I have a lot of my retirement and discretionary money invested in Fidelity Contrafund (FCNTX).

Contrafund is the most highly recommended mutual fund by Jim Cramer, the host of Mad Money on CNBC.

The fund is closing itself to new investors on April 28, so if you ever want to invest in the fund, you'll have to do it soon.

Here are my baseball bets this year. Until I get a better track record, I can't recommend these to anyone else...

Jose Contreras, under 14 wins. Health and performance risk.

From Baseball Prospectus' Team Health Reports:
"Yeah, he tossed 204.2 IP in 2005, but he has a history of nagging problems, his walk totals give us reason to worry about his arm's reliability as well as his control, and we were never totally sold on his age. Add in all that inconsistency while he was with the Yankees, and we're not convinced Contreras can repeat his 2005 and stay off of the DL. "

Mark Mulder, under 15 wins. Performance risk.

His strikeout rate has declined in 4 straight years, and the Cardinals don't appear to be as strong as they were last year.

Josh Beckett, under 15.5 wins. Health risk.

Again, from BP's Team Health Reports:
"His propensity to get injured is as undeniable as the quality of his stuff. Beckett bounced onto the disabled list twice last year, first for recurring blisters on his right middle finger, and later for a left oblique strain. Both of these injuries are chronic, and have prevented him from cracking the 200-inning threshold. Being forced to limit his innings at a young age could help him in the long run, but the Sox are counting on him to surpass his innings-pitched career high of 179.2, and that could pose a bit of a problem."

Jason Isringhausen, under 36 saves. Health risk.

Isringhausen seems to have one injury problem per year. It doesn't prevent him from being effective the rest of the time, but it might make it hard for him to get 36 saves.

Chicago White Sox, under 91.5 wins.

Based on their number of runs scored and allowed, the White Sox should've won about 90 games last year. Their bullpen and defense won't be as good as they were last year (Jenks looks awful, Hermanson is injured, Rowand is gone, Podsednik has nagging injury problems) and they'll probably run into more health issues.

Toronto Blue Jays, under 87 wins.

The Blue Jays have 2 major problems:
1) Every single member of their starting rotation has major injury concerns, as does Troy Glaus.
2) They have some star power (Burnett, Ryan, Glaus, Halladay, and Wells), but the other players are extremely mediocre and offer almost no upside.

[Edit] I decided not to bet on the Cardinals winning fewer than 93 games. Diamond Mind has the Cardinals winning 95 games. Considering their competition, I wouldn't be surprised to see that happen.

I did bet on the Yankees to win fewer than 97 games because I don't think their starting pitchers will stay healthy. I picked the Marlins to win more than 64 games because they have some promising players, and that should enable them to avoid 100 losses.

My co-workers and I were thinking of the worst possible choices to narrate an audiobook. Here's what we came up with:

Rosie Perez – War & Peace
Mr. T – Little Women
Fran Drescher - Roots
Chris Walken – any book ever written
Mike Tyson – Hamlet
Dikembe Mutombo – Lord Of The Rings
Stephen Hawking - Any Harry Potter Book
Shaquille O'Neal - Pride and Prejudice
Shannon Sharpe - The Wealth of Nations
Kevin Harlan – Freakanomics
Bill Walton – Charles Barkley’s Who’s Afraid Of A Large Black Man?

Did anyone see this yesterday?

Droopy pants suspect drives against traffic, flees on foot

It happened in Garden Grove and is currently being featured on cnn.com

On Tuesday, a Japanese co-worker walked into my office. She doesn't follow sports that closely, but we had the following conversation.

Co-worker: Thank you.
Me [confused]: Thank you for what?
Co-worker: For congratulating me.
Me: Urgh...

(Japan won the World Baseball Classic on Monday night, after beating Korea in the semi-final on Saturday night.)

Later on she apologized, saying she "shouldn't torture me like that". Somehow, I didn't feel that much better.

Maybe the fact that a mild-mannered, female, Japanese co-worker was trash-talking at me had something to do with it...

A busy sports schedule this weekend:

Friday, 4:20 PM:
1st Round of NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament
Cal vs North Carolina State
The last time we were in the tournament (3 years ago), we beat NC State on a Richard Midgley 3 point buzzer beater in a 76-74 overtime win. Let's hope we can repeat that result this time around...

Saturday, 7 PM:
World Baseball Classic Semi-final
Korea vs Japan
Ichiro didn't think we'd be able to beat Japan in 30 years. Instead, we've beaten them twice in 2 games. We'll have to do it 3 times in a row if we want to make the WBC Final.

Sunday, Time TBA:
2nd Round of NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament
Cal vs Texas
If we beat NC State, we'd probably play Texas in the 2nd round. Unfortunately, it's gonna be a virtual road game since it'll be in Dallas. But if we could somehow pull off this upset, it would be a small piece of payback for being robbed of a BCS berth a couple years ago.

Highlights from Houston:

-Stephen and Mannam's wedding was a blast. The ceremony was short and sweet, the filet mignon dinner was awesome, and the reception featured Stephen's rapping skills, which were surprisingly impressive...



-Quote of the weekend comes from Crew Andy: "[Dancing] is so much easier when you drink..."

-Roommate picture:


More pictures on Ahan's smugmug.

Ichiro Suzuki, before the World Baseball Classic:

“Not only will [Japan] win, but also we’ll make Japanese baseball fans feel that they saw a truly great game. I want to make [Korea and Taiwan] see that they will not be able to beat Japan in next 30 years.”

30 years? I don't think so... On Sunday morning, Korea beat Japan 3-2 to win Pool A of the World Baseball Classic.

And who made the last out? Ichiro, of course.

Highlights can be found at the World Baseball Classic website:

Search "Seung Yeop's homer" for the game-winning homer.
Search "Jin Young Lee bails Korea out" for the an amazing catch that saved 3 runs.
Search "Korea finishes off Japan" to see Ichiro make the final out.

[Entire post has been edited]

As you can tell, Basile overhauled and cleaned up my blog template. I'm not sure why he stayed up until 3:30 AM to do it, but I guess I should be thankful that he cleaned up my blog.

The biggest changes to my blog are the following:
1) I've sorted blogs by both first name and grad year. All blogs should appear in both sections.
2) The lists of blogs are in collapsible menus. Note that you can only expand one group at a time.

Let me know if you have any suggestions for my blog layout. Again, many thanks to Basile!