Baseball will finally return to the Richmond Va area as the AA Connecticut Defenders will be moving their Eastern League franchise south.
The San Francisco Giant affiliate will be the most southern location in the league and will mostly likely move to the Southern Division by swapping spots with the Erie Seawolves.
A thought to ponder as we are a year away from the minor league affiliate silly season.
Could this be the Washington Nationals chance to grab the Richmond market for themselves?
Harrisburg has renovated their stadium and the Nationals have to be happy with that,but Richmond offers a rare opportunity to really dig into the Virginia mar
ket.Something to keep an eye on over the next year.....
The two teams that I have heard rumors of replacing the Defenders in Norwich CT are both members of the short season NY/Penn league.
Batavia New York (Cardinals) and Jamestown Jammers (Marlins) are the teams most likely to make the jump.
I have been watching (at least the first two episodes) the Ultimate Fighter and the second episode was the same as the first for me-Compelling television for the first 40 minutes and then suffering through the fight,which for the second week in a row was pretty damn dull.
Perhaps I am just a Boxing guy,but I just don't see the excitement in the fights.
Sure,the knockouts look great,like Boxing KO's do,but the rest seem like dullsville.
At least next week's fight features Kimbo Slice and shouldn't feature a lot of grappling and rest holds and might be more exciting watching.
One of the two teams coaches.Quinton "Ramage" Jackson announced his retirement
a few days ago.This (assuming it is true) ends the scheduled December fight between Jackson and opposing coach Rashad Evans.
Jackson cited issues with UFC over his accepting the role of BA Baracus in the A-Team film remake as his reason to retire.
Now,Jackson is one of the few names that I actually recognize in MMA from the outside ( I couldn't have told you who Rashad Evans was,if I was playing a game of "Beer Money"),but one cannot blame a guy for making a career in film over the far lesser money of MMA.
UFC keeps costs down and therefore their fighters active,by keeping costs down and are able to pay their top guys far less than their boxing equivalents.
Cannot blame Jackson for that decision at all.
I was way wrong on my prediction on the Floyd Mayweather-Juan Manuel Marquez fight.
Bigger,stronger,faster carried the day as Mayweather won a lopsided decision and dropped Marquez in the second round.
The fight is replayed on HBO on Saturday night as part of the WBC Heavyweight title bout between Vitali Klitschko and Chris Arreola.
That should be a good one,while it lasts.
We like Klitschko by middle round KO.
As far as money goes,the fight was a success on pay per view as it sold over a million buys,which was more than expected and far better than its same night competition from the UFC.
Just goes to show when Boxing puts its best on display-it is far from dead.
The key is to get their guys on TV more and put the best against the best more often.
The Pirates added yet another former Yankee pitcher with the claim of Anthony Claggett off waivers.
The claim continues the to beginning to be bizarre fetish that the Pirates have towards Yankee minor league pitchers.
Claggett spent most of this season with AAA Scranton/Wilkes Barre and the numbers look OK,until you get to strikeouts- just 43 in 82 innings!
Screams soft tosser to me!
The Pirates placed Jose Ascanio on the 60 day disabled list to make space for Claggett on the 40 man roster.
Interesting article on Aquaculture from the Washington Post.
The article states that for the first time ever-half the fish/shellfish that humans consume will be farm raised.
This sounds fine,but the issues with aquaculture are more than that.
Inter-breeding with the wild catch and the higher rate of disease are just a few of the issues that make this such a complicated one....
Back tomorrow with Devils news and a look at Ohio State-Illinois.
Photo Credits
Conn Defenders:Conn.Defenders
Jackson:Unknown
1 comment:
I really don't think the Nationals will pursue Richmond anytime soon. Harrisburg will be one of the top-tier facilities after the renovations and if anything the Nats need to shake the reputation of housing their affiliates in the league doghouses (*ahem*).
What I'd really like to see is Vermont to leave Centennial Field for Dodd Stadium -- for much the same reason. You and I may complain about our respective facilities, but from what I've read, Centennial Field is "charming" in a real-estate way of speaking.
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