NEW Tuesday Quick Hitters

DE Jovan Belcher is a finalist for the Buck Buchanan Award. The Buck Buchanan Award is presented annually to the nation’s outstanding Division I FCS (formerly Division I-AA) college football defensive player.

The University of Maine announced all tickets purchased in advance for UMaine vs University of New Hampshire, Saturday November 22 will be $5.00. The #17 Black Bears will be fighting for the CAA North Division Championship and a playoff birth against the #11 UNH Wildcats. Take the trip to Orono…it will be worth it. If you can’t make it. The Central Maine Sports Blog will be blogging LIVE from Morse Field at Alfond Stadium beginning at 11AM Saturday.

The Milwaukee Brewers are about to decide Orr’s Island native Mark Rogers future.

The Boston Bruins used Tim Thomas’ acrobatics to defeat the Toronto Maple Leafs 3 – 2. The Bruins stand atop the Northeast Division with 26 points, and 3rd overall in the NHL.

Kevin Garnett will miss tonights game against the New York Knicks due to suspension.

Tuesday-7/31/07

The MLB non-waiver trade deadline is at 4pm est today, I will be on until 5 trying to keep things updated as fast as I can. Things we know right now….
-The Octavio Dotel to Atlanta deal is not done yet, and may not be. Looks like someone jumped the gun on that one. www.MLBtraderumors.com is reporting that the deal was Kyle Davies for Dotel. Kind of surprised Dayton Moore hasn’t gone for that already…
-Eric Gagne will be the biggest name bandied about, and Gordon Edes of the Boston Herald thinks the Sox are in the lead. Two problems with that include the Sox unwillingness to trade any of their good prospects for him and that Gagne has a no trade veto in effect for Boston. I personally think they are longshots, but that is just me.
-Joe Blanton was nearly traded to the Dodgers last night, but although the package they offered was pretty good, it wasn’t quite up to Billy Beane’s standards, at least for now. This could be a deal like the Teixeira to Atlanta one, where Beane takes the Jon Daniels approach and makes sure this is the best offer out there.
-Thank god Peter Gammons was able to recover from brain surgery last year. Not only because he seems like a good man and is pretty knowledgeable, but if I had had to go through another trade deadline with Steve Phillips being the main guy I would have lost it. If Phillips actually thinks a trade is good or was good, would a GM have the right to change his mind? This is like that episode of Seinfeld when George does everything the opposite of how he would normally do it. If gm’s around baseball did this, I don’t think a single one of them would get fired.

Watched two great games last night in Blue Jays-D’Rays and Angels-Mariners. The early game was pretty good in a sense that it was fairly well pitched, the D’Rays came back in the late innings to tie it up at 4. Both teams had their chances late, with the Rays’ Brendan Harris getting thrown out at home when John McDonald kept a ball form going to the outfield. Apparently the Rays gave Harris the green light because Carl Crawford, who had come into the game to pinch run, was due up next and was still battling a sore wrist. The Jays loaded them up in the top of the 11th but couldn’t push one across, which is an amazing feat against the Rays pen. Crawford of course led off the bottom of the inning with an opposite field shot to win it, so apparently the wrist wasn’t too bad.

Angels-Mariners was highlighted by the pitching duel between Kelvim Escobar, who went the distance for the Halos, and Miguel (Bernie Williams long lost twin brother) Batista. Batista was bailed out in the fourth when with the bases loaded and two out, Vlad Guerrero hit a screaming liner into left that Raul Ibanez was just able to keep from hitting the ground. The Angels never really mounted another threat. The interesting part of this game was watching fans making signs imploring M’s broadcaster Mike Blowers to send them rally fries (have no idea what that’s all about). Two 12 year-olds ended up getting them in the 8th inning, apparently paid for by FSN Northwest. They should do this for Sox games and Jerry Remy could send the winners down a pack of Marlboro Reds. (Rally Smokes anyone?)

Saw Roger Clemens At+T cell phone commercial last night, the dropped call one where he asks his wife if it’s ok to come back and play. Freakin hilarious.

I wonder how many frequent flier miles Erin Andrews has racked up. She is everywhere. That’s not a bad thing either.

A quick hit on the Kevin Garnett trade. It’s expected to be finalized today or tomorrow and should include Ryan Gomes and two #1 picks on top of the base deal reported yesterday. Apparently the only thing holding it up is the extension talks between Boston and Garnett’s agent Andy Miller. It’s going to be nice to have the Celts relevant again.

RIP Bill Walsh, a man who changed the game of football as we know it and by all accounts was a great person as well. I watched the America’s Game on the 88 49ers, and he came off very well in that, not only as a coach but as a person. Condolences to not only the Walsh family, but the Stanford and 49er families he left behind as well.

A Blog’s Resurrection-Semi Daily Postings and thoughts Start Today!

On a Monday in which the headlines were not all about Mike Vick’s kennel club and Tim Donaghy’s penchant for picking overs, I thought it might be time to bring the blog back to semi-regularity and respectability. The MLB Trade deadline is tomorrow, I will be posting links to the sites that first report the trades if you need more info than what I post here. Also news out of Boston that the Celtics and T-Wolves yelled “clear” and electric-chest-paddled the Kevin Garnett trade talks back to life. MLB trade stuff first.

Mark Teixeira is going to be a member of the Atlanta Braves. The trade consists of Teixeira and reliever Ron Mahay going to the Braves for Jarrod Saltalamacchia(that is way easier to spell than Mientkiewicz) and three minor league prospects, two of which are pitchers. The Fort Worth Star Telegram reported this first (amazingly beating ESPN to the punch, lol) http://www.star-telegram.com/sports/story/185662.html, so they get the credit here. Probably the best deal Texas could make at this point, as they probably didn’t want to send Teixeira to the Angels and face him 19 times a year.

Gordon Edes of the Boston Globe is reporting that the Red Sox and White Sox are preparing to swap Wily Mo Pena and probably a minor league pitcher (although there is rumor that Manny Delcarmen could be involved) to the ChiSox for Jermaine Dye. Details can be found here –http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/extras/extra_bases/2007/07/dye_chances_pre.html
Still not sure what this does for Boston. Dye isn’t a real strong bench player type, and it almost admits that signing JD Drew this offseason hasn’t worked out. It makes me wonder if the Sox may have a deal in place to move Coco Crisp for a bullpen arm, and they are planning on moving Drew to center, putting Dye in right and calling up Ellsbury to be the 4th outfielder. That is just speculation on my part, but keep in mind when the Red Sox make trades, they are usually trading for one thing to replace something else they haven’t traded yet. (Update 7-30-2007 3:23 pm est-Edes is now saying that the Red Sox cooled on the deal once Kenny Williams insistance on Delcarmen or Justin Masterson didn’t die down, so this one looks like it is on the back burner for now).

So far not alot of other deals that are close, other than the Eric Gagne sweepstakes (supposedly the Yankees are the front-runners, but only if Texas stops demanding Melky Cabrera). I haven’t seen much to any Griffey or Dunn rumors. Kyle Lohse and Jose Contreras don’t really get my blood boiling all that much either. It would be nice to see the Yankees get rid of Kyle (I call him “specs”)Farnsworth in another addition by subtraction move.

On to the NBA, where although not a ton of stuff has been reported so far today , but yesterday(and this morning) draftexpress.com (http://draftexpress.com/blogs.php?blogid=8) broke the news that Kevin Garnett may have changed his mind about not coming to Boston after all, and that the Celts and Wolves were close to a deal that would send Al Jefferson, Theo Ratliff, Sebastian Telfair (and presumably his collection of assorted handguns) and Gerald Green to the Wolves for Garnett. Brian Scalabrine and next year’s first rounder have been mentioned as well, as Garnett has a trade kicker in his contract that will bring his total cap figure this year to over 23 million. Reasons for the change of heart haven’t been explained but something tells me the Celtics draft night exodus of Wally Szczerbiak might have changed KG’s mind about heading to Beantown. I hope Michael Wilbon doesn’t write another article about Boston’s penchant for racism that gets KG to change his mind again, because this would be a really good thing basketball here in the northeast. I also find it extremely coincidental that this news comes over a week and half after the Tim Donaghy scandal and that there really hasn’t been any other transaction news during that time. Convenient for the NBA? Probably. I also think that if the Celtics make a triumphant return to the NBA Finals it might help those sorry NBA Finals ratings last spring. Think a Celtics/Suns finals might get some people interested in the NBA again?