Posts Tagged ‘Kentucky Derby’

How was your Week?

Posted: May 2, 2015 by Sports Time Radio in baseball, basketball, Boxing, football, hockey, sports
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The 1st round of the NBA playoffs will wrap up tonight when the San Antonio Spurs and the Los Angeles Clippers play Game 7 of their series tonight in Los Angeles. This has been the only interesting series of the first round. Even though the Milwaukee Bucks and the Brooklyn Nets found ways to win a couple games against their higher seeded opponents there was never any real doubt who would win those series. Even though the Washington Wizards where the #5 seed in their series against the Toronto Raptors; Washington was playing better basketball coming into the playoffs and it showed when they swept the series. The majority of these series were boring and uninteresting with the exception of the Spurs/Clippers series. As the NBA playoffs start the 2nd round let’s hope the games get better and more interesting.

Now the NHL has started the 2nd round of their playoffs and 3 out of the 4 games were great to start these series off. The Anaheim Ducks did have an easy time in Game 1 against the Calgary Flames winning 6-2. The Washington Capitals won Game 1 of their series against the New York rangers by scoring a goal in the final seconds of the 3rd period to steal a 2-1 victory. It took double overtime to settle Game 1 of the Montreal Canadiens/Tampa Bay Lighting series.. Nikita Kucherov scored in the 2nd overtime to win the game for Tampa Bay 2-1. The Chicago Blackhawks jumped out to a 3 goal lead in Game 1 of their series against the Minnesota Wild and looked like they would cruise to a victory. Minnesota turned around and scored the next 3 goals to even the game, but the Blackhawks managed to out 1 more puck in the net and take Game 1, 4-3. The 2nd round of the NHL playoffs got off to a great start and hopefully they’ll carry it on through these series.

I’ve always enjoyed watching the NFL draft, but this may be the last season I take the time to do that. I’ve tried watching the coverage on ESPN and the NFL Network and they both stink. They’ve spent way too much time just doing nothing. The picks get backed up 3 or 4 teams and it’s like neither network has never covered a draft before. Now I have no issue when things slow down to salute the military or have someone from a charity the NFL works with come out. It’s nice to see a former player like Jim Kelly or Rick Upchurch get the applause from the crowd for the battles they’re fighting. It’s even funny to see Ickey Woods announce a Cincinnati Bengals draft pick and “Shuffle” for the fans, but the NFL and the networks need to find a way to speed up the announcement of the picks. Rounds 4-7 start in about 4 hours and they are outside today, but luckily they’re going to get some good weather in Chicago for it. They also mentioned that the picks will be announced from the teams war rooms; so I’m interested to see how this works out and if it might speed things up a little.

On the Sports Time Radio podcast yesterday (Friday) we had Zach Alapi from http://www.TheLivingDaylights.co on with us to talk about the Floyd Mayweather/Manny Pacquiao boxing match that takes place tonight. Zach has Mayweather winning this fight by decision, but his staff was split on who would win. 3 of the writers on his website had Mayweather winning, but there where 2 writers who picked Pacquiao to win. On the podcast Dan the Man, Mr. Fantasy and I all have Mayweather winning tonight and just like Zach we see the fight going to distance. On one of the sports networks I get they were actually announcing which celebrities were sitting ringside and all I could fins myself asking was; who cares. This is a fight boxing fans have been waiting for and why does it matter at all who’s sitting ringside. With the price of tickets who else did they think would be in those seats.

The other big event happening today is the Kentucky Derby. It’s the first race in the Triple Crown from Churchhill Downs. I made my pick on Wednesday and I’m sticking with Mubtaahji. Mr. Fantasy likes Danzig Moon and Dan the Man has Firing Line to win. I will caution people not to take our advise on horse racing as we know little to nothing about the sport and I’m pretty sure we all just took a name we liked. I actually do watch the derby, but I’m just interested in the actual race and I can do without all of the pre-race stuff. There are some experts who will tell you that horse racing and boxing are dying sports. Isn’t it interesting that they both ended up having huge events on the same day.

Last night in Fenway Park Alex Rodriguez tied Willie Mays on the all-time home run list with hitting his 660th home run. While this should be a celebrated event for baseball I could care less about it. There’s a pretty good chance that Rodriguez has been using some type of performance enhancing drug his entire baseball career and there were even some reports about him using P.E.D.’s in high school. The high school rumors were never proven, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all. 660 home runs is a great accomplishment for a player who didn’t cheat the game. Is there anyone out there who even cares about this that’s not a New York Yankees fan. It was no real surprise that the Boston Red Sox fans booed Rodriguez when he was announced as a pinch hitter. Mike Shuster is the Red Sox fan who was sitting on top of the Green monster and caught Rodriguez’s 660th home run. Shuster has told the New York Post that he won’t be giving the baseball to Rodriguez. It is being reported to “stay tuned” to this story as Shuster might have a price. A Hall of Fame spokesman said they would accept Rodriquez’s 660th home run ball or “milestone” as the spokesman put it. Maybe they could put a side note on the ball explaining how Rodriguez got to this number, but I doubt they actually would.

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Let’s call it Wednesday.

Posted: April 29, 2015 by Sports Time Radio in baseball, football, sports
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Max Scherzer signed a gigantic free agent contract this off season with the Washington Nationals and then must’ve forgotten that they where in the National League. Scherzer thinks the fans would like to see the DH in the National League instead of a pitcher swing a “wet newspaper” and that “both leagues need to be on the same set of rules.”. Then after San Francisco Giants pitcher Madison Bumgarner took Scherzer to task for his comments Scherzer took to his Twitter account and said that his comments were “In jest” and “taken out of context” in order to fit “a story with a specific agenda.”. I’m not sure I’m buying Scherzer’s defense here especially since these comments came out after he had to miss a start because he injured a thumb while batting. While Scherzer may have been the only player who mentioned he’d like to see the DH through out baseball there where quite a few experts and analyst who’d like to see this happen as well. All the DH talk really got rolling after St. Louis Cardinals starting pitcher Adam Wainwright got injured in the batter’s box in his last start. St. Louis announced yesterday that Adam Wainwright would miss the rest of the season due to a torn Achilles in his left foot. Wainwright will have surgery this week, and is expected to miss between 9-12 months. I’ve seen the highlight of the at bat Wainwright got injured in and my question was did he get hurt hitting or did he get hurt as he was trying to run out of the batters box? For obvious reasons this hasn’t been mentioned by anyone who wants to see the DH adopted by the National League, but if Wainwright had a weak Achilles as it was would this injury had happened the next inning when he took the mound? While the injury occurred while he was hitting it’s easy to point fingers and say that’s why it happened and maybe it did, but there’s also a chance he injured it pushing off trying to run to 1st base. Of course if there was a DH in the National League the only way this injury would’ve happened to Wainwright was if it did happen while he was pitching because he wouldn’t of been near the batters box.

For me baseball was the first sports I ever played. There where no youth football leagues or basketball leagues when I was growing up; now there were a few hockey leagues, but they were very expensive not only to join the league, but to buy the equipment for as well. Of course there was Little League; which I only needed my baseball glove and a bat if my parents would buy one for me. Little League supplied the teams with bats, helmets and of course baseballs along with uniforms. Which I wore to my teams first practice game even though we weren’t suppose to. Now as I got older and learned more and more about the other sports what I liked about baseball was each league didn’t play each other and had a one different rule. Now in the NFL the AFC and NFC play by the same set of rules. In the NBA and the NHL the have an Eastern and Western conference, but they use the same set of rules. Then there was baseball were in the American League the pitcher didn’t hit, but in the National League just like my Little League team the pitcher batted. Now if you’re a little older than I am you will remember the pitchers hitting all the time; since the DH wasn’t adopted by the American League until 1973. Oddly though while playing Little League and moving through that system and into high school and college baseball the pitcher was always one of if not the best hitter on the team. I’m guessing since the DH is used through almost every minor league system a pitcher doesn’t work on his hitting at all while working his way top the big leagues. I’m sure there are some leagues that don’t use the DH, but the only other league I can think of that people might know that doesn’t use a DH is the .Nippon Professional Baseball’s Central League in Japan.

I understand that baseball wants a younger demographic and they believe that offense will bring in a younger group; so I fully expect to see the DH used in both leagues very soon, but I hope they don’t do it. Baseball already took some of the luster off of the World Series for me by doing inter-league play. I didn’t mind inter-league play at first, but now with an inter-league series every week it ruined it for me very quickly. I’m really hoping that baseball sees that having a DH in just one league makes them interesting and different from any other professional sport, but sadly I think I’m on the losing end of that argument.

Are you ready for the NFL draft to start tomorrow? The draft is now a 3 days event as just the 1st round will tale place on Thursday..Rounds 2 and 3 take place Friday night and then rounds 4 through 7 are done on Saturday afternoon. Now there are a ton of smoke and mirrors going on with teams right now as they try to hide their interest in certain players. That’s why I was a little surprised when Minnesota Vikings general manager Rick Spielman came out and said the Vikings were more than interested in trading the 11th pick in the 1st round. Of course trades happen all the time during the draft with teams looking to move up or down to get their guy, but nomally a general manager doesn’t advertise it like Speilman did. Then I’m sure not to be out done Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones came out and said he expects the Cowboys to trade their 1st round pick. I’m sure no one is surprised at all that Jones found a way to get some press.

We have quite a interesting sports weekend coming up. There’s the NFL draft and baseball as I wrote about above, but there is also the NBA and the NHL playoffs going on; which may be in the 2nd round. There has been some talk about this Manny Pacquiao vs. Floyd Mayweather boxing match, but don’t forget the Kentucky Derby is also this Saturday. I’ll be the first to tell you I know nothing about horse racing, but if I was betting on the race I’d be putting my money on  Mubtaahij to win the Derby. .