It's All In The Name

One guy I've decided I'm going to be watching this season is Hee Seop Choi. Yeah, he only hit .180 in 50 at bats last season but he's got a great name. Yes waiter, I'll have an order of Kkakdugi and a side of Hee Seop Choi in ginger and sesame oil. How long before he hits 20 homeruns and Wrigley Field is sold out of Mung Bean Pancakes and cold Hite Prime? Only time will tell. In the meantime, here is my All-Spring Training Name Team to date. Feel free to add your own and I'll update the list as the names roll in:

1B: Hee Seop Choi, Chicago Cubs
2B: Pokey Reese, Pittsburgh Pirates
SS: Gookie Dawkins, Cincinnati Reds
3B: Pedro "Happy" Feliz, SF Giants
LF: So Taguchi, St. Louis Cardinals
CF: (TIE): Hiram Bocachica, Detroit Tigers and Coco Crisp, Cleveland Indians
RF: Quinton McCracken, Arizona Diamondbacks, whose name is a punchline waiting to happen.
C: Yorvit Torrealba, San Francisco Giants
RHP: Pasqual Coco, Toronto Blue Jays (stunning 18.00 ERA last season)
LHP: Jung Bong, Atlanta Braves
Pinch Runner Extraordinaire: Chone Figgins, Anaheim Angels

My favorite quote of the morning comes from Shaun Powell of Newsday:

"It's so quiet that you can hear Mo Vaughn's weight drop."

In The Sporting News, Todd Jones, a reliever for the Rockies who had one save and a 4.70 ERA last season, gives us some insight on the spring training housing hard life of a big-leaguer.

"Remember, we are there to work. Sleeping in a one-bedroom apartment with fraternity keggers going on outside is good for pampered big leaguers, anyway.".

I was disappointed he didn't mention anything about baseball groupies. On the other hand, maybe we're better off not knowing about the kind of baseball groupies hang around with washed-up relief pitchers like Todd Jones. Some kind of grotesque Paula Jones and Tonya Harding hybrid maybe. I certainly wouldn't want to see the photos.

Speaking of Tonya Harding, her pro debut last night was rife with disappointment as she lost a split decision to another novice, self-described bar room brawler Samantha Browning, in the Tyson undercard. The four rounds of stumbling and wrestling around made me imagine how much better suited she is for Smackdown than professional boxing. Just think: she could bill herself as "Tempestuous Tonya", the Portland Pummeler, carry a baseball bat with her into the ring and hire Jeff Gillooly as her manager. Her first pro wrestling match should be against Mimi Bobeck from the Drew Carey show.

USA Today has been keeping track of the 10 hardest things to do in sports. They started off with Downhill Skiing, then Saving A Penalty Kick and the Tour de France. Now they're up to running the marathon. I don't know what they have planned for future selections, but I'd like to pick a few of the hardest things for SportsFans to do:


1. Carrying three beers and two hot dogs without using a tray and without spilling a drop of beer while trying to make it back to your seat in the outfield bleachers of Yankee Stadium wearing a NY Mets cap.
2. Listening to Stuart Scott's hip-hop rendition of the sports news without getting a headache. Someone get that guy an English dictionary.
3. Listening to Dick Vitale's high-volume, hysterically enthusiastic shrieking every time someone dunks a basketball.
4. Being a Milwaukee Brewers fan. What's there to look forward to? Wendy Selig-Prieb Bobble Head Doll Giveaway Night?
5. Trying to figure out why Tiger Woods is supposed to make watching golf on television more interesting. If they really want to get me to watch golf on television, they'd have to add some nuances like exploding sand traps and sudden death playoffs that require the golfers who are tied at the end of a tournament to fight it out between each other with the golf club of their choice.