Here are the most compelling matchups, stories, and personalities in Major League Baseball for the coming weekend.
10. Jose Bautista's Incredible June (TOR-LAA)
Bautista now has 14 home runs in June, which ties the American League record from the past 20 years (thanks, ESPN Stats & Information!). The all-time AL record is held by a fellow named Rudy York, who hit 18 with the Detroit Tigers in August 1937. He was probably juicing. But Bautista is theoretically in range. Four home runs over a weekend series? Why not? Except, wait ... June has only 30 days! Injustice! Why, June, why?! That means Sunday's game won't count. But if he hits his 18th home run on July 1, I'm petitioning Bud Selig to add an asterisk to York's record, Ford Frick style.
Here are the most compelling matchups, stories, and personalities in Major League Baseball for the coming weekend.
One last weekend of interleague play before it's back to outerleague business …
10. Catching Up on East vs. East
When last we checked in, the two best divisions in baseball had faced off 27 times in the interleague hiatus, with the AL East holding a slim 14-13 lead over the NL East. Over the past week, the gap has widened. It's now 29-22 in favor of the American Leaguers after a dominant seven-day stretch that saw the Yankees sweep the Nationals in a battle of the top dogs. On June 7, before this whole thing began, I wrote a piece speculating that if the AL East could finish interleague play with all five teams above .500, there was no good reason to think they couldn't maintain that historic pace for an entire season. Now here we are, three days from that end point, and what's the worst record in the division? Toronto, at 35-34. They've survived and prospered against the other best division in baseball, and theoretically it will only get easier from here. We finish this week with a solid five-against-five, 15 games pitting East against East in a last hurrah that I'm starting to think nobody cares about but me.
In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports on Thursday.
The New Orleans Saints have named top assistant Joe Vitt interim head coach during Sean Payton's year-long suspension, despite the fact that Vitt will serve a six-game suspension of his own to start the season. During those six games, the Saints will be led by offensive line coach Aaron Kromer, who is serving a four-game suspension for watching cable television (Bridezillas, specifically) in the film room. For the first four games, Saints kicking adviser Marcus McCovey will take over, despite his two-game suspension for rhyming Sean Payton with "Sean Satan" in a Skype call with his daughter. The first two Saints games will be coached by New Orleans citizen Ernest Lambreaux, who is serving a one-game suspension for plotting to coach without a proper coaching license. For that first game only, Russian emigre and renowned castrato animal impersonator Gustaf Karpov will head up the Saints, though he's suspended for a quarter because he won't stop calling chocolate doughnuts "meatless pirozhkis" during strategy meetings. In the first quarter of the first game, the Saints plan to just fumble the ball and run into each other until someone dies.
In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports over the weekend.
Usain Bolt, Olympic gold medalist and the heavy favorite in the 100m finals at the World Championships, was disqualified at the event on Sunday, after a false start. But you have to wonder: did Bolt really move early, or did he just hear the gun faster than everyone else?
