Hello,
It seems Charlie Brown will never kick the football, that I'll never marry Jennifer Aniston or that the US Men's Soccer team will ever break through mediocrity. Yes, I'm writing about yesterday's disastrous Gold Cup Final. I admit I know very little about soccer. But I've watched probably hundreds of soccer matches in my life. So I know enough to see who was the better team yesterday, but that was blatantly obvious. There's absolutely no doubt that Mexico is better by a long ways. I was hopeful that this might be a breakthrough win for the USA when they went up 2-0. As a USA Men's Soccer fan I thought I'd seen a breakthrough win many times. Unfortunately and again yesterday wasn't the day of that breakthrough. Although that was a great assist by Clint Dempsey which led to that beautiful goal by Landon Donovan.
I thought that the USA might pack it in on the defensive end to get the victory. Instead the USA just stopped playing defense. As with most soccer matches, possession is the name of the game. Mexico dominated possession throughout including missing many early chances. Once the match was tied at 2, I was very nervous about the USA's chances to win. Once Mexico scored the third goal, I was all but sure the match was over. At that point I disgustingly stopped watching as the USA choked again. Embarrassing!
Hopefully the USA women can redeem USA Soccer in the Women's World Cup. It will be difficult for them or anyone else to get past host nation Germany. Germany is the two time defending champ and won their first match today 2-1.
I'm also absolutely disgusted with the state of the LA Dodgers organization. The longer Frank McCourt owns the team, the longer it's going to take to clean up his mess. Hopefully he won't be able to cover June 30th's payroll and that will be the beginning of the end.
One of McCourt's chief weasels, Steve Soboroff, apologist and yes man quit yesterday. He was hired this past spring to be in charge of the fan experience at Dodger Stadium. In fact, he was hired "one day before MLB took over the team and eventually sent in Tom Schieffer to oversee the club's finances". (Thanks to espn.com) The rats continue to flee the Titanic with Captain McCourt driving the Dodgers to the bottom.
On the field the Dodgers were equally dismal, at Dodger Stadium they lost to the cross town Angels 6-1. The key point was when Matt Kemp was ejected in the bottom of the fifth inning for arguing balls and strikes with the home plate umpire. With him ejected, approximately 30% of their offense left the game. Ironically the Dodgers scored their only run right after Kemp was ejected. Ultimately that was their only run in their latest pasting.
How bad is it for the Dodgers? They've lost 3 straight and 8 of 11 games. LA is 10 games below .500. They are probably out of any kind of playoff contention unless MLB decides to let all teams into the playoffs. In their last 13 games at Dodger Stadium the Angels have won 10 of those. These are games played at Dodger Stadium! Other than Matt Kemp, they don't have a reliable bat. Their offense is inept and so is most of their starting pitching. I'm thankful Clayton Kershaw pitches for the Dodgers today, he's been their only consistently good pitcher. Maybe he can drive in a couple of runs today and get the win. After 8 innings in today's game the Dodgers have exploded for one run. Kershaw is pitching a two-hitter at this point. He was the one that had a hit and got him on base and Tony Gwynn tripled to drive him in to tie the game at 1. The Dodgers went on to earn a meaningless win, they now have a one game winning streak. They are on fire! Not!
McCourt if you really want to improve the fan experience at Dodgers Stadium, put a fan in charge of it. Obviously a competitive team on the field would considerably help. The Dodgers are 18-24 at home this season and are getting worse. As a Dodgers fan I expect a quality team on the field every year and every few years able to challenge for a World Series title. Under current ownership I don't see either of those things happening. Obviously no team is going to win every year. However when that happens, a team can still be run with class. I'm hopeful that McCourt is unable to cover payroll on June 30th and that will be the beginning of the end for his destructive ownership.
Other baseball news: Today Derek Jeter turned 37 years old. Happy Birthday Derek. I'm not a big fan of the Yankees, in fact I'm a Yankees hater. However Derek Jeter has represented both MLB and the New York Yankees with class. Jeter is also closing in on 3000 hits. He likely will reach that milestone soon after he comes back from his injury. It's very hard to believe that Jeter will be the first Yankees hitter to have 3000 hits. Jeter currently has 2,994 hits.
I'm not sure how I missed it but last Sunday was Lou Gehrig's birthday, he'd been born 108 years ago. Again another Yankee, but a man known for class, humility and as a fantastic player. He had one of the coolest nicknames ever in professional sports, The Iron Horse. His nickname came from his playing consecutively in 2,130 games. This is Gary Cooper's giving Lou Gehrig's farewell speech in "Pride of the Yankees":
One of the greatest speech's of all time. Gehrig was one of those players that played the game the right way, it seems there are very few of those types of players today.
So people won't contact me and remind me, yes I know that the last two Dodger managers have very extensive ties to the Yankee organization. Joe Torre won a few World Series with the Yankees. In fact he played in their old-timer game today. And who can forget the skilled hitting machine known as Donnie Baseball. That's Don Mattingly for those of you who don't know.
Here are some great songs. I saw the play of "Rent" yesterday. I was amazed again by how amazing the music is. It features a lot of rock music, but that's supported by all sorts of genres of music. From some amazing rock songs to very tender songs, this is full of great songs. The following song is the song that stuck with me the most:
Just an amazing song, Harry Chapin's "Cats In The Cradle":
I don't remember Guns 'N' Roses covering this song, but apparently they did. I do remember the Ugly Kid Joe version. No one will ever top Harry Chapin's version, but I quite like GNR's version as well. This is their version:
Paul Young's "Every time You Go Away":
themusicaddict
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