2014 MLB Preview: NL West

Welcome to our first divisional preview of the senior circuit, the quietly compelling NL West. The Dodgers have the most star power and the most polarizing player in the game (Yasiel Puig), but each of the other four teams has a guy who has been a serious MVP candidate within the past two to three years (Buster Posey, Chase Headley, Paul Goldschmidt, and Carlos Gonzalez) and other talented players. The Giants could use a bounce-back from their non-Madison Bumgarner pitchers and a big year from Pablo Sandoval. One of these years all the young talent in San Diego is going to jell. Arizona backs up Goldschmidt with the grittiest bunch of scrappy ballplayers in the league, and Colorado hopes for full seasons from Gonzalez and Troy Tulowitzki along with a rotation that can at least survive in Denver's thin air.

2014 MLB Preview: AL West

Opening Day is creeping up on us fast, which is why I want to give all you baseball fans out there a giant six-part preview, with one column for each division, starting with the American League West. Thanks to Seattle's bold play for Robinson Cano over the winter, this division looks like it should be the most entertaining in baseball in 2014, with four very different teams all gunning for a division title and only the Astros looking primed to develop some young players and lose one hundred games again (speaking of which, my good friend Keith Hankins has developed some excellent proposals to limit the appeal of tanking for MLB and NBA teams). Without further ado...

Wild First Weekend

Wow. That was one hell of a first weekend, and I'm going to assume that not only are you out of the running for Warren Buffett's billion dollars, you're also out of the running for your office/online pool unless you are a) incredibly lucky or b) Nostradamus. Double-digit seeds won ten games (discounting the four they won in the opening round on Tuesday and Wednesday), and three of them (Stanford, Dayton, and Tennessee) will play in the Sweet 16. Six games required overtime to complete, and a whopping twenty-two of the fifty-two games played so far have been decided by single digits, nine of them by a single possession. Six of the twelve highest-seeded teams will be watching the rest of the tournament from their couches. Let's recap some stories.

Influential Coaches #3: Robert Joseph Ahola

Previous entries:
Series Overview
January: Paul Westphal
February: Tara Gallagher

"Your mothers left you a long time ago. I'm your mother now!"

I suppose that IF there is one quote with which to sum up Robert, the longtime pro bono rugby coach at Pepperdine (he's the old man kneeling in the center of the blog's background photo), that would be it. He was tough, demanding, hilarious, and occasionally nonsensical. But I don't think that there is any coach I have ever been around who has as clearly demonstrated his sheer love for the game as Robert, and that infectious enthusiasm sustained the Pepperdine program through some lean years until a mini-breakthrough, which happily coincided with my senior season, turned it into something of a southern California powerhouse.

March Madness Preview

It is once again time for the best three weeks on the sports calendar, and as such, time to spill some pixels about this year's tournament, which has a lot of promise. There are maybe as many as fourteen or fifteen teams that have the ability to go the distance, although each of them has a fatal flaw or two that could just as likely crop up somewhere and doom them to an early exit. Let's get to the regions and see what there is to see.

A Pioneer Passes

Baseball lost one of its most significant non-playing contributors yesterday when Dr. Frank Jobe, longtime medical adviser for the Los Angeles Dodgers and the original developer of what we know as Tommy John surgery, passed away at the age of 88. Dr. Jobe retired from his everyday practice in 2008, but remained on the Dodgers' payroll as an adviser through three ownership changes and several front office overhauls. He was honored by the Hall of Fame last summer for his work, although not given the plaque he deserves for saving countless careers and changing the game more than any other non-player except for Marvin Miller. His story, of course, is intertwined heavily with that of John himself, the pitcher who gambled on what at the time was a shoestring chance of saving his pitching career.

Influential Coaches #2: Tara Gallagher

Previous entries:

Series Overview
January: Paul Westphal

I spent more hours under Tara's tutelage than under anyone else during my professional career, and it's not particularly close. I was her assistant for four and a half years with both the middle school basketball and softball teams, the junior varsity and later varsity basketball teams, and the varsity softball team. She was an extremely dedicated and creative coach who worked extremely hard to get the most out of what were, under any objective analysis, some fairly limited basketball rosters (in our five years together on the bench, we only had three players for whom basketball was their primary year-round sport).