The last year has been a trying time for me.  After the 2008 election, life was the highest of highs, beating a two term incumbent Senator with a $5m campaign war chest and a promised DC job will do that.  Well after a holiday vacation, the DC job disappeared, and having banked on it, I had not been applying for other jobs.   I had a couple of sure things fall through, broke up with the girl that was keeping me distracted flying to LA to see her, and trying not to spend money living at home (NON-BASEMENT ROOM MIKEV!) don't really encourage a lot of happy times.

During this process, I have spent a huge chunk of my time at AN.  I lurked for years but only had written one short fanpost before this year and commented sporadically.  This year that has changed.  I have written 19 fanposts containing 23,233 words ( or 3 times the combined length of my two collegiate theses) and about 4,000 comments of varying length.  In otherwords, I spent the last year with you and it was a good decision (well not if you ask my mom).

I have made friends with many ANers online and off and have been the recipient of much generosity.  Wacchampion and his friend Ralph have taken me to several games this year including the last AN day.  SF drift king has also given me and a couple friends the opportunity to help populate an empty Coli when he wasn't using his tickets.  Imaseasonticketholder was also kind enough to let me use her great tickets to see Landon Powell blast a grand slam on the sunniest day of the year.  In addition to tickets I have gotten to eat Lynn's heavenly food both at AN tailgates and when Nico was kind enough to open his secret dark dungeon lovely home for Chez Nico.

Online, I have enjoyed debates, critiques, and fistacuffs with so many people. Among my favorites have been grover, who has helped me out with research in his pugnaciousness loveable furry blue comments,  Iglew, with his staty nonstatiness antidebate centric debatorness,  67Marquez, with his history, Leopold Bloom with his innuendo, PT, with sharing a debaters view of the world, sirbed with his sense of humor, nevermoor, for freaking out about the same antistats stuff I do, danmerqury, with his cogency when talking about statistics, WaddelCanseco, his love of upside, Notsellingjeans, depth and questions. flashfire for sharing pictures, Nico, for his penchant for being wrong disagreeing with me, Noava22, for Carlos!, mikev, for his big as grill (tm), and so many other people that run and populate the most reasoned and intellegint fan site I have ever wander across in the large series of tubes that make up the Internet.

No, Im not dying, but I do start a job with SEIU as a union organizer a week from Monday, so I wanted to take this opportunity to thank you all for being with me in a turbulent time of my life.  Now here comes the links:

Team USA wins the Pan-Am U18 Championship. You should care about this since many of the top draft picks from next years draft were on the team.

Andy Seiler put up his first 2010 mock draft.  This is his A's pick:

10. Oakland Athletics – Chris Sale, LHP, Florida Gulf Coast – Sale was the star of the Cape Cod League this summer, and most prospect buffs would be lying to you if they told you they knew who he was before his summer run. He’s going to battle Pomeranz and James Paxton for the top lefty in the college class during the spring, and there’s a good chance Sale comes out ahead. He’s also big, standing at 6′6", but he’s projectable too, as he might be able to add a good twenty pounds to his frame. He’s got a plus fastball with good movement and an effective changeup, and I see Sale as a relatively safe pick as far as pitchers go.

If you are reading this Blez, hurry up and give Andy a SBN blog.  Seriously he does some of the best work on the interwebs.

Sickels did a profile on our own Andrew Bailey.

Fangraphs: PT was right

Fangraphs: WTF are the Angels doing with their catching? I guess they could want to lose but still Napoli>>> Mathis.

Bud: I want an international draft and hard slotting.