Marinerds, etc.

Hey, today is Raul Ibanez's birthday. The Mariners are playing the Royals, which are the only teams Ibanez has spent time with in his career. Hopefully he'll step up and hit a home run tonight. That would be cool.

(Oddly, in a weird coincidence, my ballparks calendar lists Gene Michael as their June 2 birthday, and people who have read this month's book club book would have just recently read quite a bit about Gene Michael's tenure as a player and manager and GM of the Yankees. It's a sign. YOU MUST COME TO BOOK CLUB TOMORROW.)

Anyway, I'm going to the Mariners game tonight, so I'll have a game report tomorrow. For now I just have some varied and sundry links to share, mostly from other blogs.

Jason Churchill at the Prospect Insider shares the amusing parts of a conversation with Travis Blackley, including gems such as "I get to face Clemens in two weeks, dude. Yeah, he’s going down. I’m going to be looking for an autograph, but Clemens is going down. Just give me one run."

Jim Caple at ESPN's Page 2 has his own take on the whole Clemens thing.

Paul at Mariners Morsels has some intriguing ideas for boosting attendance at Safeco. Now, I'm all for Dollar Dog Night, but "Turn Ahead The Clock" might be a bit much...

Both The 700 Level and Conor Glassey have mentioned the auctions which are up on mlb.com right now for the pink Mother's Day stuff. Seriously, those home plates signed by the whole team are pretty cool, I think. I'll be doing Race For The Cure in a few weeks though, so that's when my charitable donations will end up getting to the Komen foundation.

In general, I don't read a lot of mlblogs; most of them that I've stumbled upon make my head hurt. However, I've finally found one that I'm pretty addicted to - Zack Hample's The Baseball Collector. Not only is he a pretty good writer, but the stories are really entertaining to read, and like me, he's into taking random trips to other baseball parks fairly often. I'm pretty jealous of his ability to get baseballs, though; my only one in recent memory has been from Willie Bloomquist. I'm not a good enough stalker, obviously.

Contrary to my last statement, actually, I do read Dan Haren's blog and David Wright's blog on mlblogs.

I really wish Nick Swisher would write a blog, since he's one of the most entertaining guys in baseball and I'm a huge fan of his. At least ESPN is covering him in a series they're calling Sophomore Year; I'll have to remember to check that from time to time.

Bobby Valentine shares some pictures from a series of ads he did for Shinsei Bank. It's really scary how... right he looks in those ads. Seriously, Bobby's got to have the best life ever. The other day he was recording with DEEN, and before that he was hanging out with infielder Matt Franco's uncle, Kurt Russell.

I forgot to mention the no-hitter former Mariners farmhand Rick Guttormson threw against the Rakuten Golden Eagles last week. Sure, the Eagles are like Japan's version of the Royals, and Watanabe almost no-hit them earlier this year too aside from that whole ejection thing, but still. This was the first no-hitter by a Yakult Swallows pitcher since Kazuhisa Ishii pulled it off in 1997.

And on a last note, since I need to mention something Phillies, Gavin Floyd was finally optioned, and Eude Brito was called up to take his place. With Jon Lieber on the DL for a month, this leaves the rotation at Myers, Lidle, Hamels, Madson, and Brito. Should be interesting to see where things end up by the time Lieber's ready to come back.