We're talkin' baseball, Kluszewski, Campanella. Talkin' baseball, The Man and Bobby Feller

Well the damned Blue Jays have screwed over my fantasy team again! This time they obtained the most offensively-talented Molina catching brother, the main catcher I was eyeing for in my baseball pool(s) this year. Now, as mentioned before in this post and hockey-wise explained in this post, I refuse to accept players on my pool who are playing for Ontario-based teams (which in this case means solely the Toronto Blue Jays). Therefore Molina (and Burnett, and Glaus, and....) are all off my prospects list. Damn.

Also shitty is that it broke up the Bengie/Jose combo in Anaheim (or Los Angeles, depending how you look at it and how the court case goes). In fact, back until this tragic day when the cheating Black Sox made the WS I wasn't cheering for Houston to win the NLCS, I was hoping for St. Louis and Anaheim so that all 3 catching Molina brothers (that sounds like a circus act) would be in the World Series at the same time. Of course, once the ChiSox got into the WS, I had to cheer for the Astros, which I continued to do so until the southsiders brought home the title.

(Yes, I know that the Jose/Bengie breakup was already telegraphed when LAA let him go, but I held out hope that he'd return to the fold). Also, somebody argues that I'm being paranoid and the Blue Jays will still suck this year. I sure hope he's right. Anything over .500 is a disappointment.)

Other baseball news, Fenway Park is being renovated and expanded (again), but is expected to be ready to host Toronto on April 11th.

There's a quick rundown on all the player moves so far this offseason. More still to come: Clark is in Milwaukee, Coco Crisp is now in Boston, while Sammy Sosa may be playing for Washington.

The League is going to be helping Florida hit up taxpayers for a new ballpark, everybody is obsessed with the Negro League (though how the New Negro League fares in all this is up in the air), and Buff....er, Jeff...Bagwell claims he isn't washed up yet. Buddy, I had you in my fantasy pool last year: you're done!

I've watched another 4 games on MLB.tv since my last post, and damn do I love it. No idea when they're gonna make me buy a 2006 subscription though. Maybe never. I'll keep my fingers crossed. It wouldn't be probably until around February 28th, when Spring Training starts up. Opening Day is April 2nd, but damned if I can find a schedule showing the opening day. I could go to all the team sites, but I think I've figured out that on April 2nd the only regular season game is Cleveland versus White Sox. April 3rd games include Yankees at Oakland, Tampa Bay at Camden Yards to take on the Orioles, the Giants visit San Diego to take on the Padres, and the Cubs visit Cincinatti. I can't find any teams that start on April 4th, and Indians/ChiSox resume on that day, so it looks like there will be 8 NL matchups and 6 AL matchups on Tuesday the 3rd. Wow.

If I do have to buy MLB.com programming again this year, lifestyle changes suggest I should go all out and instead of the basic MLB.tv package go instead for MLB.com All Access Pass. The difference is $100 instead of $80 (in U.S. dollars... I paid $97 Canadian for the $80 package, and should be set back about $117 for this package since the dollar is slightly stronger this year than last). The $100 package gets you so much more though: besides all the live games and the 2004/2005/2006 archives, I'll also get "Baseball's Best" featuring classic games from years gone by, access to Gameday Audio in case I didn't want to watch the game too closely (like if I was cleaning the apartment or something, and wanted announcers who were aware I wasn't watching), and most importantly the ability to watch condensed games and highlight reels, letting me spent 45 or even 5 minutes per game catching up. I think that would fit nicely into my schedule. I'm sort of the ideal audience for MLB.tv really: I don't have cable TV, so I can't just turn on TSN or Sportsnet to watch a game or catch the highlights. I can always watch free hockey Saturday nights when they don't play the damned Make-Me-Laughs, but that's about it. But MLB.tv lets me watch the teams I'm interested in (mainly the Cubbies, the Yankees, the Mariners, and any team which features a lot of my fantasy players), and catch the American commercials. All in all, pretty sweet, pretty sweet.

Speaking of fantasy leagues, its time for the Third Edge of the Sword Interactive announcement! I've decided to start a fantasy baseball league and invite all readers of this webpage to join in and see if you can take me down (you probably can). I was thinking Yahoo (that's where my buddies go into baseball/hockey/basketball pools every year), but had thought perhaps instead to wait until February 16th where I could check out the MLB.com and see what their service is like. TSN and Rotowire do leagues as well, and it might be worth a glimpse to see which would be the best. Anybody interested is welcome to add their name to the comments of this post. We'll see what we can arrange here in a couple weeks.