EL BARRIO, EL FALLS: I got the bat signal last night and told the boss, I was on it. I lied. I knew I wouldn’t get to it until this morning. I made a mad dash scramble through the sports pages to find MTM worthy news. Here are the results of that search and the topics for today are: Dallas Keuchel, Kyler Murray And Slain Soccer Journalist.
Dallas Keuchel: The best remaining starter pitcher on the free agent market is beside himself wondering what is going on with the market. After Patrick Corbin signed for 6 years, 140 million with the Nationals it would make sense that the second best starter on the market would be available and snapped up quickly but it hasn’t happened. He has watch J.A. Happ sign with the Yankees and still no action. Keuchel is 67-45 with a 3.28 ERA in 145 starts, with a 3.31 ERA in 51 ? postseason innings over his career and those numbers deserve a big payday and you have to figure someone is gonna give him a big payday. I think teams are trying to figure what is the market between Corbin and Happ for a guy like Keuchel. Either that or he needs to get rid of that hipster beard and haircut.
Kyler Murray: Which sport will he chose? We can all agree the days of Bo Jackson and Deion Sanders are pretty much gone. Even Brian Jordan eventually stopped playing football to focus on pro baseball. With that said Murray is an intriguing situation. He just had a massive senior season as Oklahoma. However that was his one and only good year and the Oakland A’s have already convinced him to come to spring training. In college, he lost out for starting QB at Texas A&M and only won the job at the end of the season due to poor performance by the guy ahead of him. Then he sat out a year when he transferred to Oklahoma, backed up Heisman winner Baker Mayfield, then had a great season this past year. You know who else had a great season in college then went pro? Mark Sanchez! So NFL teams are not sure what the kid is doing. This kid is getting some bad advice. He should focus on football and if he doesn’t make it in the next 3-5 years, he should then make a break for baseball. Baseball is less physical, provides greater career longevity and more pay plus guaranteed contracts. He wouldn’t be the first QB to do this, if you look at Tim Tebow and Drew Hanson. He could be the first one to be successful.
Slain Soccer Journalist: Ahmed Hussein-Suale was killed late Wednesday, shot twice in the chest and once in the neck at close range while driving in the suburb of Accra where he lived. He died immediately, according to police. Ghana doesn’t have a lot of gun murders and as nothing was taken this was a clear assassination of a respected journalist. Suale Ghana who helped expose a high-ranking official at world soccer body FIFA as corrupt. Being an investigative journalist you make enemies and helping take down an organization as big as FIFA in a soccer mad country makes you loads more enemies. It was not easy but they caught Kwesi Nyantakyi, a member of world soccer’s FIFA Council and the second most powerful man in African soccer at the time, taking a bribe of $65,000 from their undercover reporters, who were posing as unethical businessmen. Nyantakyi smiles as he stuffs the wads of cash into a black plastic bag and agrees to use his position as president of the Ghanaian Football Association to help the businessmen – for a cut of their profits. It has always been this way but in developing nations like my beloved homeland, it is even more so. The president of Ghana has made a statement. Not sure how much of it is sincere but the fact that it was made shows how big a deal this is. Of course the same politician, Ghanaian MP Kennedy Agyapong circulated photos of the now slain investigative journalist, calling for retribution against hims for making the country look bad are now saying they had nothing to do with it and never wanted this to happen. Sure ya right.
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