RUWT?blog

Is anyone else’s head still spinning? Manny, Pudge, and Junior were the big names, but it seemed like every team was up to something at some point this week.

To help you keep track of all the chatter in the Bleachers, I’m happy to announce the relaunch of the RUWT? Sports Desktop Widget. Launched over a year ago (wow!), it got as much love from me as the AppleTV gets from Jobs. (zing!)

To make up for that, I scrapped everything and rewrote it from scratch with a new game plan. For the first time with any RUWT? widget you can root and shout from your desktop without even opening your browser.

I’m really psyched about this “new” app and you should expect a lot of new features rolled out over the next few weeks. Gimme a shout if you have any requests. Get it!

Wow. What a year it has been for sports.

The Super Bowl, March Madness, Tiger and Rocco in the U.S. Open, Nadal and Federer at Wimbledon, heck, even Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest went into overtime. A dog-off, if you will.

This week though, is quite special a special one. With the MLB on the All-Star Break, we have two of the slower days in the entire sports year. Unless you’re into the WNBA, a lot of you that use the RUWT? Sports Toolbar are staring at “We couldn’t find any games that match all of the options you selected.” No, it’s not a bug, it’s just that there were a whopping three games on Tuesday. One WNBA game, and two minor league Arena Football games. Today? Not much better.

But all is not lost, kids. First, we had Josh Hamilton completely own Yankee Stadium (and the fans), relegating Morneau to completely forgettable, anticlimactic winner status, and a marathon of an All-Star Game last night. And the best part? It’s only gonna get better from here.

College Football starts in a short six weeks, and I’m already starting to see television ads for Fantasy Football leagues. Things always get slow in the summer (even I’ve been slacking on my blogging duties), but there are a bunch of great games and great RUWT? developments on tap for the Fall, just around the corner.

The motivation for RUWT? is pretty simple: I hate missing great games and I don’t think any of us should have to ever again. Here’s a great post I found late last night about RUWTbot doing his job.

I almost missed Jon Lester’s no-hitter. There I was with my softball team, relishing another victory, not really paying attention to much, largely due to some slightly inconvenient tv locations. The meal and beers were seemingly at an end when my buddy Derek piped up:

“Uhhh… so, I signed up on this site called areyouwatchingthis.com. The idea is it sends me e-mails and texts when there is an awesome game on, like an overtime basketball game, 12-inning baseball game, whatever. You tell it what tv channels you get and what sports you want to follow, and it let’s you know when something exciting is going on. Anyway, I’m supposed to get e-mails when games are at an “high” level of excitement, and texts when a game is at “severe” level. So, my question is… why am I getting a text that says “Red Sox 7, Royals 0″? Do we need to check the Sox game?” (more)

Today’s YTT (care of the chairman) brings me back, so I’m sharing some early athletic stats with all of you from my first (and only year) playing Little League:

- I played Catcher and couldn’t catch.
- I dropped every third strike and proceeded to either sail the throw into right field or peg the runner in the back—there was no in between.
- In one game I clocked one over the head of the Left Fielder for an inside-the-park home run. Coach moved me up in the batting order for the next game where I proceeded to strike out in every at bat.
- Everyone in the league got an award. Mine? Most Improved Player.
- We lost all every one of our games going into the season finale.

-But…

- In the last game (against another winless team), we scraped out a win, rushed the field, and piled on the pitcher. And it was awesome.

If you use MSN Messenger, Google Talk, or any Jabber client, you can now Instant Message RUWTbot.

Just add ruwtbot@areyouwatchingthis.com as a new contact, and you can ask him for sports scores for the NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB. This is new for him, so be friendly. You can get the whole story straight from the source at ruwtbot.com.

Examples of what you can ask him: suns scores, yankees news, nba news, nhl scores, tv espn2, tv tnthd

Try it now!

We haven’t had a YouTube Tuesday since September? Lies!

Okay, maybe not lies, but it’s definitely a conspiracy. Just like that Mitchell Report. Go Yanks!

I love baseball. I do. Most of my most exciting and crushingly depressing moments in sports revolve around my Yankees, but the summer of baseball is long. 82 days long, not that I’ve counted or anything. Thankfully though, there is a light at the end of the tunnel less than a week away. Seems like as good a YTT as any to peek in on the Tour de France. Yes, it’s as gripping as you thought it might be.

We’ll be starting this week’s YouTube Tuesday with a few facts care of Wikipedia.

• Cable cars are about 12 feet tall
• Cable cars weigh roughly 8 tons

RUWT? is all about being fair and balanced, so I’ll follow those up with some “facts” from my brain.

• McCovey Cove is more than 12 feet deep
• Few 8 ton objects driven by a man in a funny hat float

Given these indisputable truths, anyone see anything wrong with this commercial?

taint

1. To affect with or as if with a disease.
2. To affect with decay or putrefaction; spoil. See synonyms at contaminate.
3. To corrupt morally.
4. To affect with a tinge of something reprehensible.

The word taint seems to be everywhere in sports these days. You have players saying that Bonds’ run at Aaron is tainted, the ridiculous blackmail and child abuse soap opera that is the Landis trial, and even ESPN, that bastion of sports news, is raising eyebrows over how they try and win scoops.

sigh.

So for today’s YouTube Tuesday, we’re going old school. We’re going pure. We’re going 8-bit. (via)

There are a lot of “T”s in that title, so it’s probably a good time for a YouTube Tuesday Two-fer.

With a tip of the cap to my love for advertising, here is a pair of two great Gatorade commercials. Instead of bastardizing classics, agencies should be giving us more like these. Fittingly, both spots are featuring players that need to start shouldering more of the load. Quick.