I'm flying to Dallas this morning on a business trip to the Beckett Media offices, where I'll be putting the finishing touches on the annual Rotoworld baseball magazine. Blogging will probably be non-existent until at least Friday, but starting next week my schedule lightens up considerably and the usual AG.com content will resume. In the meantime, my condolences to the Pohlad family and congratulations to the Christensen family.

Tomorrow is my 26th birthday, but I've never been enthusiastic about birthdays and at this point it'll just mean that there's one fewer day to work on the annual Rotoworld baseball magazine before it's due at the printer next week. For anyone wondering, being in charge of a 150,000-word magazine that gets put together during the month or so surrounding Christmas, New Year's Eve, and your birthday eventually just causes those events to lose all meaning. Plus, if you round up I'm now 30 years old, which sucks.


Chuck Norris unfortunately does not share my birthday, but these people were born on January 3: Mel Gibson, Eli Manning, John Paul Jones, Bobby Hull, George Martin, J.R.R. Tolkien, A.J. Burnett, Danica McKellar, Victoria Principal, Stephen Stills, Robert Loggia, Dabney Coleman, and Hank Stram. That collection of names has to be among the worst for any birthday, right? Seriously, the pickings were so slim that Alisha Klass, Michael Restovich, and the state of Alaska nearly made the cut.

With that exciting celebration out of the way, here are the links ...

As Charles Barkley learned the hard way this week, sometimes honesty really isn't the best policy.

Official Mainstream Newspaper Columnist of AG.com Joe Posnanski recently posted an interesting blog entry about the questions asked by reporters and included this amusing aside:

Of course cheering in the press box DOES happen in America, though the culprits are usually the sorts of people that everyone else in the business calls "foofs." I would say "foof" is a difficult word to define precisely--it has a multitude of meanings and shades. ... A foof person is not exactly a bad reporter or a clueless homer or someone who asks players for autographs on the field. A foof is the person who everyone sees in a press box and wonders, "How the heck did he/she get in here?"

I'm rarely accused of being a "homer" and would never care enough to ask players for autographs, but my guess is that quite a few reporters wondered "how the heck did he get in here?" after seeing me in the media room at the winter meetings last month. Or maybe it was just me doing the wondering.

Speaking of Posnanski, apparently good blogging runs in the family because his brother chronicled his amazing weight loss while dropping over 200 pounds in 2008. As someone who lost 92.5 pounds only to gain a big chunk of it right back a couple years later, reading about Tony Posnanski's dramatic transformation makes me equal parts inspired and depressed. Sadly, the only thing worse than being fat is being fat again.

Official Fantasy Girl of AG.com runner-up Marisa Miller's latest photo shoot involved wasting a whole bunch of perfectly good Fruit Loops.

A couple months ago University of Minnesota journalism student Cody Zwiefelhofer chose me to be the subject of an assigned profile story he was writing for a magazine class and you can now read the lengthy finished product by clicking here.

Rarely is a cover version of a song significantly better than the original, but I'm sure we can all agree that Mariah Carey can't hold a candle to Korean singing sensation Dong-Won Kim:


Most people who watch that video will focus on the actual performance, but my initial reaction was that Kim's version really just highlights some of the most ridiculously awful lyrics in song-writing history.

I'm now on Facebook, although much like with MySpace it's unclear to me what the point is exactly.

To celebrate the new year, Chris Jaffe examined the history of The Hardball Times and determined that the site has produced 2,649 articles since it launched in early 2004, including at least 10 articles from 36 different writers. Not surprisingly THT boss Dave Studenmund leads the way with 235 articles, including at least two dozen each year. However, it's shocking to me at least that some chump named Aaron Gleeman ranks second with 233 articles and until last month was the site's all-time leader:

Aaron Gleeman: the Babe Ruth of THT. They used to say Ruth's 714 home runs was a record that may never be broken. Gleeman's 133 articles in one year is a similarly Ruthian figure. It's extra impressive he did it in barely three-quarters of a year.

Heck, forget the articles for a second. Please note Gleeman was also the site's chief editor, giving him a hand in all other articles. Plus he ran the site. It's Ruthian--if Ruth won 20 games the same season he hit 60 dingers while telling the owners how to run things. THT now has about five people making up for what Gleeman did that one year.

Part of my joining Rotoworld and NBCSports.com unfortunately involved stepping away from THT after co-creating the site with Matthew Namee, so sadly my byline hasn't appeared there since 2006. While penning 133 articles in one year has allowed me to linger around in THT history, the workload doesn't seem all that extreme even now. After all, both then and now my yearly blog entry count at AG.com has been much higher than 133. Plus, my article count at Rotoworld for 2008 was well over 200.

In 2004 my gig at Rotoworld was just starting, but as Jaffe notes my THT duties included running the site in addition to writing. Plus, 2004 was actually midway through my college career, which may help explain why there's no diploma hanging on my wall right now. All of which is an overly self aggrandizing way of saying that when you really love to write and really hate school pumping out 133 articles in one year is nothing. Although that's not the first time I've been accused of having "a Ruthian figure."

Kim Kardashian has been hooked up with Reggie Bush for quite a while now, but her less attractive sister apparently digs ball hogs with neck tattoos.

Despite his blog-hating ways columnist Patrick Reusse has long been one of the bright spots in the Minneapolis Star Tribune sports section, but he'll be cutting his writing workload in half after accepting a new job as host of KSTP radio's morning show. Starting at 5:30 a.m. each day makes for a rough gig, but the following note from the station's press release announcing the hiring outlines the part of the job that Reusse will probably dislike most:

In addition to new on-air responsibilities, Reusse will contribute with a show blog and other content on the station's website.

As Reusse wrote not long ago while seemingly equating blogging to homelessness: "Journalism is getting very crowded in this new age of the blogosphere, with the internet giving anyone with an opinion and a computer a venue to vent." Funny how things can change. Welcome to the blogosphere, Pat, and please try to keep the "boot licking, obfuscation, and grandiosity" to a minimum. After all, "we're going to be colleagues."

Apparently the International Sports Press Association agrees with me.

Katy Perry's music is still more or less unlistenable, but who knew?

Friends of AG.com Keith and Phil Arnold recently finished their season-long road trip traveling to the best college football games in the country each week, and the result was amusing videos, lots of good blogging, a SportingNews.com gig, and one photo of an Arnold brother in a Twins hat embracing a girl decked out in Under Armour gear and a Florida Gators beanie. In other words, Road to Game Day lived up to its billing as "the greatest traveling college football website in the history of the internet."

Between equally glowing reviews from Bill Simmons and Mick Foley, I'm itching to see The Wrestler.

My idea for this week's AG.com-approved music video was "New Happy Birthday Song" by NOFX and my fallback plan was "Lisa It's Your Birthday" by the famous Bart Simpson-Leon Kompowsky duo, but sadly there doesn't appear to be a great video version of either song online. Instead, here's the far less amusing Paul McCartney performing "Birthday":

I've been a bad blogger lately because the Twins' offseason hasn't exactly been action-packed thus far and the annual Rotoworld baseball magazine is due at Beckett on January 6. I'm the magazine's editor and also write a big chunk of the content, so hopefully you'll forgive me for the lack of new entries here. I've got some interesting things planned for AG.com once the magazine stops dominating my life and goes to the printer on January 9, including the annual Top 40 Twins Prospects series.

In the meantime, thank you for not complaining too much about the lack of content here and thank you for supporting me in 2008, whether by reading AG.com, checking out my non-blog writing at Rotoworld, watching my videos at NBCSports.com, or listening to my appearances on KFAN. AG.com has totaled slightly more than 1.25 million visitors this year, participation in the semi-weekly live chat sessions has greatly surpassed my expectations, and Rotoworld has posted record-setting traffic.

All of which makes me very appreciative of my audience and excited for what 2009 will bring. Seriously, thank you. I'll be back Friday with a Link-O-Rama and semi-daily blogging will resume soon. And in an effort to more properly express my feelings about the loyal AG.com audience in a completely ridiculous way, here's a fitting song from my all-time favorite, Al Green:

In honor of Festivus (and some writing projects with looming deadlines) my blogging may be light for a little while unless the Twins make a significant move.

I'd never played no-limit hold 'em live before and the $2-$5 game at the Bellagio is a pretty intimidating place to start, but with the winter meetings essentially ending Thursday afternoon and my flight home departing at 1:00 a.m. it seemed like the correct way to spend my final night in Las Vegas. I'm thankful that my nerves didn't keep me from taking the plunge, because the game was incredibly juicy and the night was extremely fun.

As a poker nut perhaps the best part of my $2-$5 no-limit table was the location right next to Bobby's Room, which allowed me to watch the most famous high-stakes game in the world and rub elbows with big-name pros like Doyle Brunson, Howard Lederer, Jennifer Harman (and her husband Marco Traniello), John Hennigan, David Oppenheim, Eli Elezra, Abe Mosseri, David Levi, Minh Ly, and even Men "The Master" Nguyen, who came about as close to anteing up in Bobby's Room as me.

That probably doesn't sound all that exciting to most people, but the odds are that anyone with enough of a poker obsession to immediately recognize cash-game players like Mosseri and Oppenheim who haven't made a ton of televised tournament appearances will get a pretty huge thrill from the Bobby's Room experience. Brunson hobbling past to get to his table and Harman having a lengthy conversation while standing about two feet away definitely makes a $2-$5 no-limit game seem a lot more exciting.

As for the actual $2-$5 no-limit game, it was very beatable. My table was almost as loose as they were talkative and several players seemed capable of basically giving away money after the flop, which had me convinced that the proper plan was to avoid big pre-flop coin flips and force them to make as many decisions as possible on every street. Of course, no battle plan survives contact with the enemy and all my small-ball tactics couldn't keep me from being forced into a big pre-flop pot almost immediately.

After a couple of people limped into the pot from early position a very loose, aggressive player with tons of money in front of him raised to $30 from middle position. Dealt ace-king suited one off the button my first thought was to bump it to $100 or so, but rather than risk playing a huge pot before the flop I simply called in position. Unfortunately, the button and small blind also called right behind me, at which point the big blind thought for a few moments before shoving all-in for $225.

For whatever reason it seemed obvious to me that the all-in didn't come from a monster hand and was simply a "squeeze play" attempting to pick up all the money already in the pot. It also seemed unlikely that the button or small blind would have called behind me if they had monster hands, so when the original raiser folded my decision basically became a math problem. There was $355 in the pot and it was $195 more for me to call.

As long as the all-in raiser didn't have aces or kings I was facing a coin flip at worst and I'd be a pretty solid favorite in the fairly likely event that he had anything with an ace. Committing $225 before the flop with ace-king was the exact opposite of my plan, but giving up 1.8-to-1 odds in that spot seemed like it would have been a horrible decision. I called and thankfully my reads were correct, because both the button and small blind quickly folded and the all-in guy turned over queen-ten off-suit for a pure bluff.

Being laid 1.8-to-1 odds on the call when ace-king suited actually has a 67-percent chance of beating queen-ten off-suit made me feel good about how things played out ... until the door card was a queen and he added a ten on the river for two-pair. Despite losing a $550 pot when I was a 2-to-1 favorite an hour into the session I still managed to leave with double my buy-in and did so without playing another big pot, which no doubt would have made Daniel Negreanu proud.

Interestingly, my ace-king losing to queen-ten wasn't even close to the worst beat that ace-king took at the table. A couple hours after the aforementioned $550 pot, a guy in his late 20s wearing a hoodie sat down directly to my right with a ton of money and immediately began picking on the other players while seemingly trying to convince everyone that he was a pro. He quickly got into a huge pot with the nattily dressed middle-aged businessman sitting directly to my left, at which point the fun began.

I'm not certain what they had because neither player ended up showing their hand, but it seemed to me that the wannabe pro flopped a set and the middle-aged guy rivered a straight on a paint-filled, four-line board. As he made the laydown against a big raise, the wannabe pro began berating the middle-aged guy, telling him "you were so behind that you didn't even know it" while calling him names like "a stupid tourist fish stick."

That went on for several minutes and was definitely out of line, but the table remained silent and to his credit the middle-aged guy took it in stride (while raking in the big pot). Clearly upset and still mumbling insults under his breath, the wannabe pro took three hundred-dollar bills out of his backpack to reload. No more than five minutes later, with a few early position limpers in the pot, the wannabe pro put in an oversized raise to around $50 or so.

At that point a quiet, seemingly tight player in his mid-20s re-raised all-in for about $250. The wannabe pro called immediately and slammed ace-king down on the table, angrily asking, "You got that beat?!" The other guy sheepishly turned over four-five off-suit for a ridiculous bluff and said, "Not yet, but you're gonna be really upset when this hand beats you." Because the poker gods have a sense of humor, the flop's door card was an ace ... followed by a deuce and a three to turn four-five into a flopped straight.

As the guy with four-five raked the pot worth over $500, the wannabe pro remained surprisingly calm, grabbed a pack of cigarettes from his bag, and excused himself. As soon as he was out of sight the entire table broke out laughing in unison and the "stupid tourist fish stick" who hadn't uttered a single word since being berated during the previous big hand, said: "Is that what they call karma?" For some reason his ace-king losing was a lot more amusing than my ace-king losing, karma or not.