Rankings/List

Is it just me, or is Bon Jovi getting annoying?

Once the kings of pop metal, the band that serenades us during postseason commercial breaks has become a watered-down country-rock group with none of the edge they used to have.

With that in mind, here are 10 songs that could have been the anthems of the 2009 baseball season.

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Let put it simple. Albert Pujols was the man this past 2009 season.

Pujols undoubtedly should win his third National League Most Valuable Player award. Probably the only question is if he will be selected unanimously.

The New York Yankees are the best team in baseball—for the 2009 season (as we predicted in our World Series Preview ). But is this one of the best teams in baseball history? Is it even one of the best teams in Yankees history? What about this decade?

We all know that picking a top ten list of players in any sport must contain some subjectivity. Sure, one could simply use statistics to support their choices, but how do you compare the relative worth of a pitcher versus a hitter, for example?

Players we remember from our childhoods often have special meaning for us, and it can be difficult to block out those emotions when rating players on your favorite team. We may have looked up to these players as heroes at the time.

Well, we are older now and smart enough to understand that you shouldn't use athletes as role models.

In the first of what we hope will be an annual tradition, Stadium Journey is happy to announce its rankings for the best baseball stadium of 2009. Rankings are based on the FANFARE scoring system that takes into account Food & Beverage, Atmosphere, Neighborhood, Fans, Access, and REturn on investment. Click on the name of each stadium to see the full review.

As the A's continue to build what they (and all of us fans) hope is going to be a dynasty that peaks in 3-7 years from now, the core of the team is going to be the starting pitching, which has been the symbol of the A's since Barry Zito, Mark Mulder, and Tim Hudson were on the staff.

However, many of the young future cornerstones, especially Trevor Cahill and Vince Mazzaro, struggled in 2009.

The A's are presumably looking to improve next year, as the "building" begins to take hold.

The 1999 Cleveland Indians had one of the best lineups in the history of Major League Baseball.

They had incredible individual accomplishments. Three sluggers combined for 108 homers. Four hitters had RBIs in the triple-digits. Five players scored 100 or more runs.

They became the first team in nearly 50 years to score 1,000 runs in a season.

So, I’ve been trying this week to actually write some insightful columns and conduct some interviews, both for the folks over at CBS and here. In addition to that, I’ve been accumulating a tremendous amount of notes that I’ve slipped into various columns or interviews.

However, not everything made the cut, or fit, or whatever. So, just for the sake of having everything in one place, or in case this is the only Web site you go to on your Internet machine, let’s review the events from the last few days:

You have to go back a good long ways to find a guy who made as big a jump from nobody to somebody like Pedro Florimon Jr. did in 2009. For starters, the scrawny shortstop didn't even make the mentionables in Baseball America's 2009 Prospect Handbook.

He also came into the season coming off a year in which he hit .223 with zero home runs, only 27 walks and nearly 100 strikeouts.

The New York Yankees are back in the World Series for the first time in six years. For those not familiar with the American League champions, River & Sunset has provided a brief rundown of each player.