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Good morning. Well I thought it was a good non-call (or, at most, could have been penalties on both players). Being super incompetent and calling a penalty only to reverse it after marking off the yardage and announcing it on national TV was dumb and embarrassing, though. But Dumb and Embarrassing might as well be the slogan for the NFL this decade.
You know, growing up a sports fan, right before the Internet was a real thing, nothing was better than when your favorite team or favorite player did something cool and you got to see it that night on SportsCenter. That was the ultimate validation. I honestly can't remember the last time I've watched SportsCenter these days, but in the 1990s, I would just leave the TV on ESPN and catch the show multiple times per day -- sometimes catching the same late night West Coast edition over and over as I went to bed.
It may seem weird now, but SportsCenter was so good back then, so well written and funny, that it caught the attention of Aaron Sorkin and drove him to make a show about the palpable chemistry between the anchors. Sorkin recognized how engaging the folks at the desk were in those days. That show was called Sports Night and it was great.
Keith and Dan's Big Show was the best. Kenny and Craig made reading sports highlights seem like an eclectic comedy routine. Was anything funnier than when Charley went into a giggle fit? Remember when Steve said "bulging dick" during an NFL injury report? Linda was probably my first crush. I'd fall asleep watching repeats of Rich and Stuart.
Yesterday's news that Stuart Scott had died made me miss the days when SportsCenter was a big deal in my life. It's a clichéd thing to say, but it feels like the loss of an old friend. RIP, Stuart.
Oh yeah, this is a baseball blog...
Evan Grant begins his 15 for '15 series of ranking the top 15 Texas Rangers prospects and has RHP Jerad Eickhoff at No. 15 over Double-A rotation-mate Alec Asher.
The Rangers are linked to James Shields again in this article by Boston Globe writer Nick Cafardo. And Jim Bowden tweets:
Shields market fascinating.. looking for 5yrs 110m…no one interested at that..KC/SF spend money elsewhere..Mia,TX,Bos wait for price to drop
— Jim Bowden (@JimBowden_ESPN) January 5, 2015
But to me, Shields is kind of like the Choo of pitchers. He's a tier below the really good and isn't a guy that I'd want to drop silly free agency $$$ on. If the price drops enough, maybe it would be worth looking into. But if the price drops enough, a lot of those teams that are "out" on him would just hop back in on him again.
The Question of the Week at the Lone Star Ball Facebook page asked if folks were happy with the current Rangers TV broadcast booth. Hot takes were flying all over the place. Two people even had the nerve to say Jim Knox should be fired.
Finally, *CANSECO ALERT* The latest from America's favorite stooge has Jose Canseco calling himself "Cansecodamus" and making some prediction for 2015. Among them, Canseco predicts that Barbara Walters will interview a sentient extraterrestrial and Bud Selig will become a roided out weirdo long enough to shoot his own finger off as though that is a thing that anyone would do.
