Jeff pointed me last night to this interesting baseball article wherein Stephen Cannella wonders what if. What if there were no such thing as free agency or trading players? What if each team was stuck with the players they drafted, what would the teams look like. He's done the hard work and shows the lineups - every one is an All-Star line up, it's amazing. Jeff and I decided Oakland, Washington, Houston, and Seattle were the best looking teams, but it was not easy to choose. Then we got the idea to use the video game's, MVP 2005, "Manage Roster" option to actually create these teams and to pit them against one another to see what would happen. He selected the Mariners and I went with the Astro's, both teams complete with retro uniforms. Well, the first inning got off with a bang as Ichiro ran around the bases for Jeff faster than I knew what was happening, making the score 1-0. In the bottom of the second I tied it up with an RBI triple from Bobby Abreu. 1-1. By the 5th, it was 2-2, neck and neck. Then, in the bottom of the 7th, I use a Biggio to pinch hit for Johann Santana, and he hits a 3 run blast to right field, proving that Ichiro cannot, in fact, fly. That ended up being the final score, 5-2, so without that big homreun, it was even. It was a really fun experiment and we plan on trying the A's against the Nationals next. If anyone else out there experiments with this, let me know what happens, it's kinda fun!

-R