My Goodness

"It’s amazing
With the blink of an eye you finally see the light
It’s amazing
When the moment arrives that you know you’ll be alright"
--Amazing, Aerosmith

Two right fielders in Southern California made headlines for two very different reasons last night. Wow. We'll get the unpleasantness out of the way first.
Milton Bradley pulled a Milton Bradley and threw (returned?) a bottle into the stands after an error gave the Rockies a three-run lead in last night's ballgame. Eric Wedge definitely knew what he was doing when he let the talented outfielder go at the beginning of the season, despite his obvious talent level. He's been pretty good--by his standard--over the last several months, but this is ridiculous. Anger management issues abound. Breaking bats and throwing things after strikeouts, getting ejected from games--it's all become routine, but this has got to be the nail that breaks the camel's coffin. His display was far worse than what Jose Guillen did the other day (another display of idiocy--how an individual can put himself so far ahead of the team in the last week of a pennant race is beyond me), and should warrant a lengthy suspension, if not from the league then definitely from the Dodgers. Aargh. This whole player-fan thing is getting way out of control. Moving on to more pleasant affairs...
For those who had the pleasure of viewing last night's Angel domination, the AL MVP award was pretty much sewn up in Arlington right then and there. Vladi is amazing--I've been saying it all year--and he had just another Vladi game last night. Four hits--all with two outs--two homers and five RBIs, helping the Halos down Texas 8-2 and pull into a tie with the A's for first place in the West. Kelvim Escobar has to be quite thankful for the offensive explosion, considering his run support for most of this season. The Angels have been shut out 10 times all year, and a full five have come in Escobar's starts. That's bad luck, for sure. To finish on Guerrero though: Manny and Ortiz have each other in the lineup. Sheff has Jeter, A-Rod, Bernie, Posada and everyone else. Vlad has had mental Jose Guillen and injured Troy Glaus, then guys like Chone Figgins and now Dallas McPherson giving him protection. To do what he's done (and to be one of the best defensive outfielders in the game) merits this MVP award, no doubt. More award winners later this week.
This Angels scenario brings about yet another reason baseball has assumed its dominance in my sports world: the pennant races. In no other sport will you find two teams tied going into the season's final few days (as the A's and Angels will still likely be as of Friday) and playing each other three successive times with everything on the line. The winner goes to the post-season, the loser goes home. I can't remember an elimination game late in a basketball regular season ever, much less a two or three-game set. It does happen in football, but usually so much depends on other teams (see Green Bay's playoff appearance last year, courtesy of Josh McCown and Nathan Poole) that it's hard to pinpoint one game or series. This is awesome.
Quick soccer note (because I know everyone cares): Wayne Rooney, the 18-year-old English superstar recently purchased by Manchester United for $54 million U.S. dollars, scored a hat trick on his debut yesterday, giving Man U a 6-2 win in European action. Amazing. He's 18, starring on the national team and now scoring hat tricks in Europe for the continent's biggest side. Unfortunately, DirecTV doesn't offer ESPNDeportes, so I was unable to witness said accomplishment ("said" definitely used within the statute of limitations there), but the way it was written looked good enough.
I was scanning a few of these old blogs and realized that I still have yet to conclude the movie list I started forever ago, which is fairly lame of me, for sure. A quick recap of the top ten so far, and then off to No. 2:
10. Young Guns
9. Office Space
8. The Shawshank Redemption
7. The Usual Suspects
6. Scent of a Woman
5. Tombstone
4. Hoosiers
3. Fletch

2. Swingers
Why: Side and I pretty much discovered it before anybody else and quickly spread it to our respective spheres of influence. Because Ransom was sold out, we had a decision to make (and I had just seen Favreau on Leno the night before), so the three of us (number three being Lori Hanson) made the correct choice. I'm not saying it wouldn't have been successful without our efforts, but I'm fairly confident we did play a small part. Trent is maybe the coolest character in a movie ever, but it comes full circle and Mikey ends up the easy-going, confident, cool cat at the end, which makes for tremendous character development. Rewatchability is quite high, especially since there are so many epic scenes from which to choose. It basically started the swing craze of the mid to late-90's and coined numerous phrases that now belong to the popular lexicon--"You're so money" being the chief example. Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau haven't been skinny since this movie, Ron Livingston set himself up for the Office Space role, Alex Desert ("This place is dead anyway") is a cool cat and Heather Graham is Heather Graham. High quality cast, top to bottom (including those House of Pain guys--"Roll up! Roll up, bitch!").
Best Scene: No doubt in my mind it's the NHL 94 scene (played on Genesis, but it's still good enough). The electronic organ gets us into the scene, feeling like we're in Chicago Stadium, watching Roenick and Chelios and the whole crew handle the Great One and the Kings. Trent's smack-talk is awesome ("The Kings are a bitch team," "Yeah, that was against the computer with the offsides off," "It's not even so much me as it is Roenick. He's good," "That was for fanboy number 99 over here")--I could go on and on. The delivery boy treatment is a little awkward, but it can't ruin the momentum created by video game hockey. The fact that I've actually talked to Jeremy Roenick about this scene makes it that much cooler.
Work beckons--I gotta go get the Dodger tape so we can rip on Milton today--so number one will have to wait. This was a good writing day--Bradley, Vladi, Rooney and Swingers. Nice. Oh yeah, Dodger game tonight--definitely gonna throw a bottle at someone, see what happens. Out.