Flotsam and Jetsam

Miscellaneous thoughts and observations.

Maybe nobody was happier with the ending to The Sopranos than the guys from Journey whose song Don't Stop Believing was used to end the series. Interesting point from the story about how the last scene of the show may echo the last verse of the song: "Some will win, some will lose. Some were born to sing the blues. Oh, the movie never ends. It goes on and on and on and on ..." (HT Steve Silver)... The top 2 ERA's for starters in the AL both belong to members of the Oakland A's (Dan Haren at 1.58 and Chad Gaudin at 2.43). In fact the A's have 4 starters in the top 20 for ERA and they also have Rich Harden coming off the DL soon. This is the time of year that Billy Beane usually makes a move to put his team in the hunt for the playoffs. Right now they need a big bat for the line-up and the A's have the chips to deal to make that happen. Don't count the A's out of anything. They are 8-2 in their last 10 games and while Yankee fans are celebrating making it to .500 - the A's are already 5 games over .500 at 34-29 (which puts them 3 games back in the AL Wildcard race)... I think the real reason that the end of the Sopranos faded to black in the finale is because Tony held up a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad and HBO had to edit it out... Todd Helton was the 8th pick in the 1995 MLB draft. Darin Erstad went first to the Angels. The Red Sox picked pitcher Andy Yount with the 15th pick while Roy Halladay went two picks later to the Blue Jays. I bet the Red Sox wish they could have a do-over on that Andy Yount pick...