We Owe You

To our loyal readers and listeners,

Oh boy, do we owe you. Almost three months without any writing?? Tragic. We've been majorly slacking, which probably is owed to so much planning for the radio show every breathing moment leading up until noon on Tuesdays, and pursuing our fine education here in Davis, CA.

To get the ball rolling again after an inexplicable break in the writing action, I give you my five thoughts from this weekend....

1. Interleague play has returned to Major League Baseball this weekend. The first series' of the year are currently taking place with 4-5 more remaining before July depending on who your team is.

In the Bay Area, it's been the Giants versus the A's, in Oakland, to open the interleague season. The two teams will meet again in June for a 3-game series in San Francisco. The A's have claimed the first two games of the series behind stellar pitching performances from Trevor Cahill and Gio Gonzalez. Matt Cain was the tough-luck loser on Saturday, scattering only a few hits and allowing an unearned run en route to the 1-0 loss. Saturday's start must have felt like 2008 all over again, when Cain was 8-14 with a great 3.76 ERA. 2007 was just as bad to Cain, when he finished with 16 losses but a 3.65 ERA. The lack of run support that he's received as a Giant might be the worst run support a starting pitcher has ever received.


In other interleague news, Red Sox OF Jacoby Ellsbury (Brett's hero!) returned from a month and a half on the disabled list on Saturday. He was 0-4 with a run scored, and Brett hopes he'll get right back to hitting .300 atop the Boston batting order with another 70 stolen base season. In that game, a 5-0 Red Sox win over Philadelphia, Dice-K Matsuzaka didn't allow a hit until the 8th inning, also adding a base hit to be one of the only American League pitchers to get on base this weekend thus far.

Brad Bergesen was the only other American League pitcher to record a hit this weekend, but they'll be many more chances for those AL pitchers to awkwardly hold a bat. Anyone interested on betting on a 1.5 over/under for home runs hit by a pitcher during interleague play???? I honestly would take the over, so if I can find a willing suitor, let's throw down a cheesesteak bet.

2. Brett Favre (yes, #4 can be discussed any month of the year, including in May) had ankle surgery on Friday, helping to remove some scar tissue and bone spurs that had been bothering Favre for allegedly quite some time. Of course we all have to believe that Favre's motivation for the surgery is so that he's capable of playing this fall in Minnesota, but who knows, maybe he just wants to stay mobile as he closes in on becoming a grandfather. (A grandfather in the NFL....really???)


3. The Davis High sports scene suffered a tough closing to their season over the weekend. The DHS baseball team was eliminated from the playoffs on Saturday, dropping a 5-1 contest to rival Jesuit. It was the first time in head coach Dan Ariola's 15-year tenure that he did not record a winning record. Maybe it's time for me to forge some illegal documents and return to DHS and gain some prominence on the mound in 2011. Hopefully some former coach wouldn't recognize me and cry foul.

On the soccer field, the DHS women's soccer team ended their season playing to a scoreless tie, and eventually a loss in penalty kicks, against their rival St. Francis in the Sac-Joaquin section championship game. The teams played 100 scoreless minutes of soccer before it was "settled" in penalty kicks. Obviously because DHS was on the losing end, I'm complaining that the ladies need to keep on playing until the score is legitimately settled with a real goal. Perhaps if the Blue Devils had been on the winning end of the PKs, I would quietly be a happy proponent of settling the tie with some PKs, but I'm going to avoid admitting to that, unless it's too late.


4. Dallas Mavericks' face of the franchise, Dirk Nowitzki will reportedly opt out of his contract and become an unrestricted free agent this summer. July 1 marks the beginning of what will likely be the most incredible free agent summer in NBA history. If Nowitzki declines to return to the Mavericks before July 1, he'll join an epic free agent class including Lebron James, Dwayne Wade, Chris Bosh and Joe Johnson, just to name a few. My thoughts are that he'll return to Dallas, where he began his career in 1998, because it's just too hard to imagine him anywhere else than in Dallas hanging out with Mark Cuban.

5. The UC Davis women's softball team appeared in the NCAA postseason this weekend, their first ever time appearing in the Division I championship postseason. The Aggies opened the weekend on Friday with a tough 10-2 loss to regional top seeded Hawaii, who came in ranked #19 in the country. On Saturday, the Aggies dropped a 1-0 decision to Texas Tech to end their season. The Aggies mustered only one base hit in the Saturday loss against the Red Raiders. The end of the season concludes great Aggie careers from seniors Marissa Araujo, Sarah Axelson and Michelle Espiritu.

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That's all for this weekend. Hopefully we'll get more consistent with chatting sports on here in the coming future. I had a blast writing this today, so I see no reason why I can't do it again tomorrow or Tuesday.

--Brett

(but nobly representing both halves of the Brett and Chuck Power Hour)