Mets Win; Series Tied At 3

After getting out of a first inning jam, John Maine pitched 5 1/3 scoreless innings to lead the Mets to a victory over the St. Louis Cardinals knotting the series up at 3.

Jose Reyes got things started for the Mets in the bottom of the first, leading off with a homerun. The Mets scored again in the fourth after three singles by David Wright, Carlos Beltran and Sean Green. The latter driving in David Wright with his single. Jose Reyes scored again in the seventh inning on a single by Paul LoDuca after he stole second base on a pitchout. Also scoring on the play was Michael Tucker giving the Mets all the runs they would score that night.

Billy Wagner came into pitch the ninth inning and looked shaky again giving up 2 runs. In tomorrow night’s game on FOX at 8 PM, the Cardinals will start Jeff Suppan. He will be opposed by Oliver Perez.

UCONN Football Kicking Woes

Word of out UCONN today is that Randy Edsall won’t decide who his kicker will be until warmups on Friday night. Rumor is that Greg Vicidomino, who started last week’s game but didn’t finish, is not in the running. This leaves Tony Ciaravino and Matt Nuzie to compete for the kicking duties.

Matt Nuzie has not been good this year for the Huskies. He is 2 for 5 on field goals with one of those misses a block. He has also shanked a couple of extra points too. Vicidomino hasn’t been much better going 1 for 4. In Ciaravino’s three years at UCONN, he has only been used in the kicking game for onsides kicks back in 2004. He redshirted last year with a groin injury.

Although the kicking game is a big part of the success in the red zone for most teams, its not the case for UCONN. UCONN is 12 for 19 in the red zone this year, with only one of those failures related to the kicking game. Maybe the reason why Coach Edsall goes for it all the time in the red zone is his lack of confidence in the kicking game.

UCONN is gonna need more than a good day from it’s kickers to even stay close against West Virginia on Friday night. They are going to need to be perfect to have a chance. And even perfection might not be good enough this time against the nation’s fourth ranked team. The game is going to be broadcast nationally on ESPN at 8 PM.

Can It be 1986 All Over Again?

Well, the New York Mets are heading back to Shea tonight down 3-2 in the NLCS to the St. Louis Cardinals.

Twenty years ago this October, the Mets headed back to Shea from Boston down 3-2 in the World Series. Trailing by 2 runs in the bottom of the 10th, the Mets came back to tie the score at 5 all. Then what will be known for ever in Boston baseball folklore happened. The Mets were down to their last out, their last strike even when Mookie Wilson hit a 3-2 pitch from Bob Stanley down the first base line to Bill Buckner, who did not get his glove down low enough to field the ball, allowing Ray Knight to score the winning run from second base. The Mets subsequently went onto win game 7 to win the 1986 World Series.

So, my question to you is, Can the Mets do it again? Can they come back from a 3-2 deficit at Shea Stadium? Their hopes tonight rest on the arm of John Maine, who pitched a brilliant game 2 for the Mets.

The action tonight is on FOX at 8 pm.

New Poll

Ok I set up a poll and am giving it a trial run to see how to make it be an actual post. Since I haven’t quite figured that out yet, go here to vote on How Bad Will UCONN get beat by West Virginia in football on Friday.

My First Earthquake

Am I in Vegas? Did my buddy just put a quarter in the vibrating bed??

Well the shaking on Oahu was pretty minor, not enough to knock pictures off the wall. I was woken up by my bed shaking and then managed to walk out the window to hear some serious low frequency rumbling. Being on the eleventh floor wasn’t too good for the psyche, leaving me feeling pretty helpless. However it stopped after about 25 seconds, then a few minutes later a smaller quake. Big Island was hit pretty hard, being the epicenter, and maui was shaken pretty good as well. Eye witness reports talked about parking lots full of the ghetto cars with hydraulics on maui…well at least that’s what all the cars bouncing up and down looked like. Others actually saw tremor waves traveling down the asphalt roads. They cut power on oahu automatically, it wasn’t due to any damage. Power was brought back slowly through out the day, taking about 12 hrs in Waikiki, which erupted with deafening cheers when power came back on.

All in all an interesting day of sleeping, reading, and laughing at tourists in lines for the ABC stores which were letting people in one at a time. Locals would walk around the same corner to the mom and pop convenience stores with no lines. It was rainy, and crappy out so no use in hanging outside. There’s you update folks. Have a great day!

Note: This was written by my brother, Keith, who lives on the island of Oahu in Hawaii.

Hawaiian Earthquake

Well if your watching football and haven’t heard, there was a major earthquake this morning off the big island of Hawaii that measured 6.3 on the richter scale and an aftershock of 5.8. Ironically enough at the time I was calling my brother who lives on Oahu, he was calling me to tell me he was woken up by the quake. My brother is ok and is actually on his way to work at the Hawaiian Natural Institute of Energy to make sure that all of their projects are ok. For those who know my brother and want to know he’s doing, please call me on my cell and I will update you with information. Cell service is spotty out there and rather than have everyone call him at once, I will tell you that he is ok and will be checking in with me later

UPDATE at 4:30 PM: My brother just called and was actually more concerned that he was missing the football games today. So I gave him the scores. He did state that his projects at work were ok and that there is still no power on the island. From what he said, they took the power down on the island to look for damage and will be systematically powering the generators back up. Once he gets power, he will be filing a report with me. So stay tuned.

UPDATE at 5:30 PM: I just tried calling my brother on Oahu and right now there is no cell service. I will keep trying as my brother wanted some football score updates and I wanted to let him know that Hawaii was in a state of emergency. OK well i finally got in touch with his voicemail. I left him some scores and let him know I just read that he won’t be getting his power back until this evening. For those who don’t know, Hawaii is 6 hrs behind us here on the east coast.

UPDATE at 6:30 PM: I just read this on the Honolulu Advertiser’s website, “Officials hope to have power back to most of O’ahu by nightfall.”

UPDATE at 7:00 PM: The Honolulu Advertiser is now reporting the earthquake was a 6.6 magnitude on the Richter scale.

FINAL UPDATE From me tonight (9:00 PM): I know that everything is fine with my brother out there. I just haven’t been able to get thru in a while. Landlines on Oahu still weren’t working and the cell service is spotty still. No new news to report on my end. Look for my brother’s experiences here tomorrow.

Detroit Finishes Off the A’s

In a nail biter game today, the Detroit Tigers came from 3 runs down to sweep the Oakland A’s and advance to the World Series starting next Saturday night. Magglio Ordonez hit a walk-off 3 run home run in the bottom of the 9th off of Huston Street to finish the game off 6-3.

UCONN Rebounds From “Beergate”

In a game I was I unable to attend today due to some problems with my Jeep, the UCONN Huskies rebounded from the “Beergate” experience of last weekend, to defeat Army 21-7. This ends UCONN’s 2 game losing streak which may or may not have cost them a bowl bid.

Since I couldn’t attend, I had to resort to listening to the game on the radio, which isn’t so bad, since the voice of the Huskies affectionately known as “Joe D” was doing the game. It took UCONN about 5 and half minutes to score today as Terry Caulley broke loose a 98 yd run after a punt had them pinned deep at the two yard line. Later in the 1st quarter, the elusive Larry Taylor received some excellent blocking and returned a punt 72 yards for a UCONN touchdown.

Both teams were held scoreless until the fourth quarter when Army QB David Pevoto drove the Black Knights 80 yds for a touchdown. UCONN countered back with a time consuming drive of 6 minutes 17 seconds and 80+ yards culminated by a 1 yd run by UCONN QB Matt Bonislawski. Final Score: UCONN 21 Army 7.

Notes from the game:

  • Terry Caulley’s 98 yard TD run was the 2nd longest in UCONN history.
  • Terry Caulley now has over 3,000 yards in his UCONN career and today was his team leading 13th game with over 100 yds.
  • Kicking game struggled again as Greg Vicidomino missed 3 field goals today. He did make 2 extra points today.
  • Matt Nuzie was relegated to kickoffs today until he came in to kick the final extra point today.
  • Darius Butler had two more interceptions against Army giving him 5 in two years.

OK This Isn’t Funny Anymore

Just days after Cory Lidle’s plane crash, yet another Yankee has experienced some trouble with a plane flight. Today, the plane which Alex Rodriguez was a passenger on, overshot its the runway at Bob Hope Airport in Burbank. There were no injuries reported.

Now with this being a sensitive subject, I know there will be a few blog sites which will say that maybe the plane should have gone down. The reason I say this is, there is a lot of anti-AROD sentiment in Yankee land. To me, it’s just eerie, being Friday the 13th and all, that two Yankees players have had problems with airplanes in recent days.

Maybe the Yankees should take a page from John Madden and start busing around the country. It seems as though it’s a lot safer.

Once again, I’d like to offer my condolences to Cory Lidle’s wife, Melanie, and their six year old son, Christopher, and both of their families.

Detroit Tigers Win 3-0

In today’s first playoff game, the Detroit Tigers won 3-0, behind another strong pitching performance by Kenny Rogers, to take a 3-zip series lead. Kenny Rogers has now not given up an earned run in two playoff starts.

As history dictates, we know that there is only one MLB team that has ever come back from a 3-0 deficit. And you ask who that may be? It is of course the 2004 World Series Champions, Boston Red Sox, who came back to defeat the Yankees after falling behind 3 games in the series.

After watching the first three games of the ALCS, I don’t think theres a better team in baseball right now than the Detroit Tigers. Everything seems to be clicking right for them, their starting and relief pitching, their hitting and defense. You name it, it’s going right for the Tigers. It looks as though I may not get the total games right for this series as far as my prediction goes, but there’s a real good chance I will at least get the team right.