Link-O-Rama
Last week's Link-O-Rama included Elisha Cuthbert "making a very strong run at becoming the first ever two-time Official Fantasy Girl of AG.com" by looking like this, but she gave back all that momentum and then some this week by looking like this. Here's the side-by-side comparison:
It's like night and day, if "night" was incredibly fetching and "day" looked like Hillary Clinton. Apparently, "she's a two-face."
Ty Wigginton has been mentioned quite a bit as a potential addition to the Twins' lineup, but I'd be a lot more interested in Matt Murton. A 25-year-old right-handed hitter with over 800 plate appearances in the majors, Murton was demoted to Triple-A earlier this week because of a slow start and the Cubs' crowded outfield. He won't be arbitration eligible for several more years and has hit .294/.363/.441 in the majors after batting .309/.380/.451 in the minors.
Friend of AG.com Richard Matthes put together an excellent, video-aided tribute to one of the greatest men in American history, who he accurately describes as "Jesus, Moses, Abe Lincoln, and Bo Jackson combined."
The other day I jokingly suggested that rather than go with a young rotation next year, the Twins will "probably talk Jose Lima or Terry Mulholland out of retirement." Or at least I thought it was a joke. Now I'm starting to get a little scared:
Minor leaguer Jose Lima, formerly of the Dodgers, Royals, Astros, Tigers, and Mets, is just tearing up the Mexican league. Playing for the Saraperos de Saltillo, he's tied for second in the league in victories, with a 9-3 record thus far, and has a 4.04 ERA. Interestingly he's still a workhorse, as he's leading the league in innings pitched, with 107.
The amazing thing is, with the likes of Chan-Ho Park signing a minor-league deal with the Astros on Wednesday, it's only a matter of time before Lima gets another shot at the Major League level.
No word yet on what Mulholland is up to.
If you haven't read it yet, make sure to check out G.R. Anderson's outstanding feature about Johan Santana in City Pages. And if you missed it earlier this week, feel free to read my significantly less outstanding feature about Jason Tyner.
Tim Marchman of the New York Sun wrote an excellent, even-handed article this week about the double-standard facing online baseball writers, which is a topic I've covered here constantly over the past five years. Here's an excerpt:
If I call a team explaining that I write for The New York Sun, they'll leave a credential at the gate; if I call explaining that I write for a Web site, they'll ask me a few more questions, and some will tell me to buy a ticket.
After a century, this setup is starting to show its age. It's predicated on the somewhat archaic notion that newspaper writers are a class apart, deserving of special treatment others don't receive, because they've been vetted by newspaper editors and thus presumably have qualifications and an audience, and can be held accountable for their coverage. If you were designing a system from scratch, I don't think you'd do it this way.
He goes on to successfully compare Dave Cameron to Jay Mariotti, which automatically qualifies an article as a must-read in my book.
Somehow I can't imagine Dick Bremer and Bert Blyleven giving play-by-play like this. Speaking of Blyleven, during last night's Twins-Braves game on FSN, we learned that his all-time favorite movie is Waterworld. Seriously. If you think about it, that explains an awful lot.
As someone who more or less completely stopped eating fast food about 18 months ago, I was amused by this "ads versus reality" comparison until realizing that I regularly eat microwave dinners and they typically look even less like their picture. Back in 2004, when I was still living in a dorm at the University of Minnesota, I shared the following "truth in advertising lesson for all you fellow college students looking for some decent, cheap, microwavable food":
As I wrote at the time: "It looked nothing like what was pictured. In fact, it looked like someone ate what was on the box and then threw it up." Of course, I still ate it and reported afterward that "it actually tasted pretty good."
If you've ever wanted to read a casual account of someone winning $600,000 by playing no-limit hold 'em and pot-limit Omaha, Brian Townsend's blog is the place for you:
Just finished a two hour 1K/2K PLO/NLH mix game. It was three handed with David Benyamine and Johnny Chan. I won about 600K. I busted them on same hand when I flopped bottom set and a flush draw and was against a flush draw and wrap of Davids and a wrap of Johnny. With this win I made 2.15 million dollars in four sessions over five days.
There wouldn't be enough space in the internet for my blog entries if I beat Johnny Chan and David Benyamine out of $600,000 in two hours.
As someone hoping to retire sooner rather than later--with "sooner" being 35 or so and "later" being at most 40--this week's Minneapolis Star Tribune article about working longer and delaying retirement was a real buzz kill.
I was asked to keep quiet about our conversation when he first told me about it last month, but now that the cat's seemingly halfway out of the bag I can at least say that former Star Tribune publisher Joel Kramer's new project sounds very intriguing.
An age-old question that doubles as a blog name.
With Seth Stohs making the seven-hour drive to the Twin Cities, there was an impromptu bloggers-only get-together for lunch Tuesday afternoon at Joe Senser's Sports Bar & Grill in Bloomington. I was a little disappointed to learn that Seth doesn't use nearly as many exclamation points in person, but he was exactly the sort of nice, funny, talkative guy I expected to meet after years of reading his blog and conversing via e-mail.
Howard Sinker, John Bonnes, Nick Nelson, Trevor Born, Corey Ettinger, and Joel Thingvall were also in attendance, along with a couple girlfriends, and Kevin Slowey apparently turned down an invitation. While Tuesday's get-together wasn't "open to the public" because of how hastily it was planned, the consensus seems to be that we'll try to plan a "real" get-together for later this month. The previous get-together in early April was a lot of fun, so I'll make sure to post details here once I know them.
With the Braves in town to play the Twins, I've been reading Mac Thomason's Braves Journal quite a bit. His entry recapping last night's come-from-behind Twins win is definitely worth checking out, in part because he concludes with something many people, including Twins fans, have said over the years: "I hate the Metrodome." Coincidentally, Thomason joined Tiffany Simons, Gregg Rosenthal, and Yours Truly on NBCSports.com's "Fantasy Fix" show Monday.
On Thursday's "Fantasy Fix" show, Bruce Allen of Boston Sports Media Watch joined us to talk Red Sox. Even if you're not interested in the latest on Daisuke Matsuzaka and potential Twins trade target Mike Lowell, Thursday's show is worth watching because you can see me make what I think is a pretty solid joke, only to be completely upstaged when Rosenthal plays the semen card. And yes, you read that correctly. Watch, you'll see.
Once you're done here, check out my latest "Daily Dose" column over at Rotoworld.
It's like night and day, if "night" was incredibly fetching and "day" looked like Hillary Clinton. Apparently, "she's a two-face."
As I wrote at the time: "It looked nothing like what was pictured. In fact, it looked like someone ate what was on the box and then threw it up." Of course, I still ate it and reported afterward that "it actually tasted pretty good."
