The Official L&L Guide to the 2007 MLB Season

I've got an hour to kill on a Friday afternoon, and I dedicate to you, reader. You're welcome.

AL East
1. Boston
2. New York (Wild Card)
3. Toronto
4. Tampa Bay
5. Baltimore

I know I pick Boston to win the AL East every year, and I know it never happens. But can you blame me? I think Boston's 3rd place finish last season had a lot more to do with an incredibly viscous case of the injury bug than a lack of talent. Plus, it seems to me that Boston noticeably upgraded in the off-season, while New York remained more or less stagnate. Boston's rotation is better (Daisuke), the line-up is better (Drew, Lugo replacing Our Hero Nixon, Gonzalez), the bullpen is slightly better (Donnelly, Okajima, Romero). Meanwhile, New York replaced Sheffield with Mientkiewicz, though they'll have a healthy Matsui this year. The rotation replaced Johnson with Pettitte, which will probably be a push. At any rate, it'll be an extremely tight finish at the top. I don't feel that Toronto's rotation can carry them very far, and Tampa's plethora of young talent intrigues me enough to move them out of the basement. Expect a Tejada trade demand by June.

AL Central
1. Detroit
2. Chicago
3. Cleveland
4. Minnesota
5. Kansas City

I want to pick Cleveland or Minnesota to win here, but I just can't. They have two good starting pitchers between them (Sabathia and Santana), so I just don't see how either could overtake Chicago or Detroit. Watch out for KC - they'll still finish last, but the Teahen/Shealy/Gordon part of the line-up will do a good amount of hitting. In other words, they won't completely suck.

AL West
1. Los Angeles de Los Angeles de Anaheim
2. Oakland
3. Seattle
4. Texas

You're pretty much forced to pick the Angels here. Oakland lost its best hitter and best pitcher, and Texas has never shown it has the pitching to threaten for a division title. I feel like Seattle may make some waves this year with King Felix, but they'll still finish well behind even Oakland.Though I reserve the right to repudiate that 3rd place prediction if Ichiro is traded, which very well may happen.

NL East
1. New York
2. Philly (Wild Card)
3. Florida
4. Atlanta
5. Washington

I was extremely tempted to put Philly on top here. They have the rotation, the line-up and a descent enough bullpen to vie for the division crown. Plus, the Mets' rotation sans Pedro looks incredibly average (not to mention old). So why am I seeing a Mets title? I really don't know. Hmm...

NL East
1. Philly
2. New York (Wild Card)
3. Florida
4. Atlanta
5. Washington

Come to think of it, I like that a lot better.

NL Central
1. St. Louis
2. Chicago
3. Cincinnati
4. Milwaukee
5. Houston
6. Pittsburgh

St. Louis are the champions, but Chicago made a huge splash in the free agent pool. A line-up with Soriano, Derrek Lee and Aramis Ramirez is frightening, and a rotation with Zambrano, Hill and Lilly looks fairly good. Holding them off will probably come down to Adam Wainwright. If he can be a legit #2 starter, with a 3-ish ERA and 200 innings, then I feel that the Cards will definitely finish on top. If he struggles, I don't think Carpenter and Pujols can hold off the Cubs by themselves (did I just say Pujols couldn't do something? And that the Cubs could? Uh oh...).

I like Cincy over Houston and Milwaukee for currently unknown reasons.

NL West
1. Arizona
2. Los Angeles
3. San Diego
4. Colorado
5. San Fran

I have no idea what's going on in this division. The only thing I'm sure of is that San Diego and Los Angeles won't be finishing last. Seriously, nothing else would surprise me. Sports Illustrated has the Dodgers getting to the World Series; I'm not sold on that. I know their rotation is pure insanity, but they're depending on Juan Pierre and Nomar for offense. Yeesh. Then again, Arizona is depending on Chad Tracy and some rookies. Like I said, no idea. I guess I'm going with the Diamondbacks on a pure hunch. Maybe its a new-uni thing.

World Series: Do I even have to say it? The only real suspense is who I'm picking to lose to Boston. I'll go with... Philly. Yeah, why not.

300 Spartans vs. 4 Ninja Turtles

At last the timeless question of "Who would win in a fight, 300 Spartans or 4 Ninja Turtles?" has been answered: the Ninja Turtles, but only if the Spartans had already been fighting for two weeks.

Turtles top box office with $25 million.




Alternate title: "It Takes a Leo To Beat a Leo."

Irony Defined: Part 6,572

The NY Times has an article about a family writing a book about how, in an effort to be more "carbon neutral," they are forgoing toilet paper, among other things, for a year.

Do you see the irony yet? They want to save the forests by not using toilet paper, but they're publishing a book about the whole experience. A book, with hundreds of pieces of paper used in the making of each copy.

Oh, but they say the book will be published in some "sustainable" way. Which of course means those wonderful "carbon offsets," which sound a lot like the 21st century's version of selling indulgences. Didn't Brother Martin teach us that's a bad idea?

In related news, political blog Hot Air has a post about a "flip-flop defined" so clear and blatant that I don't even know what to make of it. It has the video and transcript of a Larry King Live interview with Senator Obama where, mere minutes after a clip shows him saying in a speech that "it’s time for us to bring our young people home," he remarks that he doesn't "know anybody who’s been talking about packing up and going home."

To quote a caveman: "Uh... what?"

Is This What The Ball Looked Like To Josh Beckett's Opposing Hitters Last Season?

Sorry for the lame joke. You may now return to watching the Madness. My bracket, by the way, is totally busted. Thanks, UNLV. Maybe one year my champion will make it out of round two.

VCU Fights In The Shade

After a lifetime of writing in a Duke loss in my bracket as soon as logically possible, I finally got it right. Thank you, Virginia Commonwealth. We are in your debt.

What say ye, Scheyer?

Darn straight.

Rapid Fire - 3/14

The drive up north was incredibly frustrating. It's hard enough leaving my friends behind, but this time I had the added pressure of knowing I had a good six-or-so hours of work ahead of me once I got to Wilmington. And if that wasn't enough, I ran into multiple traffic jams and accidentally got onto 395, which goes into the middle of DC and then inexplicably just stops. All in all, the drive took about 3 hours longer than expected. I stayed up until 7am finishing my outline, e-mailing it to Prof. Kehner (five hours to spare!) and then just collapsed on the bed until around 4pm.

That said, I had forgotten how much stress the gym can relieve. Hopefully I'll keep it up.

I really like Nickelback's song "Far Away." I know I've been a long-time Nickelback critic, but I still have to give credit where credit is due.

The more I think about 300, the more I like it. I just love how unapologetic it is. It makes no claim to be historically accurate, it knows it's over the top, and it just doesn't care. Plus, the historical impact of Thermopylae is incredibly fascinating: Leonidas and his 300 Spartans holding off a million Persians from invading Europe and stamping out Western democracy. Just awesome.

Also, 300's director, Zach Snyder, is currently working on the Watchmen movie. Watchmen is a graphic novel by Alan Moore, and while I've never read it myself, it's generally considered to be one of (if not the) greatest comic book stories ever written. It even made Time Magazine's list of the 100 Greatest Novels since 1923 - the only graphic novel to do so. I can't wait to see it.

Lastly, I wore sandals today. Nuff said.

Harvey Hale Is a God Among Insects

I wish it wasn't so late and I wasn't already burned out from making an annotated memo outline that still needs major work. That way, I might be able to provide my readers with some coherent thoughts, or maybe a "point." But alas, such is that case, and I leave you with random facts.

• Harvey Hale scored an inexplicable 21 of his 22 points after regulation.
• Wake's shooting percentages are in reverse order of what you should expect: .696 3pt, .642 FG, .625 FT. If only we we shot more from half court, we wouldn't have needed the two overtimes. And we must really suck at lay-ups.
  
• The cable went out no less than 2 minutes after the game ended. Which reminded me of the one advantage of my craptastic one-channel bedroom TV: it will always get NBC.
• All four lower-seeded teams won on Thursday. The mind boggles.
• Wake had a crazy well-rounded scoring effort: no less than seven players reached double figures.

That's all I got. Goodnight.

Nobody Wins a Championship Without Our Say-So! You Here Me, Jefferson? NOBODY!

"Not if anything to say about it I have." - Yoda

Sure, we finished 12th last year; sure, we have only one scorer averaging double figures for the first time in our ACC history; but if the USS Skip Prosser Era is sinking then by God we're taking some chumps down with us.

Today, those chumps were the University of Virginia Men's Basketball team.

Thought you could just waltz your way to the Regular Season Championship? Thought you could get a #1 seed in your sleep? Thought you could pull off the ugly-mustache-and-orange-jersey look?

WRONG!!! This Winston-Salem. We're named after tobacco companies. Yeah, you better run.

/concludes grasping at straws

Movie News!

A lot of this has been built-up in the back of my head, and I dare say its time to let it out...

Paul Giamatti as Santa Claus might be the most brilliant casting choice since... since... well, since the last movie Giamatti was in.

Speaking of Giamatti, him and Clive Owen play rival hitmen in the aptly named Shoot'em Up.

After watching the Shrek 3 trailer, I went to IMDB to see what child actor was the voice of the prepubescent not-yet-king Arthur. The answer? Justin Timberlake. Some jokes just write themselves.

Zach Braff ends his run of self-awaking, coming-of-age dark comedies and goes for the standard RomCom in The Ex. Might be good.

Transformers and TMNT!? I'm in heaven. Do we call this the Saturday Morning Summer? Additional goodness: they brought back the original Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen) and Donatello will be voiced by Barry the Dentist from Friends. You heard it here first.