picture on the front page of ESPN.com on Thursday. It was of the passenger seat in Maurice Clarett’s car. You see this huge assault rifle, a couple of more guns, a half-empty bottle of Grey Goose vodka, a CD and of course, what every crazy person has…a lint brush.

--Your youtube clip of the week comes to us from the boys of OK Go and their magic treadmills.

--Probably have to get this T-shirt…

--One of the few SC anchors on ESPN the Channel who don’t force me to change the channel is Scott Van Pelt. How can you hate on a guy who incorportates Aqua Teen and Entourage bits into his highlights? In short, Scott met girl, Scott called girl and left voicemail, girl/b**** put voicemail on the Internet. It’s pretty much exactly the kind of voicemail you’d think he’d leave.

--I hate Taco Bell, but love the little sauce packets. Although not as much as these crazies from Indiana. The other day 10-15 masked people showed up at a Taco Bell location with six 40-gallon trash bags filled with nothing but…yep…sauce packets. Roughly 25,000 packets were collected by these freaks over the past three years. Apparently they felt guilty about having them and so they returned them.

--According to a poll in The Washington Post 30% of Americans don’t know what year the 9/11 attacks occurred. Wow.

--Now time for fantasy football advice from Clinton Portis…"Year in and year out, fantasy football has a fantasy stud. And this guy has a spectacular season and people think this guy is going to have another spectacular season, all of a sudden, he's the next big thing. Year in and year out, I do the same thing. You know what you're going to get with me. Until I go wrong, until I get injured, until something happens, I don't see any reason to change. You can go out and take a shot at whoever you like, but Clinton Portis is going to be stable." Is he the 4th pick?

--Okay, you’ve decided to rob a bank. Probably not a wise decision, but it’s the one you made and so you go through with it and give it 100% otherwise just stay in bed. 20-year-old Tavish Yeargin went into a Greenville bank and handed the teller a note demanding $50,000. The teller looked at it and then Tavish realized he wasn’t going to get away with this so he walked out calmly. Unfortunately he left his fingerprints all over the note and now he’s in jail. 100% people or don’t even bother.

--In “when opportunity knocks” news…A liquor store in Sacramento was broken into early the other morning and the bad guy attempted to steal a carton of cigarettes. Unfortunately for him the guy, Leandro Diaz, who lives above the liquor store heard the commotion and with the help of a neighbor caught the would be robber and held him for the police. A whole 12 minutes later Diaz the supposed Good Samaritan shows up on the store’s surveillance tapes and he decides to help himself to the register. The good turned bad guy was arrested, hopefully by the same policemen who arrested the first idiot.

--Interesting dilemma from Rick Reilly…

Questions, comments or if you can tell me what the other half of the battle actually is…