Enclave Mike reports on the President’s “remarkable,” negative reception at opening day in DC. Mike writes:

Watching baseball’s stateside opening game between Washington and Atlanta on ESPN, and I can’t remember hearing as many boos of a president throwing out the first pitch as I heard tonight directed at George W. Bush. I honestly heard more booing than cheers during the ovation. It was remarkable.

I dunno, Mike . . . the guy sitting next to the cameraman certainly was booing, but I hear a lot of support for Dubya in this video of the event.

In the midst of March Madness and high-drama puckery, the baseball fan knows that the real season begins tomorrow (yeah, they’ve played some games in Japan and there is one tonight) during daylight hours in the country where the game evolved from its inferior English cousin (rounders).

In light of the new season, MCB has requested our West Tennessee sports correspondent - The Squirrel Queen - to make her predictions re the oncoming season. I’m sticking my opinionated nose in on the prediction game as well.

SQ Predictions and notes:

AL East - Boston by a mile. Yanks will struggle on the mound.
AL Central - Cleveland edges Detroit thanks to a more settled pen. Both teams will score a ton. Tiger pitchers are always getting injured.
AL West - Angels of whatever city they’ve added to their ridiculously long name. Mariners have the pitching, theoretically, but I don’t know if they’ll score enough.
AL Wildcard - Tigers

NL East - Three team race. Mets, Braves, Phillies. I think Santana tips it in favor of the Mets, but this one will be tight.
NL Central - I still think the Brewers may sneak in past the Cubs. BrewCrew has a ton of pitching and will score lots of runs. Need to be more consistent on the road. Who knows how long Kerry Woods’ arm will stay attached to his body. Soriano will have a better year, but I just don’t know

NL West - Another toss-up (she’s picking the Dodgers). Maybe Joe Torre is the difference here if the young Dodgers respond to him. Remember, Jeter and those guys were youngsters when he started in NY. Don’t know if the Rockies will get the same effort on the mound this season. Padres and D-Backs are still in the mix.
NL Wildcard - Phillies

World Series - Indians over Dodgers

JH predictions:

As much as it pains me, a life-long Yankee’s fan, to agree, I don’t think the Yanks make the play-offs this year either. Too many pitching question marks.

AL East: God, I hate saying this, but the Red Sox are the team to beat. Great starting pitching and bullpen, along with young superstars in the making: CF Ellsbury and 2B Pedroia

AL Central: Detroit Tigers. They picked up one of the best hitters in baseball from the Marlins (Miquel Cabrera) to supplement an already strong batting lineup. Great starting pitching and a more-than-decent bullpen wins the day.

AL West: Angels. Mariners do have better pitching, but Tori Hunter added to this ball-team, along with Guerrero and a future breakout star Brandon Wood AND one of the better hitting young second sackers in the game (Howie Kendrick) wins the day.

AL Wild Card: Indians. C.C. Sabathia rides off with the Cy Young award.

NL East: Mets, Mets, Mets. Adding Johan Santana to this staff, along with the best left-side of the infield in modern society (Wright and Reyes) bring the title to Queens.

NL Central: I agree with SQ. Brewers are loaded. Watch for a break-0ut year from Richie Weeks (2B) and great follow-up seasons from Fielder, Braun and Hart.

NL West: Rockies. Tulowitzki is for real and Holliday is going to just keep getting better. Now that they keep the baseballs, pre-game, in a humidor, the balls don’t fly out of the park with nearly the same frequency as in the old days (much to the delight of the improving Rockies pitching staff).

Wild Card: Atlanta Braves. The return of Glavine and Mike Hampton to the rotation complements Tim Hudson well. Look for shortstop Yunel Escobar to have a big season.

World Series: Tigers over Brewers (it’s a midwestern joint this year)

Best player not many people have heard about: Hanley Ramirez of the Florida Marlins. Put him in NY or LA or Chicago and they’d be writing plays, books and poetry about this guy.

Team with a load of future superstars that just doesn’t have enough pitching: Tampa Bay. B.J. Upton and Carl Crawford already are well-known. Watch for mid-season call-up Evan Longoria (not the Desperate Housewife!)

Best 1-2 punch starting pitchers: Arizona with Webb and Haren (not enough runs scored behind them to win..last season was statistically flukish).

Player most likely to be involved in serious off-field incident: Elijah Dukes (Washington Nationals)

*No, this is NOT a story about steroids!

It’s sounding more and more like there’s very little hope for a new minor league baseball stadium in downtown Nashville.  Well, at least under the current group that owns the Sounds.

In this morning’s Tennessean, Nashville Mayor Karl Dean said, “We’re certainly not going to offer a better deal, and we may not be able to offer the same deal.”

Team owners met with Dean yesterday to disucss an extension of the lease at Greer Stadium or a new ballpark.  The current lease runs out at the end of this season.  No decision has been made, though Dean said he wants to work to keep the team in Nashville.

However, reading Gail Kerr’s column this morning, things may not look good for the team.

The mayor told The Tennessean that he and Gordon didn’t discuss the lease, but it’s the buzz of Nashville: City officials are about to wash their hands of the current Nashville Sounds ownership. Gordon blew it last year, by letting the deal fall apart to build a new ballpark on riverfront land that used to house a garbage burning plant.

Gordon has shown himself to be arrogant. He has rarely shown his face in Nashville while, at the same time, having this sense of entitlement that we owe him a stadium, land, tax incentive financing and, perhaps, our first-born child.

So it’s no surprise that he’s getting the cold shoulder.

It could be an interesting season for the Sounds–and that’s just off the field.

I was just reading (here) about Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA) and his reported regret about holding the Clemens hearings. John Hutcheson posted on the subject the other day, and Glen Dean at TennesseeFree.com has a round-up of Tennessee bloggers on the matter.

The NYTimes highlights the partisan nature of the hearings, but from other reading that I’ve done on the matter, the partisanship is unremarkable given the reason for the hearings. While the Times reporter emphasizes that Dubya, HW and Clemens are all from Texas (and as we all know, Dubya and HW were both Republican presidents–see how fun this is?), I think it is a little more relevant to consider that Republicans and Democrats have a different view of the role of the Federal government, the legitimate reach of “Congressional Oversight,” the extent to which Henry Waxman epitomizes the principle, “politics is show biz for ugly people.” That last one was just thrown in there for fun.

I guess that some in Congress are contemplating making Steroid use a Federal Crime, if local references to the “Commerce Clause” are any indication. Regardless, it is intriguing to observe the country’s fascination with this issue and these hearings. Even for those who oppose the idea of Federal legislators putting people under oath and grilling them. As the NYT pointed out, FoxNews broadcast the 4+ hours of hearings even though FoxNews anchors and reporters raised questions about the legitimacy of the oversight investigation. Henry Waxman regrets the Clemens hearing? It seems to me that this spectacle is a wholly predictable product of Waxman’s vision of the Federal Government as Supreme Overseer.

Congress decided, rightfully so in my opinion, that the powers of baseball have been dragging their feet when it comes to detecting, dealing with, and punishing anabolic steroid users. Baseball waged their own investigation, but an investigation without subpoena and sworn testimony is a canoe trip without a paddle.

One of the clearest and most internally consistent arcs in sports is that athletes are at their best in their twenties, begin to slide in their thirties, and generally fade out of the picture in their forties. There are exceptions, not to the fading part, but for some, the fade-out is a bit slower. Baseball, football, basketball players and hockey players do NOT get better in their forties.

Roger Clemens, star pitcher for the RedSoxBlueJaysYankeesAstrosYankees, somehow overcame the odds (as did Barry Bonds). Many of us (including the baseball authorities and player’s unions) wanted to believe that the defiance of nature was within the grasp of the baseball gods. Many of us were wrong.

So, Roger Clemens, alleged steroid abuser, is testifying before congress. Newscoma is not impressed with what she hears:

What grossed me out though is that Roger Clemens blamed everyone in the world for his troubles and owned nothing. To hear Clemens tell it, he is the most victimized man in America. I’ll give him an B+ for being defiant, but the self-righteous stuff was …

….I don’t blame him for defending himself. But the whole “the president found me in a duck blind” and “I wore USA across my chest” statements then basically saying “How dare you? I’m Roger Clemens, Lord of Baseball and I’m also kind to kittens” just made me sort of go “Blech.”

Clemens basically had his day in the sun under oath and he flailed around like a dying trout. McNamee [alleged provider of steroids to Clemens} isn’t a saint either. But why is it everyone else’s fault in Roger’s world. Pettitte “misremembered?”….

Baseball has taken worse hits. But no one won yesterday, quite frankly. Not Roger, Not McNamee and definitely not baseball where we as fans forgive stupid crap but we don’t forget. And Roger, you looked like a tittybaby. Man up, dude. You don’t have to be so defensive and snarly if you didn’t do it.

In the short run, it’s about a man’s legacy and his sport..in the long run, it’s really about defiance and yet another vain attempt by man to defy nature. There’s a pretty clear track record in that race.

Shelbyville Times-Gazette blogger Bo Melson, a retired long-time sports and police editor for the newspaper, is following the proposal to turn the old state prison into office space:

My interest in the old prison is because I’ve been in there, not as an inmate, but to play baseball.

Read the whole story.

(Apologies for linking to my own paper’s blogs, but I thought it was too good to pass up.)

Chris at Pour Out has a very weighty post about the new manager for the New York Yankees.

So now I turn to Joe Girardi. I embrace him like a brother and I kiss him on the cheek. He is a handsome man. A man whom I feel I know well, having watched him catch for the Yankees for several seasons. That’s why I thought it absurd when earlier in the week it was suggested to me that I blog about who Joe Girardi is. I laughed at the idea, assuming that any self-respecting baseball fan would already know who he is, but then I thought back to a recent post I wrote about “learning people’s verses.” That’s when I decided to learn more about Joe Girardi.

His full entry promises to be the first in a series. If you’re a baseball fan, I’m betting you’ll find Chris’ entire post of interest.

jmsloop has a sad tale over at Xark!

Last weekend, my Bonnie and I were playing Taboo with another couple and their nine year old son. …When I drew the word “Steroids,” I immediately said, “Barry Bonds.” Within a half second, both Trey and his son shouted their first guesses. Trey was wrong with his guess of “home runs.” But his nine year old son, who will be thinking about Barry Bonds long after Trey and I are put out to pasture . . . well. . . he guessed the word correctly.

I don’t even like baseball and that story still makes me sad. I don’t know if I’m sadder about the state of affairs in professional sports or the fact that little kids are both jaded and facing a shortage of decent role models.

The New York Yankees are down two games to the Cleveland Indians in their best-of-five game divisional series with the third game being played tonight. After getting blasted in game one, they lost a heartbreaker in game two and now the pressure is on.

Then the owner piles-on more pressure….

George Steinbrenner says Joe Torre most likely won’t return to the New York Yankees unless they overcome their deficit against the Cleveland Indians and reach the American League Championship Series.

“His job is on the line,” the owner was quoted in Sunday’s editions of The Record. “I think we’re paying him a lot of money. He’s the highest-paid manager in baseball, so I don’t think we’d take him back if we don’t win this series.”

You know, as a Yankee non-fan, watching the drama of them falling apart in the post-season has been compelling…but now it’s been made even more so.   You almost feel as if every pitch could be Joe Torre’s job now…I wonder how much the guys at TBS paid off Steinbrenner to announce this before the game tonight instead of after.

I never knew that Mark Rose was such a huge fan of the Philadelphia Phillies. In this post he chronicles the up and down season of his favorite team. Who is your favorite team? Who do you pick to win it all this year?

Speaking of baseball, did anybody watch the “The Bronx is Burning” over the summer? I made a point to watch every episode. My favorite was the final one. I was just a little kid when Reggie Jackson earned the name “Mr. October”, but I will never forget watching him run off of that field. What an awesome player.

I’ve seen a house of cards that didn’t collapse this badly.   The Mutts had a 7 game lead on September 12th. Usually, that’s good enough.  Not this year…As the front page of the New York Post subtly put it:

PAGING DR. HEIMLEICH!

I’m guessing this guy is happy right now…

The San Francisco Giants are cutting ties with Barry Bonds after this season.

So, who do you think will pick up the Giants’ slugger for next season?  And what’s your reaction to this news?

Not a good season to be an Orioles fan.  At this point, I’m hoping we don’t somehow feature in the first segment of SportsCenter because, well, it’s not going to be good news.

Last week, Texas scored 30 runs on the Orioles.   Yesterday, the Orioles are on the no-hitting end of the no-hitter by the Red Sox rookie.

Meanwhile, you might as well stick a fork in the Braves…they are done.

Maybe it’s a certain fan who adopted the Cubs before the season as his favorite team. Maybe it’s a sign that global warming is indeed, a reality. Maybe, as Sir Paul once said, I’m amazed. It’s nearly September (and yes, there’s still time for a collapse, a goat ex machina, or a Bartman II) and the Cubs remain in first.

For those of you who don’t know or don’t care (but, you’ve read THIS far), the Cubs haven’t won the World Series since 1908, which is. for you mathematically challenged and/or UT grads, nearly 100 years. The Cubs have had their share of misfortune and woe (far more than those whiney Boston fans).

I’m still in Knoxville as part of a training team for emergency preparedness Health Department employee. I’m not teaching truck driving (we’re teaching how to use handheld devices to help register and triage patients in the event…). The main teacher is a representative of the software vendor. She’s from Chicago and she’s a huge Cub’s fan. One of her first fake patients used to demonstrate the software was Ron Santo (beloved former Cubs player and current Cub’s radio guy). She was trying to think of an address to use, and I suggested 1908 as the street number. She didn’t laugh, but I got a good laser-like glare out of the suggestion.

*Porklips Now is one of the greatest short satirical films ever made.

How embarrassing is it to be an Orioles fan today?

OK, let me rephrase that…how much more embarrassing than usual is it to be an Orioles fan today?

Have the Red Sox replaced the Yankees as “America’s team”? (At least for baseball, that is).

Now, if we could just get rid of the Cowboys as “America’s team” in football, life would be just about perfect.

(Ed. Note:  Don’t firebomb my house for greenlighting this. )

you’ll love this post.

Baseball is a lot different than most other sports in that there isn’t really any subjectivity to the rules. Sure, umpires have to make judgements, but the rules are clearly defined. You never hear commentators say, “wow, they’re calling it really tight tonight” the way they do in football or basketball.

Clint Brewer and Bill Harless report in the City Paper today that the Nashville Sounds have begun informal discussions with the city of Franklin about a possible relocation to a new stadium there.

That’s only fair.  I pay higher taxes in Nashville so that half of the population of Williamson County can move north for three hours on Sundays.  Now maybe they can share the bill for the baseball games I attend.

Mark Mays at Dork Nation is pretty disgusted about the whole Barry Bonds thing.

Show of hands, how many of you have tried to hit a 90 MPH fastball? 80? 70? If any of you who have tried were able to consistently make contact around 2 to 3 times out of every 10 tries, you’re ready to be a major league baseball player. That’s a 70 to 80 % failure rate thereabouts (baseball stats is Verb’s thing, not mine). Think about that. There is a task out there so difficult that you can get paid to do it knowing that you will probably fail doing it most times.

The people who perform this task well don’t necessarily have to be cock strong. Making the ball meet the bat does require the ability to make the bat move real fast. However, to perform this task very well it requires coordination, great eye sight/depth perception, and perhaps more importantly, knowledge of the game and the ability to out think the pitcher. You gotta make contact to hit a home run. I know that’s a Yogi-ism, but it’s true, and so obviously true that people forget it.

Roids, cream, horse ballz, whatever Bonds took, if anything illegal at all, probably added a few years to his career in the National League (maybe without it he’s a DH for the Yankees or Red Sox, and getting paid less). I don’t agree that it made him hit more home runs. *

Steve from Whites Creek Journal writes of the time he saw Hank Aaron knock it out of the ballpark.

It was Nurses Day at Atlanta Stadium, and no, I’m not nor never have I been a nurse, but I’ve been fond of a few of them. I was sitting with a few of them on this particular day, about halfway up in the left field bleachers where they put nurses when they want to show them how much they are appreciated. We were in a group of about 20 people who I assumed were nurses or friends of nurses and we had, of course smuggled in several beverages to help make the day more pleasant. Outside of our group of twenty, there was nobody else around us, except for a group of what I would call bleacher rats down below us next to the fence.

John wrote of Barry Bonds hitting his 755th home run last night, tying Hammering Hank. The story is all over the Innertubes and television, but there are some that are honoring the man who did it first, and in their opinion, best.

Left Wing Cracker isn’t a Bonds fan either. Bill Young at KnoxViews also speaks fondly of Hank.

And, for Miss Sharon Cobb who is excited about her beloved Cubs.

And for those of you who don’t give a flip about baseball but enjoy the traditions and legends of the game, here is the infamous goat curse broken down.

Someday there’ll be a documentary called ‘Even the Bats Were Juiced’.   Bonds finally tied Aaron tonight in the 3rd inning against the San Diego Padres at the Padres home field.    In real baseball home run numbers*, that would be home run 600 or so, more than plenty enough to put Bonds in the Hall of Fame.

I was watching when Hank Aaron hit 714 and 715.   Except for a number of racists morons who didn’t want a black man to break a white man’s record, most of America was rooting for Aaron.   Tonight, I was rooting that Bonds would twist his ankle and he would be hurt just enough to miss the rest of the season.  Not to be.

The Squirrel Queen spoke on this general topic earlier.  She has a great picture.

*my inexact scientific guess of how many actual home runs that Bonds would have hit if he didn’t juice and quit improving at an age when no mortal man had ever improved before.

Squirrel Queen isn’t a fan of Barry Bonds. She remember seeing Hammerin’ Hank hit his 755th home run live as a child, and she believes that Bonds is not telling the truth about using a little help.

As a Cardinals fan, she’s even rooting for a Yankee to surpass Bonds.

I do believe there should be an asterisk next to his name. I do believe Bud Selig should be there when Bonds finally swats a shot over the fence. Selig helped this steroid issue stagnate and then boil over into the mess we have to day.

I do believe he had Hall of Fame credentials before he joined the Roid Brigade, but I didn’t like him even then. I was rooting for Atlanta’s Sid Bream as he lumbered toward home in Game 7 of the 1992 NLCS, rooting against Bonds’ arm as he made the throw to try to nail him at home plate. Safe!

I do believe we should all root for A-Rod to hurry up and clobber about 300 home runs out of Yankee Stadium, unless Jose Canseco’s next book gives us evidence otherwise.

And I hate to root for a Yankee, no matter the reason.

Bonds could break the record anyday. But for some, it won’t be a glorious moment and may just be another stain on the game.

And for extra goodness, SQ has a picture from about a year ago of her perception of Bonds from last year.

Cubs in first. The ghost of Harry Carey is lit. This time, LET THE GOAT IN!!

Heavenly days, I’m sick to death of hearing about Barry Bonds and his pursuit of the all-time home-run record. I’m equally sick of the whole “should he or shouldn’t he” thing swirling around Bud Selig, the commisisoner of baseball.

I just wish Bonds would go ahead and break the record already so I can stop hearing about it. And seeing it lead off the top of every SportsCenter where we have to go through every Bonds at bat, pitch by pitch. (It’s only slightly less annoying than the Who’s Now? thing that if it went away tomorrow, I would’t cry a single tear).

I think a lot of my annoyance come from the controversy surrounding this whole thing. And the fact that there it’s pretty much a no-win scenario for everyone involved.

Local insight on the whole thing comes to us via John Dwyer.

I don’t get why Selig is willing to be forever asked why he wasn’t there for one of sports’ hallowed records. If Bud isn’t there when it happens, his absence will be about the fourth line in his obit.

Read the rest John’s thoughts here.

And at least it’s only 39 more days until college football kicks-off. And we can get back to disussing something more than Barry…

One of the reasons I’m not a big fan of the Tennessean’s Dwight Lewis (op-ed columnist) is that he is so predictable.  Pick a subject, and most readers can pretty much nail Dwight’s take on it before we bother to read the column.  The fact that he centers on ‘black’ issues and offers a ‘black’ perspective does not bother me.  Race remains an issue germane to much of our world, as much as some people would like to think it’s a dead issue.

But…today..today, Lewis jumped the shark, crossed the line, and generally sucked wind.   The topic is Barry Bonds.  For those of you who are not baseball fans or who shudder mightily when the topic is sports, Bonds is a great baseball player for the San Francisco Giants.  He is two home runs away from tying Hank Aaron for the all-time home run record (755).   Over the years, Bonds has been one of the best players of the game, and one of the most exciting players I’ve ever watched (I’m a baseball idiot - beyond the word fan).

Then, what’s the problem?  Bonds is a duplicitous, selfish, prevaricating cheater.  At age 38 when virtually every player that has ever played the game starts losing their game, their eye, their bat-speed and power, Bonds got better, and better and better.   He was already great, but he couldn’t stand the attention received by other power hitters (who were most likely cheating as well) so he decided to artificially improve.  Steroids and Human Growth Hormone were the ticket.  The book ‘Game of Shadows‘ is a multi-page indictment of Bonds.  Read this book, and I promise you, you won’t look at Bonds (or Olympics track and field) the same way ever again.

Lewis says it doesn’t matter.  We’re picking on Barry because he’s good.  Maybe because he’s black.  Steroids don’t help you that much in baseball and besides, hordes of others are using ‘roids.   We don’t like him because he ‘talks back’.  (In all honesty, Bonds doesn’t talk unless it’s about Bonds and won’t answer hard questions).

The truth is, once we discovered that Mark McGwire (caucasian) most likely used steroids, his post-baseball career ended in disgrace.  He didn’t come close to being elected into baseball’s Hall of Fame, even though his statistics were more than sufficient.

Many of us baseball fans do care.  Hank Aaron played the game the way it should be played.  We don’t want to see our game sullied or defiled any further.  Steroids could have prolonged his career, because they allow you to recover quickly from the infirmities of age and day-to-day wear.

I honor Hank Aaron.  I appreciate Bonds talent, but he’s not worthy.  Dwight Lewis should know better.