Thursday, January 10, 2008
The Toronto Blue Jays are making noise in the American League East and are doing so with a patchwork starting pitching staff and a less then stellar middle infield. Last night they took apart prize free agent Josh Beckett who has had his way with the rest of the American League, but is struggling mightily with Toronto.
The right-hander, who entered this season without a single regular-season start against his new division rivals, grabbed wins against Toronto, New York, Baltimore and Tampa Bay in his first start against each club.
Yet against the Blue Jays, the only team to see Beckett more than once this year, the 26-year-old is demonstrating steadily diminishing returns. Beckett beat the Jays on April 11 (seven innings, one run), claimed a no-decision on April 21 (7 1/3 innings, five runs), another no-decision on May 3 (five innings, four runs) and a blowout defeat on Tuesday (4 2/3 innings, seven runs).
Beckett got destroyed by the Jays in his fourth and most recent outing against them. Beckett allowed a career-worst four homers and matched a career-worst by permitting 10 hits. Beckett now has a 1-2 record and 6.38 ERA against the Blue Jays, and a 6-0 record and 3.43 ERA against all other clubs.
The concern for the Red Sox is how all the other teams will respond when they get a second peek at Beckett as the season moves into the second quarter.
As for Toronto they are getting a MVP year out of center fielder Vernon Wells who hit three bombs last night to bring his total to 43 RBI's and 12 homeruns, while Troy Glaus now sits at 17 dingers and 43. The Jays middle infield began the year with Russ Adams and Aaron Hill, but Adams has a throwing issue and was sent down and Hill only has 1 homerun and 12 RBI's.
Why are the Jays near the top of the Al East?
1. Roy Halladay is 6-1 with a ERA of 2.88 and an incredible WHIP of 1.03.
2. B.J. Ryan collected his 12th save in 13 opportunities Tuesday tossing a scoreless 1 1/3 innings. Five of his 12 saves have come in appearances of longer than one inning.
3. 29 is the umber of days the Jays have spent at the top of the AL in team batting average through Friday. The Jays were hitting a combined .301 for the year, easily the highest team average in the majors.
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Greek Hotels - a home in the Med
Greece is full of hotels. Its Mediterranean location is an ideal holiday spot, and it is still seeing tourism increase year after year, even though it has been steadily increasing by 10% a year for decades. The Olympics in 2004 only boosted its popularity further, as did the 2006 Eurovision Song Contest – there's no sign of a decline any time soon.
As tourism is such an important industry in Greece, hotels are everywhere: they just can't build them fast enough to meet all the demand. As a result, the quality of hotels in the country varies widely. Rather than being ranked with stars, hotels in Greece have been put into categories, with 'category A' being the best. However, as the category system is numerical, based on things like the sizes of rooms, it can often be deceptive – many category B or C hotels are actually better than some category A ones, or at least most people would consider them superior.
There are lots and lots of things you should look for when choosing a hotel. What are the facilities like? Is there any building work going on? Can you bring children? What kind of rooms are there? Is it close to what you've come to see? And so on. The best way to get all these questions answered is to use a site that reviews or compares hotels, so that you can see all the features of each hotel laid out in front of you.
One thing you do need to realise is that, as an English speaker, you may find you are only able to book at quite big hotels. Smaller hotels will often rely on agencies to act as a go-between and translate into Greek for them, which can push up the cost of staying there.
One last thing to note is that it is essential to book before you go to Greece rather than trying to find a hotel once you're there. The exceptionally high demand means that in peak season all the decently-located hotels can easily end up full, leaving you to wander around aimlessly for hours trying to find something. It's much easier to just book in somewhere before you ever get on the plane.
John Gibb is the owner of Greek Hotels, For more information on Greek Hotels please check out http://www.Greece-Hotels-resources.info
Kiwi Invader New Zealand Mud Snails Endanger Yellowstone National Park
What, you may well ask, do 13 foot-tall New Zealand birds that have been extinct for 500 years and modern Wyoming trout species have in common? And what, you may also ask, since you're in the asking mood, do snails have to do with any of it? Well, the answer is "quite a lot, really". It's a bit complicated, but bear with me.
In something like the year 1500 C. E. the Polynesian ancestors of the Maori peoples arrived in what is known today as New Zealand. They were a brand new species to the islands, with no previous place in the ecosystem. As a result the local prey species, most notably the enormous native birds called Moa, had no natural defenses against them. Moa were not only flightless, they were completely wingless. Their only natural predator on the island was a 30-pound eagle (also later hunted to extinction by the proto-Maori), so the weren't that fast on their feet, since there's not much point in running from an 80-MPH flying killing machine. Their only defense against ground-based predation was their great size, which humans have traditionally not given much of a damn about (island peoples can hunt whales in wooden canoes; over-grown chickens are hardly scary to them). The end result is that all of New Zealand's giant flightless birds are currently on display at several fine natural history museums around the world.
But what's that to do with snails?
Enter Potamopyrgus antipodarum, the New Zealand Mud Snail. These tiny, aquatic, freshwater mollusks are migrating out of New Zealand, not into it, but their impact on an ecosystem they had no previous place in could have similar repercussions for native species. Carried by us world-trotting humans, these critters made their North American debut in the 1980's in the Snake River, and have been drifting west ever since. They are now present in Wyoming's Yellowstone National Park.
How do these diminutive invaders hop from river to river, lake to lake, establishing an almost unshakeable presence as they go? Humans again, I'm afraid. The New Zealand Mud Snail is prone to hitchhiking on boats and fishing gear. So a careless or messy angler on an extended fishing trip can spread the little devils far and wide.
Mud Snails are quite hardy enough to make the trip as well. They're so small ( 6mm long, maximum, and sometimes as small as a grain of rice), and they so much resemble tiny flecks of mud, that they often go undetected. They can survive out of water for several days, and can live in many kinds of freshwater environments. They're even resilient enough to handle low temperatures (anything above freezing) and can pass unharmed through the digestive tract of most fish. Moreover, they reproduce asexually, and are "livebreeders", meaning they produce a number of perfectly formed little clones, so even one can spawn a colony.
New Zealand Mud Snail densities of more than ½ million snails per square yard have been found in Yellowstone Park. With no natural predators to keep it in check there's every possibility native snail species will be out-competed into extinction and native plant species overwhelmed. Such an unbalancing presence can decimate other species, such as trout, something that gives the Colorado Fish and Wildlife Department and dedicated Wyoming fishing enthusiasts reason for pause.
Efforts are being made to curb the New Zealand Mud Snail invasion. Let's hope the trout have more luck than the Moa.
Looking for more information on Wyoming Rivers check out visitusa.com your outdoor adventure travel guide