It's taken me long enough to respond to this thread so now there is plenty to dig into. Firsty, I will say that I am a Blue Jays fan and have been since birth and to be quite frank I find it sick and disgusting that anyone new to the game would choose to support the Yankees or the Red Sox.
The Yankees and the Red Sox represent everything that is wrong with baseball. Because they have the sheer luck of being located on the east coast in high ecomic regions and because they are two of the oldest franchises in the league they get undeserved benefits. You see this mostly in a pure economic sense. These two teams are spending nearly $200million each on their pay roll this year, the next closest is another money grubing whore, the NY Mets at $120million followed closely by the LA Dodgers. These large market teams are ruining it for the rest of baseball. This past off-season the Red Sox needed a pitcher, so they went out and paid $50 million just to negotiate with the Japanese superstar Dice-K, then another $8million a year to sign him. Then they dolled out another $10mil per season for a oft-injured JD Drew and then $8million more for Julio Lugo who is complete **** but it doesn't matter because they can afford him. Guess what that means for the rest of the league? Well it means teams like the Toronto Blue Jays can't even get a .250 hitter, because they can't afford it so that means they have to go the small money route; the Jays signed journeymen Royce Clayton and he didn't even last the season before he was cut. This doesn't affect teams simply by taking all the talent in the free agent season, but also screws the teams by running up every other player's salary across the league, making it more costly to keep players and as a result lowers the talent of those teams.
Every Yankees ***le won from about 1970 onwards was bought. I love watching them get shitrocked, and the same goes for the Red Sox. Only the Sox have choked more ***les away than the Yankees have won. And their Championship in 2004 is sitting there with a big asterix because all they did was assemble a bloody all-star team and crossed their damn fingers.
Manny is only in his mid 30s isnt he? I know hes lazy but how can he be past it when others like Barry Bonds et al go on in to their 40's with continuing success?
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There is a distinct difference between Manny and Bonds. Now don't get me wrong Bonds is a complete douchbag, and a cheater that disgraced the game of baseball, but Barry works is balls off. Even before he got on the juice he took care of his body better than anyone in Baseball. And after he took the juice he worked even harder. Manny on the other hand is a fat lazy **** that is beyond being eccentric and quite frankly doesn't work that hard. If he did, he's at least be competent in the field, yet he is still dreadful and pathetic. I'm surprised the people of Boston haven't lynched his ass yet. They take his "Manny being Manny" as a haha thing, like his waky hairstyles and taking **** in the outfield closet. Yet they just disregard his repeated demands for trades. The last time someone demanded to be traded out of Toronto(Vince Carter, baseketball player), we the fans booed him until he left and haven't stopped yet. I don't know why people tand for it.
I'm a Braves fan at heart, but definitely love watching Vlad hit[/b]
Vladdy has always been one of my favourite players. When he was in Montreal he was absolutly lights out but nobody knew who he was because he played for the Expos. But you just have to love how ugly and vicious his swing is. You just know he's had that same swing since he was 7 years old.
See the guy who caught the ball Barry Bond's got his homer record with had to be escorted out of the stadium?! The ball is expected to fetch millions.[/b]
Maybe millions of Zimbawean dollars, this ball has been estimated to be worth maybe $350 thousand.