Season openers abroad

It's getting a bit ridiculous and cheap ploy for publicity when almost every North American sports league opens their regular seasons overseas. The NHL did it in London for the beginning of their 07-08 campaign and are doubling efforts next season with openers in Prague and Sweden. The NFL played a game in England last season and even had a minor league running in Europe that was forced to close down. The NBA is looking at European expansion as their future and are marketing heavily in China. Even the English Premier League was looking into having regular season games on the other side of the pond.

But here's the nuttiest one of them all: Major League Baseball – who has been opening in Japan for several seasons now — staged games in Tokyo featuring the Red Sox and A's while the preseason was still being played out stateside. Even better, the A's and Red Sox will come back and play more preseason games after they've already opened their seasons. How does this make any sense at all?

Even when the Braves and Nationals open the regular season in the states on Sunday night, there will still have been three Spring Training games that took place during the afternoon. I would expect this kind of lunacy from a shifty league like the NHL but not from MLB.

The players who are forced to travel and play at what amounts to six a.m. on the body clocks only hurts their performance and can throw a monkey into the beginning of the teams' seasons. Maybe they're lucky that they can have a tune up before playing more real ball, but I don't see how this benefits anybody.

The simple solution would be to make the Japan games exhibitions, but then you may not draw a big crowd and teams would likely bring over more scrubs than stars. Would you be a Tokyo-er if you couldn't watch Manny or Big Papi?

So can we try to straighten this out sometime soon? Having a fantasy baseball draft a week earlier than usual to try to get in two games is quite absurd.

A true fantasy

Every year major league baseball tries to tell us that fantasy baseball infringes on their copyrights and every year they can’t stop anyone from drafting their teams on a wide array of sites. MLB thinks that its players names, their stats and all their information are somehow copyrightable and their exclusive property – not to be used for the purpose of games. But since when was information not public domain? Well MLB can keep on spinning its wheels over that while I set up my sweet team for the 2008 season.

Who did I manage to snag you may ask? Well here’s how my team, in a standard Yahoo! Public rotisserie league:

C: Ivan Rodriguez. Catchers were running out and he was the best available. Hope he holds up.
1B: Mark Teixeira. Last pick in the second round. Monster numbers at first.
2B: BJ Upton. Great potential and a solid five-tool player. Can also play OF.
SS: J.J. Hardy. I missed out on the early, better shortstops. Hardy can play though.
3B: A-Rod. How could I not be happy about this? I wouldn’t have minded drafting second and getting Reyes to clean up in steals though.
OF: Hideki Matsui. In a contract year and is usually good for 100-25-100 with average.
OF: Juan Pierre. I’ve got to get steals somehow and he’ll score more runs with L.A.’s new lineup.
OF: Jeff Francouer. My sleeper. Had 19 homers last season and 20 doubles that bounced off the wall. Now that he’s put on 20 lbs of muscle, I expect great things.
Util: Todd Helton. Doesn’t have as much pop as he used to but a discount in the 12th round.
Bench: Aaron Rowand, Stephen Drew and Jose Guillen. I don’t think I’m too bad off if I’m hit with an injury or two.
SP: C.C. Sabathia. Contract year/Yankees audition.
SP: Cole Hamels. Number 2 in the rotation means easier matchups.
RP: Bill Wagner. The Mets are going to win a lot of games.
RP: Trevor Hoffman. A saves stud. Even if he’s getting up there in years
P: Jeff Francis. Only getting better and 17 wins last year.
P: George Sherrill. Could save 35.
P: C.J. Wilson. Needed one more closer.
The pen: Heath Bell. Matt Garza. Bell in case Hoffman goes down and Garza has a lot of hype behind him.

Overall, I’m feeling pretty good about my team. I could use a few more steals and I’m not sure about my K’s but we’ll see how the season plays out.

It begins...

The MLB season is upon us once again as the defending champion Red Sox will face off against the A's in Tokyo today (this morning, whatever). Oakland seriously has it rough in this match up when you consider that Boston will be starting the pride of Japan, Daisuke Matsuzaka who made the trip overseas and left his pregnant wife in North America. There's also the fact that Oakland went into full out rebuilding mode over the winter and jettisoned some pretty good players like their ace Dan Haren (dealt to the D-Backs) and slugger Nick Swisher (dealt to the White Sox). Don't expect too much from the A's this season.

What else should you expect this season? Well just in time for the opening pitch of the 2008 season, here's Running The Point's predictions.

AL East: Boston Red Sox
AL Central: Detroit Tigers
AL West: Anaheim Angels
AL Wild Card: New York Yankees
NL East: New York Mets
NL Central: Chicago Cubs
NL West: San Diego Padres
NL Wild Card: Los Angeles Dodgers
Most improved team: Houston Astros
The "If they could only stay healthy" team: Toronto Blue Jays
Most disappointing team: Colorado Rockies
AL MVP: Manny Ramirez
NL MVP: Jose Reyes
AL Cy Young: Eric Bedard
NL Cy Young: Jake Peavy
Most Homers: Ryan Howard
Barry Bonds will end up with: The Yankees

I'm kind of baffled by the way nobody has suggested Bonds going to the Yankees. They always seem to be hit with injuries and love to grab big name players off the wire midway through campaigns. Is it too much of stretch to see Barry in pinstripes? I don't believe so. This should be another great season of baseball — even if we have to deal with Roger Clemens stories way too often.

For every Cinderella...

For every feel-good, cinderella story that the NCAA tournament can give you, there's always the heartache that this princess just destroyed your bracket most likely. Sure it's really nice that Davidson bounced Georgetown and San Diego faced off against Siena in a battle between a 12- and 13-seed, but who had those two teams in their bracket? One upset maybe, surely not two.

Davidson especially hurt my pool chances, causing me to put several crosses through Georgetown's all the way to the Final Four. Losing the first of your four is always the hardest and it's exponentially tougher the earlier that it happens. I'm not sure if I've ever lost one of my regional champs in the first weekend of play.

Let's hope, for the sake of my bracket, that UCLA, Tennessee and Texas can withstand the pressure and earn me some cashola.