We met my son and daughter-in-law from Nashville  in Atlanta this week and caught 2 Braves games against the Padres. Needless to say, since the Braves swept the series, a good time was had by all!

P.S. saw in the paper today the Padres released Jim Edmonds yesterday. 

The nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth is a government program...........Ronald Reagan

First I have to give a friendly rebuttal to my fellow member Balboa, who has ragged on me about drag racing, saying nobody cared, and Indy racing was the big deal. I happen to have the ratings on both Danica's and Ashley Force's wins.

This comes from the Spin Doctor 500 blog written by Michael Knight, who is an extremely knowledgeable motorsports writer, with knowledge of all forms of racing. In his blog he laments, and asks the question: What would Winston do? As most know, Winston was a long time sponsor of both NHRA drag racing, as well as NASCAR Cup racing. Since Winston couldn't advertise on TV, they spent insane amounts of money on both NHRA and NASCAR promotion. RJR should be credited with bring both forms of racing to where they are now. They helped both bring in many, many corporate sponsors, from non-racing companies.

The blog is a must read for racing fans: http://spindoctor500...

But the meat of this story for me and Balboa is this:

" Danica Patrick's first post-win performance got a .74 rating on ESPN2.
That's up 164 percent from last year's dismal .28. Ashley Force's first
female Funny Car victory pulled a .89, an increase of 56 percent from
last year. That also was one of the network's best-ever NHRA ratings."

As you see, more people watched Ashley's win, both on ESPN2, and most certainly in person.

Ok enough of that!

It's pole day at Indy. Danica did her usually good job of sitting on the pole, for a short time. But as of now, Dan Weldon, a former 500 winner is on the pole. Now Danica (or anyone else) can go back and try to better their qualifying spot, which is taken from the average speed of your 4 lap run. The catch is, if you elect to re-qualify, your first time is voided. So it's a risk. But I think Danica's team will give it another shot!

I was happy to see Smoke (Tony Stewart) win last night with the Old Spice car. Great driving on a really fast track.

Tonight is gonna be a good race. Wouldn't count Stewart out to double up.

If that's not enough, Connie Cohen will be on the Discovery Channel tonight. She races in Pro Stock Motorcycle, with her 7 second, 190 mph Buell. She's on a show called "Mean Green Machines" and will race against an electric drag bike. I've not seen the show, but if it's the bike I have seen, she'll have some competition. The TV times are 7 pm and 11 pm central time. Should be fun to watch, just have the BS filter handy when the global warming speech comes!

All in all, a ton of good racing today, as Pole day continues to 5pm, followed by the Cup race at 6 pm central.