The Morning Wood - 09/07/06

Stud: Anibal Sanchez
Jesus must hate the Red Sox. Sanchez threw the first no hitter in over two years in only his 13th career start. Meanwhile, Josh Beckett is probably giving up at least 4 hits per bullpen session at this point in the year. Hanley Ramirez is looking like a still-doing-pretty-well-for-himself man’s Jose Reyes. I need a drink. The Marlins have more young talent than the Mouseketeers in the Timberlake/Spears/Aguilera years.
P.S. Just so you know, I envision bad things happening to Anibal Sanchez. He’s a young talented pitcher for the Marlins: check the track record there. He also seems to be on the Bartolo Colon dieting plan. If he’s in the league in five years with an era under 5 or a body weight under 240, I would be amazed. And no, that isn’t sour grapes.

Dud: Rafael Nadal
There is something about this guy that just pisses me off. Maybe it’s the pipes, his Spanish sensuality, his cromagnon face, I’m not sure. Either way, I was definitely hoping for another RFed (Imagine if Roger Federer and Kevin Federline switched personalities. Actually, don’t.) Nadal match up in the finals. But then he ran into Mikhail Youzhny, a Russian and a half and the dream match up is gone. According to Mikhail, the US fans were chanting “You” because his last name is too hard to pronounce. For some reason, I have a mental picture of a stadium filled with Robert Deniros, all doing the “yoou” from the movie Analyze This. Also, Americans are even ugly Americans in their own country. Amazing.

Talk Around The Cooler:
I remember a day when I used to like the letter B. It started so many of my favorite words: beer, booze, breasts, baseball, burritos, B-Movies, bigamy, Big Boy, etc. But that has all gone to hell. Now it is leading off for everything wrong with sports: B-12 vitamins, Barry Bonds, BALCO, blood doping, and lately, the B-sample. The A Sample had a nice run but now the B’s career has taken off quicker than Kristin Cavallari’s after she decided to swallow more often. The latest is that Marion Jones’ B-sample is negative after her A-Sample from a month ago turned up positive for EPO (EPMD’s cousin). But clean B-Sample or not, the truth is this: Jones is just another athlete that will forever have a stain of doubt on her career in this era. The age of innocence and delicious ignorance has been forever lost.

Quick Hits:
The WNBA Finals are still going on? What’s this five game business? This has to be the world’s longest period. John Welbourn, a retired Chiefs tackle, was suspended for six weeks for violating the league’s drug policy. Umm, what exactly is he suspended from doing? Watching the games on Sunday? Seeing his family? Eddie Guardado is done for the year after the Reds found major damage in his 75 year old left arm. Here’s to hoping he saved up enough money from the ’49 gold rush to have the surgery covered. Speaking of old, Gary Payton resigned with the Heat for a year. Pat Riley apparently wanted someone to support him in complaining about “these young whipper snappers with their rip rap music and their plimped out cars”. Everyone once in a while, getting in so deep with sports causes us to lose touch with what actually matters in the real world: here’s to hoping Jon Lester has a full recovery from his battle with cancer.