May 25, 2012
Link-O-Rama
• Dmitri Young sold his baseball card collection for $2.5 million. And here's my favorite part of the story: "Only seven cards in the entire collection received no bids and all were rookie cards of his brother, current Tigers outfielder Delmon Young."
• Anyone know if this team needs a blogger?
• Oddly both brilliant and creepy: The evolution of a family, one picture per year.
• Joe Mauer and Snoop Dogg, together again at Thursday night's White Sox-Twins game.
• Financing the remake of a Pauly Shore movie is a sure sign that you have too much money.
• Thing that made me feel elderly: This week is the 20th anniversary of The Real World on MTV.
• Friend of AG.com and former Gleeman and The Geek guest Lindsay Guentzel beat out 22,000 applicants for a spot in the MLB Fan Cave, but now they're voting out residents, Survivor-style, and she needs your help to stick around and keep living in New York all season. Go vote.
• LeBron James reads The Hunger Games in the locker room, obviously.
• Michael Cuddyer is in a new league and on a new bad team, but the newspaper articles about him and "clubhouse chemistry" predictably live on.
• Curt Schilling: Great pitcher, not-so-great businessman.
• Saying this will inevitably lead to ridicule, but whatever: John Mayer's new album is really good and also quite a bit different than most of his previous stuff.
• If you're interested in becoming an AG.com "sponsor of the week" click here for details.
• Fat-O-Meter update: I wrote on March 7 about losing 153 pounds in one year. Since then I've dropped another 23 pounds and now weigh 179 pounds, compared to 176 pounds lost.
• My weekly appearance on KFAN with Paul Allen was fun and you can listen to us talk about the Twins and the MLB draft and my life as a robot by clicking here.
• On a related note, I showed up at the radio station immediately after this took place:
Not so long ago I'd have been excited about the fact that there were still donuts around.
• I'd like this cake for my next birthday, please. But definitely not the blond version.
• Aroldis Chapman was arrested for driving significantly slower than he throws.
• Jim Thome is single-handedly trying to prop up the housing market by selling his old place for $3.8 million and buying a new place for $4.6 million.
• Someone bought Babe Ruth's old jersey for $4.4 million.
• Torii Hunter has yet to rejoin the Angels two weeks after his 17-year-old son's arrest on sexual assault charges.
• My former Sunday school classmate Leora Itman writes about how my old temple in St. Paul has a new, supposedly "cool" rabbi. And he has a sports blog called The Great Rabbino.
• Chris Brown and his fans truly deserve each other.
• Albert Chen of Sports Illustrated wrote a lengthy profile of Georgia high school center fielder Byron Buxton, who might end up being the Twins' choice with the No. 2 pick next month.
• I've never tuned in specifically to watch this show, yet cancellation is probably the only way to stop me from watching five episodes in a row every time I stumble across a marathon.
• NBC renewed Community for another season, but creator and show-runner Dan Harmon got fired and it's tough imagine the quality and creativity not suffering without him.
• Who is Cole De Vries and what is he doing in the Twins' rotation? I'm glad you asked.
• In similar news, I'm taking myself out of consideration for People's sexiest man of the year.
• Jesse Thorn's long-form interview show Bullseye is always a must-listen, but that's especially true this week with Mets knuckleballer R.A. Dickey as his guest.
• Finally, this week's AG.com-approved music video is the studio version of the title track from Mayer's new album, "Born and Raised":
This week's blog content is sponsored by Curt's Salsa, a locally owned salsa company that believes in fresh ingredients and rooting for the little guy. Please support them for supporting AG.com.
The Schilling story is tragic. The state of Rhode Island dishes out a reported $75M loan to his company for Schilling’s guarantee that he’d bring approx 450 high paying jobs into the state. None of it happend and the company is now broke.
In addition, it’s reported Schilling paid himself back for his initial investment into the company. If true, not cool 38.
Funny how he can still appear so arrogant while doing his bit on Baseball Tonight.
Comment by Paul Keprios — May 25, 2012 @ 9:25 am
Any chance of making your links open in new windows/tabs? Chur
Comment by Jeremy — May 25, 2012 @ 9:32 am
Dimitri Young selling his baseball cards for $2.5M sounds impressive until you hit the link and see he paid $5M for them. Yep, that’s Delmon Young’s brother all right.
Why would anyone give a baseball player $75 million for a video game company? Did Rhode Island miss the chance to invest in Lenny Dykstra’s car washes?
Comment by Pedro Munoz — May 25, 2012 @ 10:12 am
As a life-long Twins fan now living in Denver, I’ve been waiting for you to comment on the Cuddyer ‘great leader’ BS here in Colorado. Funny how he can be viewed as such a great leader and gamer, yet be on two of the worst teams the last two years. You can claim small sample, or its a team game (and no doubt he has been on teams with awful pitching the last two years!), but the majority of old-school press completely fails at their job most of the time and continues to spout cliches.
I have loved to hear the sports-talk radio shows here in Denver absolutely crush the Rockies owners, in particular Dick Monfort, for his ridiculous statements and backing of the current management team in Colorado. Reminds me of the Pohlads and all of the foolishness in the Twins organization right now.
Comment by Breaker — May 25, 2012 @ 12:04 pm
Aaron go on a maintenance diet. Stop losing weight, there will be nothing left of you to write!
Comment by Twindy — May 25, 2012 @ 12:48 pm
Jeremy……right-click on the link…
Comment by whistler — May 25, 2012 @ 6:43 pm
Aaron,
Love you site. My dad and I were arguing over the fate of Ron G. at the end of this year. Question for you (or anyone else who wants to chime in with the answer): Has a manager in the modern era ever had a 99 loss season followed by a 100+ loss season and NOT lost his job?
Comment by Erik Nelson — May 28, 2012 @ 1:40 pm
Jeremy and whistler,
Ctrl-clicking the link should open the page in a new tab.
Aaron,
177.5! I want to see a pic of you on one side of a scale and a huge tub of gelatinous fat-like goo on the other.
John Mayer,
1970s alt country soft rockers called, they want their sound back.* It was a pleasant enough song that I won’t kick it out of bed but also one that was absolutely uninspiring so I won’t exactly be calling it any time soon either.
*The Nineties called. It wants its joke back. Else cease and desist letter forthwith.
Comment by Hermonie — June 1, 2012 @ 10:23 pm