MLB

When the baseball starts back up tomorrow, there are going to be all kinds of storylines to follow.

Can Albert Pujols win the first Triple Crown since 1967?

Will the trading of Roy Halladay change the landscape of the National League pennant race?

The second half of the 2009 season for the Baltimore Orioles isn’t necessarily about wins and losses, but it is about changing a negative aura that has been more than a decade in the making.

Baltimore has posted a winning mark in the second half of the season only three times since 1998 and not since 2004.

But the struggles have gone beyond just registering losing seasons. Almost every year, the Orioles have sleep walked through the last two months of the season.   

I like to do this thing every year called the MLB Non-Star team.

And it seems as if every year, my criteria and make-up for the team changes slightly.

There remains one constant, though.

Pick players who didn't make the All-Star team.

In this case, I'm picking players who didn't make my own All-Star team.

Think about the mystique of leftfield at Fenway. Punctuated by the famous and historic 37 foot tall, 310 foot deep wall, the Green Monster.
Some of the greatest players to play the game. Williams. Yaz. Manny. Those are just three of the precious few who have had the pride and privalige of playing leftfield at Fenway Park for the Boston Red Sox.

Hey, Mets fans! Guess what?

"Who's your daddy?"

Pedro Martinez is in the process of finalizing a one-year contract with the Mets most hated rival, the Philadelphia Phillies, in hopes that he can not only prove to all of Major League Baseball, but to the Mets, that he still has something left in that golden right arm. 

On Tuesday, July 14th, Major League Baseball hosted its 80th All-Star game in St. Louis, Missouri. On hand were some of the St. Louis Cardinals legends, guys like Lou Brock, Red Schoendeinst, Bruce Sutter, Ozzie Smith, Bob Gibson and Stan Musial.

As the unending pageantry of the All-Star pregame show continues its free-fall from glitzy longing for past glories to sob story shlock, I think it's high time to take a look back at the first half of the season that was for yours, mine, and our Colorado Rockies.

On May 27, when the Rockies record stood at 18-28 and the team had just suffered through a, well, insufferable three-game sweep at the hands of the Dodgers, the outlook appeared a bit grim for the boys in the purple pinstripes.

Hopefully, you all remember the classic Sportscenter segment that always aired near the end of the show. It was called "Did You Know." It featured some statistical anomaly that occurred during the day or sometimes took notice of some historical achievement. Well, here's my All-Star version, with a bias towards the Orioles. These "did you know" questions cover the big league club, as well as their minor league affiliates. Here goes!

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