Talk Derby To Me*

*I stole this title from an article about the Kentucky Derby. This was eating at me. I feel better now.

The Home Run Derby is on tonight as the proverbial warm-up act to tomorrow's MLB All-Star Game. Now even though the derby has become much like the NBA Dunk contest, in that no one who is any good at cracking home runs participates anymore, I still think that the derby is one of those situations where the warm-up band out shines the headliner--much like the way the All American Rejects completely upstaged Fall Out Boy in their spring tour. (Very disappointing. This is why I don't trust main stream music anymore. That, and because it mostly sucks). Regardless, the All-Star Game always ends up being a wash with the American League winning and the players providing enough lollygagging to make Skip from Bull Durham light his jock-strap on fire.

More than anything, though, I like the HR Derby because invariably someone always pulls off some triumphant run while a big name guy embarrasses himself with only one or two home runs. To me it is always fun to see a guy like Piazza, Bonds, or A-Rod have a terrible outing while someone like Tejada rips the ball apart. All the meanwhile, the other guy is trying to act like he doesn't care, and has that "It's only a pointless derby, what do I care that I'm being completely upstaged by a guy who hit 28 HR's last year" look on his face. Only you can tell they are really seething deep inside. It's amazing how trivial these guys are; yet not one of them will admit it. It's almost like watching an episode of the Real World, only with more black men.

So who's gonna win tonight? Well I wouldn't put much stock in my predictions these days, but I'm gonna go with Lance Berkman of the Astros. I think he's a terrific player and he almost won this thing when it was in Houston. And with guys like Bonds not participating the door is wide open for Berkman to take the whole meaningless event by storm. So there it is. Berkman. Mark it down.

Before I get too far from baseball talk, being as there is a greater than zero chance that I may not get around to baseball for another week or so, I wanted to mention that Lance Berkman of the Astros and Micheal Young of the Rangers are two of the games best players and yet, many people have no clue who they are--especially Mike Young. I mean the guy was the AL batting champion last year and yet his baseball card was printed wth the wrong guy on it (they put Rod Barajas on there by mistake). Would that ever happen if he played in New York or Boston? Even in a million years? What if there was a Colin Ferrell movie coming out and the movie ads billed his character as being played by Mel Gibson? There would be an uprising at theaters across the nations that could end Hollywood as we know it. Never the less, if Young or Berkman played in New York or any of the East Coast towns, their jerseys would be flying off the shelves and the baseball world would be disgustingly over-saturated with talk of them. Just thought we should all be aware of this. And, yes. I know I am the only one who cares.

Rangers: The hometown heroes somehow took two of three from Toronto and two of three from Minnesota with Liriano and Santana on the playbill. A strong finish to the first half of the season, especially as it looked as if they were about to let the wheels fall off this thing. I'm not sure they have the team to win the division, but with the difference between them in first and Anaheim in last being only 2 1/2 games anything is possible.

Random Work Quick Hit: I just received an e mail at work about our second quarter earnings and promptly deleted it without even considering taking a look at it. It is now clear that my apathy will ultimately be my undoing.