Beltran (finally) returns for Mets

Baseball Betting Lines

07/15/2010 - San Francisco, CA (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The New York Mets will get a much-needed boost on Thursday when they welcome back perennial All-Star outfielder Carlos Beltran from the 60-day disabled list.

Beltran has not seen the field for the Mets during the 2010 season after undergoing knee surgery back in January. The procedure was somewhat controversial, as the Mets did not get a chance to review Beltran's medical condition before the outfielder decided to go under the knife.

In 14 rehabilitation games with Single-A St. Lucie over the past few weeks, Beltran hit .367 with five runs scored, five doubles, five RBI, and seven walks.

Beltran started having trouble with his right knee in the middle of May of last season and had a lengthy stay on the disabled list with what the team maintained was a deep bone bruise.

The 33-year-old missed 2 1/2 months of the 2009 season and was limited to 81 games. He returned in September and, according to the team's medical update, had not been experiencing pain following the conclusion of the season and into his early offseason conditioning. However, the symptoms returned to the point where pre-spring training conditioning became too painful.

The switch-hitting, five-time All-Star batted .325 with 48 runs batted in, 10 homers and 11 stolen bases last season for the Mets. He owns a lifetime average of .283 to go with 273 home runs, 1,035 RBI and 286 steals.

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FOOTBALL TRASH TALK

NFL Football Trash Talk

Trash talk has a place in every competitive endeavor (except baseball; those stirrup-wearers are too busy chewing on their sunflower seeds and their supplements to worry about what their opponents are doing).

Fantasy sports is no exception. Any intelligent discussion of the subject would probably start with a thesis statement or a definition of terms. Thankfully, this wont be an intelligent discussion.

Let me just say that I am happy to take a place in this space alongside my talented colleagues, even our commissioner. (You should see how she bleats like a demented paper boy about league fees on our fantasy site).

Trash talking, I would argue, is primarily about amusing your friends, their sheeplike demeanors and sloping foreheads notwithstanding. The best place I have found for football trash talking is at www.SportsAlarm.com.

Beyond the entertainment factor, though, I would recognize that the sophomoric ritual has one advantage, when properly applied. It magnifies your fantasy triumphs and mitigates your fantasy failures by transforming the eventual point total into an afterthought. Winning makes it seem like your opponent really is a truss-owning, lapel-pin-wearing nitwit. And in defeat, trash talk can be the air bag to break the fall from your hyperbolic heights. The plug-necked yahoos on your team, you can say, will be sacking groceries by the end of the season.

The best trash talk, in my view, is layered and nuanced. And it doesnt focus only on your opponents team. It picks apart your opponent. The idea is to create a shock-and-awe-scale blizzard of nonsense, and the goal is to make your opponent drop his hands from his keyboard in exasperation.

What team does your opponent root for? Accuse a Giants fan of having a Joe Namath pillowcase. Wheres your opponent from? Give a look of concern no matter his reply, then say, I'll try to type slower for you next time. Is your opponent into politics? Label everyone a tax-and-spend corporate shill.

Cap all that with a liberal application of irrelevance. For instance, dont just conclude by saying your opponent is a twerp who drafts like my grandmother. Say that your opponent is a sweater-wearing, eyebrow-plucking twerp who drafts his team about as well as Zsa Zsa Gabor gave acceptance speeches at the Oscars. By the time your foe makes sense of that, his starting running back will have had puppies.

But what about you? Hmm? Recall a memorable slam? Have a tried-and-true technique? Know someone who seems impervious to insult? Take a moment and tells us about it. Put together some (fit-for-publication) thoughts. You wont be too busy returning phone messages from your friends, Im sure, to reply.

In addition to the trash talking, the Sports Alarm has a huge gallery of high resolution pictures of beautiful women and models in bikinis. The most popular models are: Lindsay Lohan, Carrie Underwood, Alessandra Ambrosio, and Paris Hilton.