Fan News

No team in the National League playoff hunt is looking forward to September 1 more than the San Francisco Giants. Heading into the Colorado series, the Giants have only won six of their last 15 games.

The Giants desperately need a boost, especially in the pitching department. The team is fighting extremely hard, a credit to Bruce Bochy and the players, but the pitching looks tired. 

Carlos Beltran began his career with the Kansas City Royals in 1998. In his first full season in 1999, Beltran won the A.L. Rookie of the Year, batting .293 with 22 HR, 108 RBI, and 27 SB. He spent parts of seven years as a Royal, where he established himself as one of the few five-tool players in the game.

It seems like most of the superstars of the '00s have given us a reason to be disappointed in them. Bonds, A-Rod, Big-Mac, Slammin' Sammy and Manny, among others, have all come up tainted. It leaves a fan incredulous, ready to accept that any player with big numbers is dirty.

CC Sabathia leads the American League in wins. And now he's been tagged as the front runner for the 2010 American League Cy Young award.

If there are two subjects I love, they are baseball and politics. I have had various times in my life when I have been obsessed with both, and I have had various times in my life when I've had to shield my eyes from both.

Despite my interest in the two realms, I am always surprised when the two cross over. Sure, conservative political commentator George Will wrote one of the great baseball books of all time, and sure former President George W. Bush owned the Texas Rangers.

The Arizona Diamondbacks begin a three-game series against the San Diego Padres at Chase Field tonight. These two teams met a week ago at Petco Park with the Padres winning the first two games of the series before dropping the finale.

The Diamondbacks' win in that third game marked their first win this season in San Diego. Since that time the Diamondbacks went on to take two out of three from the San Francisco Giants while the Padres were swept at home by the Philadelphia Phillies.

"I can remember a sports writer asking me for a quote and I didn't know what a quote was.  I thought it was some kind of soft drink."-Joe DiMaggio

Well, everyone who reads this article probably knows what a quote is (hopefully).  And you have to admit it, sports have had some funny quotes.  And many of them are from baseball.

Part of that reason seems to be that baseball just has so many aspects that there are that many things to joke about. 

They say around 90 percent of the things we get anxious about, are things we never have to experience. The majority of what's left of that 10 percent, doesn't kill us.

So why are we so jumpy Philly?

The reason we panic, as Phillies fans, may have to do with a lot of things. Our nerves may be jumpy from previous trauma involved with our other teams.

In MLB, unlike the other three major sports leagues, there is a disparity among the number of teams in the American League and National League as well as the divisions.

Four divisions have five teams, while the AL West has four and the NL Central has six. The NL has a total of 16 teams, while the AL has 14. This also causes scheduling conflicts during interleague play, since the NL has two more teams. The leagues need to have the same number of teams, so adding two expansion teams would help.

Expansion

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