1 Happy St

As Greg stated earlier, this week is MLB’s All-Star week. Greg and I (and Dad) had the privilege of attending in 2003 when it was held in Chicago, and the festivities really are a lot of fun. Tonight starts off with the annual Home Run Derby, in which baseball’s best HR hitters get to swing as hard as they can at a slow pitch right down the middle of the plate and try to hit the ball 500 feet or so. The whole concept is kind of stupid, but most people seem to enjoy it (myself included). The only bad part though about the HR Derby, at least as I see it, is the broadcasting. ESPN has rights to it every year, and they insist on force-feeding us Chris Berman as the play-by-play guy. If you’re not familiar with Chris Berman, his voice is similar to the one I would assume you’d hear at the gates of hell. This of course assumes that hell has gates, as well as assumes that there’d be a audible voice to be heard once you got there. My point? I don’t think I have one. Oh wait, yes I do. His voice sucks.

The HR Derby affords him the opportunity to recycle his old clichés such as "back-back-back-back-GONE" whenever a HR is hit, or "this ball’s hit all the way to [insert appropriate neighboring city to where host ballpark is located]" whenever it’s hit for a considerable distance. For instance, when the game was held in Detroit, he busted out this line twice, once saying 'this ball’s hit all the way to Lansing', and the other time saying 'this ball’s hit all the way to Kalamazoo'. It wasn’t funny either time, but it’s almost a lock that he’s going to bust out a similar version again this year. In fact I have little doubt that he has already looked up San Francisco on a map to see which neighboring cities would be the most clever to use (the word 'clever' of course being relative to Chris Berman’s ability at cleverness). So I’m placing odds:

Odds that the following cities will be used tonight by Chris Berman in his attempt at clever broadcasting:

Oakland – 3/2
Santa Clara – 4/1
Sacramento – 10/1
San Jose – 20/1
Los Angeles – 50/1
Other – 100/1

Gambling lines are open, and good luck.