Welcome to the inaugural (and for all I know only) addition of Who’s Awesome and Who’s not Awesome. Its kind of like Sports Illustrated’s Who’s Hot and Who’s Not, only much more subjective.
Who’s Awesome:
Manny Ramirez: After an offseason of everyone saying he was done and that he needed an incentive laden contract to even try, Manny hit a home run in his first spring training game. Suck on that everyone.
Polls: Today’s ESPN poll on the MLB page asks if the Cubs will win a World Series in your lifetime. I answered yes because I’m planning on living for about 60 or so more years and I’m willing to bet that the Cubs get one in that time. I know they’ve already gone more than 100 years but c’mon, another 60? Really? The thing is that 57% said no, including 56% from Illinois! They can’t all be in their 80’s, can they? The only states that voted yes are the cockeyed optimists in New England. (Side note: the single worst part about the Red Sox winning the Series in 2004: the loss of the “1918!” chant. Great chant, may it rest in peace.)
Who’s Not Awesome:
Carlos Silva: Silva is a bad pitcher who had a good year in 2010. Though he is career 70-70, in his two seasons with the Mariners, the team that gave him a ridiculous 4-year $48 million deal, he went 4-15 and 1-3 before being handed to the Cubs in the Milton Bradley deal. Point is, he is not in a position to be getting into dugout fights in early spiring training games over bad defense behind him. Who does he think he is, Carlos Zambrano Jr.? Gimme a break, its spring training. Its like the first week of games, the guys behind him are all going to end up in AA anyway.
Spring training Unis: Last year it was those terrible hats. I hate those things. See the stupid things right above the ears? Ridiculous. Now its this? Who comes up these things?
Line drives off of heads: First Josh Beckett takes a fungo to the head and now Padres’ coach Rick Renteria gets his face smashed in during BP. This is not a good trend. I still remember when Chuck Knoblauch hit Don Zimmer with a foul ball some years ago. Scary.
30 Teams in 30 Days: Turns out its a major pain to do one team every day and it really messes with what we want to post. We are men of our word, however, and will finish it.
Any other suggestions as to Awesome and Not Awesome things can be commented below of sent to offthebench@offthebenchbaseball.com
–Max Frankel
