The first question comes from Battlin' Bob.
Bob wants to know who has impressed me most in the first week of the minor league season.
Well, that is an easy one- Hagerstown's Juan Soto is going to be a prospect that everyone is going to be talking about soon and he's just 18.
The ball jumps off his bat and he's going to hit for power.
Soto isn't a fast runner and I wonder about him defensively, but the bat is going to play.
Washington knows that their window is starting to close at the big league level and might be forced to make a mid-season splash-If the Nationals have to decide which of their top two position prospects have to go between Soto and Victor Robles, it's going to be a very difficult choice to make.
The next question comes from Bill Cover from the ballpark about the Cavaliers and their chances in the playoffs.
Bill is a long time Cavalier fan and has some concerns about the playoffs.
I'm a little concerned, but not overly so.
I look at the other rosters in the Eastern Conference and I don't think that any team including the top-seeded Celtics that observers could say that a series win over Cleveland would not be an upset.
The Cavaliers have the conference's most talented team and when push comes to shove, I think that they will be able to put it together to win the East.
In other words- I don't see any team that is going to beat a LeBron James-led team four times out of seven.
Now in the finals, that could be a different story, but I'll at least say that a return to the finals is likely...
Next, we have an easy one- What's up with the podcast?
I'm hoping to have a new free server when my deal with Podbean expires.
I want to keep it alive, but not at the current cost-If there is any of the archived material that you want to listen to or download for yourself-I'd get on that soon!
I do have some guests scheduled, so look for those soon as well...
Next up-this question from Twitter-What's my stance on Chief Wahoo?
I love Chief Wahoo and I've loved him since childhood, but I can see where he could be found offensive to Native Americans.
Terry Pluto thinks a re-design is in order and maybe so.
I do HATE the current blah Block C that the Indians currently favor, so let's float this idea out there.
I'd trade the Chief, but in return, the block C is scrapped in favor of the "Crooked" C from the '70s.
The crooked C pays homage to the name Indians more than the bland current version, yet takes away what offends.
Under those circumstances, I'd make that trade.
Jason Christensen asks about autographing with this-Are there certain affiliates that seem to be easier than others to get signatures from?
Well, this does tend to ebb and flow according to prospects, but it does seem to be the middle-level teams (at a particular time) that are better than others.
Teams that have been bad at the big league level can sometimes be tough because everyone wants high draft picks, but the traditionally popular teams like Yankees, Red Sox, Mets, Giants, etc can be difficult too.
Currently, the Rockies (minus the Brendan Rodgers experience in 2015), Rangers, Orioles, and Pirates are teams that I had good luck with.
Seems like the good teams change from year to year and the bad ones generally stay the same.
Another thing that helps is if the manager likes to sign.
If the manager (or team player that's a leader) likes to sign, the team follows, and conversely, if they hate it-it's always a grind.
Finally, we have Fred Landucci with a boxing question-Fred wants to know why big fights like the unification fight between Ricky Burns and Julius Indongo aren't shown on American television and how not having it anywhere but online (unless you have AWE tv) doesn't help to grow the sport.
Fred's right that it doesn't help, but apparently no network other than AWE wants to buy the fight.
Some of these small networks would do well (in my opinion) to pay a small rights fee and use the transmission from the other country's main network feed to keep costs down.
I've always thought about the small cost that HBO and Showtime should invest in these types of bouts.
HBO has a show on HBO Latino that could have shown Burns-Indongo on tape (at little cost) to use it to build interest in the winner vs Terence Crawford since Crawford is an HBO fighter and it's the same division.
It's really a Catch 22-they aren't shown because " no one knows them and the interest isn't there", but how do you know them and want to see them, if the exposure never arrives?
It's a hard situation for boxing to be and until we as fans get lucky enough to have a boxing guy run a network, no matter how small, fights like Burns-Indongo will be unavailable on television...
I always enjoy these, so I'll try to do another one soon!!
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