Spring training
'Twas a dark and stormy October night. The List Guy gripped his List ale
in his favorite List tavern, his eyes glued to the screen that broadcast
news of a faraway battle. It didn't look good for The List Guy's beloved Bombers, as the evil minions of Ted
Turner were trouncing their way to the coveted Series championship.
But lo, an obscure mitt-wearing hero crushed a hanging slider into the upper
deck, and The List Guy celebrated victory with wine, song, and a tongue-lashing for the
southern-born barkeep.
But that was last year.
If you have a pulse and a clue, to you spring doesn't mean flowers or the
mercury inching up past freezing again. It means the God-given return of
baseball -- in all its rising-fastball, Texas-leaguer, overpaid-whiny-player
glory. You're so thrilled you're turning up at work early just to log on and
stoke your spring training excitement.
Sporting News Spring Training Section
The List Guy loves the Sporting News. Why? 'Cause the Sporting News loves
baseball as much as he does, and it shows. The News' baseball section is
already the best on the Web, and now that spring is here they've gone all
out, with way in-depth team previews, division analysis, tons of news from
every team, and the obligatory predictions (the Dodgers meet the Tribe in
October).
USA Today
Baseball
USA Today dishes out all the dirt a fan could want. Check the daily updates
from every spring training camp, a full list of off-season transactions,
and -- you guessed it -- more predictions for the coming season (Seattle beats
the Braves in seven).
Fox Sports Spring Training
Fox's slick spring training site is a solid hit. Aside from lengthy team
previews and roster updates, the real winner here is the Movietone section,
where you can watch vintage spring training videos of Pee Wee Reese in
Havana and Joe DiMaggio in San Francisco. Those were the days ...
ESPNET
SportsZone: Major League Baseball
Since this is a sports list, we've got to mention SportsZone, but it's getting
harder and harder to recommend a site that charges for its best content when
you can find the same stuff elsewhere for free. Oh, yeah, they've been gazing
into the crystal baseball, too (O's, White Sox, Mariners, Braves, Cardinals,
and Dodgers top their divisional heaps).
Sportsline USA Spring Training Section
Nice divisional previews and off-season trade updates, but Sportsline has,
unfortunately, taken a page from the SportsZone playbook in charging for the best
content.
Tampa Bay
Online's Play Ball
The place to go if you're die-hard enough to migrate south for spring. Aside
from Associated Press updates, you'll find full schedules and directions to every
spring training park.
Arizona Central's Cactus League '97
If you didn't already know, some of the western teams practice in Arizona so
they can save some of their inflated salaries on airfare. This offering from
Arizona Central isn't much, but anyone planning a visit will find all the
schedule and ticket info they need.
Postcards From Spring Training
So you shelled out for the trip to Tampa and you can't even find a decent
postcard to send back home. Or maybe you want your baseball-fanatic boss to
think you took off for Florida when you're really living it up in Waikiki.
Don't worry -- Nando's Zonker Harris has assembled a nice collection of
postcards that will no doubt do the trick.
The Boycott
Major League Baseball Home Page
Talk about a spoilsport. Here's an ex-fan who argues for boycotting games
just because of greedy, overpaid players; greedier, filthy-rich owners who
raise ticket prices year after year; faithless stars who travel from team
to team in search of a fatter paycheck; the cancellation of the 1994 World Series
because of that strike; the lack of respect for the fans; and the
general metamorphosis of the game from national pastime into just another big
business. What a buzzkill.
Today's List Guy, Ezra
Gale, knows what to say to anyone who says the Yanks won't repeat.
Harumph.
Image credit: © 1997 The Sporting News
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Future Web
The Web Design & Development
'97 conference finishes up at San Francisco's Moscone Center today. You
can still check out archived Webcasts of keynote speeches from JavaSoft
chairman Alan Baratz, Marimba CEO Kim Polese, and Macromedia chairman Bud
Colligan. You'll need VXtreme's Web Theater Client to listen in on keynote
speeches by these Web visionaries. The site will also provide details on
other upcoming Web '97 conferences.
Starstruck
Perform your own private star search at Starwave's newest entertainment
offering, CelebSite.
You'll find selected Web sites on your favorite actors, models, directors,
and athletes to browse through. Quick Hits offers the latest Mr. Showbiz
news centering around stars like Woody Harrelson, Madonna, Ethan Hawke, and
Martin Scorsese. Membership gets you e-mailed updates of the site as well as
access to an area from where you can send fan mail.
Goofing off
Click the rubber chicken at Wacky.com, and you'll have your choice of a daily
"Wackattack" joke, a wacky site of the week, and a "Net A Sketch" prize
game. You can register your vote in a Bill Gates popularity contest, enter
the name of a would-be victim for hypothetical destruction using the
Tantalis Program (an experiment measuring tolerance to others on the Net),
or order featured humor and Web-related books from Amazon.com.
Have a new site you want listed? Tell us about it.
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