Opinion

Oh dear Lord, please say it isn't true.

According to the Florida Marlins' official website, the first 15,000 fans that come to Saturday's game versus the Tampa Bay Rays will be the proud owners of miniature Marlins vuvuzelas!

The team is calling them "air horns," but don't be fooled; they're vuvuzelas.

I have been watching much more baseball in the 2010 season then I have in any other year. This really should be a sin of the highest degree considering I call myself a Phillies fan, and all I watched was their 2 World Series runs, previous to this year.

The reason I choose to write on the topic of shortstops is it seems to be the most argued on and most talked about position. Aside from the few perfect games that have been pitched, but generally speaking, this is a very heated topic.

People can keep telling themselves "oh, it's only one game," but soon the doubters will have to accept the fact that the New York Mets are a legitimate threat in 2010.

They shut out the Yankees for their third straight victory over their cross-town rivals on Friday night, and the Mets are putting more weight behind the idea that their road sweeps in Baltimore and Cleveland were no fluke.

This current Chicago Cubs team has shown the unremarkable ability to lose in many different ways, most often due to a lack of so-called clutch hitting.

And yes, this team has certainly had its share of bullpen issues along the way, just to add insult to injury.

But one thing has remained constant throughout the Jim Hendry era: a lack of fundamental baseball.

Remember when we blamed Dusty Baker for a lack of attention to fundamentals as his teams kicked around the ball and couldn't ever seem to do the little things that win games?

I was married on May 31, 2008, the same day Manny Ramirez clubbed his 500th home run at Camden Yards in Baltimore.

For that reason, it’s one of those baseball moments forever ingrained in my mind, as the replay was still dancing across the televisions in the hotel bar as our wedding party meandered in.

That historic feat took place in the same stadium that, barely more than two weeks earlier, Ramirez high-fived a fan sitting beyond the left field wall.

While turning a double play.

The Mets and the Yankees are rivals by geography, they have to be, Queens vs. the Bronx. And as the Subway series moves crosstown to Yankee Stadium, it's time to take a look at the backbone of each of these two teams.

Derek Jeter and David Wright, the faces of the Yankees and Mets, are two outstanding men on the field and off.

Despite the uniforms that they put on each day, Jeter and Wright don't share a heated rivalry, like Roger Clemens and Mike Piazza had going.

With the Arizona Diamondbacks sitting at 26-41 and 12.5 games out of 1st place in the NL West, it is obvious that they will be sellers when the trade deadline arrives. The Diamondbacks have already started trading players. They swapped Connor Jackson for minor league reliever Sam Demel on July 15th.

Are the Reds really in this for the long haul?

The calender says it's mid-June and the Reds occupy the top of the NL Central. This is uncharted territory for a team that is emerging from the "lost decade."

Typically the injuries begin to pile up, and the Reds begin to fold. This year features more of the same injury problems (Homer Bailey, Ryan Hannigan, Chris Dickerson, Mike Lincoln, and Edinson Volquez), but the team has stayed afloat.

The difference?

Veterans such as Scott Rolen and Orlando Cabrera.

A Phillies fan leafing through his Philadelphia Inquirer on May 23 would have seen his team sitting atop the NL East with a 26-16 record—the best in the NL. The Phillies had a fairly comfortable 3.5-game lead on the second-place Atlanta Braves, and that was only after the Tomahawks had amassed a five-game winning streak.

The Phillies were the all-but unanimous favorites to win the division, if not the pennant, for the third year in a row. Nothing had happened in the team's first 42 games to change that.

The Mets are the hottest team in baseball right now, finishing their second consecutive sweep on the road. The Mets had been struggling for most of the season on the road, not even being able to win a series before sweeping through Baltimore and Cleveland.

The Mets have been doing everything right, getting great pitching, fielding, and hitting. They have been hustling, getting key hits, and adding on extra runs when needed.