It is easy for me to remember your wedding anniversary and your daughters birthday since they bookend my birthday which is tomorrow.  A Capricorn daughter, you are very lucky, my wife is a Capricorn and I couldn't ask for more.

congratulations on the 10 years!

but haren, kotsay....so who's your other favorite player?

It seems like only a very short period of time since I was a young man hanging out watching Disney movies with Cherokee.  Now I'm no longer young, Cherokee is 14, and Lion King has been replaced with Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers.

Kotsay in high regard. Seems to be a lot of haters here. Especially for a player who came back from back surgery too early in a effort to help his team.
I go to practically every single game and enjoyed Mark's great work in center field. Any ball anywhere in his neighborhood he was able to get. But, oh my, I'm not a stat head so maybe I didn't see the assists, the spectacular back to back impossible catches that he & Milton Bradley made, or the in the park homeruns or or the plate discipline or him being the first one to greet and support a player having a bad game on their return to the dugout.
Mark Kotsay, in my opinion is a wonderful man and a role model and great to the fans. I say it for the following reasons:
Back in 2004, when we were eliminated with one game left, that Huddy was pitching...before the last game on that Sunday, all of the players with the exception of Mark & Justin Lehr stayed in the clubhoouse. Mark & Justin came out to the field one hour before the game and signed autographs. After the game, he kept his commitment to the fans and came to meet us at the Field Irish Pub  and talked about his deep hurt of not making the play-offs ( with tears in his eyes).
But his feel good story is that one day after a game, his usual route home was jammed so he ended up driving through the back way in East Oakland. He saw a group of inner city kids trying to play baseball on a barren field. He said he thought about how blessed he was to have  had the best facilities when he was growing and felt bad for these kids. He spearheaded the refurbishing of that field which was later dedicated in a ceremony attended by him & Ron Washington.
I also remember reading an interview by where he said his father used tough love on him, you know the type, You bring home an A-, what happended to the A? He said he still battles the effects of that today.
But, most of all, one of his duaghters has a slight learning disability, so  when he's on the road, he spends his time on the internet doing research on ways to help her.
Oh yeah, during his first scheduled Fan Fest appearance, he was in southern califonia the night before, could not get a flight to Oakland, to get him here in time, so he flew to Reno,
his home and then hopped in his car and drove  the 4 hours to Oakland.
My greatest Mark Kotsay moment was during a home play-off game, Manny Ramirez was credited with a shoe string catch that obviously hit the ground. He grinned knowing that he got away with one. The very next inning, Mark made a fabulous shoestring catch which the umpire called a no catch. Mark was so furious he had to be restrained. When the A's went back out on the field after the at bat he was still so furous, he went after the umpire and his buddies had to go & get him. Talk about passion for the game. I wish him the best in Atlanta where he can hang with my pal Huddy.  

I wonder what the game would be like today without him.  Honestly.

Roger Clemens has gotten a lot more of the benefit of the doubt than Barry Bonds ever did...I do think that the manner in which guys deal with the media has a whole lot to do with what happens when the s$^# hits the fan.  That and having a personal barcalounger appear to be a big no no.

I don't disagree with any of those comments, but to address this issue and not mention that Clemens is white and Bonds is black seems a bit naive. This country (whether its the media, the legal system, whatever) has a pretty consistent track record of race-based double-standards.