I Dislike Your Favorite Team

Twins:
I believe it was Dick Bremmer that made the call on Saturday saying that a Twins pitcher would hit a homerun this last weekend of Inter-League play in Florida. As it turns out, he had a very near miss. Johann Santana ripped a triple off the base of the center field wall, after showing bunt. How great is it that the league’s best pitcher over the last 5 years added offensive potency to his already obese repertoire? Santana also made it 106 straight games of pitching at least 5 innings, which is as telling a stat of his dominance as there can be. I mean the guy has never had a game where he had an off day and had to be pulled early, something that happens to all pitchers, except for Cytana of course.

I hope the Twins can continue this improved offensive play and allow their young pitchers some room to attack the strike zone. The series next weekend with Detroit is big, so it is imperative they have all aspects of their game working, in order to make up a little ground before the All-Star break.

Hopefully, Mr. MVP will recover completely from his bruised lung, and that his short lay-off doesn’t affect the hot batting streak he has been on of late.

Soccer:
I don’t know about you (except that I know everything about you) but I am real excited about the Copa America that begins this week. Don’t misunderstand, I was excited to see the USA win its fourth Gold Cup, but come on it was the Concacaf, a JV tournament as international tournaments go. It is always nice to beat Mexico and to do it by coming back in a game in which the USA got out played in the first half, but they are not Argentina or Brazil.

I want to see two of the top teams in the world play their way through a tournament and I also want to see where this Bradley USA squad stacks up to the big dogs of our hemisphere. We will find out in short order when the USA plays Argentina on Thursday for their opening match of the tournament. I have no real expectations, other than Argentina making most teams in their group look like youth squads. However, anything can happen and that is what is exciting.

It will be interesting to see where Brazil is a year after their disappointing showing in the World Cup last year. There is a youth movement going on in Brazil, but I am not sure who will be playing, as Brazil has historically been very loyal to its veteran players, especially come tournament time. Brazil is my first favorite team; they taught me to love the game when I lived there and have always provided good reason to continue paying attention. As Canarias, should easily dispatch of Mexico Wednesday night, which will be fun, stupid Mexico.

P.S.-Wice, blow it out your ass, with the “God, soccer is gay” bullshit. That’s right, preemptive blogging.

NBA:
Draft- Yeah? I hope we get someone who will help right away, but we are the T-Wolves and that is not what we do. I like Brewer or Greene, so we will take Hawes who will suck.

KG- I love KG, the Ticket, Da Kid and I had always hoped he would finish his career here in Minnesota, winning a couple of championships along the way, but I have come to terms with his departure if that is what God decides should happen. It has been amazing watching him develop into one of the best players of all time, but very difficult to see him excel individually and yet achieve so little with the poor, poor teams that have been put around him. “If you love someone let them go.” Go get your championship KG and be sure to bring us some 1st round picks when you go, because we’ll need them in the next few years, as we give ours away.