Monday, August 09, 2004
LUNCH MORSELS
Just a couple of really short ones here before I go hit some baseballs or something...
-- I don't know how I didn't hear of it earlier, but now-former Seahawk announcer Brian Davis has been hired on to the Fox Sports Net crew for the 70 or so Sonic games in the upcoming season (along with some Pac10 football and basketball games). He'll be working with Kevin Calabro and Craig Ehlo. In a related note, I have no idea how this is going to work. For many years, Calabro and whoever was with him would just simulcast the radio calls over the TV airwaves, which I found highly enjoyable. With Calabro and Davis both presumably as play-by-play guys, does this mean they switch off like Rizzs and Niehaus on the Mariner telecasts? I'm guessing this would leave Billy McKinney on the radio side, unless he got canned or something. Will Elise Woodward do sideline reporting for the radio broadcasts? Does anyone know the answers to these questions?
-- Some people may remember that Athens lobbied hard for the 1996 Games. Why? Those Games marked the 100th anniversary of the very first Olympiad. Why did they lose out to Atlanta? It's probably a leap, but I always thought it had something to do with sponsorship dollars, and the Coca-Cola Company (based in Atlanta). Come on, it makes sense, right? People over there complain about how hard it is to get to Braves games (not just because they're horrible sports fans, the transportation layout just sucks), let alone an Olympic games. One could only imagine how brutal it was when the Braves quandary was multiplied by 20 or so when the Games came to Atlanta. Hence, Coca-Cola pumps money into it, and the IOC looks the other way. Just a hair-brained semi-theory.
-- As I posted a while ago, the Greek Olympic baseball team is made largely of North American-born players of Greek descent. Okay, it's a bad setup, but Andrew James Brack and Derek Nicholson tested positive for stanozol and diuretics, respectively. Both have been thrown off the team. Both have been minor leaugers.
-- In a more positive Olympics note, we've added some Olympics links to the sidebar for NBC and CBC, their broadcast schedules, and some bio pages for a couple of local swimmers (sisters) that kind of got into the Olympics themselves. Y'all can thank Jeremy for digging up the links because I've been a little lazy lately.
-- Thanks to David Locke for this one...Scott Spiezio's month-by-month batting average: May .194, June .188, July .167, August .150. Melvin: "If Speez is hitting well, fifth is a good spot for him." Spiezio hit 5th yesterday. He has 1 RBI since the All-Star break. He has played in 18 of the last 23 games. Right now, Locke is on a roll, saying Spiezio is hitting worse now than Jeff Cirillo was when he was here. It's not out of the realm of possibility, folks. Granted, the pressure is a little less being on a team of such craptitude, but Spiezio is hitting worse than crap. What was his contract? Three years, $9M? Yup, looks great. Earlier, Locke was using clips from Mitch Levy's interviews with Gillick, Piniella, Lincoln, Armstrong, Bavasi to see what the hell happened. I think it was Lincoln who said after last season that he gave Lee Pelekoudas and Pat Gillick extra money needed to make a deadline deal last year, but that other teams weren't drooling over the Mariners' offers. Locke's conclusion: perhaps the Mariners misevaluated their own prospects. Hopefully this changes with Bob Fontaine now in house, but given some of the control problems and inconsistency that we've seen from Clint Nageotte and Travis Blackley (might be a stretch, though Blackley had six starts or so), perhaps the Mariners just hyped the hell out of these guys to the point were they and the fans believed that they were incredibly good, whereas talent evalutors from other organizations viewed their prospects as nowhere near as good. I know it's probably not the first time this has been touched upon in the blogosphere, but I just got around to it, thought it would make for decent post material, etc.
-- Koren Robinson has returned to Seahawks camp, and Brock Huard has been sent back to Seattle to have some more tests run on the tightness in his back.
Okay, so the tidbits weren't so short. That happens when you find some other stuff to talk about, I guess.
Enjoy your Mariner off-day! Looks like it'll be mostly sunny in the Jet City, so if you have a laptop with wireless capabilities and a wireless network nearby, feel free to sit in the sun and pull up Sports and B's outdoors. If someone actually does do this, please let us know and give us a shameless ego boost.
-- I don't know how I didn't hear of it earlier, but now-former Seahawk announcer Brian Davis has been hired on to the Fox Sports Net crew for the 70 or so Sonic games in the upcoming season (along with some Pac10 football and basketball games). He'll be working with Kevin Calabro and Craig Ehlo. In a related note, I have no idea how this is going to work. For many years, Calabro and whoever was with him would just simulcast the radio calls over the TV airwaves, which I found highly enjoyable. With Calabro and Davis both presumably as play-by-play guys, does this mean they switch off like Rizzs and Niehaus on the Mariner telecasts? I'm guessing this would leave Billy McKinney on the radio side, unless he got canned or something. Will Elise Woodward do sideline reporting for the radio broadcasts? Does anyone know the answers to these questions?
-- Some people may remember that Athens lobbied hard for the 1996 Games. Why? Those Games marked the 100th anniversary of the very first Olympiad. Why did they lose out to Atlanta? It's probably a leap, but I always thought it had something to do with sponsorship dollars, and the Coca-Cola Company (based in Atlanta). Come on, it makes sense, right? People over there complain about how hard it is to get to Braves games (not just because they're horrible sports fans, the transportation layout just sucks), let alone an Olympic games. One could only imagine how brutal it was when the Braves quandary was multiplied by 20 or so when the Games came to Atlanta. Hence, Coca-Cola pumps money into it, and the IOC looks the other way. Just a hair-brained semi-theory.
-- As I posted a while ago, the Greek Olympic baseball team is made largely of North American-born players of Greek descent. Okay, it's a bad setup, but Andrew James Brack and Derek Nicholson tested positive for stanozol and diuretics, respectively. Both have been thrown off the team. Both have been minor leaugers.
-- In a more positive Olympics note, we've added some Olympics links to the sidebar for NBC and CBC, their broadcast schedules, and some bio pages for a couple of local swimmers (sisters) that kind of got into the Olympics themselves. Y'all can thank Jeremy for digging up the links because I've been a little lazy lately.
-- Thanks to David Locke for this one...Scott Spiezio's month-by-month batting average: May .194, June .188, July .167, August .150. Melvin: "If Speez is hitting well, fifth is a good spot for him." Spiezio hit 5th yesterday. He has 1 RBI since the All-Star break. He has played in 18 of the last 23 games. Right now, Locke is on a roll, saying Spiezio is hitting worse now than Jeff Cirillo was when he was here. It's not out of the realm of possibility, folks. Granted, the pressure is a little less being on a team of such craptitude, but Spiezio is hitting worse than crap. What was his contract? Three years, $9M? Yup, looks great. Earlier, Locke was using clips from Mitch Levy's interviews with Gillick, Piniella, Lincoln, Armstrong, Bavasi to see what the hell happened. I think it was Lincoln who said after last season that he gave Lee Pelekoudas and Pat Gillick extra money needed to make a deadline deal last year, but that other teams weren't drooling over the Mariners' offers. Locke's conclusion: perhaps the Mariners misevaluated their own prospects. Hopefully this changes with Bob Fontaine now in house, but given some of the control problems and inconsistency that we've seen from Clint Nageotte and Travis Blackley (might be a stretch, though Blackley had six starts or so), perhaps the Mariners just hyped the hell out of these guys to the point were they and the fans believed that they were incredibly good, whereas talent evalutors from other organizations viewed their prospects as nowhere near as good. I know it's probably not the first time this has been touched upon in the blogosphere, but I just got around to it, thought it would make for decent post material, etc.
-- Koren Robinson has returned to Seahawks camp, and Brock Huard has been sent back to Seattle to have some more tests run on the tightness in his back.
Okay, so the tidbits weren't so short. That happens when you find some other stuff to talk about, I guess.
Enjoy your Mariner off-day! Looks like it'll be mostly sunny in the Jet City, so if you have a laptop with wireless capabilities and a wireless network nearby, feel free to sit in the sun and pull up Sports and B's outdoors. If someone actually does do this, please let us know and give us a shameless ego boost.
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