Be careful what you wish for

This and that from here and there .....

I wonder who will be with the Houston Astros longer, Lance Berkman or GM Ed Wade.
Why is this relevant? Well, Berkman recently said that if he were GM he would explore trading any player on the roster, including himself. Wade responded with the typical "no issue" comment and joked that "I were the first baseman, I might want to be hitting .350 right now."
At 10-21 Houston is the worst team in the National League and if not for the Baltimore Orioles (9-23) they would be the Detroit Lions of MLB. They should be looking to trade away some salary and build for the future.
Berkman, by the way, is hitting .194 and has an on-base percentage of .296. At his current pace and based on the percentage of Astros games he has played now, Berkman has to get 153 hits the rest of the season to hit .350. The Astros have 131 games remaining so you do the math.
My vote goes to Wade.




Perfect game, perfectly empty stadium
If a pitcher threw a perfect game and nobody was there to see it would it still count? Well, ask Oakland A's pitcher Dallas Braden. The former 24th-round pick, who played for 8 minor league teams from 2004-2008 threw the 19th perfect game in Major League history in a 4-0 win over Tampa Bay.
A crowd of 35,067 -- all but 12,228 were dressed like empty seats -- witnessed the feat.
How pathetic is that? What a story he can tell his kids. He did the near-impossible and probably could hear the conversations going on in the stands at Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum throughout the game.
I love to dummy things down so consider this .....if every student enrolled in Centerville and Kettering city schools were to have gone to that game, they would have had 4,000 more people.
As of the 2008 figures, there are 404,155 in the City of Oakland.
Wonder what could be keeping fans away.
Anything you can do I can do betterSo one day after a 17-year-old ran on the field at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, a 34-year-old played copycat and rushed the field during a Phillies game. He wasn't tased like the 17-year-old so I guess the older trespasser knows best.

The funny thing is, a few hours away in Pittsburgh if that same thing happened at PNC Park, they would have chased the guy, given him a glove and forced him to play second base. My college buddy Dave Teeuwen, who works for USA Today suggested that on Facebook and I thought it was too funny not to share.
But seriously, what's gotten into people? TV stations don't show that kind of stuff on the air anymore. So running on the field won't get you on TV.
Well it will ... during the crime segment on the 11 p.m. news.

McBad?
I'm not one to listen to athletes bashing their former teammates when they have been traded or leave via free agency. But I'm just wondering if there might be something here.
Terrell Owens had some not-so-nice things to say about Donovan McNabb during and after his tenure with the Philadelphia Eagles.
OK, it's just T.O. being T.O.
But now receiver DeSean Jackson, one of the up-and-coming superstars in the NFL, has dissed McNabb, reportedly saying "I don't think we lost anything, even with McNabb being gone."
If one person says something you can dismiss it.
But two?
Hmmmm.