That damn Rally Monkey

So the Yankees will face the Angels in the ALCS. I spotted SportsCenter promo on ESPN that I hope will prove prophetic for the series...



UPDATE: Nate Darling informs me on Facebook that this promo is two years old. I just saw for the first time today. I guess I'm not watching enough ESPN.

Baseball is like a box of chocolates

This morning Mike Greenberg of ESPN Radio's "Mike & Mike in the Morning Show" read an excerpt from a Buster Olney column, written the morning after the Tampa Bay Rays improbably won the ALCS, outlining why he believes "Don Zimmer is officially baseball’s Forrest Gump."

(I'd link you to Olney's column, but you have to be a paid subscriber.)

Don Zimmer has officially seen everything.

He played with Jackie Robinson. He played with the Brooklyn Dodgers when they finally won World Series in 1955. He played with Sandy Koufax and against Willie Mays and Hank Aaron.

He played with the infamous ’62 Mets and he managed the Red Sox in ’78 when Bucky Dent ripped the guts out of Boston.

He was there in the dugout as a coach through the Yankees’ dynasty in the ‘90s. He was there as a coach for Aaron Boone’s homerun.

And now he is part of the Rays organization as an assistant and threw out the first pitch before Game 7 on Sunday – a night when the Rays became baseball’s version of “Hoosiers” and the Miracle on Ice.

Forrest Gump has nothing on Don Zimmer.

Big air

Nolan gets a kick out watching skateboarders and other extreme sports. So it's no surprise I caught him watching the X Games last night on ESPN.

I sat down with him and we watched some guys doing BMX stunts.

Then this morning while at the Y I caught some skateboarding highlights and knew he'd love to see it. So tonight we found these highlights of the "mega ramp," which he thought was "wicked cool."

Although it's fun to watch, there is no question these guys must be a little crazy.

BoSox Betrayal?

A Red Sox-fan friend of mine sent me the link to a funny SportsCenter promo that features a sight that would make most Boston fans cringe.

Play ball

Major League Baseball owners approved television contracts today. The bad news is, the World Series will remain exclusively on Fox through 2013.

The good news is Fox will no longer have exclusive rights to the ALCS and NLCS. They’ll start sharing those series with TBS under the same system they used to have with NBC. Fox will have the ALCS next year, TBS gets the NLCS. Then the following year they’ll switch.

I don’t know if TBS will be any good or not, but at least it will be nice to have an alternative to Fox.

The ESPN article doesn’t make any mention of the Divisional Series. Right now ESPN gets some of those. I believe that’s part of a separate deal that’s still continuing.