Let's stay in Japan, shall we...

I was as skeptical as anyone about the Red Sox opening their season in Japan. The trip is too far, Dice-K's wife is pregnant, the games will be on at odd hours and the Sox will have 2 less games of Spring Training - by this time you should know the objections by heart. Well, I was wrong.

I like having the games at 6 AM.

For one thing, it eliminates the danger of accidentally hearing the Dennis and Callahan show. It also adds some spice to your morning: you can watch the games BEFORE you go to work! And it opens up the rest of the evening; Jenny and I had plenty of time to watch the Bruins (who actually won a game) and "the Riches" without having to worry baseball. Work is much more fun when you can spend half of your time worrying about a baseball game. And my cat was so happy about the arrangement that he did NOT try to kill me last night. Jonathan Papelbohn's insanity seems less insane at 7AM than it does at any other time of day. Hell, even Manny looks like normal when I'm essentially comatose.

As I said, baseball games in the early morning are a good thing. I understand that the Sox wouldn't want to move to Japan or anything quite that drastic. But perhaps as a compromise, they could come back to the US and play more afternoon games. On weekends. Like they used to all of two years ago.

Random Rants:

- Two Hockey East teams make the NCAA's. That's down from five last year which was also not a great year for the league. If neither BC nor UNH make the Frozen Four, this is officially the worst year in Hockey East history. I wasn't quite aware of how precarious UVM and BU were positioned, but seeing both teams out of consideration wasn't something I wanted.

-Speaking of college hockey, the WCHA and CCHA tournaments made for fun viewing last weekend, especially when Doug Woog said something weird (twice every period). The ECAC championship game was okay, but the broadcast quality was horrendous. You couldn't make out the orange in Princeton's jerseys and it looked like Harvard was the team in BLACK. The Hockey East championship game was extraordinarily dull - especially in comparison to the goalie optional semi game between BC and UNH that went 3 over time periods. I was fast asleep by the team BU and UVM got to the second period of the next game.

-The Celtics have a 2 game losing streak. Meanwhile, the Bruins played their best game of the season at Toronto. Why can't we have two good teams at the same time?

Rant of the week: I hate this week

What can you say about the week where your cat destroys $750 worth of property, you can no longer open your car's gas tank without major help, you end up in a horribly uninteresting job just to keep from getting bored, a snow storm conspires to keep you from an exciting trip to North Andover, and every conversation - whether it be on the phone, in person, or even on stupid Instant Messenger becomes a horrible painful ordeal? You say, "good riddance".

If this week was a man, I would knee him in the crotch and proceed to kick the week's head until it was a bloody pulp.

Thank God its Friday indeed.

Random Rantings:

-Watching BC and UNH fans exchange pleasantries on USCHO is sickening. Where's the Matti/Ayers bickering when you need it?

-BU is scary. UVM? Not so much. Maine? Not at all.

-If PWR is to be believed, right now all of two teams are going to make to the NCAA's. If this isn't a giant cry for help in this conference, I don't know what is. If NU and PC have good weekends, that number will go up to three. Part of the problem is the utter cluster**** that is the WCHA. What PC (and NU, actually) NEED to happen is for one or two of these teams to get hot (my bet would be on MSU-M and Wisconsin) and put some distance between themselves and the rest. CC, UND, and DU are probably as good as in. You have to hope that everyone else scrapes along the rest of the way. I'm not even going to try to figure out the CCHA. Miami and Michigan have been #1 and #2 so long that I can't imagine anyone else pulling the upset - well, maybe our good friends at MSU can help with that. And as usual, PC needs help: Michigan, MSU, Union and Clarkson need to keep chugging along. SLU is a lost cause. Don't get me started on Holy Cross. PC's fatal mistake was losing to the Crusaders. The Goons would be in much better shape had that game not taken place.

-Speaking of general trends, its entirely possible that Hockey East is actually WORSE this year. No one outside of UNH has covered themselves in glory and the fact that the conference is banking its hopes on the Kitties is frightening after the disappearing act that UNH did in the last two games of the previous seasons. The amusing this is that everyone in the league is better. But if only two teams out of 10 get into the post season, its going to be awfully hard to spin that as a good thing.

-I think Matt Walsh is a liar. So there. I don't think he has a tape of the Ram's walkthrough. I don't he even has a tape of "Batman". ESPN is just stupid.

-Someone needs to let the Celtics know that the All Star break is over.

-As I said before, the comments section on this blog is open. If anyone, ANYONE: Jenny, Mark (haha), grumpy MTU fans who want to debate my feelings on the WCHA, and even people pretending to be a rabbi (!!) want to make a comment, feel free.

-And one final note, I hope everyone had a better week than I did!