BASEBALL: Home Run Derby

Baseball begins its annual 3 day All Star break today. But fear not, fellow die-hards. We are still left with the Home Run Derby from Pittsburgh's beautiful PNC Ballpark. So naturally I'm making that today's TOTW.

The Home Run Derby is fun, but rarely lives up to the obnoxious hype commentator Chris Berman provides. Many of the best sluggers don't participate. This year we won't see 40+ HR guys like Albert Pujols, Jim Thome, or Andruw Jones hacking at the 65mph soft tosses. And the feared sluggers who do enter usually end up choking, allowing relatively unknown guys like Bobby Abreu and Garret Anderson to often win these competitions. In fact, the only real "stars" entered in this event are Boston's David Ortiz and Baltimore's Miguel Tejada. The other participants - Ryan Howard, Jermaine Dye, Lance Berkman, Troy Glaus, Miguel Cabrera, and David Wright - are all great sluggers, but also don't bring quite the pedigree and fan-interest that Bud Selig would surely love to showcase in the HR Derby.

My pick: Lance Berkman. The Astros HR man was runner up to Tejada in the 2004 Derby. He's a switch hitter and says he'll hit lefty since PNC has a shorter porch in right field. Hopefully a few long balls will land in the river and we'll get to see the obligatory camera shots of the idiots jumping into the water to retrieve those priceless souvenirs.



So that's what I'll be watching. What will you be watching? The Home Run Derby? Or maybe you'll check out Monday Night Raw for an appearance by Stacy Keibler?