My First Entry...

Hello friends and visitors!

As some of you know, this blog has been a LONG TIME coming... and well today is the day that it finally makes it's debut!

First off, I want to give a big THANKS to my friend and long time fellow Fantasy Baseball competitor, Dan Christopherson. Dan is a sportscaster in the Portland, Oregon area - who at last report was headed off to cover March Madness. Yes, I'd like to be in your shoes, buddy! Dan was a driving force behind me creating this blog and provided me all the encouragement a guy could ever ask for. I had the privledge of filling in for Dan at an auction baseball draft on Tuesday night and had a blast! As Dan gave me the link to the draft and the participants, one name jumped out at me immediately - Scott Pianowski! For those of you that don't know, Scott is a contributor to FantasyGuru.com and Yahoo Sports - he dispenses some GREAT fantasy baseball advice! I corresponded with him several times last year, so it was a lot of fun getting to draft with him and the other 8 participants. Dan sent me a PM on Wednesday thanking for me for the "great job" I did!!! Dan is a lifelong L.A. Dodger fan, so I made sure I got him a couple of Dodgers - Juan Pierre and Derek Lowe - on his roster.

Although I will be talking a lot about fantasy baseball here, I'll be talking about a lot of other things too... first and foremost at the moment is the NCAA Tournament. As some of you know, I'm a UCLA graduate so I'm a faithful Bruin supporter. Last year was a bitter pill to swallow - getting to the Championship game only to lose to Florida. It's been 12 years since we last won the title - Tyus Edney and the "coast-to-coast" drive with 4.8 seconds to play in the 2nd round against Missouri saved our season that year! Here it is on YouTube in case you don't remember or want to relive this classic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHceOvR464s. My Bruins are now in the elite-8... next up is a one seed - Kansas.

If we can beat Kansas, and Florida can take care of business against Butler and then beat the Oregon/UNLV winner, then we will have our much awaited rematch!!! Needless to say, I'm hoping for a different result this year. FYI, I got off to a VERY rocky start in my brackets... hiding out in the low and embarrassing 10% range through the first two rounds!! Fortunately for me, my final 4 - UCLA, Florida, Georgetown & Ohio State (whew x2!) - are still alive, and I'm now up to 31% in my ESPN bracket: http://games.espn.go.com/tcmen/entry?entryID=342839

Another of my HUGE passions is music... I'm mainly a Country listener these days, though I do like a wide variety of music styles... I'm also a VERY avid music chart watcher (more on that another time)... so I'm really enjoying seeing my 5 favorite Country artists amongst the top 10 at the moment - Tim McGraw at #2 with "Last Dollar", Carrie Underwood at #3 with "Wasted", Martina McBride at #4 with "Anyway", Rascal Flatts at #5 with "Stand" and Keith Urban at #8 with "Stupid Boy" (which peaked at #2 last week)... For those others of you who are big Tim fans, he has a new CD coming out next Tuesday, March 27th called "Let It Go"... Martina's new CD "Waking Up Laughing" drops the following Tuedsay, April 3rd, as does a re-release of Carrie's "Some Hearts" with "exclusive digital content". One other piece of news for you Carrie fans - she's going to be on Saturday Night Live tomorrow night, along with Super Bowl MVP Peyton Manning! Yes, two of my idols on the same show - I can't wait to watch!!!

Time will be in short supply for me the next week or so - I have fantasy baseball drafts happening every day the next eight days starting tomorrow morning... I will try to post as often as I can and also hope to give out some good fantasy advice and also discuss other topics of interest in future blogs... I hope you all enjoyed my first blog entry... feel free to leave me a comment!