Saturday, January 17, 2009

Inauguration Day Live!

I will be live-blogging during Tuesday's historic Inauguration. I have chosen Cover It Live as the on-screen interface to use, as it will allow real-time interaction and conversation from you, the reader. I will have the Hulu live feed on the site as well.

The live-blog session here will kick off at 11:30AM EST; our 44th president, Barack Obama, is scheduled to take the Oath of Office at noon.

I hope you'll join me!

Cole Hamels - No Arbitration!

Happy news for my beloved World Champion Philadelphia Phillies: the Phillies' website announced today that pitching ace Cole Hamels has signed a three-year, $20.5 million contract with the club! Hamels was one of seven Phils who might possibly go to arbitration this year. Agreeing to this contract avoids arbitration in Hamel's case, and secures both a highly valuable part of the 2008 Championship Team and one of the flat-out best young starting pitchers in the Major Leagues today. Hamels performance in last year's post-season was phenomenal, and I, as a life-long Phillies fan who has seen a lot of bad pitching from this club over the years, am very glad to see this deal get done!

With the game's finest pinch hitter Greg Dobbs recently signing a two-year deal, and the addition of Raul Ibanez to the outfield, the 2009 team is starting to take shape. How the Phils will fair in '09 may rest, however, with the six remaining players eligible for arbitration: Ryan Howard, Ryan Madson, Jayson Werth, Shane Victorino, Chad Durbin and Joe Blanton. Howard, of course, is the big question-mark, but the Phils would not have been in the post-season if not for the strong contributions of the other five names on that list.

LeVeille Update

First of all, thank you to those of you who commented on the post I wrote last week regarding Steve LeVeille being taken off the air. I am so pleased to hear other voices joining the chorus asking for his return. Please, keep the comments coming!

That post has generated a tremendous amount of traffic for this blog, in large part because of two sites which linked to it: The Boston Radio Blog and Radio-Info.com both picked up the post and brought quite a few new readers my way. A huge thank you to those who linked, and a warm welcome to those who stopped by to take a look. I do hope you'll stay and become regulars!

While there hasn't been anything to report regarding Steve LeVeille's status, the Boston Globe is reporting that Lovell Dyett, another former WBZ on-air personality who was summarily laid off in similar fashion and at the same time as LeVeille, has been meeting with WBZ management to discuss a return to the air. Could this be the first sign that WBZ is realizing the tremendous mistake they've made by selling the station's soul to the CBS Network? Keep fingers crossed!