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There’s been very little for the University of Washington fans to celebrate outside of the comfort of Bank of America arena.  After last nights 93-81 beating by the Cal Bears — the huskies have now equaled the win total of the 2008 Detroit Lions on the road.

Zero. Zilch. Nada. And minus the heart-breaking losses to UCLA and Texas Tech — the majority of the losses have been poorly defended, turnover infested blow-outs with appalling shot selection where the team has not only been outplayed, they’ve also been — sorry Romar defenders — outcoached.

If you had just read the box-score, or only watched the first half of the game, there wouldn’t be too much reason for optimism.  The Huskies shot below 45 percent from the field, had only seven assists, and were out-rebounded by nine — not exactly the definition of how to win on the road.

If you take a look at the bigger picture (and in a year where you have zero road wins, you kind of have to) — you will see there were a lot of things the Huskies can take into the final third of the season.

First, lets keep in mind that Cal is not only arguably the best team in the conference, but a bad match-up for the Huskies. Jerome Randle is nearly an impossible matchup for both Venoy Overton and Isaiah Thomas — they just aren’t big or long enough to close out on his quick release, and when forced to play close he’s quick enough to blow by, as we saw on numerous occasions last night. Jamaal Boykin is another tough matchup, too big for Quincy Pondexter and Justin Holiday, too quick for Tyrese Breshers or Matthew Bryan-Amaning.  Yes, they were able to have their way with the Bears at home, but it took one of the best shooting days of the year to complete the effort.  The Dawgs should hope that someone pulls an early upset and Cal can be avoided in the Pac-10 tournament.

Despite the poor match-up, the Huskies were also still able to finally put together a decent offensive effort on the road. The 81 points could have easily been 90 to 95 if a few balls bounce in the right direction. Shooting 26 for 30 from the free throw line will usually help you win a lot of games, it just didn’t today.  There are still major concerns about the ball movement when Abdul Gaddy isn’t on the floor, but it was still one of the better offensive performances of the year.

The biggest reason to have optimism though, is that the Huskies didn’t give up. When the Dawgs were down by 17 with around four minutes left in the first half — it would have been easy for the team to pack it in and hope that Stanford gets the team of the snide.  There was no sign of that, however. The Huskies competed for loose balls throughout the game, made a few adjustments to try and create some pressure, and at no point gave the “oh well” body language. Lets not forget about the gigantic amount of minutes being played by sophomores and juniors — with quite a few of the players not being regular members of the rotation last year. It would be easy for these kids to say ‘wait til next year’ — but last night that wasn’t there, and that’s something to admire.

The last six games are all winnable — in fact winnable may be an understatement. The chances of an at-large bid may have already slipped away — but there were things to take from last nights game that bode well not only for next year, but for mid-March as well.

Technology has changed the way we receive the majority of our information forever. We don’t bother to call people because we can convey our feelings on a social networking website. If we need to give information as quickly as possible, we don’t dial a number, we turn on our T9 or autofill on our cell phones and have it typed up faster than we could ever communicate it verbally. And we no longer get our sports just from Joe Local-TV, we get the information from our lap-tops and our phones as quickly as said information occurs.

Not only do we get that information as quickly as ever, it has become as specialized as ever, and recruiting is no exception. Numerous websites are focusing more and more on prep sports, offering their takes on who the best players are in the country, giving high school kids rankings and of course, the aesthetically pleasing stars, usually between one and five.

Youre going to see the Washington Huskies class rankings vary — there have been some that have it as a top 10 class, and some that have it as low as 30.

These rankings don’t tell the story of how important this 2010 class is for the Washington Huskies — nor what an amazing job coach Steve Sarkisian did assembling one of the best classes in the Pac-10.

Lets first keep in mind that this is a team that hasn’t been to a bowl game in over half a decade, and just over a year ago was coming off a season of going defeated. While there still is as much history for Washington as any pac-10 program not named USC, this history just doesn’t mean as much to 17 and 18 year old kids. Coach Sarkisian had to be able to sell these kids on the ability to win not just soon, but immediately. Yes, the Huskies had an advantage of being able to offer playing time sooner than some of the other schools they were competing against because of unfruitful classes under Tyrone Willingham, but getting to play early and not going to bowl games isn’t what these kids sign up for, they sign up to compete for conference championships and more.

And the Huskies got the good ones today. The best part of this class is not just the quality, its where the quality comes from. Nearly 2/3 of today’s class came from California, and despite it being a fairly down year for the state of Washington, Coach Sark was still able to sign seven of the top 10 from the state.  If the Huskies are going to be able to compete for Rose Bowls on a consistent basis, he’s going to have to be able to recruit not only the in-state talent, but steal the kids from down south as well. Not only that, but we once again saw the dawgs be able to emphasize their efforts on the California kids but were still able to bring in an abundance of talent from Hawaii as well. Recruiting nationally is a great advantage, but you can win when you recruit locally and have connected resources in the right places.

The depth of the class is simply astounding as well.  Everyone knows about Nick Montana, but the Huskies got quality players in every aspect of the game offensively and defensively. On offense, the interior (Colin Porter, Erik Kohler, Micah Hatchie just to name a few) the playmakers (Deonte Cooper, Kevin Smith, Jesse Callier) and of course, the leader (Montana).  On defense, the interior (Sione Potoae, Andrew Hudson, Hauili Jamora), the linbackers (Victor Burnett, Darius Waters, Chris Young) and the defensive backfield (Sean Parker, Taz Stevenson and Jamaal Kearse (though he may play wr).  The Huskies didnt just address these positions with mediocre kids whom they knew were likely to sign. They went out and they worked — hard– and signed real players, with real potential.  They weren’t competing for the same kids Idaho or Washington State were competing for. They were going after guys that were wanted by the USCs, the UCLAs and the Cals, and they won.

These are the kind of classes that you can potentially look back upon and say were the foundations for something special. And I can’t guarantee that all these kids will work out — I can’t even say for sure that any of them will. But just based on the sheer depth of the class, and a general understanding of what talent is — it’s very likely that we are looking at something remarkable beginning in Montlake.

When I moved from Lacey, Washington to Virginia Beach 10 months ago, one of the reasons I was excited about the move was the opportunity to be in the middle of everything.  Being up in the that left hand corner pretty much limits your spur of the moment trips to Spokane, Portland, or a very long, harsh, unforgiving drive to California.

Being in the mid-atlantic, I have a fairly short drive  to Washington DC, Baltimore, Boston — and of course, New York. Using an internet map service, it’s about a nine hour drive to Cooperstown, New York — home of the Baseball Hall Of Fame. I have put off this trip for various reasons (gas prices, laziness, school, laziness) — but it occured to me about a month ago that I could make my first trip during the 2010 introduction ceremonies, and maybe just maybe get a chance to see Edgar Martinez inducted into the most sacred of baseball grounds.

Unfortunately, if you take the current yes vs no collection up at Ussmariner.com (which is outstanding, by the way) as a poll, Martinez is going to fall far short of the 75 percent requirement. In this — the age of the internet — we not only get to find out who, what, where or when faster than ever, we find out the why, and in much more detail than ever before. Many of the voters have given their reasoning as to why they think that Martinez doesn’t belong in the Hall Of Fame, stating their various expectations for who belongs and what their standards are for someone to be invited to Cooperstown.

The reasoning for some of these baseball ‘experts’ for not including Edgar on their ballots is embarassing. For these writers to be so un-educated on the game and to be allowed to decide something so important makes me wonder if it’s as important as I once thought.

Here are a few of the more common reasons Edgar is being left of ballots

He spent most of his career as a DH: Ok, Bruce Sutter and Goose Gossage spent most of his career pitching with two to three run leads for one inning. Yet Gossage made it without any controversy It doesn’t even matter why Edgar was a DH, the numbers he put up at any position are insane. Martinez career OPS is .933, currently 33rd best of any hitter to ever play the game. Nine times Edgar Martinez finished in the top 10 of adjusted OPS. Of the ridiculously high number players who qualify, Edgar Martinez ranks 38th. Thats higher than Ken Griffey, Jr, Tony Gwynn, Wade Boggs, George Brett, and some OF named DiMaggio. The idea that since he did it as a designated hitter it means less is just laughable. Run prevention is great, but its impossible to win without players getting on base and producing extra base hits, and there’s not a single right-handed hitter who did it better than Edgar in the 90’s or half of the 00’s.

He didn’t hit any of the major milestones : This is probably the most frustrating argument you’ll hear not only for this year, but for years to follow.  Apparently to some voters you can just ignore players until they hit 500 homers or 3000 hits or 300 wins or bla, bla, bla. Yes, Edgar never got to 3000 hits, but he did get on base 42 perecent of the time. Appearantly, since Eddie Murray got 3000 hits and 500 home runs, it doesn’t matter that he got on base 5 percent less than Martinez and had an OPS 50 points lower. What matters is that he played a position and that he had a lot more at bats. Because thats the key to winning baseball games, not scoring more runs than the other team, but batting more times than the other team. Excuse me while I try to remove the hammer from my brain. Why is it counted against Edgar thath e walked nearly 1300 times? We teach our kids a walk is as good as a hit, and then dont vote for a guy who gets on base 3400 times because not enough of them are…hits. Excuse me while I remove the hammer from my head.

He played in the PED period: Fine, but you better not vote for anyone from this era either. No Pujols, no Manny Ramirez, no A-Rod, none.  Having a low (albeit growing) percentage of the league screw up and cheat doesnt mean you should hold it against Martinez. Numbers are numbers. The fact that Edgar slugged .515 for 17 seasons has nothing to do with who injected who and never should. If you don’t think players who test positive for steroids or any other performance-enhancing drug should be allowed to make the Hall Of Fame, fine. Putting everyone else who played in the era on the same level is childish.

And finally, and this is the one that makes my brain really hurt

I just never got the feeling that Edgar was a Hall Of Famer, but maybe I’ll vote for him at a later time: I honestly didn’t know what to say when I first started writing this. I probably wrote and erased about three-hundred times til I finally came to this conclusion:

You dont deserve your vote . If you truly are being paid to be considered an expert at the sport, and you really did the research, and the end-result was hmmm, not now, but maybe next time — go away.

Same to you Dan Shaughnessy, for saying ridiculous things like “Some guys just strike you as Cooperstown-worthy and others do not. Edgar Martinez was a very fine hitter, but I never said to myself, “The Mariners are coming to Fenway this weekend. I wonder how the Sox are going to pitch to Edgar Martinez?”

This guy gets to decide who gets in the Hall Of Fame? Someone who bases his vote on how he, someone who has absolutely nothing to do with the game, feels about how pitchers are going to pitch to him?

Or how about this winner from Jon Heyman

“While Martinez was a superb hitter, and his career .418 on-base percentage and .515 slugging percentages are impressive indeed, only twice did Martinez even crack the top 10 in MVP voting (he was third once and sixth once). That suggests something less than dominance. And even on his career totals, he comes up short. His final power figures (309 home runs, 1,261 RBIs) are underwhelming for someone whose whole candidacy is based on offense.”

Yes folks. The entire object of the game of baseball is to hit home runs, hope that someone is on base before you bat, and pray that you do it well enough to be in the top ten in MVP voting.

And this whole “he’s not a Hall Of Famer now but he might be in 2028″ argument is just baffling. Nothing changes. Edgar’s stat line will still read 300/400/500. There will still be an extremely small amount of players who can ever come close to those numbers. What in the world changes from year to year, other than perhaps youre ability to comprehend statistics.

I just dont get it. I hope this entire post was just an exercise in ranting and that Edgar gets in convincingly.  It doesn’t look very likely though, and that should make not only Mariner fans sad, but anyone who appreciates greatness.

Edgar was great, its a shame that only half of the country seems to understand.