The second in a series of articles about fantasy sports will cover some of the tips that you should be aware of to possibly win your fantasy sports league.The first tip is to get to know the sport that you’ll be playing in a bit better. Look at the positions to be filled and look at the main stats. categories that are available to you. In a sport like baseball, hitting and pitching are key elements to help you win so you might want to focus on those positions before anything else. If it’s a sport like hockey, goals and assists are your main categories usually, so you may want to look at adding some snipers to your line up to help you gain more points. Also,be on the lookout at certain times for trades or free agents. Every league has their own deadlines set and you should be aware of this fact midway through the season.

Secondly, you should be aware of all of the stats. categories that are given to you in your league. If it’s a basic league, then you should focus on things like touchdowns, goals,baskets, etc. and look for scoring help. Otherwise, you should be aware of other categories that may seem hopeless to you, but may very well help your chances at winning your league. For instance, in hockey the ‘goon’ may seem like an undervalued commodity to you . Instead, a goon can definitely help you gain penalty minutes that can earn you valuable points if penalty minutes are a stats. in your league.

In baseball, scoring may seem like a high stats. to you but be aware that even in real life hitting is nothing without good pitching. A good starting rotation of pitching can take you to the promised land or break you even with a decent offensive ball club. In football, defense helps but receivers,running backs and quarterbacks lead the way for fantasy football so pick these guys often and early.

Another tip to follow is to keep track of your sport before your fantasy draft even begins. In football, is there going to be a quarterback controversy? Is the quarterback that you plan on picking even going to be the starting quarterback after training camp? Is that star receiver you plan on picking going to consider ending his lockout and returning to the team in time for the season to start or will he continue his holdout for more money? Will that star point guard in basketball decide to hang up the sneakers officially or will he return and decide to play for one final season?

These are all things that you should consider before drafting a player to your fantasy team. Another thing to look at are injuries. Is there a player that you want to pick that often gets injured? Is he worth the risk or should you choose someone potentially not as valuable to your team but that you know won’t get as injured often. Injuries play an important role in Fantasy Sports and unfortunately rely more on luck than on skills. So while you may wish your friends teammates good luck, secretly you’re hoping that they break a leg or get a concussion. It may sound mean but if money is involved the better the reason to think like that. So there’s just a few tips that I hope Fantasy Sports fans pick up on and hopefully will help them in the next fantasy sport to come around.

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There used to be a time when each part of the world had its own past time as far as sports were concerned. Europe would have football(soccer), Asia had Cricket, and other parts of the world like North America were more diversified in their interests(Hockey,Baseball,Basketball, American Football). But lately, I’ve noticed that restricting yourself to only one part of the world is simply not good enough for some owners anymore.

Sports franchises have learned that there is more money to be made by traveling overseas to help showcase their teams as well as their leagues. Whether or not this helps them in the long run is still questionable, but in the mean time let’s take a look at some sports franchises that have taken the plunge into marketing their teams on a worldwide basis.

The New York Yankees( United States)

It was inevitable that baseball’s most storied franchise would expand itself globally and what better of a place to start than in Tokyo,Japan. Baseball is just as much of a pastime in Japan as it is in America and is one of the only other places in the world to have its own professional baseball league. On March 30th, 2004, the Yankees opened up their season against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays to showcase to the fans of baseball the American way of playing baseball. This was the second time that MLB has played their opening game in Japan coming four years after the New York Mets played a pair of games against the Chicago Cubs.

It was also a chance for Japanese fans to see their hero, Hideki Matsui, play in Japan again as he left Japanese baseball to come and play for the Yankees. Many people might not know this but MLB has a long tradition with Japanese baseball dating all the way back to 1934 when a U.S. Major League All-Star Tour of Japan featured Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. Since then, Japanese baseball has flourished into its own league and has a similar skill level to that of MLB. It’s only recently though that MLB has used Japanese baseball as a marketing tool to showcase some of its franchises like the Yankees to the world. What’s next for MLB?

How about the World Baseball Classic which will begin in 2006 which will have several teams from different countries competing against one another to call themselves the best country in baseball. More on that will follow in a separate article but for now it’s nice to see the Yankees getting some exposure over in Japan.It’s no surprise that after the Yankees; the remaining 4 teams all come from football (soccer) leagues with football being the largest sport in the world. (more…)

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Just because athletes are doing physical things all day long doesn’t mean that they can’t stop for a moment to deliver a funny quote or two. The commentators can also get into the thick of things and not even realize what they just said as well. So with that being said; let’s take a look at our first bunch of hilarious quotes straight from the world of sports.

[Gene Klein]-“In basketball, the first person to touch the ball shoots it. Either that or the coach carefully diagrams a set play and then the first player to touch it shoots it.”

[Kevin Keegan]-“I’ll never play at Wembley again, unless I play at Wembley again.”

[Jeremy Roenick After a playoff game in which the Blackhawks claimed that they deserved a penalty shot against Colorado, goalie Patrick Roy declares that Roenick would not have been able to score anyway. The Blackhawks forward replies:]-“I wonder where he was in the 3rd game (won 4-3 in overtime by Chicago). He was probably busy adjusting his jock strap when I beat him.”

[ Bill The Spaceman’ Lee]-“You have only two hemispheres in your brain – a left and a right side. The left side controls the right side of your body and the right controls the left half. It’s a fact. Therefore, left-handers are the only people in their right minds.”

[Charles ‘Casey’ Stengel]-“There’s three things you can do in a baseball game – you can win, you can lose, or it can rain.”

[New Orleans Saint RB George Rogers when asked about the upcoming season]:”I want to rush for 1,000 or 1,500 yards, whichever comes first.”

[Stu Grimson, Chicago Blackhawks left wing, explaining why he keeps a color photo of himself above his locker:] “That’s so when I forget how to spell my name, I can still find my fucking clothes.”

[Shaquille O’Neal on whether he had visited the Parthenon during his visit to Greece:] “I can’t really remember the names of the clubs that we went to.”

[Jacques Plante]-“How would you like a job where, every time you make a mistake, a big red light goes on and 18,000 people boo? ”

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Sunday, June 12th, 2005 was a great night to be a wrestling fan once again. I often talk way too much about wrestling and with good reason with my former background as a wrestling journalist/news reporter but last Sunday brought out some emotions I haven’t felt about wrestling in a long time. While the WWE and NWA-TNA have both been adequate lately, the emotions that I felt while watching the ECW PPV last Sunday were emotions that I had been waiting to feel for a long time. For the first time in a long time, I was actually anticipating this PPV as were other faithful ECW fans.

To recap a bit of wrestling history, ECW was a small, independent wrestling federation from Philadelphia that started out as Eastern Championship Wrestling and later quit the NWA Alliance and changed its name to Extreme Championship Wrestling. It was an innovative wrestling federation that had little to do with story lines like the soap opera WWE of today and more to do with blood,sweat and hard work ethic from the wrestlers that wrestled in that very ring every night. It was the first American wrestling fed. to bring the Mexican ‘extreme lucha-libre- style into the United States as well as to feature matches that other federations wouldn’t dare to touch like the barbed wire wrestling match.ECW didn’t have the production values of a WCW or WWE so they had to settle on smaller venues with lower production values and poor lighting. What set ECW apart from the rest though was its connection with its fans. ECW had some of the craziest,most loyal fans that you could ever ask for and if they didn’t like you than they would tell you about it right to your face. The fans would often start chants up during the match that I wouldn’t dare to repeat in this blog due to their choice of language and they would also bring weapons to the shows to give to the wrestlers to use on each other.

Because ECW couldn’t afford to travel very often ; they would often hold their shows at the ECW Arena in Philadelphia which is now known as The Viking Arena. The fans would come from different areas of the North-Eastern United States to Philadelphia just to show their dedication to the product.ECW learned to create brand new characters and gimmicks and during their prime had some of the brightest wrestlers to come to the United States from all over the world. ECW was a victim of the Monday Night Ratings War between WCW/WWE at the time with both companies competing with one another and snatching up any rising star from ECW when the opportunity arose. (more…)

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Athletes are a weird bunch. They get paid very well but in order to receive these big salaries they must push their bodies to the limit. In order to reach their maximum potential they are often pushed to the limits by their coaches,scouts and the fans.This can cause an increased level of stress in an athlete and from this stress comes anger.In recent years the number of incidents involving fans and athletes seems to have increased and if I’m wrong than the media sure is exposing it more often on television and other media outlets.

The gap between the salary of a sports figure and that of a regular joe has widened significantly during recent years and perhaps the disconnection between the athlete and the players has grown because of it. With the higher ticket prices, fans feel as though they can do or say whatever they want to athletes because they earned the right to do so by buying such a high priced ticket. The athletes, under an extreme amount of pressure, feel that due to their higher standing in society they are entitled to whatever they want. Because of their wealth and exposure, they seem to believe that their morals and standards don’t apply in the real world. This causes contrasting elements between the fans and the athlete and has helped to cause these recent incidents in sports:

-On Sept. 19, 2002.Two men, a father and a son, jump from the stands at Comiskey Park in Chicago, Illinois, and attack Kansas City Royals first base coach Tom Gamboa.

-On Mar. 9,2001.he Maple Leafs’ Tie Domi wrestled with a fan in the penalty box during a game against the Flyers. Domi, who was serving a penalty, twice poured water over taunting fans in the front row. The attacking fan, Chris Falcone, was sitting in the second row. Falcone lunged against the glass and threw a punch at Domi that did not connect. A glass panel separating the two collapsed, and Falcone was pulled into the penalty box by Domi. A linesman already in the box broke up the fight. Falcone was then escorted from the arena and given a citation.

-On Dec. 23, 1995. An abundance of snow and thousands of bored Giants fans made for a dangerous combination. The crowd started throwing snowballs in the fourth quarter of a Chargers-Giants game, striking Chargers equipment manager Sid Brooks in the face and knocking him unconscious for 30 seconds. The final tally: 14 arrests, 175 ejections and 15 injuries. (more…)

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