SUNDAY PAPER

Sundays for me are a bit of a mixed bag. I love a good Sunday breakfast, relaxing, watching football during the fall, and reading the Sunday paper. But the Sunday paper routine for me can be a bit daunting.

Currently I read the New York Times, Boston Globe, and the local Metrowest Daily News on Sunday. Well, "read" may be a bit of a stretch. I suspect if I read all of those Sunday papers it would take hours, and that stresses me out a bit on my relaxing Sunday. So it amounts to a scan of the headlines, maybe the occasional first paragraph or full article, of all of the sections of all of the papers. Then I do the Globe and Times crosswords.

But the one thing I do read almost all of is the sports sections. And if you, unlike me, need something else to peruse over coffee on a Sunday morning, I offer you my new feature - the Sunday Paper, my thoughts on all things going on, patterned after the columns introduced to the country via the Boston Globe by the likes of Peter Gammons. (And since copied by almost all papers across the country, so I don't feel bad ripping it off as well.)

*I don't know what to make of the Scott Kazmir trade. It seems to me that his value has never been lower (8-7 this year, with a 5.92 ERA, 91 K in 111 IP), yet the Rays got three prospects in return. When his potential was sky-high, the Mets traded him for only Victor Zambrano. I do know how I feel about this trade, come to think of it...it proves that he's forever linked to the Mets in a negative way.

*I always was under the impression that a "Player to be named later" was someone who the two teams hadn't quite decided on to complete a trade, but that whole thought process has been turned on its head after the Kazmir trade. The Rays got back two prospects and a player to be named, and Joe Maddon's quote was, "We're very excited about the player that we can't name yet..." That implies the Rays know who they're getting, but the information is being withheld. Maybe I should have known that was the process (or is it always the way I thought, and this one is the exception?), but I didn't.

*I like how the NFL Network shows almost every pre-season game. I couldn't see the Giants-Jets game live on Saturday night in Massachusetts, but it's being aired Sunday morning on the NFL Network.

*I'm intrigued by "Big Fan", the Patton Oswalt movie about an obsessive New York Giants fan who gets beat up by one of his idols. I think I'm afraid to see it, though, because it might hit a little too close to home for me. I don't know if I'm that guy. In fairness to me, I've only called in to one sports radio show ever, and I'm still proud of it - I'd say it was about 2000, and the Boston daytime hosts were talking about Jim Abbott for some reason. Boston sports radio, for those who don't know, is pretty awful, and they don't talk about anything in the wide world of sports, just the local teams, and mostly just the Red Sox (especially in 2000). When they talk about someone like Jim Abbott, they are woefully underinformed. So they start going off about how it must have been impossible for him to hit with one hand. I called in to tell them they were doing their listeners a disservice by not doing any research and finding out that Abbott could hit, and hit better than .400 during his senior year in high school (I read a book about him when I was a kid). That may not translate to the majors, but don't say he can't hit. All right. Maybe I should try to see the movie.

*It's a downright shame Nyjer Morgan broke his hand this week...and not just because his injury probably spells the end for my fantasy team. Yes, he filled the box score with runs, he was hitting, and he stole a ton of bases, but he was exciting to watch. Defensively he would track anything down. The Nationals made a great trade getting him from Pittsburgh, and he has been amazing for Washington since the trade.

*With 22 games left in the regular season, Gary Carter's Long Island Ducks are at .500; 23-23. They're battling for a wild card spot. Let's not forget, as I've written in the past, that all Hall of Famer Gary Carter has done as a manager in the minors is take his team to the championship (three championship appearances, winning twice). We'll keep you posted on the Ducks as their season winds down, and since that's the only whiff of playoffs that a baseball team I care about will get.