American League

East
Yankees
Rays*
Red Sox
Orioles
Blue Jays

Central
Twins
White Sox
Tigers
Royals
Indians

West
Mariners
Rangers
Angels
A’s

National League
East
Phillies
Marlins*
Braves
Mets
Nationals

Central
Cardinals
Reds
Brewers
Pirates
Astros

West
Rockies
Dodgers
Giants
Diamondbacks
Padres

DIVISION SERIES
Rays over Twins
Mariners over Yankees
Phillies over Cardinals
Rockies over Marlins

LEAGUE CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES
Rays over Mariners
Phillies over Rockies

WORLD SERIES
Phillies over Rays, sounds familiar right?

One of the most fun things I got to do when I was in my senior year at Marist was play basketball.

I’d find out to be friend of Marist football and IT guy Dave Lanthier set up a basketball game on Tuesdays and Fridays at around noon. This led me to meet a few professors and people who worked at Marist who, like me, just liked to have fun playing basketball.

After a while, I thought it really didn’t matter that I’d always stroll into my 2pm religion class late. It did help that the class was boring so I didn’t really want to be there early anyway. However, after that class I had another two rooms down and that class was taught by one of the professors I played that day.

I still get emails from the group, which I like. I’d like to make a small goal of getting up to play up once at Marist with these guys again, just for the heck of it. However that would take the following:

• 2.5 hour drive up to Marist and then back home
• 1hr LIRR trip, 1/2/3 to 42nd St. and a 2hr trip to poughkeepsie, someone driving me to campus and back to the station (feel free multiply by 2)

This is the first time though I’ve thought of goals for 2010 and I’m trying to work on circling the baseball calendar all while trying to get cheap MLB.com/Shop products.

2009 A Review

• Part One: MAAC Tournament, Marist Alumni Weekend 2, Citi Field trip, June Vacation, Recap on my Connecticut experience
• Part Two: O’s Game, Meeting Zack Hample
• Part Three: Mets game with Keith & met Zack again, 2 more Met games to end the year, Postseason Baseball, Trip to Yankee Stadium, Marist Alumni Weekend
• Part Four: Thanksgiving, December fun and Christmas.

Also links to all the posts are previously chronicled on my web site or others. I tried my best.

Baseball Games

• 5/10/09 at Citi Field (1, Jenna: 1)
• 7/27/09 at Camden Yards
• 9/8 & 9/10 at Citi Field (4, Keith: 2; 7, Adam: 1)
• 9/22/09 at Citi Field (4, Danny: 2)
  

Reading List

• Watching Baseball Smarter
• As They See ‘Em
• Founding Brothers
• Losers: The Road to Everyplace but the White House
• Next
• Panic: The Story of Modern Financial Insanity
• Power and the Presidency
• Season of Life
• The Audacity to Win
• The Men Who Stare at Goats
• The New New Thing

I will gradually post my picks. Here goes.

There are way too many bowls, so I’m taking the easy way out and saving my BCS picks for before New Years. By the way, my prediction is that Florida State would end up with a losing record for Bobby Bowden to be pushed out on. That would be sad to see.

(Click to enlarge t0 see my picks)

So I did a brief interview on Owlified, the Temple Owls sports fan site, for Siena Saints Blog. Now they’re doing a bowl pick ‘em and yours truly is participating.

First off, just know I don’t watch a ton of college football like I used to. I used to watch a whole lot more in the last 5-7 years but now when I watch I like to see what each team is doing and try to analyze what’s really going on.

However, I am a real sucker for the end zone camera. After watching game tapes at Marist, I say that the end zone view is the best view of any in football.

Like I enjoyed the SEC Championship game between Florida and Alabama but I couldn’t stand how bad the commentating was. Even with that, it was great football. However, you could see Alabama just thoroughly outplaying the Gators on the field and Florida’s complete inability to run the football against the Tide’s defense.

However even with that I like to take the statistical side into account to, looking at Jeff Sagarin’s fine ratings and all the other metrics out there.

I’ll share my picks next week but I already sent finalized picks, now all I have to do is figure out why I did that.

Charlie Weis was fired on Monday but the more important news appears to be that Bobby Bowden will announce his (forced) retirement this morning. I’m not going to watch but I’m sure this will be an interesting resignation press conference.

Consumerist has a great post up with a tree on where to eat. Here is that tree. Funny stuff there though I think this should be expanded.

The UFL, United Football League, is united in losing money. The league says they lost $30 million in their first season. Problem is, the season was almost an exhibition with all the different teams playing games in Hartford and other places to showcase the league in the fall.

There was also a good article over at Smart Football about a vertical play that the Bengals used against the Ravens.