Thanks to everyone who has visited our site over the course of the first year. We all greatly appreciate it, especially myself. But now, over the off-season we're hopefully going to be launching an entertainment site similar to this one. And in order to ensure its quality, the hardballreport.com site will be down until the beginning of next season. We haven't been writing as much lately because, after all, this is a side project and all the time needed to make this site truly exceptional was taken up in other places (school, presidential campaigns, etc.). So please come back late next March for more baseball news and be on the lookout for entertainment report sometime in the new year.
If you turned off Game 5 of the Rays-Red Sox series after it appeared that the Rays would advance easily to the World Series, you weren't the only ones. I, someone who writes about baseball and blogs about it with greater frequency, turned it off and watched Life on Mars. The facts, though, is that the Red Sox came back against a shaky Tampa Bay bullpen with timely hitting and finally a big hit by David Ortiz. I won't go through the entire comeback - for that head over to ESPN.
The Padres seem pretty sure they're going to suck next year, which can be seen by the general youth movement that the organization is moving towards. As well as the fact that the front office has been shopping 2007 Cy Young award winner Jake Peavy to several well-off teams. The five NL teams that Peavy is interested in includes the Cardinals, Cubs, Braves, Dodgers and Astros.
During the postseason, youth is usually seen as a weak point for any team trying to compete for the World Series. The exact opposite has proven true for the Rays. Evan Longoria and B.J. Upton, both under age 25, have been playing well beyond their years so far this postseason. Longoria has tied a rookie record with four postseason homers and Upton is quickly closing in on the all time playoff record with 5 of his own. The Rays are currently leading the Red Sox 2-1 in the ALCS, and these two emerging stars are a big reason for that.
If you've been living under a rock, or maybe solely going to this site for your baseball news, then you're probably the only people who don't know that the Championship Series matchups are set. In the National League, the Dodgers will be going up against the Phillies. The Red Sox will go up against the upstart Rays over in the AL.
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