Baseball

The report is very disconcerting for Atlanta Braves fans.

Chipper Jones strained oblique muscle is only getting worse after reaggravating the injury trying to come back and play for his country.

He has finally decided to head back to Braves camp in hopes that he can be ready to play in a few days.

Some early reports stated that Chipper might not be available until opening day, but the latest reports—and even Chipper himself—said that he should be back within the week.

Coming from the Southeast, I am surrounded by three "fandoms": Braves, Red Sox, and Yankees.

I side with the first.

With this, came the natural hatred of the New York Yankees.

They seemed to be the polar opposite of my beloved Bravos. They always spent a TON of money and never really focused on their farm.

However, with the gradual evolution of my love of the game of baseball came the gradual increase of respect for the Yankees.

Fans are always asking: why do Major League teams bring so many players to Spring Training?

To answer that question quickly—they do it in order to get a good look at how the young players are performing and more importantly how they play against other Major League talent.

But after a few weeks, the teams will begin shorting their rosters in order for their Major League starters to get more consistent and longer game appearances.

On Sunday, the Texas Rangers made their first round of optioning players to the minor league squad in preparation for Opening Day.

Standing at 6 feet 7 inches, 290+ pounds, hurling a horse-hide sphere at 96 miles an hour straight at you, it's safe to say, you're not safe when C.C. Sabathia's on the mound. But for how much longer will Sabathia be able to maintain this level of pitching?

An offseason acquisition brought him to New York, where good players go to die.

So the 28 and overweight Sabathia was a perfect candidate to play in NY: a pitcher who's had mediocre-to-terrible statistics against the division he recently joined.   

Below is a preview of the Philadelphia Phillies' 2009 bullpen.  The pitchers are listed in the order in which they appear on the Phillies' official depth chart.

Brad Lidge 

In order to provide some insurance in the infield, the Mets have signed veteran infielder Junior Spivey to a minor-league deal today.

The 34-year-old Spivey hasn’t played in a major league game since 2005 with the Washington Nationals, where he hit for an unimpressive .232 batting average.

This is gonna be a little experiment driven by necessity.

I'm borrowing the idea of joint and several liability from law to solve an irritating little glitch. The idea is to write a single article, lop it in two, and have the two parts work autonomously. More accurately, it's to write two articles at the same time that are the product of a single thought process.

It may work or I may thoroughly confuse myself and end up writing about the National Football League by the end. We'll see.

With all due respect to the Tampa Bay Rays, the two favorites are finally in the building—the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox.

I feel a little bad about doing this because it's one of the primary reasons people really hate these two franchises—they get all the hype no matter how recent and thunderous their failures.

Boston lost the American League East and the AL Championship Series to Tampa in 2008. New York failed to even qualify for the playoffs. Yet, here I am, touting both as the kings of the hill with no reason except offseason headlines.