Link Dump 5/25: At Least My Softball Team Won

That's right, our intramural softball team did something that the A's haven't been able to do for almost a week: win a game.  The victory was the result of mental heavy lifting on the part of my team.  To those that discount the mental aspect of underhand slow-pitch softball played by nerds, I submit the following two events:

1. I hit a slow roller to the pitcher, who needs only to make a routine throw to first base to record the out.  However, my blazing speed and fleet feet cause him to rush his throw, allowing me to reach first base with ease.
2. It may be underhand slow pitch softball, but when a cunning pitcher such as myself can hold the opposition to 5 runs in 4 innings while recording a strikeout - in slow pitch softball - was it not my mental edge that allowed me to prevail?

Oakland loses again.  Mark Kotsay thinks it's just bad luck: Mark Kotsay was robbed of a possible homer in the first inning. His fourth at-bat, his drive to left was run down on the warning track. His final time up, he struck out looking to end the game and was displeased with the call.

And so it went for the A's, who didn't play badly but still dropped their season-high fifth game in a row, losing 3-2 to the defending champion White Sox on Wednesday night. Dan Haren pitched well, manager Ken Macha thought the team swung the bat OK, but the hits either didn't come at the right time or weren't hits at all, erased by Chicago's excellent defense.

"That sums up the last two months of the season," Kotsay said. "The first three weeks, we weren't getting any breaks and now it's like we're back in that rut again. The ball is not bouncing our way."

Last year, I never really feared the White Sox as they always seemed to be a good team with the record of a great team.  This year, the White Sox scare me because they look like a great team with the record of a great team.  Blech.

Tonight, the A's turn to Brad Halsey to stop their slide.  A four game set against the Rangers, even in May, is significant when we look up in the standings and see Teixiera and company staring down at us.  Texas sends their big money ace to the mound, Kevin Millwood.  salb918's psychic baseball prediction for the day: a routine fly out to right field turns into an opposite field home run.

The Phillies are interested in a durable young lefty with a declining K-rate and spotty control who will soon to become too expensive for his current team.  That's right, the Phillies are after Dontrelle Willis.  Who did you think I was going to say?

OT: Mick LaSalle reviews the new X-Men movie:

The metaphor here is the clash between special talent (the mutants) and conformity (everybody else). But it's one thing for people to react with hostility toward someone who writes an incendiary novel. It's quite another for people to react in this way toward someone who can set their heads on fire. The first reaction is intolerance. The second is simply the genuine recognition of a threat and the beginning of self-preservation. The vision at the heart of "X-Men" -- of a golden Utopia in which humans live side by side with mutants -- is absurd. It requires that mutants never get mad, ever, and that humans never even have to worry that they might. But hasn't anybody ever heard of road rage?