linky

Clemens abd bonds to have to wait a year with Piazza getting the first ballot treatment. I think it gives the blowhard BWA folks a way to be smug about steroids, unless something new comes out touching Piazza.

If you’ve got (at least) $100,000 to spare, you can now clone your puppy. Not that that would be completely f*ing weird or anything.

This is better than I thought it would be.

Indiana Jones sacrifices chest hair in order to save the earth.

Bound together by fate: Andrew Brown. Andris Biedrins. Roy Halladay. Lenny Dykstra. Harry Houdini. Lindsay Lohan. Gandhi.

is 4-1 Angels in the 3rd

interesting....

San Diego Padres pitcher Chris Young and catcher Josh Bard were knocked out of Wednesday night’s game against the St. Louis Cardinals by Albert Pujols within a span of two batters.

Pujols hit a line drive off his Young’s face in the third inning, breaking the right-hander’s nose. Young immediately fell on his backside and put his right hand up to his face. Blood was running down his face

Aaron Miles and Pujols scored on the play. But right fielder Brian Giles’ throw arrived at the plate at the same time as Pujols, who slid and caught Bard’s left leg.

Bard went down in a heap and stayed on the ground for a few minutes before he was helped off the field, dragging his left leg.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=3407357

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=lukas/080521

Piazza had kissed Clemens when he threw the bat shard at him, they could have killed a lot of birds with one stone.

Juicy

It’s about a day old now, but this week’s "Purple Prose" column was about the A’s Monday game versus the Rays! If you’re not familiar with it, the column is an unserious look at one of the more interesting games each week written in a ridiculously flowery (very) old-school prose. I’ve ended up clicking to it from deadspin a few times. It’s fun enough (on an off-day at least) just to read about our A’s in this style, even though we lost that game.

from deadspin: "Slate’s Robert Weintraub, like many of us, loves the old purple prose of early 1900s sportswriting, the Grantland Rices, the men who painted epic tales of warriors, grizzled combatants and lardywarks too manly to wear gloves. In an occasional series, Weintraub writes about the week’s best baseball game in the style of the vaunted sportswriters of yesteryear. This week: The Rays’ win last night over the A’s."

http://deadspin.com/5010204/latina-mary-pickford-first-lady-of-the-cagers

If you can’t laugh at this, you’re probably taking the recent scuffling too seriously…

The Saint Paul Saints have a new promotion:
Larry Craig Bobblefoot Night

.213 .277 .361
.291 .341 .443

which would you take ;-)

Continues to implode.

Wow. I just. I dunno. I don’t think he’s even had a single good start at AA.

• Straight A’s: If you’re a trade-deadline-aholic, the team you should be watching closely is Oakland. The A’s are looking toward the future no matter how this season turns out. So Billy Beane figures to be one seriously active GM under any circumstances—and especially if the A’s keep slipping in the standings. “That’s a good team to stay on top of, because they’ve got pitching inventory they’re willing to deal,” said a scout for one team searching for arms.

The names that have circulated most on the rumor mill are Joe Blanton and Rich Harden. But the sense we get is that clubs are watching Oakland’s bullpen as closely as they’re watching the rotation, with Huston Street, Alan Embree and even Chad Gaudin high on their list. “I think they’ll talk about trading any of them,” said the same scout. “So I know one thing. I’m going to see this club as much as I can.”

... and …

• Harden times: Speaking of the A’s, here’s one NL executive’s take on what would have to happen to get him interested in trading for Harden, even if the oft-injured ace strings together eight straight dominating outings between now and July: “I wouldn’t give them three quality guys for him no matter what I saw in the next two months, because I couldn’t count on him doing that for the next three years. Oh, I think he’ll pitch over the next three years. But I think he’ll pitch, then break down, then pitch, then break down. So to me, this deal would have to be one piece. It would have to be just a prospect. And it wouldn’t be a top-of-the-line prospect. But I bet Billy will get somebody to give him that top-of-the-line guy. There are just enough [GMs] fighting for their job that in a month or two, they might trade anybody.”

Link

I mulled it over, and decided it should be one of those shield-your-eyes bright yellow throwback helmets. Or maybe a miniaturized win expectancy graph from this game.