Link-O-Rama
One of my favorite bloggers, Paul Katcher, who once wasted an entire day of his audience's time by interviewing me, celebrated his five-year blogging anniversary yesterday. Paul's "PaulKatcher.com Celebrates Five Years of Existence" entry is a good read, especially if you're a fellow blogger. A lot of the stuff he talked about is stuff I talk about when someone makes the mistake of asking me about my blog. Plus, five years is a really long time. I often wonder if I'll still be blogging when this site's five-year anniversary rolls around in 2007. I also often wonder if Luis Rivas will be gone by then.
On the opposite end of the blogging spectrum, here are a few new blogs that are worth checking out: Warning Track Power (Royals) ... Orange and Black Baseball (Giants) ... Minnesota Public Radio's Baseball Blog: The Bleacher Bums (Twins).
I'm sure this will come as a huge shock, but a lot of White Sox fans weren't very pleased with my "The New Sox" article at The Hardball Times earlier this week. A couple things: One, it's impossible to write an article saying a team's great start won't hold up without offending that team's fan base. Two, the number of White Sox-related sites that aren't fans of mine is huge, and that's just fine. In fact, I hope the same White Sox fans get angry at me next year, when I suggest that Chicago will finish behind the Twins for a sixth straight season.
My favorite comment from this particular group of angry White Sox fans?
It must be great to be a stathead, you don't even have to watch any games.
If you can find a human being on earth who has watched more innings of baseball over the past few years than I have, I'd like to meet him.
As if I didn't already have enough TV to watch, first comes last week's news about Ricky Gervais signing a deal with HBO and now comes this week's news that Comedy Central has a new show coming out starring Adam Carolla, and another starring Stephen Colbert. This may sound strange, but Carolla and Vin Scully are the two people whom I would enjoy listening to talk about literally anything. Scully because he'll make it sound so smooth and Carolla because he'll go off on a 20-minute rant about it involving parking tickets and high school football.
There are several kinds of funny. One major kind is scripted funny, like Jerry Seinfeld or Chris Rock, who put together standup sets that are pure genius. However, my personal favorite kind of funny is unscripted funny, and specifically unscripted, ranting funny. In this category, the only person who can even come close to Howard Stern is Carolla.
Of course, I am also one of perhaps as many as a dozen people who loved Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn, a show that the same Comedy Central executive who hired Colbert and Carolla canceled because it "felt like the same show every night." By the way, for those of you about to send me an anti-Stern e-mail, don't bother.
Here's a great picture of an Ichiro! catch that even Torii Hunter blushes at.
Speaking of great pictures, don't click here unless you want to see Jessica Alba in a yellow bikini.
I'm not sure exactly what this is, but I laughed.
I watched this movie and Million Dollar Baby back-to-back last weekend, and came away thinking Million Dollar Baby was overrated. Still good, yes, but overrated. I don't know why I feel the need to share that, but I felt like pretending to be Roger Ebert for a minute.
Something I actually said in last night's "Game Chat" just minutes before the game started: "No Victor Martinez for the Indians, which is a good thing." Martinez's replacement at catcher, Josh Bard, ended up hitting the game-winning homer for Cleveland.
It took more than a month, but the Twins finally decided it was safe to slip Corky Miller through waivers. An ongoing story during the first month of the season was the fact that the Twins were worried that another team would claim Miller, so they kept him on the roster as a third catcher while Terry Tiffee spent most of April at Triple-A.
Well, either the glaring lack of bench options for Ron Gardenhire in late-innings situations lately forced their hand or Joe Mauer's knee is really feeling good, because the team called Tiffee up from Rochester yesterday. And Miller, who has one hit in his last 55 at-bats in the big leagues, amazingly went unclaimed on the waiver wire.
Speaking of Gardenhire, ESPN.com readers voted him "baseball's most underrated manager" yesterday. To which I say, underrated by whom, exactly? In three seasons as a major-league manager, Gardenhire has finished third, second, and second in the American League Manager of the Year voting.
In continuing what I think is now officially the theme of the 2005 season, the Twins went 0-for-6 with the bases loaded last night. They came up completely empty despite loading the bases with no outs in the first inning, scored just one run in the exact same situation in the second inning, and then loaded the bases before Lew Ford made the final out of the game in the bottom of the ninth. They are now 5-for-37 (.135) with the bases loaded this season, a number that would be even worse if it somehow accounted for all the double plays they've hit into in those spots.
I'm not sure what Skyway News is or who David Brauer is, but he wrote a very good article in it about the Twins' new ballpark proposal. Here's one interesting part, for those of us who enjoy getting completely ahead of ourselves:
Will it be a hitters' or pitchers' park?
Pitchers will hate it: The left field fence is 15 feet closer, the left field power alley moves in 14 feet and center field is shortened 6 feet. Right field is roughly the same distance away - but without the Dome's infamous baggie.
Normally I would comment about how this is bad news, since teams are better off building their new ballparks to favor pitching, but can there really be "bad news" in this case? I'll take another Coors Field if it means I can get a sun burn while watching a game.
And finally, if you haven't noticed already, there are now comments on this blog.
Today at The Hardball Times:
- Faceoff 300 (by Craig Burley)
- Business of Baseball Report (by Brian Borawski)
Today's Picks (27-17, +$1,170):
