Friday’s Den: Happy Opening Day, everyone…..

13) We start today with a hard-hitting news story; a guy in Las Vegas walked into an adult toy store, and walked out with a 3-foot-tall dildo that weighs 50 pounds. Didn’t pay, just grabbed it and walked out of the store. Hmmm……

The guy put the dildo in his car and took off; this is grand larceny— the dildo is apparently worth around $1,200. Who knew?

Feel free to insert your own jokes here. I’m moving on…….

12) Couple of hours before the 2020 season started, major leagues announced that the playoffs would be expanded from 10 to 16 teams, for this year only.

Top two teams in all six divisions will make it, plus the next two best records in each league. There will be no first round byes, but in the first round, the #1 seed will have all the series games in their home ballpark.

11) Bronx 4, Washington 1 (5)— Rain-shortened season opener; neither team went to their bullpen. Giancarlo Stanton hit a 459-foot homer, Gerrit Cole won his New York debut.

Nationals’ star Juan Soto tested positive for the coronavirus, is out indefinitely.

10) Dodgers 8, Giants 1— Clayton Kershaw was a late scratch with a bad back; he is on the IL. Dustin May threw 4.1 innings as a late replacement.

Over last 13 years, San Francisco has started 13 different left fielders on Opening Day.

9) Here is how rosters work this year; for the first two weeks, each team will have 30 players, for the next two weeks, 28 players. Then it pares down to 26, which it would have been all season, had this been a normal season.

8) Ray Fosse mentioned on the A’s game the other night how Carl Yastrzemski played the entire 1970 All-Star game at first base. Thats the whole 12 innings.

Starters don’t do stuff like that anymore; now Yaztrzemski’s grandson Mike plays CF for the Giants- he hit .272 with 21 homers last year. Somehow, the Orioles gave up on them even though they were a terrible team, and the Giants pounced. He hit .272 with 21 homers LY.

7) Over/under in Las Vegas on Astros’ hitters being hit by pitches this year: 41.5.

6) Minnesota Twins have lost 16 consecutive playoff games, which is a record; last time they won a playoff game was in 2004.

5) Watching Padres-Angels exhibition game the other night, and there is a guy sitting by himself in the right field bleachers, going over notes. Only person in the stands.

Turns out it was Tony LaRussa, who works for the Angels now as a consultant.

4) Seattle’s new NHL team will be called the Kraken; they begin play in 2021-22.The kraken is a legendary cephalopod-like sea monster in Scandinavian folklore. A very large sea monster. The logo and colors looked pretty cool, at first glance.

3) Actors and their roles; there are 26 actors who have appeared in 6+ episodes of the Showtime series Billions, who also appeared in at least one episode of Law and Order. There are 16 other actors from Billions who appeared in either Law and Order: SVU, or Law and Order: Criminal Intent.

It is good to know people, make an impression; that’s how you you get hired for more jobs.

2) USC Trojans are 0-7 ATS in their last seven bowl games, even though they won three of those seven games. Last time USC covered a bowl game was in 2009, beating Boston College 24-13 (-7) in the Emerald Bowl.

1) NBA teams are scrimmaging for the next few days; real games start on Thursday. Was fun watching teams scrimmage, though they looked more like real games, seeing how they wore their real uniforms and all. 

Author: Armadillo Sports

I've been involved in sports my whole life, now just write about them. I like to travel, mostly to Las Vegas- they have gambling there.