Hey there, Gabbers. Confession time: I started the Franchise project at a bit of a complicated time. My girlfriend just got back from 6 months in Brazil. I ran down to Akron, Ohio on Thursday to see family for a day, then I had to shoot up to the Cleveland area to get to the airport to see her in. I didn’t get to play romantic though, because she managed to catch an earlier flight and catch me off guard. So no time for flowers or anything like that. I was more impressed I made it from Akron to Painesville in an hour with the 60 mph highways here. Beeze, I don’t know how you put up with it.

Anyways, being on the road I try to check in while I can and I figured I’d take this opportunity to fill folks in. We’ve got some great responses to the post so far. I’d like to thank Beeze for throwing it on our Facebook group, as that thought didn’t cross my mind. I’m going to provide a link to the discussion, but you can still find it in the MLB tab.

http://www.yougabsports.com/pt/Faces-of-the-Franchise/blog.htm#comment9CF1FC9C-6637-43B2-B9F5-720234D5BCCC

Just to sum things up, here’s the positions we’ve kinda locked in. As I’ve said before, if you don’t like what we’ve done, just let us know who you’d prefer to see for your team. Leave us some reasons or maybe some numbers.  Here’s what we have so far:

Atlanta Braves: Hank Aar4on OF/1B (nominated by B-Dub)

Boston Red Sox: Ted Williams OF (nominated by Fragnoli)

Cleveland Indians: Bob Feller SP (nominated by The Beeze)

Colorado Rockies: Todd Helton 1B (nominated by Norm)

New York Yankees: Babe Ruth OF (nominated by ScottyJax)

Oakland Athletics: Rickey Henderson (nominated by BOB) with the best reasoning we’ve come up with thus far…

Pittsburgh Pirates: Roberto Clemente OF (nominated by The Beeze)

San Diego Padres: Tony Gwynn OF (nominated by Norm and BOB)

San Francisco Giants: Willie Mays OF (nominated by BOB)

Seattle Mariners: Ken Griffey Jr. OF (nominated by B-Dub and ScottyJax)

Texas Rangers: Nolan Ryan SP (nominated by B-Dub and ScottyJax)

Here’s our close races. It’s no surprise we have as many. The guys we have already are a who’s who, but some teams are just hard to nail down to one player. I didn’t figure we’d have as much trouble with the Astros, but we’ve had three names brought up. Here’s what we’ve got:

Arizona Diamondbacks: Craig Counsill, Luis Gonzalez, Randy Johnson

Baltimore Orioles: Brooks Robinson, Cal Ripken Jr., Jim Palmer, Earl Weaver, Boog Powell

Chicago Cubs: Ryan Sandberg, Ernie Banks

Chicago White Sox: Frank Thomas, Harold Baines

Cincinnati Reds: Johnny Bench, Pete Rose

Detroit Tigers: Willie Horton, Al Kaline, Ty Cobb, Hank Greenberg

Houston Astros: Craig Biggio (he’s pretty much got it wrapped up), Jeff Bagwell, J. R. Richards

Los Angeles Dodgers: Jackie Robinson, Sandy Koufax

Marlins: Edgar Renteria, Jack McKeon, Kevin Brown, Jeff Conine

Milwaukee Brewers: Robin Yount, Paul Molitor

Minnesotas Twins: Harmon Killebrew, Kirby Puckett, Rod Carew, Kent Hrbeck, Joe Mauer

St. Louis Cardinals: Stan Musial, Bob Gibson, Lou Brock

Tampa Bay Rays: Carlos Pena, Evan Longoria, David Price, James Shields

Toronto Blue Jays: Joe Carter, George Bell, Jack Morris

Washington Nationals/Expos: Gary Carter, Andre Johnson, Vladimir Guerro, Andre Dawson, Tim Rains, Dennis Martinez, the Alou family

This is by no means finished, so feel free to throw out extra names. Now, there’s a few that have more or less been narrowed or have only really received one name. Some should already be posted, but as I said at the start, I’ve been a little busy. Here they are:

Kansas City Royals: George Brett

Los Angeles Angels: We haven’t had any nominations here… Darin Erstad, Tim Salmon, Troy Glaus, Jered Weaver

New York Mets: Tom Seaver

We have a little narrowing to do, but we’ve put in a nice list here.

So, Prince Fielder won the home run derby. A lot of folks in Detroit were excited. I was exactly the opposite. With the offensive slumps the Tigers have had as a club, the last thing we need is for Prince to jack up his swing in the derby. The guy always puts on a show in the derby, but winning it is a lot like the Madden Curse. It should be awesome to win it. It gets the fans that can still stand Chris Berman jacked up. The fact that most of the previous winners or participants have fallen off afterwards is still a bit concerning.

Said jink didn’t affect last year’s winner: Robinson Cano. Cano came into the break with 15 Hr and hitting .296. After the break, he got 13 Hr and brought his average up to .309. He also had a nice post season with 2 Hr, 9 RBIs and a .318 avg. Hopefully, Prince talks to Robby about keeping his swing.

That’s it for this week. Hope you folks enjoy the game tonight. I’ll be running around Port Clinton, OH for a little. It’s a neat place if you’ve never been. I’ll also be enjoying the cool down. I never thought I’d be so happy with 80 degrees. Have a great weeks and thanks for stopping by.