As with any Opening Day, hope springs eternal. I don’t think there’s any sport in which that’s more true than baseball. I made sure to get home from Walker in time Monday evening to catch the start of the Angels-Twins game on ESPN2. I’m always optimistic that the Twins can do well, though that’s a bit tougher to do when you’re Opening Day starter is the washed-up Livan Hernandez… In any case, I don’t think the Twins will make the playoffs this year, but I do think they can finish at or a little above .500 overall, which should be good enough for 3rd place in the very competitive AL Central. For this year’s edition of the Minnesota Twins, I think that’d be deemed a successful season. Losing the best pitcher in the universe, Johan Santana, and 7-time Gold Glove center fielder Torii Hunter, will definitely hurt the Twins this year. But if our young starting pitching staff can gel and pitch reasonably well, and if our new young hitters Delmon Young and Carlos Gomez can both show good consistency at the plate, then I think the Twins could at least hang around in the playoff hunt. But hey, the Twins opened up with a 3-2 win over the Angels, so they’re still on pace for perfection. 😉
Speaking of hope, Barack Obama made a campaign stop in State College yesterday, on the heels of Bill Clinton coming to town on Thursday night. I didn’t bother going to either one though. Over 6,000 people crammed into Rec Hall to see the former president on Thursday (he was an hour late though, as usual), but around 20,000 people crowded onto the Old Main lawn to hear Obama. It’s not every day that a presidential candidate (or two) pays your town a visit, but even that curiosity wasn’t enough to draw me out, so I just made sure to avoid the downtown/campus area. I’m sure I would’ve gone to hear them speak if there was any chance whatsoever that I’d ever consider voting for either one, though. Oh, which reminds me, I decided not to change my party registration for the upcoming Pennsylvania primary after all. It would’ve been fun to participate in “Operation Chaos,” but I just didn’t wanna have to buy all that soap for post-polling place. 😉
Oh, and to continue with the whole Barack Obama theme, we took first place at trivia on Friday night with the team name: “Barack-atology: As close as Penn State gets to March Madness.” I was proud of that one. 🙂
My brackets are still alive, in the meteo grad pool anyway. I was hurt by Wisconsin losing to Davidson and by Tennessee losing to Louisville in the Sweet 16, but I got my entire Final Four in with the exception of Texas, who got housed by Memphis on Sunday. Bottom line: If Kansas beats North Carolina and UCLA beats Memphis, and then if Kansas beats UCLA for the national title, I will have won either the 65%, 20% or 10% share of the pot, depending on the final score of the championship game, because I’ll be tied with two other people. But in any case, with all four #1 seeds making it to the Final Four for the first time ever, this should be a fantastically entertaining Final Four.
And this doesn’t really have anything to do with anything, but Tracy & Daniel jogged my memory tonight of this hilarious video (original hat tip to Jacob a couple years ago, though!):
I wonder if there’ll be any surprises to come on this April Fools’ Day…