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Division Series Match Ups

Well now that the wild card games are over, I am officially 1-1 on baseball post season predictions. Yippee. I really wanted Cleveland, but I knew Tampa Bay was going to win. Damn it.

Now for the Division Series picks.

Boston Red Sox vs Tampa Bay Rays. Oh good, the team I didn’t want to see the Red Sox face in the first round is the team the Red Sox will face in the first round. It doesn’t matter though, the bearded Bostonians will rain down pain and suffering upon the Rays like Grant raining cannon fire into Vicksburg. (see what I did there? Long beards equals civil war references. Get used to it) As if there was any doubt, I am picking the Red Sox.

Detroit Tigers vs Oakland Athletics. Do I follow my brain or do I follow my gut? My brain tells me that the logical choice is the Tiggers (T-I-Double guh-Rrrrr). My gut, however, says to go with the A’s. I’m pretty sure I went with the A’s last year and got burned. This year… I think I am going with the A’s again.

St. Louis Cardinals vs Pittsburgh Pirates. Again, I’m going with my gut over my head. I am picking the Pirates. We are family and all that. I am on the wagon. Officially. That pretty much guarantees that the Cardinals will win in a sweep, but I am sticking with the Pirates.

Los Angeles Dodgers vs Atlanta Braves. There is no way on this Earth or any other that I will ever root for this Dodgers team. No offense to Nick Punto, but Hell No. I am picking the Braves. Do you think if the Sox and the Braves meet in the World Series we might see some sort of exhibition game at the site of the old Braves Feild? I didn’t think so either.

So I am on record as rooting for a Boston/Oakland ALCS, and a Pittsburgh/Atlanta NLCS. You heard it here first.

Wild Card Games

Well Robbie, that was a good way to kick of baseball’s post season. I picked the Reds to win the wild card play-in against the Pirates and the Pirates owned the game from the first pitch to the last. I am officially 0-1 in playoff predictions so far.

The American League game is tonight. The Rays and the Indians. I am rooting for the Indians because I think the Red Sox have a better chance at beating them in the Divisional Series than they do the Rays. However, this is a prediction post. I predict that the Rays will win and advance to face my team. Hopefully this time tomorrow I will be 0-2 in my prognosticating.

Oh, and the NHL started last night. No lock outs this year. I flipped the channel from TBS to VS (or whatever the hell it’s called now… NBC Sports or something?) just in time to see the Blackhawks unfold the Stanley Cup banner. Oh the hell with that. I switched back to TBS. The Bruins open against Tampa Bay on Thursday. No Stanley Cup banner raising ceremony for us this year.

Magical Morning

We almost made it today.

My 43 mile morning commute took one hour and 50 minutes this morning.  The best part was the last mile and a half on route 93 South.  At the speed limit, it should have taken a little less than a minute and a half, but instead it took 28 minutes.  That was some serious awesome sauce right there.

As incredible as the trip was, it didn’t quite break the magical two hour threshold.  It was as close as I’ve come in the month that I’ve been back on the highway, but not quite there.  I’m sure we’ll get there soon enough.

(Note: This post is flooded with sarcasm.  In case you didn’t realize that)

Game #163

For the Tampa Bay Rays and the Texas Rangers the 162 game major league baseball season has 163 games. The two teams face off tonight in Texas to break the tie for the second AL wild card slot. The winner then gets to play a second one game playoff, this time against the Cleveland Indians. The winner of that games faces the triumphant, glorious, freakishly bearded, civil war re-enactors knows as the Boston Red Sox.

So as a Boston fan, who do I want to win? Honestly, I don’t know. The Rays’ pitching scares me. I’ve been saying for weeks that I don’t want to face them. Now though, are they in better shape than Texas and their current seven game winning streak, or Cleveland who have also been playing well lately? Tampa Bay is kind of a mess right now. Hell, they almost blew their chance at the post season yesterday by blowing a 7-0 lead to the last place Blue Jays. On top of all that, the Red Sox have dominated the Rays in recent weeks.

I don’t know. I guess I really don’t care who wins today or tomorrow, just so long as they use up their entire bull pen and waste their best starting pitchers, and maybe have the stress of the play in games launch their hitters into terrible slumps. It doesn’t matter who the Red Sox face, so long as the Red Sox win three straight to sweep themselves into the American League Championship Series. I’ll settle for that, for now.

A New Flavor of Nerd

This is a picture of my television. See the image? It’s the MLB iOS app. I’m listening to the end of the Toronto vs Tampa Bay game (let’s go Blue Jays!).

The app is running on my iPad and while the audio is streaming to the TV via Airplay, it is also mirroring the image from the iPad screen. I’ve never tried that before, but it’s working pretty well. Of course the image is pretty static on this particular app, so I can’t say how much latency is affecting things.

Still… Cool, right?

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Comic Book Kitty

Comic Book Kitty

Jen and I are both at home, sitting on couch using our laptops. I have a goal to learn how to write an iOS application. The deadline for that goal is roughly some day before I die. I want to install the development tool kit onto my MacBook Pro, but I have to upgrade my OS first. As I sit here waiting for the download to finish, it occurs to me that I have never submitted the cat to Photo Booth.

That oversight has been taken care of.

Home Field Advantage

Hello and welcome to the final day of the Major League Baseball regular season. As of yesterday, there is nothing left for the Red Sox to play for. Just as the Sox vs Orioles game was starting, the A’s lost their game. That guaranteed the Red Sox home field advantage through the American League playoffs. The AL’s win at the all star game guarantees the AL pennant winners home field in the World Series. So the Sox could potentially have home field all the way through the post season. That has a nice ring to it.

Boston has 97 wins with one game left to play. After the nightmare horror of last season, I was optimistic that they could win 81 games. Let’s look at the current standings and see where an 81 win season would have placed us. How does second to last in the AL East ahead of only Toronto sound? It sounds like a huge improvement over last year, that’s what it sounds like. It also looks really depressing to finish behind the Yankees yet again. Fortunately, we’re just cruising our way to the best record in the entire American League. I cannot overstate how happy I am with this team. What a great season, and hopefully the best is yet to come.

As for the Division Series match ups, they are set for the Division winners. Oakland plays Detroit and Boston plays the wild card winner. The wild card race is still up in the air. Neither spot in the AL has been clinched yet. With one game still to be played, Cleveland (91-70) has a one game lead over Texas and Tampa Bay (both at 90-71). Tampa Bay plays Toronto today at 1:00, Cleveland plays the Twins at 2:00, and Texas plays the Angels at 3:00 (all times are Eastern). If the race ends with two teams tied for the second wild card spot, there will be a one game playoff on Monday (to decide who gets to play in the one game playoff… confusing, eh? Just wait, it gets worse) with the team that won the season series hosting. If the race ends in a three way tie it gets really strange.

The league has a formula where they designate the three teams as Teams A, B, and C. I am not sure about this, but I think the slotting is based on winning percentage against the other two teams, with the team with the best record getting to chose which slot they want. Cleveland is team A, Tampa Bay is team B, and Texas is team C. What does that mean? On Monday, Cleveland would host Tampa Bay. The winner gets the first wild card slot. On Tuesday, Texas would host the team that lost on Monday with the winner getting the second wild card slot, and the loser getting the opportunity to start Christmas shopping a little early. Then of course, the two wild card teams play each other to determine who wins the chance to lose to the Red Sox in the Division Series.

Part of me is rooting for that three way tie! Imagine having to play three one game playoffs on three consecutive days (I think, the wild card game might be Thursday, but I am pretty sure it’s going to be Wednesday), talk about stress, huh? I don’t really care who wins what, just as long as Tampa Bay doesn’t advance to the Division Series. As far as a Red Sox opponent goes, all three teams scare me, but Tampa Bay’s pitching scares me the most. I would much rather facing the Indians or the Rangers.

We’ll have to hang on and see how it all turns out over the next few days. It definitely looks to be a fun finish to the regular season in the American League, and I haven’t even looked at what’s happening in the National League yet.