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Gag baseball card of Jeter shows President Bush

NEW YORK (AP) — As President Bush smiled and waved from the stands and Mickey Mantle looked on from the dugout, Derek Jeter swung his bat. Talk about pressure.

The game never happened, of course. It was just someone’s idea of a visual gag — pulled off in a recent Topps baseball card through digital manipulation.

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1996-2001 Yankees Dynasty Tribute

A tribute video to the late 90’s-early 2000’s Yankees dynasty, in which they had 6 playoff appearances, 5 division titles, 5 AL Pennants, and 4 World Championships by Matt Kabara

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Colorado Rockies Need to Follow Tigers’ Blueprint

By Nicholas Kirt

Professional baseball in Denver, Colorado might as well not exist past the first week of April. Typically, Coors field is packed for the Opening Day game, and then attendance drops off significantly from there. Now this should come as no surprise to the millions of fans of professional sports around the globe. The reason is simple…fans like winners.

Sad as it seems, Coors field is usually sparsely populated during the dog days of summer save for a few series against teams that bring their own entourage like the Cubs or Yankees. Usually you can go to any given game except for these rare occurrences and find the few diehard fans, occasional businessmen using company expense accounts, and small family units sprinkled among the vast expanses of empty seats.

It wasn’t always this way in Denver. Rewind back to the inaugural season of 1993. The Rockies were having a brand new downtown stadium built solely for them. In the meantime, they were setting dozens of attendance records at nearby Mile High Stadium, the home of the NFL’s Denver Broncos. April 9th, 2003 the Rockies play their first “home” game at Mile High against the Expos of Montreal and set a whopping record of 80,227 fans. One month later, on Mother’s Day May 9th, the Rockies have over one million fans through the turnstiles. It took only seventeen home games to reach that mark. They hit two million by Father’s Day June 20th. They ended that season with an attendance record of 4,483,350 fans.

By 1995, the Rockies were into their new home at Coors Field, and they were winning ballgames. On April 29th, they owned the top slot in the division. By October 1st, the Rockies clinched the NL’s Wildcard berth, and were into the playoffs. The whole season the city of Denver was buzzing with excitement, and fans came out in droves to the ballpark.

After that magical 1995 season, things began to go downhill. The 1996 and 1997 seasons didn’t go quite as well, so the Rockies decided to add some bulk to their payroll. The Rockies tried to become like the New York Yankees and spend on high-priced coveted free agent pitchers. Prior to the 1998 season, the Rockies signed free agent pitcher Daryl Kile to a five plus million dollar per year contract. After an unsuccessful stint in a hitter’s park, Kile was traded to St. Louis. After not learning from their last major free agent pitcher acquisition, they signed Mike Hampton to a $10 million dollar deal. He answered with a 14-13 season and an ERA over five. His following season was even worse going 7-15 with a 6.15 ERA. Hampton eventually left town as well.

The Detroit Tigers on the other hand was a franchise mired in losing throughout the nineties and into the new millennium. They hadn’t had a winning season since 1993, and lost an AL record 119 games in 2003. Dave Dombrowski was brought in to revamp the club, and turn it into a winner. He started to re-build the club around his home stadium, Comerica Park. It is a pitchers park with deep fences, and cavernous left and right field gaps. He signed Ivan Rodriguez as a line drive clutch hitter to take advantage of the park. Rodriguez would also help mentor his young pitching staff. He traded enigmatic Jeff Weaver in a three team deal that brought 19 year old Jeremy Bonderman to be the future ace. Magglio Ordonez was also sign to help add some clout to the lineup. Meanwhile, Dombrowski was re-stocking the minor league system that for years had been depleted by trades for players that didn’t pan out. Veteran Kenny Rogers was also signed to help stabilize the young rotation. The finishing touch was to hire Jim Leyland as the manager. He masterfully helped manage the Tigers to a spot in the 2006 World Series.

The Rockies are not that far from being a contender, especially in the typically weak NL West. They should follow the Tigers’ blueprint and begin building on a good foundation of young players. Todd Helton is a quality ballplayer and a class act. He’s really their only remaining tradable asset that would return anything of value. With a salary figure of over $16 million dollars, which he very much deserves, Helton makes up over forty percent of their 2006 payroll. The Rockies should move Helton to a team with a deep farm system, or one willing to pickup most of his salary with a few quality players. Ryan Shealy, one of the Rockies top prospects would’ve been a great replacement at firstbase. Unfortunately, Colorado traded him to the Royals for pitcher Jeremy Affeldt. If the Rockies can follow the Tigers’ model and re-build their farm system, make smart leadership decisions, value their young talent they already have, realize that Coors Field is a hitter’s park they can be on their way to another playoff bid.

Nicholas Kirt is an online entrepreneur. He’s developed websites for e-books, ticket sales, and real estate. His latest venture ACG Ready E-books Inc. at http://www.acgrei.com is in the beginning stages of business, but has already become a top reference for all things e-book related.

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