FanPost

DLD 4.5.11

13933216fa6a86cf551a26a4a3b0863d-getty-109235380th017_medium

via d.yimg.com

So, Chris Jones thinks baseball is awesome, and who am I to disagree?

That's how we found ourselves sitting down the third baseline, watching the Pittsburgh Pirates play... I really have no idea who they played, actually. The Rays, maybe? Anyway, the Pirates were playing someone. The weather was perfect. I ate one of those big pretzels for the first time in a thousand years. Members of our party talked about David Foster Wallace, and other members talked about the Philadelphia Phillies rotation, and I daydreamed about tits for a while. It was fantastic. My shoulders dropped, but in the best possible way.

I didn't keep score. I didn't make any paper models. I didn't lose my virginity or cut my head open. But there was baseball, right there in front of me, making happy memories for me again. And while baseball still finds itself naked and bloody every so often — the Wilpons won't let go of the New York Mets, and Evan Longoria can't find his AK-47 — for the first time since 1994, it feels like summer and looks like hope again.


This next road trip - Toronto, Minnesota, Chicago - will be cold.

"There's always one last snowstorm in April or in early May," said A's second baseman Mark Ellis, who grew up in South Dakota, next door to Minnesota.

The A's very much hope that doesn't happen this weekend, because this will be their only trip to Minnesota this season. If, say, Sunday's game were to get rained out (and rain is currently in the forecast), there's a chance they'd have to make it up late in the season. The teams' only shared days off in the second half come in September.

"It's not our preferred time to go from a weather standpoint," Oakland general manager Billy Beane said of his team's visit to Minnesota. "That's probably the best way to say it."


Giambivangogh11_medium

via mit.zenfs.com

Jason Giambi draws a resemblance to Vincent Van Gogh, says Rob Iracane.

R.A. Dickey, Mets knuckleballer, is pretty awesome.

During the baseball season, R. A. Dickey’s job with the Mets requires ascending a hill only 10 ½ inches high, a modest summit from which he surveys the field and throws his knuckleball to batters.

But Dickey’s ambition before next spring training is to climb a far more majestic mound, one that rises 19,336 feet above sea level, a snowy summit from which he will be able to gaze at the African continent below.

Josh Willingham is so popular, the Nationals aren't quite ready to let him go.