{"id":499,"date":"2008-07-25T18:27:13","date_gmt":"2008-07-25T23:27:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/just-before-i-go-outside\/"},"modified":"2008-07-25T18:27:13","modified_gmt":"2008-07-25T23:27:13","slug":"just-before-i-go-outside","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/just-before-i-go-outside-499\/","title":{"rendered":"Just Before I Go Outside"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s hot and sunny here (a rare occurrence this summer) and I am off to an outdoor music festival in just a few minutes, so I&#8217;ll apologize in advance if my concentration has been more focused at other times. I like you all, and I appreciate that you read what I write, but you don&#8217;t hold a candle to beer, music and sunshine and I&#8217;m not going to apologize for that. Before I go, though, I thought that I would share a few of the things that are bouncing through my sporting mind today:<\/p>\n<p> 1. Brett Favre as a Jet makes me happy. The green New Yorkers have reportedly been given permission to talk to Favre. He&#8217;d be a good fit. I don&#8217;t love their receiving situation at all, and I am desperate for the AFC East to be more competitive than it currently appears that it will be. Let&#8217;s get it done soon so we can quit talking about this endless story.<\/p>\n<p> 2. There is an outstanding day of horse racing from Saratoga tomorrow. I will be writing more about this tomorrow morning, but there are four very interesting races in a row from the world&#8217;s greatest race track, and it appears as if ABC is going to show us all four of them starting at 4:00 p.m. EST. Brilliant.<\/p>\n<p> 3. Big Papi returns to action tonight. With the trade deadline just around the corner, this is a more significant addition than Boston could make through any transaction. If Ortiz is even halfway healthy then this gives Boston a much needed boost to try to take advantage of a Tampa Bay team that is looking more mortal and is suddenly truly awful at hitting with men in scoring position.<\/p>\n<p> 4. Jeff Samardzija was called up by the Cubs. How smart does the former Notre Dame receiver look now? He got a massive signing bonus, he&#8217;s a pro now, and he didn&#8217;t have to live through the disgrace that is the recent Charlie Weis era<\/p>\n<p> 5. AFL loses commissioner. David Baker, the commissioner of the Arena Football League, resigned suddenly today after 12 years on the job. The move came two days before the ArenaBowl. I only have one real response to this &#8211; the AFL stillexists? Talk about a league that has failed to impact the public consciousness to any real extent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s hot and sunny here (a rare occurrence this summer) and I am off to an outdoor music festival in just a few minutes, so I&#8217;ll apologize in advance if my concentration has been more focused at other times. I like you all, and I appreciate that you read what I write, but you don&#8217;t [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[132,135],"tags":[327,248,326,325],"class_list":["post-499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nfl-handicapping","category-sports-handicapping","tag-afl","tag-brett-favre","tag-david-ortiz","tag-jeff-samardzija"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}