The 2006 AL WEST

The AL West is a fun division. It is filthy but it has personality. It better have a lot of personality, a lot more than that pig from Green Acres. Seattle is trying to rebuild with guys with tats on their necks and players from Japan, Anaheim is tough and willing to spend money, Texas is trying to get pitching.

How about the Oakland A's? If you know me you know where I am going with a post about the A's. If you are a fan of the A's, get ready to bring on the dancing girls and put the Champaign on ice, cause we're gonna win it all this year. This is it, this is the big one, finally the best franchise is baseball is going to show everyone. Of course I have been telling everyone I know the same thing every spring for the last 5 years, but really THIS IS THE YEAR. That young young team got a year older and one year closer to the World Series.

Know why they are going to win it all? Let's start at the finish. Huston Street. The name conjurs up visions of Paul Bunyan, Superman, Michael Jordan, Lance Armstrong, name your favorite superhero, real or fictional, that is who Huston Street is. In his first major league inning, he struck out Sammy Sosa, and the outs just keep coming. He was 18 for 18 in saves after the Allstar break. Do I think he will save them all this year? Maybe not, but he is a pretty good bet for 95%. The guy's stuff is electric, and he knows no fear. Before he had his first major league save he made this statement, "You are in the batters box thinking about the score, the count, the game, the pressure, and I have only one thing on my mind, to get you out." And another one, "Every fan has a dream that his favorite player is going to hit a homer late in a game and snatch a victory from the jaws of defeat, and I am here to smash that dream." The dude is 22 years old and I see nothing but smashed dreams for fans of teams the A's are playing for the next few decades. I gotta get to work, more AL west stuff coming soon.

Top 10 Pac Ten Athletes of All Time

After watching USC in the national championship game, I thought it would be fun to post my picks for the top 10 Pac Ten athletes of all time. My list has the stipulations that the athlete accelled in college, but then also had success after college and also that the athlete played in the 2nd half of the 20th Century. Here we go:

Top 10 Pac 10 athletes, 1950-present

1. Barry Bonds, ASU - The #1 all time baseball 
player is probably the #1 all time Pac 10 Athlete.

2. Tiger Woods, Stanford - I would give Tiger 
a good chance at becoming #1 some day.

3. Kareem Abdul Jabbar, UCLA - Until I went and looked
at this dude's stats I didn't realize how utterly 
dominant he was.

4. OJ Simpson, USC - People easily forget 
how good OJ was.  

5. Jennie Finch, Arizona - gotta give 
props to the superstar of women's softball.

6. John Elway, Stanford - 2 Superbowls 
at the tail end of his career really made his stats better.

7. Mark McGwire, USC.

8. Bill Walton, UCLA

9. Randy Johnson, USC

10. Anika Sorenstam, Arizona - the greatest 
woman golfer of all time

There you go, 2 golfers, 2 women, 2 basketball players. Maybe a guy like Kenny Lofton should get some credit for playing in more than one sport. I noticed my list didn't contain a single athlete from the 4 schools in Washington or Oregon. I wonder who the best athletes from those schools are?

Winter Reading

I would like to post primarily on the AL West, but since it is the offseason, I thought I would post about a good baseball book for winter reading. The book is called "Who's Better, Who's Best" by Elliot Kalb. In this book, Kalb lists the 75 best players of all time a writes a few pages about each player.

Elliot Kalb is a statistician for NBC and particularly for Bob Costas. He knows his stats and he knows baseball. He starts the book with a BANG! with his first pick. #1 all time player, Barry Bonds. He does a very good job making a case for Barry, and besides educating and pontificating, he entertains. Here is his top 9:

1. Barry Bonds
2. Babe Ruth
3. Willie Mays
4. Hank Aaron
5. Walter Johnson
6. Ty Cobb
7. Ted Williams
8. Honus Wagner
9. Alex Rodriguez

I guess the most controversial thing about this group to me is that ARod is 9th, not that Bonds is first. Arod is already better than Mickey Mantle, Joe D or Stan Musial? Whadduya think?
In my m