Baseball and Such

ok so i promised a post awhile ago, and of course i didnt do it. i could run down the reasons why, but they're all well-known to everyone at this point so i'll just get down to business.

so baseball playoffs started today and i'm going to try and use those as an impetus to post on a regular basis with crappy predictions that are 100% biased and will be proven false. i realize the playoffs started 7 hours ago, but whatever, i'm picking now anyways.

rockies-phillies: being honest, i don't really care about the national league, you can lump dbacks-cubs in here as well. i wanted the brewers and braves to make the playoffs but they didn't and im bitter. i guess the rockies are cool, they won a bunch at the end, but seriously, meh. i went to coors field once and i ate a bison hot dog there. it was awesome. i also enjoy drinking coors light. therefore i'm picking the rockies. that may be the dumbest set of reasons to pick a team, but i don't really care. they'll win in 4. as for the other nl series: we'll go cubs in 5. i'd rather the dbacks win but the cubs just seem better, even though they did their best to piss away the central division. these teams inspire no passion in me. typing this feels like watching women's soccer, or the wnba, or something else that's boring and i don't like.

yanks-indians: the indians have the best 1-2 in the playoffs, but at the same time, sabathia somehow hasn't pitched against the yanks since like 2004 (not sure if that's the exact number but its been several years, that just seems hard to do) and carmona is young. i just get the feeling the yankees are too experienced to lose to the indians. luckily my bias is going to shine through here and i'm predicting a-rod will go hitless and will set himself aflame athome plate looking at strike 3 in yankee stadium (a.k.a a giant shit hole that everyone reveres for no fucking reason. seriously, it's a fucking dump. have you been there? a regular sized "jumbo" hot dog and regular sized "jumbo" soda is like $10 and that was 2 years ago. the place is disgusting and cramped, smelly and dingy, like fenway park before they decided to sink some money to clean it up a bit. i don't care that they're moving into a new stadium in 2009, if they're going to claim to be america's team, they need to at least clean out the rats. i'd rather eat something at the stadium in anaheim than yankee stadium). that was long. i don't even know where i left off, so sorry if you actually read that. indians in 3, torre and cashman get fired, a-rod walks to the dodgers, all is right with the world.

red sox-angels:ok so the red sox somehow finished with the best record in baseball. now, i don't know how normies (i.e. people who didn't go to china) feel about this, but i find it incomprehensible. not that we didn't deserve to make the playoffs, but it seems like we've been a .500 team since i've been home. not bad, but nothing special. of course, all the damage happened when i was in beijing, which sucked because i couldn't revel in any of it. remember that back to back to back to back home run game against the yanks in october? sure was fun to watch wasn't it? o yea, i had espn game cast on. and ran back to check the score in between classes. really fucking fun. the only advantage to being cut off from sports is that the nfl playoffs didn't happen last year. last i heard, we beat the jets, and pulled out the game in san diego, then the playoffs were cancelled. no afc chamionship. no super bowl. no pro bowl (but then again no one cares about the pro bowl anyways). after the chargers game, next thing i knew we'd signed adalius thomas and traded for randy moss. maybe the super bowl counts double this year since it didn't happen last year. hm... so back to the original thought, somehow we got home field throughout the playoffs. sweet. and beckett just fadumped the angels. mannys back. ortiz is hitting. mikey lowell is a gentleman of cuban descent with a fine mustache. and eric gagne single handedly tried to kill my fantasy and make me commit suicide. sox will win in 4

i kinda did a china story above but i'm going to elaborate on the sports thing. ok so before i went to college, i maintained that one of my goals was for my school to make the ncaa basketball tournament, and i'd be in the front row, with my chest painted in my school colors. this is a fact. ask my parents, they will confirm it. so going to villanova, there was a good probability of this happening. they've made it every year since i've been in college. however, freshman year, i was on spring break and couldn't attend the game. sophomore year, i was at hc and we lost in the patriot league championship. HOWEVER, last year, we beat bucknell and made the tourny. we were playing in ohio and the school was offering a bus to the game. of course i was in china and my dream died. so anyway, we drew southern illinois and the game was scheduled for 10am saturday march 17 beijing time i.e. st. patricks day. so we decided we would go to lush, a cool bar/restaurant with internet access to watch the game and start our drinking since they were offering 10 kuai Guinesses all day (equivalent of $1.25) so we get to the bar on time, but, of course, the internet isn't working. i can't connect to the slingbox and the cbs site where you can watch online won't load, so we're reduced to watching espn gamecast again. if i hadn't had that in china, i probably would have hung myself. so finally corey, another hc kid, got his web cam to work and he got his friends back in connecticut to point their webcam towards the tv so we could watch the game (at first it wasn't the hc game but it switched over). so at 11am on a saturday morning, there were 10 or so americans drinking, eating breakfast and all huddled around a laptop cheering a game through a video chat. so of course, hc lost, because things work like that, but it was close. afterwards, the bar tried to scam us on the Guiness. they said that the "10 kuai Guiness all day" didn't actually apply until after noon, because this is china and why would "all day" actually mean "all day" (i.e. 24 hours). that would be ridiculous. after about 20 mins of back and forth arguing, we got a round of Guiness for 10 kuai then left to go wander around wu dao kou and drink, cuz thats how we roll. ok this is too long, i think i've been writing for close to 20 mins, so i'm done for now, i'll post again by the time lcs start