I love Mike Piazza.

Brett Myers is a MAN! Don't mess with him! Rawr! [pounds chest]

The reporters response:

Reminds me of Scott Adams's "Redmond effect."

Also of note: his prescience (this was written in 1998).

Flat-panel screens on each wall will give the impression you are in a hot-air balloon floating over the Alps. Noise-cancellation technology will block out the surrounding sounds while providing a symphony within the cubisphere. The computer will continue its evolution to a full entertainment center, providing a constant supply of first-run movies, live nudity, gambling and video conferencing.

His dystopian vision applies to AN, too.

I heard about an experiment where rats were given the choice between food and cocaine. They chose the cocaine until they starved. The same thing will happen to the engineers. I predict they'll all starve to death inside their cubicle wonderlands.

New AN sucks. KTHX!

I interpret those ERA+ numbers quite a bit differently.  They seem to me to be a pretty nice trend of improvement by a very young pitcher, which is stalling this year, for some reason.  I'd be wondering if he was hurt.

Is it too early to post a diary about Spring Training 2008?

Seriously guys.  WTF?

Are we going let the M's fans destroy us in fan scouting report?  There have been 42 responses from A's fans.  42!  Boston has had over 200.  Seattle over 300.

The point isn't to stuff the ballot with how great our fielders are.  It's to get lots of honest participation so that we have a good fan-based scouting report on our fielders.  And it requires NO USE OF SABERMETRICS.

And, most importantly, do not, absolutely do not, look at any numbers. Don't look at his fielding percentage, range factor, zone rating, UZR, or anything else that someone else is telling you. I just want you to rely on your eyes. You are the scout. I need you to rely completely on your own observations.

Go do it!

No, it's not a Melissa Etheridge song.  It's part of Michael Vick's statement after pleading guilty.

Also used was the classic "Through this situation I've found Jesus" line.

yesterday.

hulk jr. was released from the hospital today but his passenger in his car remained in critical condition.

sigh

link

and not expect a debate among AN's legion of editors, ex-editors, and wannabe-editors.

Chicago Manual of Style says:

The question of how to form the possessive of names of more than one syllable ending in the sound of s or z probably occasions more dissension among writers and editors of good will than any other orthographic matter open to disagreement.

CMoS agrees with your rule but adds, "The Press is willing to accept other ways of handling these situations, however -- if they are consistently followed throughout a manuscript."

that this is a really interesting link dump! TY MIke A. and good job.

I'm loving Milton Bradley right now.  I'm not sure the Padres have ever had a player taunt fans and other teams like he does after scoring or driving in a run.  Can you think of one?  The Padres are seriously the most emotionless team in the Big Leagues.  Khalil, Adrian, Kouz and others sometimes seem like zombies on the field.  It's nice to see a guy so amped that he gives the whole team a boost and shows some heart.  Most Major Leaguer's give the same old cliches after a win about how they respect the other team and thank the fans, etc. but it's nice having Bradley keep it real.  I'm a little conflicted because I usually like the modest players but this is exactly what the Padres need from Bradley in the home stretch.

sound familiar?

Aggravated assault charges have been filed against a church deacon and University of Oklahoma Sooners fan after officials say he grabbed a University of Texas fan between the legs during a scuffle in an Oklahoma bar.

http://www.nbc5i.com/sports/13968715...

Serves the UT fan right for going into a bar in Oklahoma

http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/photos...

Dogs now outnumber children aged 10 and under in Japan -- there were 13.1 million dogs in 2006. As the number of humans shrink, the dog population is growing, research firm Euromonitor said, and so is the market for dog-related products.

Holy fireballs, Batman!

http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/videos...

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/space/0...

The cosmic blank spot has no stray stars, no galaxies, no sucking black holes, not even mysterious dark matter. It is 1 billion light years across of nothing. That's an expanse of nearly 6 billion trillion miles of emptiness, a University of Minnesota team announced Thursday.

Scientists only observed the phenomenon recently following the A's moves to trade their sucking black hole to the Cubs, place their stray star on the DL, and trade their mysterious dark matter to the Padres.

I usually like Scott Ostler’s pieces alright, because I’m an easy mark for humor columns.  But the more serious he tries to be, the worse he gets.  Here, Ostler rates Geren and Bochy on their rookie managerial work so far.  He gives each of them two stars (on a 1-5 scale).  About Geren, he says:

At least one of those stars is for niceness. There is no more pleasant, affable, genuinely friendly person in baseball. Which, naturally, some players are going to see as a negative...Geren gets dinged for less-than-authoritative handling of the Milton Bradley situation. He gets good marks for his handling of the pitching staff and for aggressively pushing the offensive action more than might be expected of a man with Beane on his shoulder like Jiminy Cricket.

In addition to the Shallow Eval (an underrated film), Ostler loses points from me for the poor choice of Pinocchio analogies.  If you’re going down that road, Beane simply has to be Geppeto to Geren’s long-nosed boy.  Jiminy Cricket is a conscience; Billy Beane is nothing if not a puppet master.

Rosenthal has the scoop.

And the best part...

Owner Drayton McLane expected the team to contend after signing left fielder Carlos Lee to a $100 million free-agent contract and adding starting pitchers Woody Williams and Jason Jennings.

oops

I've seen 'em on the roof of the building next door - in Berkeley!

Ozzie's lil grinders did it again, scratching out five runs on four homers (all in one inning).

But have they seen the boobs working in sector 7G?

and it's green and yellow. Perfection!

http://www.threadless.com/product/96...

Danny Graves was there with a Viet Nam baseball project before the beginning of spring training last year.