GIANT WINNING ^_^

AL Triple Crown winner Miguel Cabrera (right) of the Tigers walks away
dejected as San Francisco Giants teammates Buster Posey (left) and
Sergio Romo (54) celebrate the team's second world championship.

You know something? That jersey doesn't look half bad, when you win.

MAJOR LEAGUE GOOFBALL congratulates the 2012 World Series Champion San Francisco Giants. My early season chastising of your road uniform modification did little to phase your postseason ambitions, and you came through with flying colours. The Giants won Game 4 of the best-of-seven series against the Detroit Tigers by the score of 4-3 after ten innings of play to close out the baseball season with an emphatic four games to none series win. This is the second world championship won by the Giants in three years; their earliest coming in 2010 when they defeated the Texas Rangers in five games to win their first since moving the ball club from New York to the Bay Area in 1958, and their second under manager Bruce Bochy ^_^

Washington Time Warp

Washington Nationals mistake the club house for the shower, and
douse what they think is water on their clothes in celebration
of their city's first post-season berth since 1933.

The 2012 MLB Postseason is upon us, and what better way to return to a formal writing schedule than by writing about this year's surprising Fall Classic? ^_^

Look for loads of new content and insight as I follow the baseball playoffs leading up to the World Series ^_^ I'm excited! The Washington Nationals are quite a story; this is the first time a major league ball club out of Washington will play a postseason game since 1933, when manager Joe Cronin's Senators (AL) lost to John McGraw's New York Giants (NL) in the World Series. According to Wikipedia, lots happened in 1933, including...

• Prohibition ends.
• Amidst the Great Depression, Franklin Delanor Roosevelt's "New Deal" legislation kicks in.
• The first major league "All-Star Game" takes place at Chicago's Comiskey Park.
• Wiley Post becomes the first man to fly solo around the world; aww :(
• The first "Krispy Kreme" doughnut shop opens in Nashville, Tennessee.
• James Brown and Yoko Ono are born.
• RKO releases some gorilla monster movie called King Kong. I heard it was alright.
• In only her third picture, a young actress named Katharine Hepburn wins the Academy Award for Best Actress playing the role of Eva Lovelace in Morning Glory (RKO).

For the latest on the Washington Nationals' winning the National League East Division Championship, click here!

Early to Bed, Early to Pitch =_=

ICHIRO jersey available NOW at shop.mlb.com ^_^

With the Major League Baseball season kicking off across the pond (The Pacific one, not the Atlantic o_O), game time for the Seattle Mariners and the Oakland Athletics begins at 5:04am Eastern Time at the Tokyo Dome.

I remember when American television executives requested start times for sporting events in far and distant lands to be pushed back so they could showcase those events in prime-time. They did it for "The Rumble in the Jungle", but this isn't a boxing match between two heavyweights, and the Yankees and Red Sox are still in the sunny climbs of Florida suffering from near tropical weather, deadly orange juice cocktails, and the menace known only as "Lee Roy Selmon's Restaurant" and their exquisite cuisine. So terrifying indeed o_O

Known as the away match for the Season Opener the previous day, Seattle won that game 3-1 in extra innings thanks to Dustin Ackley's 2 "ribbies" (2 RBIs or runs batted in for those unfamiliar with ball talk): A solo home-run in the fourth inning, followed an RBI single in the eleventh frame.

Ichiro (at bat) with one of four Opening Day hits vs Athletics (Toronto Star)

It's good to see Seattle star Ichiro perform in front of his native land; his four hit performance is another Opening Day record in the fact book for the Mariners. I still question why Ichiro doesn't try his hand at batting for a competitive team in the American League East Division, where clutch hitting and national exposure can go a long way for a player's career and reputation. No offence to the Seattle Mariners, but a player with 200 hits could see their name on MVP ballots and postseason game reports playing for the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, or maybe this year my Toronto Blue Jays ^_^

Dropping Ichiro in the batting order is one of the first signs the Mariners ball club is in need of a culture change. Since the days of Ken Griffey Jr, Seattle loved their all-star players, and as long as they hit the ball and bolstered fantasy league scores there was no problem. Assets depreciate over time, and the Mariners found that even the great superstar Ichiro Suzuki is showing signs of rust at thirty-seven years of age, according to Steven Goldman of the Bleacher Report. The Mariners finished dead last in the West Division of the American League in three of the previous four campaigns, and went through just as many managers during that span, if not more. The Pineda trade with the Yankees in the off-season is a step in a direction towards competing with the Rangers and Angels, but I hardly call it the right one. Albeit too late, I see the Mariners preparing for life after Ichiro :(

If Ichiro taught me anything about baseball, it is the higher the knee socks, the better the player ^_^ "High knee socks means he's good!" - Benson Chiu