In the spirit of good sportsmanship, I just wanted to send out a big congratulations for the hard fought victory tonight. It was a long, grueling series to cap an eventful season, and I want to pay my respects to that.

So without further ado, my heartfelt congratulations to the Seattle Mariners, Texas Rangers, Cleveland Indians, Kansas City Royals, Florida Marlins, Yomiuri Giants, and Oakland Athletics on their big ALCS win tonight. Without your selfless sacrificing, inability to sign lucrative enough deals, and tireless scouting efforts to harvest the finest talents in the world, this victory would not have been possible. The New York Yankees are forever in your gratitude for doing the real leg work that they have been so incapable of for a decade, so that you may be cast into their shadow for yet another season.

Congratulations again...and here's to another decade of being the REAL talent and brains of baseball. Don't forget to spend that $3 million that'll trickle down to you from the luxury tax so you can sign Scott Schoenweis to a one year deal to restore competitive balance.

Go Phillies. I'll be rooting for you to crush Wal-Mart the Yankees.

On the play with Cano and Posada, I thought Cano was on the base. I was waiting for two players to be on the base, and when there was never the situation where both of them were on the base at the same time. When he tagged Cano, I thought Cano was on the base, and when Jorge touched the base and continued and tagged Posada out, I thought Posada was out.

That's right, folks. You heard it straight for the horse's mouth. He made the call because it was the outcome he was 'waiting' to have happen. He didn't actually pay attention to what happened in the play itself. Instead, he ANTICIPATED a certain outcome as probably happening, and ruled accordingly. Never mind actually verifying a play happened one way or another, you can just ANTICIPATE it happening.

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Second-degree murder charges await Andrew Thomas Gallo in the death of Nick Adenhart, Henry Pearson, and Courtney Stewart. In addition, he faces charges of DUI causing injury, one count of driving over the limit with injury, and fleeing the scene of a crime causing injury. The combined maximum he faces is up to 55 years to life in prison. This directly from the Orange County District Attorney's office, announced today at 2:30pm in a press conference.  The District Attorney stated that Gallo's actions carried an implied malice necessary for the charge and that his BAC was three times the legal limit.

Oh, and as a fun little aside, the D.A. also said that he tried to flee a SECOND time after police had tracked him down and cornered him.  Little fuckhead really put up quite the struggle to not have to answer for his recklessnes.  Since he was caught, nothing makes me happier than the fact he tried to flee, since it only makes it more certain he's going down hard.

Angels infielder Brandon Wood was demoted to the minor leagues today.

Brandon Wood has been raking all spring, his K-rate is down from where it was before, and he's done everything a man possibly can to earn a spot.  I get that we've got other guys on the depth chart, but this is probably still the top "prospect" (I use the term loosely on our team) in our organization, he's not getting any younger, and he's proven his talent now at every minor league level.  The man has nothing more to prove at this point and, if I wanted to cherry pick, he was just beginning to get into the swing of things toward the end of last season with the big club.

Look, Chone Figgins and Erick Aybar are all fine, and I want to see them get playing time, too.  But I just don't see any reason at this point to continue to delay the inevitable by continuing to steam ahead with a self-created logjam that is going to keep the current situation the same until something is done about it.  Sure, there's no room for Wood right now in an everyday role.  But if Aybar and Figgins are going to be long-term pieces (and I think one of them should not be), then that logjam is going to be around until someone acts on it.  And in the meantime, our (potentially) power-lacking club could use a contributor like Wood who is, might I add, quite the defender, as well.

The man has earned his shot, and it's not fair to him to leave him sitting in the minors for so long while management sits on its hands and lets his potentially best years go to waste behind two players with considerably less offensive upside.  I love both Aybar and Figgins, but the jam-up on the left side of the infield (nevermind Maicer Izturis) is not worth the delay in getting him in front of major league pitching, in my opinion.

Or who knows, maybe I'm just insane and bitter and my man crush got the best of me.