Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Dog days of August

Well it's been a good run for the Blue Jays...there's a month and a half left in the season (oh baseball, you go by so fast!) and the Jays sit 7.5 back of the Damn Yankees and 8.5 behind the defending champion White Sox for the wild card.

They had a rough road trip a while back but have since played better...unfortunately it hasn't translated into gaining any ground.

Their one last realistic shot at making some noise comes the rest of this month, with 3 of 4 series against beatable teams (Tampa, Baltimore, Cleveland). If the Jays have any hope at all, they have to at least win those 3 series and ideally take two of three against Oakland.

I'm optimistic they'll do well, but not so optimistic that they'll move up very much in the standings...just too many good teams ahead of them.

Congrats to Roger Federer for winning the Rogers Cup over at York University, his 40th career victory and 17th straight finals appearance. The guy is just ridiculous...he has almost no competition, outside of Rafael Nadal, and that's only on clay.

The scary part is that he's only 25...he's already the best in recent memory, and he's on his way to etching his name with the likes of Sampras, Agassi, Lendl, Borg and the other male tennis greats.

And last but certainly not least, a big shoutout to my favourite player in the NFL, newly-retired Junior Seau. He was the most dominant linebacker of his day, going to twelve straight Pro Bowls...TWELVE. Most NFL players don't even play 12 seasons...this guy was at the top of his game every year.

He sparked my interest in NFL football and my subsequent love of the Chargers which still burns to this day, thanks to LaDainian Tomlinson and the hopes of a contending team for years to come.

And his retirement press conference wasn't the usual washed-up-football-star-gets-all-weepy affair.

"Listen, I win. I'm not going to cry. You know what? I won."

"Today is my graduation day. Retirement means that you'll just go ahead and live on your laurels and surf all day in Oceanside. It ain't going to happen."

"Respect the game. Love the game. Stop pushing the game away, youth. Because you know what? The game is going to go anyway. The game's going to leave you anyway. So why not embrace it? I loved that game."

Words of wisdom from one of the game's best. Seau deserves to be in the Hall of Fame, and a broadcast career is definitely in his future. I wear the 55 on my back partly because of him...thanks Junior, you were great.

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