Sports Catch Up

I haven't written about sports in a while, so here goes.

On Friday I went to the Angels' game with some buddies (and one of them brought his 8 y.o. daughter). I was a bit late because the HB's theater rehearsal got moved and neither my wife or I knew about it, and Friday night traffic completely sucked. But, I met up with them at the bar, had a jager-bomb and a beer and was ready to go.

Right now the Angels are just plugging along. They aren't hitting a ton (Guerrero was in the middle of a 5-game hitless streak) and they're missing two of their top pitchers (Lackey and Escobar). But, lo and behold, they're in first place. I think they are going to stay there for a while. They lost the game I went to (though they've won the three since). But, a good time was had by all.

The Lakers are just smoking. They blew out Denver in the first round of the NBA playoffs and took Utah's best shot (literally) last night and still won. Kobe (soon to be officially named MVP of the league) hit 19 free throws in a row and everyone else chipped in. If the Jazz thought they'd be able to out-muscle the Lakers, they were right (they had a huge rebounding advantage). But, it didn't matter because the purple and gold got some easy hoops and defended well. The Lakers won't get as many foul calls in the next game, but that works to their advantage as they'll have a better offensive flow. I'm thinking they'll win the series 4-1.

I'm not much of a horse racing fan and don't even pay that much attention to the Kentucky Derby anymore. However, this year's was an attention grabber with Big Brown winning going away and Eight Bells being euthanized on the track immediately following the race. I'm not a big animal vet, but when two horses with great bloodlines dies unexpectedly within a few years (see Barbaro), something has gotta be up with the breeding. Not enough variance in the genes? A bad one becoming dominate? Horse racing has enough problems without its potential stars suffering mortal wounds on the track.