Ah, the DC City council rejected the stadium lease in a mix of craven pandering and principled opposition. This effectively renegs on the agreement they signed last year and baseball will now take the city to arbitration, as per agreed upon remedies in the agreement. Almost certainly they will win, and get more money out of the city than that agreement stipulated, all in all. And, of course MLB still won't sell the team...obstensibly so that they can be the bad guys who forced the arbitration, and the new owner starts "clean". I still think a real owner would have gotten something worked out because it was in his best interests to sacrifice anything in the name of good relations.
Don't believe the "they're leaving" hype; they still have nowhere to go, and if anyplace becomes remotely plausible the Marlins have dibs. However, early this season Selig can notify the Player's Association that he intends to contract two teams, and the players cannot contest (per the last labor agreement.) Since Selig does not have to name the teams, I now expect he'll waive this baton to scare DC, South Florida and Minnesota into coughing up corporate welfare in the form of stadia.
UPDATE: Well, staying up later than even I do, the council approved a lease with a spending cap. Baseball probably won't be happy with that but they'll have to live with it, as they claim the construction company is already on the hook for some overruns as currently detailed. See Boswell's column for more info, but keep in mind that as he's been pining for basebal since the expansion Senators left, he plans to hold his breath and turn blue if the Nationals try to pull up stakes.
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
Olympic Hockey Preview, Part One
I thought I'd cull together information from some sources to go over the 12 teams in the upcoming Men's Olympic Hockey Tournament. I'll certainly watch some of the Women's tournament, but I won't be into it enough to preview it.
The IIHF website has this handy schedule, although it's in local time in Torino; subtract 6 hours for EST. Also, the complete rosters can be found there, as are the world rankings referenced below.
NHL referees will be used, and we're supposed to see the obstruction crackdown continue. If the players relapse and the refs don't then we should see special teams (power play and penalty kill) play a huge role. I supsect the players won't relapse, as fewer "muckers" will make the all-star-like rosters and they will be using the wider (by 13.5 feet) international ice surface. The neutral zone will also be larger at the expense of the offensive zones, more like the pre-lockout NHL. ESPN has the other major rules differences.
The twelve participants are divided into two preliminary round-robin pools; the top four in each group will advance to the medal round for a single-elimination tournament. This is a change from the first two Olympiads with NHL players, where they had two four-team preliminary pools, the winners of each advanced to join another four-team pool consisting of themselves and the six "big" nations (USA, Canada, Russia, Finland, Sweden, Czech Rep.). Since the NHL would not shut down in time for the preliminary pool, the seventh-best team, Slovakia, got hosed--their players could only play the early games if their NHL teams consented to let them go early. Germany, whose hopes have always ridden on Washington Captials goalie Olaf Kolzig, also got screwed over. I'm glad they've finally rectified this. The two groups (World Ranking in parentheses)
Group A:
Canada (1), Czech Republic (3), Finland (7), Switzerland (8), Germany (10), Italy (19)
Group B:
Sweden (2), Slovakia (4), Russia (5), USA (6), Latvia (9), Kazakhstan (15)
Sometime before the tournament starts a week from Wednesday, I'll get previews of each of those two groups up. They'll largely be based on my personal compilation and interpretation of "experts" that I'll be sure to link to & reference, but I'll interject my original thoughts (if I have any) as well.
The IIHF website has this handy schedule, although it's in local time in Torino; subtract 6 hours for EST. Also, the complete rosters can be found there, as are the world rankings referenced below.
NHL referees will be used, and we're supposed to see the obstruction crackdown continue. If the players relapse and the refs don't then we should see special teams (power play and penalty kill) play a huge role. I supsect the players won't relapse, as fewer "muckers" will make the all-star-like rosters and they will be using the wider (by 13.5 feet) international ice surface. The neutral zone will also be larger at the expense of the offensive zones, more like the pre-lockout NHL. ESPN has the other major rules differences.
The twelve participants are divided into two preliminary round-robin pools; the top four in each group will advance to the medal round for a single-elimination tournament. This is a change from the first two Olympiads with NHL players, where they had two four-team preliminary pools, the winners of each advanced to join another four-team pool consisting of themselves and the six "big" nations (USA, Canada, Russia, Finland, Sweden, Czech Rep.). Since the NHL would not shut down in time for the preliminary pool, the seventh-best team, Slovakia, got hosed--their players could only play the early games if their NHL teams consented to let them go early. Germany, whose hopes have always ridden on Washington Captials goalie Olaf Kolzig, also got screwed over. I'm glad they've finally rectified this. The two groups (World Ranking in parentheses)
Group A:
Canada (1), Czech Republic (3), Finland (7), Switzerland (8), Germany (10), Italy (19)
Group B:
Sweden (2), Slovakia (4), Russia (5), USA (6), Latvia (9), Kazakhstan (15)
Sometime before the tournament starts a week from Wednesday, I'll get previews of each of those two groups up. They'll largely be based on my personal compilation and interpretation of "experts" that I'll be sure to link to & reference, but I'll interject my original thoughts (if I have any) as well.
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
Jack Bauer vs. Chuck Norris
Random facts about Jack Bauer (favorite: "Jack Bauer has been to Mars. Thats why there's no life on Mars.") and random facts about Chuck Norris (favorite: "Oxygen requires Chuck Norris to live.")
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Renew! Renew!
No, not back to this crap, but just a post about how I've renewed my Nationals tickets. Of course, I could only renew Plan B, but I want Plan A this year. I'm supposed to call in a couple of weeks and see if I can switch that. If not, I suppose the only bad deal is a few more afternoon games that I think I'll be able to skip away to, plus having to buy 3 Cubs tickets instead of two.
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Cringe-worthy Doublespeak
OK, so death row inmate Clarence Allen (I'm refusing to participate in the "murderer gets their middle name listed" convention) wanted to be allowed to expire if he had another heart attack before his execution. This was refused. Now, I can see the prison wanting to preserve opportunities for clemency or making sure that sentences were carried out as intended. But I don't think you can justify it the way Vernell Crittendon did:
Nope, we will respect life right up until we end it. If you want to be in favor of capital punishment, fine--I'm against it, for the record--but let's not pretend the system we have now treats all life as sacred. Perhaps "all life that has not committed horrible transgressions," but this attitude of pretending this is not state-sanctioned killing irritates me. Again, if you're ok with that as it is, fine. But come out and say it.
At no point are we not going to value the sanctity of life.
Nope, we will respect life right up until we end it. If you want to be in favor of capital punishment, fine--I'm against it, for the record--but let's not pretend the system we have now treats all life as sacred. Perhaps "all life that has not committed horrible transgressions," but this attitude of pretending this is not state-sanctioned killing irritates me. Again, if you're ok with that as it is, fine. But come out and say it.
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
Hmm...Not Sure How I Feel About This.
On one hand, thanks to my support of the teaching of actual science, I now have a song about my very own name. On the other hand...I have a dorky song about my very own name.
Thursday, January 05, 2006
01 + 05 = 06
Happy New Year! I ain't got nuthin' to say but I'd better get back on schedule. DC Baseball is still a pissing contest, Pat Robertson is still batshit crazy, Alex Ovechkin is still a really good hockey player. Oh yeah, and the state of Virginia is going to allow some DNA testing to see if a man who was sentenced to execution is innocent. Too bad they already carried out that sentence.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)