Sunday, September 16, 2007

It's all going down in Bean-town

As much as I don't like the East coast bias in the media and the whole New Yrok-Boston nexus, I have to accept that the centre of the Sports universe this weekend is Boston. I am told there's a Nascar race somewhere up there in New England, which I really don't care about. But I do care that the Yankees are playing the Redsox and the biggest game this NFL weekend is San Diego at New England. The NFL schedule is kinda weak this Sunday and this is THE game. Patriots looked awesome last weekend and they'll always be better coached than the Chargers under Norv Turner. Thats just the truth with the video-spying hoody at the helm in New England as much I don't like to accept that. The Chargers themselves won against a very good Bears team last Sunday, but they didn't do it in style. They are on the road here and I am afraid I have to pick the Pats. Vegas agrees since they have made the Pats a 4 point favorite. I just hope the Chargers have home field and win the game in the playoffs when these 2 teams meet again.

NFL schedule is otherwise soft this week. The other mildly interesting games are actually between NFC West rivals - Seattle @ Arizona and SF @ St. Louis. That might either be because the NFC West is so evenly mediocre or because of my West coast bias :-) But this game along with the Minnesota @ Detroit game do have the closest lines with 3 points. No other games are closer and most are at 6 or more. That proves my point about week 2 match-ups. So it might be wise to keep an eye on the Yanks-Sox game featuring Clemens and Schilling. Two talented, old pricks going against each other. These kind of pitching mach-ups rarely stand up to the hype. So lets see how this shakes out. The Sox won the game Saturday behind Josh Beckett's 19-Th win after a classic heart-breaking, late-inning choke job Friday. It was typical Redsox V Yankees because like clock-work, they gave up 6 runs in the 8-Th to blow a 7-2 lead to lose 8-7. Their bull-pen studs Okajima and Papelbon exploded spectacularly and crushed the Boston faithful's heart for the trillionth time in the history of this rivalry. It's amazing to watch this again and again and it never gets boring.

Speaking of baseball, I am cynic at heart as the very name of this URL should suggest, and even I got caught in the whole Rick Ankiel comeback story. How stupid and naive for me to fall for this as the inevitable steroid link comes out just a month later. He apparently got a year's worth of HGH (human growth hormone) and he is now part of the new wave of HGH accusations that are flying around involving a whole bunch of players. It's sad, but should I really be surprised? Baseball is tainted beyond repair right now and I shouldn't be believing or trusting anybody in the sport. I usually don't since I consider myself fairly smart, I am a cynic and I am not into the emotional, mushy, girly stuff that most of our Sports media shoves down our throat. But I really wanted this Ankiel story to be genuine because he seemed like a good guy and he had gone through so much trouble, mostly mental, and to overcome that is impressive to say the least. But this story is tainted beyond repair. It seems like a small injury and a minor surgery have become great excuses for MLB and NFL players to get HGH and explain it away as part of their recovery regimen. What a scam this is becoming.

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