What in the Wide, Wide World of Sports?

Jets' fans should curb expectations

2008-08-07T15:05:00.000-07:00

Favre will be rethinking his decision to continue playing.

It would be really easy for me to make my triumphant return to the "Wide, Wide World" with a rant about Brett Favre’s long odds of succeeding with the New York Jets being a result of the Jets’ lack of offensive playmakers and 4-12 record last season. However, this piece will be limited to Brett Favre’s shortcomings and why he was likely destined to fail no matter where he ended up.

So many NFL fans, especially those residing within 500 miles of Lambeau Field, thought since Favre had another great season in 2007 that he would automatically play that way for the short remainder of his career.

People better think twice about that. As stellar as Favre was for during the first 9 years of his career, the second half of Favre’s career has been a mixed bag of the good, the bad and the ugly.

In the two seasons prior to 2007, Favre threw 47 interceptions and just 38 touchdowns. While his quarterback rating of 95.7 in 2007 was impressive, his rating has been in the seventies more times since 2000 (4) than in the nineties (3). Favre has turned into a great quarterback that is now only great sometimes.

In 2005, then Packers’ head coach Mike Sherman allowed Favre to stay away from all of the team’s mini-camps, OTA’s and off-season workouts. He was hoping that the time away from the team would have Favre chomping at the bit to return. When he did, the result was a 4-12, 29 interception season.

Now Favre must learn a new system, get familiar with new personnel and new coaches in a new city, all in less than a month. Having already missed the first two weeks of training camp layered on top of skipping an entire off-season of the aforementioned mini-camps, OTAs and off-season workouts, Favre’s first season as a New York Jet is already set up for failure.

Wallace's headband least of Bulls' problems

2006-11-28T13:10:00.000-08:00

If the Bull's want to turn their season around, Wallace
and his new teammates must "band" together.

As if the Chicago Bulls struggles through the early part of the NBA season wasn't concern enough for head coach Scott Skiles, he must now deal with a malcontent in the locker room and on the floor. Off-season acquisition and reigning NBA Defensive Player of the Year Ben Wallace was benched during Saturday night's Bulls' victory over the Knicks. While his recent poor play could've been reason enough to bench Wallace, it was his disregard for a team rule against wearing headbands that got him the chair.

On the heels of an embarrassing zero-point, zero-rebound, zero-steal, zero-block performance on Friday in which he spent much of the second half on the bench, Wallace took it upon himself to silently, but publicly, challenge head coach Scott Skiles on the Bulls team rule.

Despite being aware the headband rule all season, Wallace had his headband on at the start of Saturday's game against the Knicks. Skiles didn't notice until two minutes after tipoff, at which point he pulled Wallace for Malik Allen. Wallace headed to the bench and defiantly kept his headband on for nearly eight more minutes.

It's clear the honeymoon period in Chicago for Wallace and the Bulls is over. Wallace's acquisition this off-season made the Bulls one of the favorites to represent the Eastern Conference in the NBA Finals. The Bulls' 4-9 start has them tied for second worst record in the east and their defense has actually been worse than last year despite Wallace's presence.

Wallace has 60 million reasons over the next four years to fall in line with team rules that he was made aware of before inking his deal and considering his poor performance on the court, he really isn't in position to be challenging anything.

Green should lose job to performance not injury

2006-11-16T19:01:00.000-08:00

Trent Green will start this Sunday against Oakland.

His first start since week 1.

In week 1 of the NFL season, Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Trent Green took a vicious hit in a Chiefs loss to the Cincinatti Bengals as he began his slide on a quarterback scramble just a half-second late. Enter backup Damon Huard. All Huard has done as the Kansas City starter is go 5-3, post an 11-1 toucdown to interception ratio and become the fifth highest rated passer in the NFL.

This week, Green was cleared by team doctors to practice and play. On Wednesday, Chiefs' head coach Herm Edwards announced that Green would start this Sunday against the Raiders. Edwards had said weeks earlier that Green would start when he was healthy, believing that a quarterback shouldn't lose his starting job to injury.

Well maybe a quarterback shouldn't lose his job to an injury, but he should lose it to performance. It's highly unlikely that Green would've played better than Huard over the last eight weeks even if he hadn't been injured. So why change back now. Why gamble that a guy can play as good as the guy that's been in there when the guy that's been in there is already playing at such a high level?

Huard, as well as the rest of the Chiefs' offense, didn't play well against Miami last week. This perhaps gives Edwards the excuse he needs to throw Green back out there.
I couldn't disagree more with Edwards decision. For the best example of why sticking with the hot backup over the now-healthy starter, one just needs look at the New England Patriots. Would Bill Belichick have three Super Bowl rings if he thought the same way Edwards does?
I doubt it.

Cavs, James shouldn't downplay late game walkoff

2006-11-09T20:26:00.000-08:00

Lebron James, 'The Chosen one', chose to leave the

floor before the game was over Tuesday night.

As a minor sprinkle of negative press flew towards LeBron James on Wednesday for allegedely walking off the court in the final seconds of overtime of the Cavaliers overtime loss to the Atlanta Hawks Tuesday night, it seemed all that LeBron, his coach and the rest of the Cavaliers wanted to do is downplay the incident.

"It's not like I walked off the court and came to the locker room while there was still time left on the clock," James said before Thursday's game against Chicago. "I stood on the court the whole time, until the buzzer's end, I even said something to [Hawks guard] Joe Johnson on his way out.

"It was kind of frustrating for us to lose that game, but as far as quitting on my team or anything like that, it's crazy. If we would have won the game, it would have never been mentioned. Say if we was winning the game and I did the same thing. Would it have been mentioned? I don't think so."

Cavaliers coach Mike Brown backed his star, claiming he wasn't even aware of the incident until his son told him about the amount of press it was getting.

"We both understand there is a right way to do things," Brown said. "This business is the perception business and the right way to do it is to finish the game out on the court. It won't happen again."

Even LeBron's teammates claimed they weren't aware of the walkoff and defended their teammate by claiming he's not the only one who's ever left the floor of a game early.

"It's no big deal," forward Drew Gooden said. "LeBron is under such a microscope that every little thing he does gets noticed. I don't care what anybody says, at some point I'm sure Michael Jordan and Larry Bird walked off the floor with 13 seconds left."

The Cavs players and coaches can downplay this all they want, but it won't change the fact LeBron got off easy. If Rasheed Wallace or Ron Artest did this, we'd be talking about it for weeks.

All I can say is that I want Drew Gooden to provide me with the video of Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Reggie Miller, or any other NBA great leaving the floor of any lopsided game that he wasn't ejected from. Drew, if you can find it, I'll give LeBron a pass.

The bottom line is that you won't find it. You can't find it. If Reggie Miller was the type of player to leave an NBA floor of an "already-decided", yet unfinished contest, one of his career's defining moments never would've taken place.

Miller scoring eight points in the final nine seconds against the Knicks in 1995, leaving the home crowd at Madison Square Garden utterly stunned is one of the great moments in NBA history. It never would've occurred if Miller had pulled what LeBron pulled on Tuesday night.

How many state champions do we need?

2006-11-02T21:12:00.000-08:00

As the Arizona High School 4A and 5A regular seasons conclude this week, it kind of got me thinking about how much Friday Night Fever has changed over the last two years.

The 2004 Hamilton Huskies may have been the last state champions

in Arizona history.

On December 18, 2004, the Chandler Hamilton Huskies defeated the Glendale Mountain Ridge Mountain Lions 31-7 in the 5A State Championship football game. It was the second straight title for the Huskies and in the minds of many, it was the last true state championship game ever played in Arizona.

“With the realignment and new playoff system, most coaches and players feel that the days of crowning a true state champion are gone,” said Brian Cole, head coach at North Canyon High School. “Things were already broken up enough before the AIA turned it into alphabet soup.”

In 2005, the Arizona Interscholastic Association began the first year of realignment for high school football. The new system divided 4A and 5A schools into 4A-I, 4A-II and 5A-I, 5A-II brackets for the postseason. The regular season remained unchanged.

Teams from Division I and Division II could still be in the same region together and play against each other during the regular season, but once the state playoffs began, they were placed into separate brackets to determine four different state champions. This is all in addition to the small school titles awarded at the 1A, 2A and 3A levels.

The AIA instituted the new system as a long term solution to the increasing growth in Arizona that has new high schools starting new athletic programs every year, but does a system that awards state titles to four different schools of comparable size really work?

As it stands right now, any school with an enrollment of 950-1600 students is classified as a 4A-I school. Schools with a student body of 1601-1899 students are placed in 4A-II.In 5A, Division I schools have student enrollments between 1900 and 2500, while any schools with more than 2500 are Division II programs.

The AIA estimates the number of schools with a student enrollment of over 1899 will grow from 59 to over 75 by 2010. In 2006, two new high schools, in their inaugural year of varsity competition, will jump right into the 5A ranks. Boulder Creek High School in Surprise and Valley Vista High School in El Mirage will join the 5A Northwest Region.

In addition, three schools in 4A are expected to exceed the 4A enrollment limit and join the 5A conference in 2007. Copper Canyon High School and Raymond Kellis High School in Glendale and Liberty High School in Tucson are all schools with growing enrollment levels and are already over 1750 students. All three schools are scheduled to make the move to 5A in 2007.

In the meantime, this does little to pacify football coaches already fed up with the new system after only one season. The chief complaint that coaches have is with the Division I and Division II distinction only mattering during the playoffs. In all other instances, the divisions are combined.

Last season, two Northwest Region schools, the North Canyon Rattlers and the Mountain Ridge Mountain Lions played each other on the final day of the regular season. Both teams were 8-1 entering the game and the winner would claim the 2005 Northwest Region championship.

North Canyon defeated Mountain Ridge 21-13, but despite the fact that both are 5A schools and both play in the same region, when the state playoffs began, the Rattlers played in the 5A-II bracket while the Mountain Lions were seeded in the 5A-I bracket.

This is the most glaring example of the fundamental problem with the entire system. The AIA needs to decide if all of these schools are in the same division or not. Right now it's really all over the map. North Canyon was clearly good enough to compete in the 5A-I playoffs, but they never got the chance because their enrollment was 85 students less than Mountain Ridge's.

The lack of distinction between Division I and Division II schools carries over to issues off the field. When the 2005 AIA All-State offensive and defensive teams were named following last season, only two teams were named, one for 4A and one for 5A.

So, while the AIA doubled the amount of opportunities for teams to compete in the playoffs, they refused to increase the amount of opportunities for players to earn All-State honors.
It doesn't make a lot of sense.

So as another Arizona high school football post-season approaches, the AIA will prepare itself to crown seven state champions for the second year in a row.

Notre Dame complaining about the BCS is BS

2006-10-26T20:21:00.000-07:00

Weis won't get any sympathy from college football

fans for its slide in the BCS standings this week.

I may have resisted the urge to take shots at the BCS last week, but that certainly won't stop me from taking shots at somebody else for doing the same thing. Notre Dame head coach Charlie Weis sounded off this week when his 11th-ranked Fighting Irish were jumped by two teams in the BCS standings.

"One of the teams (Tennessee) that jumped us had the same game that we had. They're down, they're playing at home and they win by a field goal," Weis said. "Another team (Florida) that jumped us wasn't even playing. They were home

eating cheeseburgers and they end up jumping us. That befuddles me."

The "jump" left Notre Dame ranked 9th in the BCS standings. The top eight teams in the standings are guaranteed a BCS bowl bid and the $4.5 million that comes with it.

While this is only Weis' second year at Notre Dame after coaching in the NFL for 15 years, this is no excuse for his whining. What Weis must realize is that his Irish are universally the most loved,hated, feared and admired team in college football.

Notre Dame, with its exclusive network television contract and rich history is already viewed as an institution of privilege. The Irish are viewed as a team that has gotten all the breaks over the years. They're seen as a team that gets favorable rankings and undeserved bowl bids on an annual basis just because of who they are. Weis' complaints certainly won't help improve that image.

The most notable example of this occurred in 1994. The Irish finished the regular season with a mediocre 6-4-1 record and yet still got invited to play in the Fiesta Bowl. A game they decisively lost to Colorado 41-24. This prompted a reoccurring joke that was heard all over sports talk radio that bowl season...

What's the difference between Notre Dame and Corn Flakes? Corn Flakes belong in a bowl.

What Weis needs to realize is that his team's chances of getting a BCS bowl bid will take care of themselves as long as the Irish take care of business on the field. If the Irish manage to finish the season with only one loss and defeat 3rd-ranked USC on the road, Notre Dame will not only get a BCS bowl bid, but the may even have a shot at the national championship game.

Did you know?

2006-10-19T22:10:00.000-07:00

As I prepared to blog about sports again this week, I realized earlier today, there isn't a whole lot to go off about this week. I thought about doing a rant about how in NCAA football, the BCS is B.S., as the first 2006 BCS rankings came out this week, but I want to save that for when we get closer to bowl season. I thought about discussing the typical "Cardinal-ness" of Arizona's collapse against the Chicago Bears on monday night, but after four days, there's nothing new to say. So, I just decided to go in a completely new direction.

This blog will simply be the informative kind. I will astound and amaze by presenting sports facts and figures that even the most ardent sports fans may find hard to believe. It will all be done by asking...did you know?

Did you know that during the Chicago Bulls six championship runs in the 1990s, they weren't pushed to a seventh game in the NBA Finals even once?

Did you know that Charles Barkley, Karl Malone, Kevin Garnett and Steve Nash are the only NBA MVPs that have never won an NBA Championship?

Did you know that quarterback greats such as Terry Bradshaw, John Elway, Johnny Unitas and Troy Aikman DO NOT rank among the top 20 of all-time in QB rating?

Did you know that the first player in NFL history to catch 80 or more passes in three consecutive seasons was a tight-end? The Los Angeles Raiders' Todd Christensen (see photo above) pulled of the feat from 1984-1986.

Did you know that Bill Buckner, a former Cub, wore a Chicago Cubs batting glove under his mitt when Mookie Wilson's grounder went through his legs in the 1986 World Series? Perhaps battling two franchise curses at the same time?

Did you know that former Philadelphia Athletics and Boston Red Sox pitcher, Al Benton, is the only player in major league history to pitch to both Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle?

Did you know that there are five shared team names among the four major professional sports leagues (NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL)? Cardinals, Panthers, Giants, Rangers and Kings.

Did you know that Steelers vs. Cowboys is the only Super Bowl matchup to occur three times?

Be honest, how much of this stuff did you know before reading this blog?

NASCAR vs the NFL...still no contest

2006-10-05T20:42:00.000-07:00

As the NFL concluded the first quarter of its 2006 season, I realized that I haven't watched a single Nextel Cup NASCAR race since the NFL season began. For four straight weeks I've simply come home and checked NASCAR.com to get my race results following my Sunday at the sports bar watching the NFL. To be honest, this has worked out just fine for me. I haven't really missed watching the races every week and this begs the question...Why does NASCAR insist on going head-to-head with the NFL?
I consider myself a pretty big NASCAR fan. During the spring and summer months, my Sunday errands and chores are planned around what time the NASCAR race starts. This has become especially true since my taste for Major Leagues Baseball has waned in recent years. From the conclusion of the NBA Finals until week one of the NFL regular season, NASCAR is the only spectator sport I really care about.
I even have a favorite driver...Jeff Gordon. I even began playing in a fantasy NASCAR league this year. I've even found myself critiquing the race analysts on NBC and FOX, discussing which ones are the best and which network has better coverage. I even play the EA Sports NASCAR series of videogames.
However, this all changed on September tenth. It was the first Sunday of the 2006 NFL season and suddenly NASCAR didn't seem to matter that much anymore. Not only have I not watched a single race in the past month, two out of the last four weeks I forgot to even set my fantasy NASCAR lineup. I'm sure I'm not the only sports fan that does this on an annual basis.
This is odd when you consider that this is the most exciting part of the NASCAR schedule. The Nextel Cup season is coming down the stretch and is right in the throws of its ten-race "Chase for the Cup."
I've mentioned before how I believe that NASCAR has replaced the NHL as a "big-four" sports league in america, but this doesn't explain why, at least for the time being, NASCAR doesn't schedule more Saturday night races during the "Chase."
On its 2006 regular season schedule, NASCAR had seven Saturday night events, including its All-Star Challenge. NASCAR gets great ratings for these "Racing under the lights" events. Only one of ten "Chase" races is scheduled to take place under the lights this season.
I'm the first to admit that NASCAR's growth, increased popularity and soaring ratings over the last decade is most impressive. Heck, they've even drawn me in. However, NASCAR must realize that they are not yet ready to take on the 800-pound gorilla that is the NFL. The simple solution...more Saturday night races in September and October.

T.O. Doesn't Deserve to Dominate Headlines

2006-09-28T20:23:00.000-07:00

I began listening to the Colin Cowherd show on ESPN Radio 860 Wednesday morning, and as expected I had to sit through an entire segment of talk about Terrell Owens and his alleged overnight depression-induced suicide attempt. When the segment was completed and the commercial break ended, I thought..."Finally, now maybe we can get to some actual sports talk." No such luck. The next segment was spent talking about T.O. The segment following that was spent talking about T.O. and every segment for the remainder of the show was spent talking about T.O.

As "The Herd" was concluding and I was just moments away from the start of "The Dan Patrick Show", I felt a sense of relief. I figured..."Dan Patrick's been around a long time. He's a saavy sports journalist. He must realize that despite it's inherent news value, the T.O. story doesn't have to dominate every minute and every second of sports news today." Again, no such luck. Dan Patrick announced within the first half-hour of his show that the day's scheduled guests, Emmitt Smith and Dan Marino, were being rescheduled and that they would be going to Cowboys coach Bill Parcells press conference as soon as it began. Later, they broadcast T.O.'s press conference with his publicist live and the few remaining segments of the show were dedicated to talking about all the T.O. "stuff."

I took the rest of the afternoon off from sports news, knowing what I was probably going to get. No more sports talk radio. No ESPN. No internet. Nothing. Late last night I finally finished all of my studying and clicked on ESPN. SportsCenter was about to start. It was no surprise that the T.O. saga led off the show. What was surprising was the fact that T.O. news and reactions took up more than half of the hour long show. It took 33 minutes for ESPN to show a single baseball highlight. By this point of the day, all I could ask is...."Why?"

Why do we continue to give so much attention to someone that can't get enough? Why do we continue to give headlines to someone that makes them for all of the wrong reasons? Why do we have to wait for sports news that we actually do care about in order to analyze someone we don't? Why must T.O. become a distraction to my life just because he's become a distraction to his own team?

Since the end of the 2005 Super Bowl, T.O. has made ten times as many headlines with his off-the-field antics than he has with his on-the-field play. Sports news producers and programmers have to realize one thing...some sports fans are actually tired of T.O.

Is the NHL still Major?

2006-09-21T13:05:00.000-07:00

A couple of years ago, I became the most predominant poster on a discussion board called The BBBC http://thebbbc.com/forums/index.php. My frequent posting was termed "a hostile takeover" by the sports talk forum moderator at The BBBC.

One of the first topics I posted was regarding the NHL and its potential upcoming lockout. I was curious to see if anybody even cared that the prospect of no NHL hockey in 2004-2005 was a realistic probability. Well guess what? It's actually happened and......NOBODY CARED!!! Big shock.

NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman eventually canceled All-Star Weekend before any last ditch attempts by players and owners to reach a collective bargaining agreement failed and he had to call off the entire season. The funniest part of all of this is that at the time of the cancellation of the 2004-2005 season was announced, there had been no recent talks between players and owners and none were scheduled.

The NHL was already barely clinging to "big-four" status with the NFL, NBA and MLB before the lockout. Now with NASCAR and the X-Games ready to jump into that slot, the NHL has effectively nailed its own coffin shut.Last season's NHL games and highlights on ESPN were littered with images of half empty arenas. Television ratings reached an 11-year low. This was a trend that many saw cominghttp://cbs.sportsline.com/nhl/story/8191804.

As the 2006 NHL preseason got started this week, I have trouble seeing it returning to the same status and level of success it had before the lockout. Even with the NHL's return return last season, I would bet that more people can name the 2005 NASCAR Nextel Cup Champion than can name the 2006 Stanley Cup Champions.

The Destruction of Fantasyland?

2006-09-21T13:03:00.000-07:00

For years, I did whatever I could to stay away from the trend that was sweeping the nation....playing fantasy sports. My primary concern was the notion that I would actually be pulling for players who weren't necessarily on my favorite team. I may even at some point have a player on my fantasy team who was playing AGAINST my favorite team. Would it be a conflict of interest?

Eventually, I got past this "severe" mental hurdle.Well, after playing fantasy football for the last three years and now being in the midst of my first fantasy baseball season, I have to say I'm hooked. Fantasy sports are like heroin. Soooooooo addicting.

Real Sports on HBO did a story on the fantasy sports trend last year. They talked about everything from mainstream fantasy football and baseball to the more obscure games of fantasy golf, fantasy European soccer and fantasy sumo-wrestling.One potentially scary thing they touched on toward the end of their piece was the amount of time being spent on fantasy sports sites while people are at work. It's apparently gotten so out of hand that it's speculated within the next two years that most corporations will begin blocking access to these sites as if they were porno or gambling sites. State Farm Insurance has already started doing this http://www.pjstar.com/stories/090906/TRI_BATHG7EG.061.shtml .

NOOOOOOOO! This is an outrage. How could they be allowed to do this?

MLB is Stupid!!!

2006-09-05T15:25:00.000-07:00

As the 2006 Major League Baseball season opened in April, I found myself simply not caring. As a lifelong Oakland A's fan, my discontent with the organization's inability to keep its top players year after year has me so jaded that I am not only boycotting this season of MLB, but I am seriously considering quitting on baseball for good if something doesn't change to allow the A's (and other small market teams) to at least keep some of their top talent. Seeing my team basically become a "farm team" for the rest of the playoff contenders in baseball over the last four or five years has just gotten to be too much for me to take anymore.
It started for me after the 2001 season. After falling to the Yankees in the first round of the playoffs in five games for the second straight year (I still wonder what the hell Jeter was doing there when he made his back-handed flip to home plate!!!??), I was very fearful of what would happen next.

Jason Giambi was becoming a free agent, and there had been talk all season that the Yankees wanted him and wanted him bad. I knew that it was 50-50 at best that Giambi would be back. Then something happened.......Something that made me so pissed that I wound up boycotting baseball altogether in 2002!!! A couple of weeks after the World Series, the Raiders were playing the Broncos in Oakland on Monday Night Football. Giambi was there. He was decked out, head-to-toe in Raider Black. Melissa Stark tracked him down and did an interview with him before kickoff. He was all smiles!! You could hear the fans in the background chanting "MVP!!! MVP!!! MVP!!!" This made me actually believe that the A's had a shot at bringing Giambi back. Ten days later, Giambi signed with the Yankees. I was crushed. I still haven't completely gotten over that slap in the face from Giambi!! If he was never going to don the Green and Gold again, that mother-f*cker had no f*cking business showing up at my stadium that night!!!!!!! AND I MEAN NO F*CKING BUSINESS!!!! To show up at Oakland Coliseum that night to get his rocks off in front of the Oakland fans one last time before signing with the Yankees was classless!!

This occurrence led to my boycott of baseball in 2002. I had waited nearly a decade for the A's to become contenders again, and now that they were, their first significant free agent flies the coop. I knew the A's would probably still be good in 2002 (they made the playoffs again), but it didn't matter. After the Giambi fiasco, I needed a break. The 2002 season was the first time since the fifth grade that I hadn't followed baseball and the A's on a daily basis. If an A's game was on ESPN or FOX...I wouldn't watch. When A's highlights came on SportsCenter...I'd change the channel. Even when the 2002 A's had that 20-game win streak....I just didn't care. The 2002 season came and went, and I barely gave it a second thought.

Toward the end of the 2002 season, MLB actually avoided a work stoppage and agreed with its players on a new collective bargaining agreement. The parameters of the deal were actually supposed to level the playing field between the large and small market teams...or so we thought. With this agreement in place, I came back to baseball in 2003. The Giambi sting had begun to subside. The A's had a new AL MVP in Miguel Tejada. Eric Chavez had established himself as one of the best 3B in the game. The big 3(Hudson, Zito, Mulder) were still intact. Oakland had a new all-star caliber closer in Keith Foulke. And after a year off to "cool my jets," I was ready to return. 2003 was fun! The A's won the AL West again and despite ANOTHER first-round fifth-game loss in the playoffs (this time to Boston), 2003 was worth the ride. Unfortunately the off season came......here we go again.

Now it was Tejada's turn to test the free agent market, and right on cue.....he leaves. The Orioles signed Tejada, and I was now more furious than ever!!!! I was ready to boycott.....again. I just couldn't take it anymore. Then the unthinkable happened....The A's actually signed somebody!! During spring training 2004, the A's reached a long-term deal with Eric Chavez, who was going to be up for free agency himself at season's end. Like an idiot, I fell for it. I actually believed that this was a sign of things to come. I thought "Maybe now we'll start keeping some of these guys."

2004 was alright. The A's won 91 games but just barely missed the playoffs largely due to a bullpen that had 37 blown saves. When the off season started, I quickly realized that the Chavez contract was nothing more than a "token-signing" to pacify myself and other A's fans who were just as fed up with everyone leaving. Billy Beane and Co. wasted no time. Both Tim Hudson and Mark Mulder were traded to the Braves and Cardinals respectively, for no other reason than the fact that the A's knew they couldn't afford them when they each reached free agency in the next couple of years. Just a couple more playoff teams getting better through the use of the "Triple-A's."

A's departures since end of 2001.....Johnny Damon, Keith Foulke (Red Sox), Jason Giambi (Yankees), Mark Mulder, Jason Isringhausen (Cardinals), Tim Hudson (Braves) Miguel Tejada (Orioles), Jermaine Dye (White Sox). The list goes on and on. You could put together a frickin' All-Star team with these guys. I'm not saying we have to keep everybody, but some of them would be nice. As good as they've been in recent years, imagine how good the A's would've been if they could've kept just a few of these players.

It may take a new collective bargaining agreement that actually does level the playing field. It may take the new A's ownership showing that they actually do have the $$$ to keep some players. It may take the A's getting a new stadium. It may just take another season-long boycott. One way or another, it'll take some sort of significant change for me to give MLB another chance. As it stands now.....Baseball is stupid!!

Any Royals or Pirates fans agree with me?

Are you the fan of a small market team that is fed up with baseball too?

If baseball is your passion, tell me why I shouldn't quit on MLB.

Anyone think baseball's just fine the way it is and nothing needs to change? I really do want to hear all sides.