In the 70s, managers like Billy Martin, Ralph Houk and especially Earl Weaver made the season fun, even in August when your team was in the basement.

This radio clip from one of Earl Weaver's shows always makes me laugh. But it is not safe to play at work!

Like the normal hard core sports fan I like to pick the winners of everything. From the NCAA Tournament, to a semi meaningless game like Northern Iowa vs. Wichita State.

Last NCAA Tournament I made a bracket and entered it into one of ESPN's bracket challenge pools with about 50 other people I knew. Through the first round I had only missed one game and was ahead by a mile. By the end of the tournament, however, I was in dead last. I found my situation humurous.

So far ten of eleven games have been played in this year's NFL postseason. So far I have picked ONE of them right (Dallas over Philly), just ONE, unbelievable, my bracket is almost the exact opposite of the actual one. Oh well, that's just how things go in sports, you can never tell. That gives me an idea for another post, but it will have to wait. Saints fans should be anxious because I have them winning the Super Bowl.

I also found this situation a tad humerous and began to wonder why sports fans love to analyze games and pick who they think will win. Why Vegas creates Over/Under and point spreads.

I think sports is just a way to get away from our real lives. Most of us are being told what to do and how to do it nowadays and it's nice to be able to look at the data ourselves, make our own choices, create our own brackets, and scores and point spreads or whatever. Just how we, ourselves, like it.

Moving the Pro Bowl to a week before the Super Bowl has its pros and cons. Pros: It shortens the wait between Championship, and Super Bowl Weeks, and more people are likely to watch it because they've still got football on their mind, but that's about it. Cons: Players playing in the Super Bowl cannot participate, and naturally the Super Bowl teams will have more and better players. Hawaii is better than Miami, and let's face it, the Pro Bowl just plain Sucks.

Honestly, it looks like the Pro Bowl is played as a pick up game between fourth graders. There's all these chinsy rules they add, it just makes it more complicated and less entertaining. You can't hit the quarterback, or anyone for that matter, so lineman don't get to have any fun, and I don't pretend to know the mind of a star football player, but I don't think the ProBowl is considered much of an honor, compared to other sports all-star games.

Baseball's All-Star Game is the best all-star game of the major sports. The voting process is a big deal and being selected is also a big deal. If your selected you SHOW UP and PLAY BASEBALL. The players slide hard into second, dive for fly balls, and try to strike out batters. It's a COMPETITION between the AL and NL, none of this AFC-NFC crap. The ProBowl is more of a social get together instead of a game. Baseball players get to have fun during the Home Run Derby, but during the ProBowl Randy Moss would be chatting with Derrelle Revis when he's running his routes instead of trying to burn him for a touchdown.

Hockey is great too. They have a skills competition for fun and then they play the game and everyone is trying to take out Sidney Crosby instead of gossiping with him.

Basketball's All-Star Game is more like a Globe Trotters game, but they play hard and have a Dunk contest and three-point shootout before hand.

If your selected as an All-Star in any sport you should be honored, but the least you could do would be to show up to the game and show people how you can do against fellow all-stars. You need the magic that 40 or so All-Star players can bring to a stadium, and the ProBowl doesn't have it.

I will not be watching it this year.

Justin Verlander of the Tigers filed for arbitration, seeking $9.5 million. Given the salaries some other pitchers are getting, this is a steal. I know it's just arbitration, I know it's just a bargaining maneuver. Still, if I were the Tigers I wouldn't even bother suggesting a lower price.

In 2009, Verlander was 19-9 and the league leader in:

• strikeouts
• innings pitched
• starts

Detroit is very fortunate to have Verlander. Anything could happen but he sure looks like another Roy Halliday.

When you run the Giants and that employee is Tim Lincecum.

So, a guy like Bobby Seay is getting $2.5 million this year. For those of you not B students, that's the same as a $125,000 a year salary -- for 20 years.

Given that you're probably gonna pull down about $50,000 a year for 20 years if you study, and maybe $35,000 if you don't -- but can use that extra time to focus on that professional athlete dream, maybe it's worth pursuing it.

Of course, Yankees also achieved the most.
Sports Illustrated has the breakdown here:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/writers/tom_verducci/01/19/verducc...

You can probably guess that we at Statimagician are big Detroit fans. But hey, that's the team we now and love and have to yell at someone when they do something wrong; which is often, in our eyes.

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