April 29 - Steph Sizzles Out

She gave it quite a run, but Stephanie was unable to pull the chicks together and ended up getting booted off Survivor last night. With seven people left – four women and three men – Stephanie tried lo launch a gender war but it was squashed by an alliance who felt she was just too dangerous to keep around any longer. After all, she was a threat to win some immunity down the stretch and nobody wanted to face her in the finals. So the final member of ULONG is now history and that leaves us with just six competitors: Tom, Ian, Greg, Jennifer, Karyn and Katie. The next ousting is really pivotal since the way I see it, there are basically two three-member alliances right now. Tom, Ian and Katie have been hooked up since day one and will probably stick together. So that leaves Greg, Jen and Karyn on the outside looking in. What makes this interesting is Greg and Jen have been banging each other so Karyn is really the swing vote here. Can she be brought into Camp 1 and make it 4-2 against Greg and Jen.? Greg better hope not since his days are numbered if she buys a ticket to the Final four with Team Tom. Conversely, can Greg hold Karyn in line and peel off Katie or Ian? That would expose Tom, who would be at risk if he does not own immunity at tribal council. The real wildcard here is Katie who has the trust of Ian and Tom but could always flip and turn the game around. If I had to guess, I would say she will be the one to shake things up down the stretch. It will be one of those game changing moments when she flips on Tom the moment he doesn’t have immunity. She probably doesn’t have the votes to win the whole thing, but if she does knock out Tom, she will have a shot at that second place check.

Baseball Bytes from Thursday Night: The Marlins watched helplessly as their last three games at Coors got washed out. The fish aren’t scheduled to go back to Colorado this year so how in the world are those games going to be made up? This happened with Boston and Cleveland a few years back and it absolutely destroyed the Sox pitching when they hade to play seven games in four days. The moral to this story is the fish will not be playing 162 games this year. The Brewers finally cooled off the Cards as Russ Branyon hit his fifth blast of the season. The Cards now move on to Atlanta where we will see two former A’s – Mark Mulder and Tim Hudson – hook up tonight. Wade Miller had a nice outing for Pawtucket last night and it now looks like he will make his Red Sox debut on May 8th. Miller’s return more then offsets the loss of Wells, but John Halama is not exactly Curt Schilling. The Royals flat out stink even though they did get to Joe Nathan yesterday afternoon. Baseball really needs to consider contracting that franchise. Mike Maroth had a nice line for the Tigers last night as Detroit moved back to .500. Aaron Boone had a night to forget, going 0-4, with three whiffs and five runners stranded. The Yanks finally got something out of Kevin Brown last night but they were absolutely hopeless at the plate against one of the AL’s worst pitchers. Look at some of the guys who have shut the Yanks down this year: John Lackey, Chan Ho Park, Bruce Chen and Hideo Nomo. That didn’t happen in year’s past. Gil Meche threw a nice game for the M’s, but Seattle has got to be wondering when Adrian Beltre will show up. His OPS is 400 points short of where it was a season ago. You got to wonder if the Mariners bought the high and are now perhaps stuck with something a bit better then ordinary. Tonight we have Clemens vs. Maddux which is twelve Cy Youngs and 634 career wins. There is also a big matchup in the Bronx where Roy Halladay will go up against Randy Johnson. With some guy fresh off the boat slated to go for New York tomorrow, the Yanks need the Big Unit to show up tonight or they run the risk of losing yet another series at home