From the sports weekend...

Man, It's such a great time of year for sports. This weekend was full of action, so here are a few of my thoughts from the weekend.

MLB: Padres! What a great weekend for the Pads. Man, a sweep of the red (way too late) hot Pirates down the final stretch. Great! Also toss in Trevor Hoffman tying, then breaking the record at home for All-Time saves? Even Better! Oh, and a NEAR no hitter by CY along they way? Wow! Give the Padres credit for shaking off that home run derby debacle in LA, and coming together at the right time. It's rather non-Padres like, but it's sweet. As mentioned in the previous post by my homie CJ, the announcer during the near no hitter (NNH) was baffling me a little. It was funny. He tip-toed around the no-no talk for about 2 seconds, dipping his baby toe in, then before you could even blink, he was doing a double-gainer belly flop all over it. I haven't seen that approach before. It was like he was trying to use reverse-psychology on the Jinx. Well, jinx caught on. Oh well, Good on ya anyway, CY. Speaking of that announcer (Steve Quis), I'm sure it's been said many times before, but when they interviewed for that job, was it just a casting call for the best Vasgersian imitation? I guess we needed to groom a Vasgersion clone for when he leaves us and becomes the "Next Bob Costas"... To the untrained ear, Quis is pretty close. He's even started scooping up helpings of pop-culture references for good measure. Well, I'm an admitted Vasgersian fan (I'm not ashamed!), so if you're going to try to clone someone, I'd say he's a good choice. Anyway, a great weekend for the Padres, and hopefully they'll go back-to-back as division champs! They couldn't have ordered up a better momentum builder.

Golf: ugh. I spent quite a bit of time on Saturday watching that mess. I guess our sweater vests looked a little bit less goofy than their euro rain slickers. Well, no not really. Call that a push, but that's all we got.

NFL: Bye weeks are so sucky. It's like being sick on the weekend of a big party that all your friends are going to. And they call you from their cell phones and tell you all about it in real time, and you can hear the music and hear people laughing and doing shots and having a great time and all you can do is sit there and wish you were there. Thank God that is over. As for the NFL action that did occur, the Steelers Cincy game was pretty interesting. Steelers look ok, but not as good as last year. They've lost some luster. I'm not sold 100% on the Bengals yet, but I'm getting there. They look tough. I watched the Donkers vs. the Patriots on Sunday night. I admit that was a good win for the Broncos. They needed it DESPERATELY, and they got it. The Patriots looked out of whack, confused, and pathetic on offense. Since they were 2-0 going in, I reluctantly give some credit to Denver's D for that. I'm not sure if they really made it happen or if the Pats just had a horrible night, but I guess I'll give the benefit of the doubt to Denver D. OK, that's all they get from me... now on the other side- Denver nation may be doing backflips cause Jake forgot to turn it over a few times, but this still isn’t a great team. Where was Corey Dillon? He was absent? The game became one-dimensional, running the no-huddle shotgun pass every time. That’s all they did, and they didn’t do it well. The Denver defensive coordinator must have thought it was Christmas. And now for the other part of the game, the OFFENSE- man, if I were a Denver fan, I'd be worried. As much as Jake and his boys had the ball against a half awake Patriots team, all they could come up with was 17 points?? It took 3 games for Denver to get a TD, and their average score is about 10 points on O. That won't work against high some of the high-powered offenses in the AFC (Chargers, Bengals, Indy... etc). Broncos are still overrated in my book- they are better than about 1/2 the AFC teams, and worse than 1/2. But they are happy... for now. But I think their D is gonna get tired of trying to help this team win games with field goals.

Again, cheers to the bye week being over with, and to the Chargers getting back to business. I can't wait to have Raven for breakfast on Sunday morning!!! What goes better with that? Beer or bloody mary's?