Welcome to 2008

I guess we forgot to tell all 5 of our readers that The Sports Hub actually takes the winter off just like MLB. We had our Winter Meetings, and Greech actually went down to the Dominican for TSH's version of Winter Ball...the blogging convention of Santo Domingo.

Since pitchers and catchers have reported, I guess it's time for us to restart the Hub. Since we last left you the Pats gave away a perfect season, the Mitchell Report came out, Clemens went to Congress, Sean attempted to give up texting, Johan Santana became a Met, and the Gauntlet came back to MTV. I guess I'll just throw together a random thoughts type of deal to catch up to the present:

-I'm over the Pats. I actually got over it about 2 days after the game when I realized pitchers and catchers were heading to Fort Myers. Bottom line is they choked away the perfect season. Plenty of chances to beat the Giants but they couldn't do it. I'm still not ready to live in a world where Eli Manning has a Super Bowl MVP, but I'm adapting day by day.

-The Mitchell Report came out and Jose Canseco wasn't happy with it. If you told me 10 years ago that Jose Canseco would be the man that exposed baseball's steroid problem, then complained about the investigation because it wasn't thorough enough, I just would have you-tubed the video of the homerun that bounced off his head and used that as Exhibit A as to why he's a moron. Now, I really don't know what to think of him. Someone replace John Kruk on Baseball Tonight with Canseco just to mix things up. OK I'm not sure where I was going with that; I guess I just hate Kruk and hope they fire him.

-Can someone find a way to get Harold Reynolds back in my everyday life during baseball season?

-Looks like Curt Schilling won't be available for a while and to tell you the truth I'm not even the least bit worried. Let's say we get him healthy by July. He's 10 times more valuable down the stretch than he is in April. Plus, we have plenty of arms to fill his role. Between Clay Buccholz and Julian Tavarez, I'm pretty sure we have 2 guys that are more than capable 5-starters.

-Everything I've read this winter says Manny Ramirez has been an absolute animal this winter with his workouts. A motivated Manny could be scary for the rest of baseball. If this guy comes into camp with an actual desire to play and keeps his concentration all year I think any stat line is possible. He could easily hit .400, 80 HR, 200 RBI. Of course, this is all assuming he doesn't get distracted by a beachball out in the bleachers because then all bets are off.

-Now onto more important things; The Gauntlet returned to MTV. Not sure who's watched it yet, but if Congress can investigate MLB they seriously need to start looking into a potential friendship between Brad, Danny, and Brian McNamee because those two had a more dramatic increase in size than anything that Barry Bonds ever did.

You're going to have to forgive me here. I'm already out of ideas. Let's just call this my first day of Spring Training. I'm working my way back into writer's shape. Give me a couple of weeks and I'll be back in shape and ready to go.

I'll have to work on some preseason predictions that we can look back at in October and say "wow, wtf was Danny thinking??"

So welcome back to the Hub. 2008 is the year we take off, guaranteed. As soon as Greech gets casted on Real World and stars in the next Inferno, we have a plan to expose the Challenges as Performance Enhancing Drug havens. Plus, I really think he could hook up with the smoking hot Asian girl Jamie...

Until next time, feel free to hit us up at thesportshub@gmail.com