Gilbert Arenas and Sharks

After he signed his new mega deal Gilbert Arenas said he was going to cut back on the little distractions that he is so prone to creating. At the time he claimed,

"Yeah, yeah, I know, I know, all the little things I do out there is gonna come to a halt. You know, but I think I'm up for the task. I just need to cut out some of the foolishness I do." - Gilbert Arenas

Well I don't even think it's been a month yet and Arenas is already living up to his quirky reputation. The latest piece of information is just too good. Here's a hint: it involves sharks. From Arenas' blog, by way of TrueHoop,

"I’ve been in love with fish tanks and sharks for a while. (And not just shark jokes.) I actually bough Ken Griffey Jr.’s old tank online and have that in my living room. I knew somebody who was selling it in Orlando. Actually, the company ended up buying it back from me and building me another one for the same price because the old one was too tall. It was like 10 feet tall and there was too much water pressure to have it in my living room, or whatever, so they build me one that was rounder and shorter. I’m going to have exotic fish in there, a couple sharks, some black tips, some bonnet heads … that’s my mild tank.

Then I have the tank in the grotto that’s going to have semi-aggressive fish like lemon and leopard and puffer fish and the fish with poisonous spikes that’s in Deuce Bigalow.

Then I’ll have my personal shark tank that’s going to be in my basement. My basement used to be my weight room but I’m converting it to a shark tank. I cut a whole wall out down there and replaced it with a 10,000 gallon shark tank. That’s going to be my aggressive tank, only filled with bullhead sharks. If anybody knows what a bullhead shark is, it’s the No. 1 killing shark in America. It can go in salt water and it can go in fresh water. I’m going to have a salt water tank so I can have my eels and my stingrays too.

I’m going to have three bullheads in there. I originally wanted six, but the guy who has to clean it once a week said that he’s not going to get in the tank with six of them, he’ll get in with three. Once they get big enough, I’ll have to get rid of them. The guy who cleans the tank actually goes and catches the sharks himself, because you know, these sharks you can’t just go buy, they’re illegal." - Gilbert Arenas

I encourage you to check out his blog for the rest. Oh yes there's more. He references Jaws and Cribs. Meanwhile, I maintain that if I had to be from any other part of the country and as a result blog about another team I would want to be from the DC area and focused on the Wizards from 2003 until whenever. As long as I didn't have to like the Baltimore Orioles or the Washington Redskins. Man I hate those teams. For some reason I'm cool with the Nationals though. Is there a lesson here? Definitely. I'm intrigued by anyone who blatantly talks about breaking the law on NBA.com.

MLB needs the ALL-Star Game, But should it?

The MLB just had it's ALL-Star game and Homerun Derby, which I only found the Homerun Derby entertaining when Josh Hamilton was trying to knock over the center field wall of Yankee Stadium by himself. But I find myself trying to figure out anything else that will be exciting for most baseball fans in the country from now until October. The fact is half of the 30 teams in the MLB already have no chance of making the playoffs and are already looking towards next year or worse 5 years away.

Many people blame this problem on there being 162 games in a baseball season, so each one has little meaning. Others blame it on teams financial situations, smaller market teams can't compete with the "big boys". I have a better solution to the problem and would make the game on September 15th between the KC Royals and Seattle Mariners worth paying attention to.

Major League Baseball needs to adopt a system similar to the English Premier League (or any of the top leagues in Europe). This would mean creating a drop zone in major league baseball. The two worst teams in the National League and American League would be relegated to the current triple A league, and the top 4 teams in triple A would be promoted to MLB. In order for this to happen the Triple A teams would have to be independently owned, and free from being a farm system for MLB teams and become a league of 12 "big market" or "potentially big market" cities. This would be your Las Vegas' of the United States. These teams would be able to give higher paid contracts to veterans a the end of the career unwilling to hang up their glove feeling they could still contribute (ala Ricky Henderson). They would also be able to "loan" developmental players from MLB teams in order to give them more experience. Of course the Triple A teams would have to pay their salary during their loan period.

The reason that this would be so successful is that it would make the owners of teams, such as the Pittsburgh Pirates, to stop treating their franchises as an investment. There would be much more to lose in not investing in their teams fully where as now they have nothing to lose besides fans. But more importantly it would create more interest in every game being played throughout the season! Games between the worst team in the NL and the 10th placed team would now be a lot more interesting and mean a lot more creating a scene like this:

A picture from Fulham's last game of the season where they avoided relegation

Instead of this:

An image from Monday, Sept. 24, 2007 of a game in Baltimore between the Baltimore Orioles and the Kansas City Royals

If the MLB developed a system like this the All Star Game would become a distraction from the passion of regular season game instead of an attraction needed in the middle of boring mid season MLB season where no games matter.