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General Chatter
I take full responsibility for the Brewers' rout of the Cardinals last night. I wrote a piece for ESPN on Sunday about how Jaime Garcia could be a key part of the series for the Cards, and look how that turned out. I'm rooting for the Brewers as they have a fun team and haven't been to the World Series since the '80s, but I wasn't exactly expecting that to happen.
I missed this on Saturday, but Ryan Howard had a pretty serious injury on the last play of Game 5 of the Phillies' NLDS series. After getting evaluated, it turns out he tore his Achilles tendon and will miss at least a couple months of next season...possibly more. Good thing Howard's new 5-year, $125m contract is all set to kick in next season; I'm sure the Phillies are glad they did that last season.
Amazin' Avenue put together a collection of ridiculous Shane Victorino gifs from around the web, inspired by his gaffe in the NLDS. Now we just need someone to do this for Raul Ibanez.
Al Davis passed away over the weekend, and Joe Poz has a tribute piece up. Even if I don't know the person or player all that well, I always make sure to read his tributes, since they're so well written and I end up learning new things.
It was a piss poor weekend for Florida sports. The Bucs lost...big. The Bolts lost. The Gators, Seminoles, and Hurricanes lost. This means things can only get better going forward, right?
Rays Talk
There haven't been many articles out on the Rays of late -- go figure -- but I just saw the movie "Moneyball" last night finally and it got me thinking. It's worth remembering that while that movie praises the A's for competing with the Yanks and Red Sox with only a $39m payroll, that was in the early 2000s. Payrolls have inflated since then, so the Rays' success with a $42m payroll in 2011 is even more absurd than the A's.
Johnny Damon was featured pretty heavily in the movie, and they mention at one point how he's not worth the $7m salary the Red Sox are paying him. That's a bit of an exaggeration, even for then, but Damon was paid $5m this season and worth every penny. Plenty has changed since 2001-2002. And not all of it has been for the benefit of small-market teams.