Marinerds, etc.

I went to last Saturday's Mariners-Jays game with Bretticus and ETownCoug from Lookout Landing, but I never got around to writing anything about it, mostly because I suddenly went into high-gear "OMG I'm moving to Japan" mode. I have some notes about various plays that happened, but it seems silly to try to write it all up a week later. I will tell you that the AM-PM "too much of a good thing" was 75 boxes of Junior Mints, which they estimated to be about 3857 candies. The other weird moment of the night was when they decided to replace Miguel Batista on the mound in the 7th inning -- so they said on the speaker, "Now pitching, Eric O'Flaherty," and they put his stats up on the board, and he even ran about 30 feet out of the bullpen, and suddenly he stopped and ran back to the bullpen and Sean Green ran out instead, and they put his stats and stuff up instead, and it was just pretty bizarre. Green pitched an inning and O'Flaherty replaced him after that. I don't think I'd ever seen that before -- I thought that once you put up the info and make the announcement, you have to have that guy come out to pitch, but, hey, whatever.

Anyway, we sat in the upper deck so I didn't take many game pictures, but I did catch some batting practice, in-between desperately trying to get a full set of trading cards. (I was missing the end of the alphabet and had dupes of the Mariner Moose, which of course nobody wanted. Eventually I was doing my usual walk-back-and-forth-taking-pictures thing and saw that someone had left an extra set of cards under a seat, so... I picked them up. They were missing the beginning of the alphabet and had extra Jamie Burkes, so that worked out well, and I completed my set and gave the rest to Coug later on.) Many Jays players came out and signed stuff -- I got Shaun Marcum -- and then I watched Roy Halladay warm up and do bullpen throwing. I've been sort of fascinated by him for a while, so I was glad to see him pitch in person. I was also, of course, glad that the Mariners won, bringing my personal record to 13-4.


Pitching over the Halladay weekend.

In theory, the real "picture of the day" from that game was when we met up with legendary LL mascot and Beltre worshipper "Red", but I thought it might be weird to put that one up on the front page here.

Photosets:

Mariners vs. Blue Jays, June 30, 2007

Mariners vs. Red Sox, June 26, 2007

All-Star results:

Hideki Okajima and Chris Young. I wish Pat Neshek had made it, and I voted for him a few hundred times, but as I said... Okajima! Fighters pride!

NPB All-Star Rosters in addition to the ridiculous fan vote. (English) Yakult's Seth Greisinger got a spot as a CL pitcher. The Yokohama pitching reps are sideweirder Atsushi Kizuka and closer Marc Kroon (I sort of expected Hayato Terahara to get a spot, not that Kizuka or Kroon are bad choices). Someone also finally noticed that Baystars catcher Ryouji Aikawa doesn't suck. And Dragonbutt got selected for his first all-star team too! ...as an infielder. I believe he was on the ballots as an outfielder though.

In the PL, Lotte's Naruse got his first spot, but Shunsuke Watanabe didn't get a spot? Hiroyuki Nakajima and Tsuyoshi Nishioka go with Munenori Kawasaki to give the Ikemen Infield. As deserved, the Fighters' outfield of Atsunori Inaba and Hichori Morimoto got spots on the roster as well, so look forward to Hichori pulling some kind of grand stunt during the games. (Last year most people remember him dressing up as Piccolo from Dragonball Z. Today, a bread company made a life-sized loaf of that for him. You could call it deadpan.)

Fantastic article by Jim Allen about the ludicrous Pacific League all-star ballot. He says it even better than I ever could in a million rants.

Some links that I meant to post at some point:

Shannon Drayer wrote a pretty interesting entry in her blog about why Mike Hargrove left, which may shed some light on things. Either way, it's an interesting read.

Kazuhiro Kiyohara's season is over. Possibly even his career...

Fun website put together by 7 members of the Yokohama Bay Stars: 55 Sports. Shuuichi Murata, Katsuaki Furuki, Naoki Mitsubashi, Masaaki Koike, Takeshi Tsutsumiuchi, Shougo Kimura, and Yuuki Kohno, all of whom were born in Showa 55 (or 1980, aka the Matsuzaka Generation Year). The players have blogs on that website, and in addition plan to use it to put together some baseball clinics and charity events. It's kind of neat that Yokohama's doing this well and so some of the good young players are getting recognized.

Kevin Youkilis mentioned on his blog that he set a record going 120 games without an error at first base during the Mariners-Sox series last week. "I'd never really heard of Stuffy McInnis before this week...."

CJ Nitkowski is updating his site again, but even more awesome, he has been putting up videos on YouTube of what it's like inside the Softbank Hawks clubhouse (and in the team bus, and out at Karaoke, and so on). This is so incredibly awesome that I can't even begin to describe it.

There's a really neat best athlete for each uniform number article in SI -- even if it's pretty football-heavy. I'm sad that Mike Schmidt was just the runner-up for #20 and that they didn't even bother mentioning Ichiro for #51. Still, I've actually been trying to collect shots for another numbers series sometime in the offseason, so I think it's neat to think about the different players who've worn different numbers.

Oh yeah, and the Phillies are up to 9997 losses as of this writing.

I'll probably edit in a few more links as I remember which ones I wanted to share.

The All-Star Rosters for MLB have been released, finally. Ichiro and JJ Putz are representing the Mariners. There are some sort of bizarre choices in the ranks, perhaps partially due to the requirement for every team having a representative, but whatever. I think I'm most surprised and sad that Eric Byrnes didn't get on the team -- he's having a monster year, and he's from the Bay Area and lives there and would get to be in the ASG in front of friends and family and all. And besides, he's Eric Byrnes, which is worth even more entertainment value on its own. Alas.

There's a Final Vote for the last two all-stars, and while all of the choices are legitimately guys who should or could be all-stars, I'm going to go ahead and say that I'm fully behind voting in Pat Neshek, even though my Fighters pride says I should be behind Hideki Okajima. Why? Because Pat Neshek is really goddamn cool. As he put it:

"I really don't know how to describe this, but I'm the fan/collector/guy that somehow managed to get to the big leagues. I seriously wake up each day and can't believe how I got here and am thankful to even touch the uniform! Basically if I wasn't playing baseball right now I would probably be the guy who was coming home from work and planning a night around baseball... planning what games to go to, which minor league teams to get autographs at, which guy to take on my fantasy team and which guy to trade in MLB The Show... heck this is what I do in the off-season, no lie! Basically I'm a fan of baseball, if your team wasn't represented in this final 5 Vote I would love to represent you and all the fans of the game. I can tell you right now that nobody in the world, no other player would appreciate this more than me. So if you want somebody that is a fan of the game, a guy just like you, a guy that would probably pass out if elected to the ALL STAR game then you can help me out by voting here!"

And if that wasn't enough, Pat had a contest for someone to make YouTube videos advertising his campaign, and one of the guys on his forum made this parody song for the campaign, which is awesome. I'm the queen of baseball parody lyrics, dammit, so if I say it's good, it's good. Go vote for Pat.

Now, on to some not-so-starry all-starness. The fan voting results are in for the NPB All-Star game, and it's completely retarded in the Pacific League. Now, I'm all for cheering for the Rakuten Golden Eagles because they're the crazy underdogs -- it's like being a closet Mets fan back in the mid-1960's -- but EIGHT ALL-STARS? WHAT?

    Central League                 Pacific League
SP  Hiroki Kuroda (HC)             Masahiro Tanaka (TRGE)
RP  Masanori Hayashi (YG)          Akira Matsumoto (TRGE)
CL  Kyuji Fujikawa (HT)            Kazuo Fukumori (TRGE)
C   Shinnosuke Abe (YG)            Motohiro Shima (TRGE)
1B  Kenta Kurihara (HC)            Nobuhiko Matsunaka (FSH)
2B  Toshihisa Nishi (YBS)          Yosuke Takahasu (TRGE)
3B  Michihiro Ogasawara (YG)       Hiroki Kokubo (FSH)
SS  Hirokazu Ibata (CD)            Munenori Kawasaki (FSH)
OF  Tomonori Maeda (HC)            Koichi Isobe (TRGE)
OF  Norichika Aoki (YS)            Teppei Tsuchiya (TRGE)
OF  Kosuke Fukudome (CD)           Tuffy Rhodes (OB)
DH                                 Takeshi Yamasaki (TRGE)

Now I mean, there are a few bones I could pick with the CL -- Hisanori Takahashi is by far the best starting pitcher in the CL so far this year, but he only finished 5th in the voting, even behind his teammate Tetsuya Utsumi. I like Kenta Kurihara, but Tyrone Woods is a monster. I'm bitter about Ogasawara, of course, but as usual he's fully deserving of an all-star spot. Hirokazu Ibata is the best shortstop in Japan, so no complaints there. I'm amused that Tomoaki Kanemoto didn't place in the top 3 in CL outfielders, but since the rest of the top ten in voting are Kanemoto, Yoshinobu Takahashi, Tani, Morino (!!!!!), Akahoshi, and Alex Ramirez, I'll let it slide. I can't imagine that the rest of those guys don't end up on the roster.

You may notice that I actually listed only 6 more for the top ten, and that's because there's one outlier that doesn't really make sense -- Koichi Ogata, who's been on the DL for the last month or so, and wasn't doing so well before that. Maybe someone's stuffing the ballots for both Rakuten and Hiroshima?

The most obvious of the "WTF" choices for Rakuten are catcher Motohiro Shima (currently batting .168 and not all that great at calling a game; Lotte's Tomoya Satozaki is still the best catcher in the PL), and middle reliever Akira Matsumoto (currently with an ERA of 6.10 and has walked 14 guys and struck out 17 in 28 innings; the Fighters' Hisashi Takeda IS the best setup man in the PL (1.96 ERA, 31 K, 11 BB, 41 IP, 4-2 with 2 saves). Those are the awful choices. The "Err, OKAY" choices would be Isobe and Teppei in the outfield over Tamura and Hichori, and to be fair, much as I hate to say it since I like him, Kazuo Fukumori as closer over the unreal Takahiro Mahara, who has been just plain fantastic this year as the Hawks' closer. I mean, the guy's converted all 22 of his save chances and has allowed ONE EARNED RUN in 27 games (32 IP). I thought he was amazing last year and he's gotten even better this year.

I'm not going to comment on Masahiro Tanaka. I don't have a problem with him getting the popular vote, a la Matsuzaka, and he's been pretty damn good for an 18-year-old kid. I also have no problem with Takeshi Yamasaki getting the DH vote because he's been an absolute monster this year. But the rest of the Eagles? Uhhh, no.

Fortunately, I'm pretty sure that most of the rest of the guys who deserve to be all-stars will get chosen for it by the managers and all. But this is just seriously seriously screwed up.

Geoff Jenkins has a blog. Cool. The funny part is that he mentioned that Chris Capuano, JJ Hardy, Bill Hall, and Jeff Suppan filmed a segment for The Young And The Restless. That's just hilarious. More details on that here and here. Considering JJ Hardy already looks like a soap opera star, this isn't too far out there.

Kevin Youkilis is also going to try out the mlblogging thing. The first sentence on his blog is "Maybe we can finally put all of this 'Kevin Youkilis can't run' stuff to rest now", about his inside-the-park homer the other day. Hmmmm.

MetsGrrl made me aware of two things, one funny, one sad. The funny is in theory lolyankees, which I hadn't seen before making my silly lolmariners of Betancourt. I have a feeling that I don't get some of the Yankees jokes, but hey, that might not be a bad thing. And the sad thing was that Bat-Girl is retiring from blogging, which is pretty crazy. I would not be lying if I did not say that at one point -- mostly around the 2005 Postseason -- I was basically just a wannabe Bat-Girl. Very sad.

If you haven't seen it yet, Mississippi Braves (AA) manager Phil Wellman went nuts the other day in a game against Chattanooga. See the video of it on YouTube. Funny part is, the Braves are playing the Mariners AA team right now. Crazy, huh?

The Pacific League is now beating the Central League 34-22-1, if I counted properly. The Fighters are... I'm not jinxing them. They are doing well, that's all I'll say. Seibu is sucking, and are 2-8 in interleague so far, while even Rakuten has a winning record at 6-3 and has been dancing with .500 for a bit. Baseball is great.

I've been meaning to write something about this for a few days, but still don't exactly have the right words in my head.

This article ran on the Fox Twin Cities website two weeks ago, about the crazy autograph seekers at the Metrodome. I saw it while skimming the forums on Twins pitcher Pat Neshek's website. (I've said it a hundred times, and I'll say it again -- Pat's awesome, read his blog, you're missing out if you don't.)

I've mentioned in a lot of my game reports the times when I've gotten stuff signed by random players after batting practice, just because it's a cool random little pre-game thing between picture-taking and other wanderings. 99% of the time, what I get signed is just the game's ticket. I bet a lot of players think that people getting their tickets signed just throw them out afterwards, but that's really not true in my case -- I've saved almost every ticket from the last few seasons, not even just the ones I get signed. I think it's really neat, and in most cases it brings back funny memories when I look through them.

I don't actually think I place that much value on actual signatures so much as on the experience. For example, I have several signed copies of books, but in almost all of those cases I think the story behind how I got them signed is a lot cooler than having the signature itself; the signature is usually just proof of the experience. I have some signed CDs and posters from various bands, but again, almost all of them have a funny story behind them as well. I have a Jamie Moyer signed rookie card, but to me, the awesome thing about that is just remembering the grin on Moyer's face when he was showing JJ Putz the card like "Look, that's me when I was your age!"

Originally, I think I started getting tickets signed after batting practice because I wanted to try to be less shy and actually approach players. Now, I'm a lot less shy about it, but I still just think it's pretty cool. Mostly, it's pretty interesting seeing some of the players close up, like how tall John Buck is, or how short Adam Kennedy is, or how blue Rich Harden's eyes are. I'd never sell anything I've gotten signed, nor would I ever actually buy anything specifically because it's signed. Like I said, the signature isn't worth as much to me as the experience, or the story. For my birthday last year, my dad went to a Mike Schmidt signing in Philly and got me a signed copy of Clearing the Bases. That's worth a lot to me just because I think it's awesome that my dad went to the trouble for a cool birthday present.

I don't necessarily think autograph hounds have ruined the experience for the rest of the fans, but they definitely can sometimes put a damper on it. One time in Philly, Cole Hamels was out signing things before a game, and he signed a jersey for a guy, who then said "THIS IS TOTALLY GOING ON EBAY TOMORROW!" Now, whether the guy was joking or not is irrelevant -- Hamels pretty much didn't sign anything for anyone else who wasn't a little kid for the rest of that time, and I had to catch him the next day. So the suggestion of "I just got this signed to sell it" actually did make things worse for other people.

I sometimes feel bad asking players to sign stuff just because there are so many people out there, and I would never get in the way of a little kid (quite to the contrary, I've often lent my Sharpie to little kids and told them players' names and such) but at the same time, I think that getting a ticket signed pretty much at least is the best indication of "This is for me", since it's not like people really want to buy a signed ticket.

Anyway, Pat Neshek had a pretty interesting reaction to the aforementioned article, which he posted on his forums:

That was a pretty brutal story, I think it's really good for everyone to see how the media can sway a certain topic to what they want to prove...Using shady video work, a catch phrase and player comments you can do a lot of stuff...they do these type of stories and can really mess up people's lives depending on the story...I wish they would've asked me about it but then again they would never understand the business and the point of graphing...What do I say...that story was a bunch of crap...I sign everyday before games for everyone that is there...everyday and everyone and I have never had a problem with anyone...I'm for the selling of my stuff or other players...I don't understand the big deal...If someone sells their item that means someone out there is willing to buy it that isn't able to get the autograph thereselves and there is a demand for your autograph...nuff said, terrible story!

It's interesting, because I mean, I never thought about it that way, but he's right. Different people place different values on different things. I'd never pay $50 for a signed baseball, but I could see why other people might. And if there's someone out there who really wants a Joe Mauer signed baseball and can't get to a Twins game or signing event, then why would you want to stop them from being able to buy one from someone else who can? And if you're Joe Mauer, and everyone adores you and wants your signature (and sideburns), isn't that good for you too?

I think there's nothing wrong with players who decide not to sign things, but at the same time, it's those little interactions with fans that make them into bigger fans. Something I noticed about Japanese people is that they'd often rather get their picture taken with someone famous than get something signed, which makes sense if you don't have a whole lot of room to keep collections of signed stuff, and makes even more sense in the cellphone-picture generation -- if you're having a conversation with someone at a game, you can't exactly whip out your signed baseball collection out of nowhere, but if you've got a picture of you with Bobby Valentine on your cellphone, you can show that off pretty quickly. On the other hand, if everyone wanted to get pictures with players rather than getting things signed, that actually would take longer in the long run. Plus, I don't know about you, but I don't really like pictures of myself all that much, even if it's with someone famous. I'd rather have an autograph!

(A week or so ago I discovered a guy's page titled Baseball People I Have Met. It's pictures of him with a crazy range of various baseball people over the years, and pretty cool in general. The funny thing is, when I found it, I was like "well... wait a minute, shouldn't this just be called 'Pictures of me with Baseball People'? It's pretty obvious that most of these are just at signings and such -- is that really "meeting" someone?)

In the old days, players weren't all that lofty compared to normal people, in terms of salaries and whatnot, but nowadays there's a pretty big celebrity gap thing that goes on. So it's cool to have a moment or two to see that the guy in uniform really is just another random dude, except he happens to get paid a lot of money to play baseball. Or, if you're really lucky, you might get Scott Kazmir to come hang out at your elementary school. Either way, it's about that little bit of interaction that brings fans and players a little closer together.

"It's like a haiku that forgot to stop."

Today's my birthday.
Sherrill and Putz are my age.
How'd I get so old?

Unfortunately, I was up in Canada all weekend and completely ignoring baseball, so I really have nothing useful to say, except maybe that Julio the Horrible is even more horrible than before. Beating up your wife is just plain not cool. It's even less cool than getting beaten by the Yankees, which is what the Mariners were doing all weekend after that crazy-ass Friday night game of "Who can suck more?" starring Kei Igawa and Cha Seung Baek.

As always, if you want humorous and incisive recaps of the games, go check out the verbal stylings of Jeff Sullivan.

Yukio Tanaka countdown: 3 hits left to 2000. He got another home run on Saturday, too!

Though, speaking of records, apparently Masaichi Kaneda (!!) was at the Mariners-Yankees game today to recognize Hideki Matsui's entrance into the Meikyukai, giving him an official jacket. How awesome is that?

Tim Lincecum, the #1 draft pick of the Giants last June, made his MLB debut tonight on national TV. His opponents were the Phillies, led by Cole Hamels. Old King Cole totally Felix'ed the spotlight, except that everyone already knew how awesome he was, so it wasn't entirely unexpected. The Phillies won the game 8-5, without the presence of You-Know-Who. Still, it's kind of funny thinking about how a year ago, I could have gone over to the University of Washington to see Lincecum pitch, and tonight he was the starter for the Giants. In comparison, a year ago Cole Hamels was about to get called up from AAA, since they figured that a guy who's kicking enough butt in the minors to strike out 36 and walk 1 in 23 innings is probably ready to kick some bigger butt. They were right, of course. And I'm still pissed off that I had waiver claim #2 at that point in my fantasy league...

I forgot there was a Mariners game today until around 2pm, at which point they were already down 13-1. It seems that I'm probably better off for that. From what I understand, Jeff Weaver was just very, very bad today. Offhand, my biggest thought after the game was how the Nippon Ham Fighters really could use Hideki Okajima (now doing well with the Red Sox) or Brad Thomas (now sucking with the Rainiers) back, as the lefty side of their bullpen has been abysmal.

I really need a good way to share random links here without making an entry for each. I've been sort of collecting them on the side and figured I'd regurgitate them all at once, even if they're a few days out of date.

So, something I wasn't aware of was that the teams in the KBO actually draft the Korean players in the MLB, regardless of whether those players have any intention to come back to Korea. The SK Wyverns picked former Mariners prospect Shin-soo Choo with the first pick. The Hyundai Unicorns picked Byung-Hyun Kim. And apparently, the KIA Tigers picked the struggling Hee-Seop Choi, who actually sounds like he might return to Korea.

I thought it seemed crazy to have the Indians play a series with Milwaukee as their home, but it looks like almost 20,000 people attended the "home" opener anyway. Google maps tells me that it's a 7-hour drive from Cleveland to Milwaukee, so my guess is that it was mostly the Wisconsin chapter of Grady's Ladies filling the stadium.

Still, the snowfest in Cleveland was worth something -- a good Mariner snow fight. Is the "snow ball" an outlawed pitch these days too?

And speaking of the Angels, I thought it was really cool how Troy Percival retired as an Angel -- signing a minor league contract with them on Opening Day, then retiring, and throwing out the ceremonial first pitch that evening. I used to really like Troy Percival -- he just always looked so badass out there on the mound, like he was going to crumple a beer can into your forehead if you stood in the way of him getting his three outs. And it was way cool of him to literally build his alma mater a new clubhouse a few months ago. So, with Percy and Salmon retired and Blue Eyes on the Mariners now, that about does it for Angels I used to really like, I think. Well, there's always Shields, I guess.

This is not a baseball link exactly, but the Washington Post recently pulled what I think is an excellent stunt -- they got Joshua Bell, who is basically the Johan Santana of violin playing, to go stand in a subway station in DC and play violin for 43 minutes and see whether anyone actually noticed. They surmise that nobody noticed because people just don't pay attention to beautiful music OR crappy music performed by buskers. My hypothesis lies in the opening sentence of the article describing Bell's appearance: "a youngish white man in jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt and a Washington Nationals baseball cap." It's quite obviously the Nats cap that made people rush by. Duhhhh.

I have no point here, I just want to forward an awesome Page 2 article on Sal Fasano.

Though I guess that could make a nice segue into Jonah Keri's hilarious
Page 2 story lines for the season article. The best part is point 6, calling out Pat Neshek (rightfully so) as the best baseball player-blogger. Pat, of course, had to live up to that, and responded in his own blog, mentioning that you should never suggest what sounds like a ridiculous memorabilia trade to him -- after all, he actually HAS the Simpsons trading cards in question.

And completely out of nowhere, just because I want to remember the link, ">Pat Venditte is a switch pitcher. Who knows if he'll make it to the majors, as usual, but it's still cool.

To transition between sides of the pond, here is an awesome audio documentary of Adam Hyzdu, which Mark Moran forwarded me. It's long -- an hour -- but basically Hyzdu had a tape recorder with him in spring training for several years, and he and his family recorded diaries as he made his journey through the minors and majors, and even into the start of his playing time in Japan (where, incidentally, he is also in the minors currently. Poor guy).

Robert Whiting, who is the man when it comes to writing about Japanese baseball, is doing a series in the Japan Times this week on MLB's effect on Japanese baseball. The first piece is out and as usual, Whiting says everything I'd want to, only better than I ever could. I look forward to the rest of the series.

You know, the Fighters bullpen isn't just having trouble with lefties -- their closer, Micheal Nakamura, just got de-activated from the roster due to shoulder pain. Arrrrgh. Same article mentions that Jason Johnson has an inflamed elbow. On the other hand, Seibu is still winning games and Nippon Ham is not, so pffft. At least this explains why Darvish pitched a complete game the other day in order to get the win.

Okay, the season's officially started now that Orix manager Terry Collins managed to get himself ejected from Sunday's game arguing over a balk that Tom Davey made which eventually led to a Seibu win. Here's a picture of him blowing his top.

Hanshin Tigers ironman Tomoaki Kanemoto turned 39 last week and celebrated by hitting a grand slam.

As I mentioned, Fighters veteran Yukio Tanaka is getting close to reaching 2000 hits (he started the season with 1982). Here he is, with ">16 left! and 15 left!. One could argue that putting in a utility infielder who's way past his prime might be part of why the Fighters are losing games, but let's face it, they basically lost way too many key parts of what made the team so great last year. I'm not ready to give up on the season yet, but from what I have seen, there just aren't enough new guys who can fill the old shoes. At any rate, if the team's losing, at least they can let Yukio hopefully get enough at-bats to reach his goal so he can retire and become a coach or whatever. I have mentioned it's weird seeing old Fighters centerfielder Tatsuya Ide as a base coach for the Softbank Hawks, haven't I?

Speaking of big round numbers of hits, remember I mentioned a few weeks ago that Chunichi's Hirokazu Ibata is the best shortstop in Japan? Well, in addition to being a kickass fielder, he also just reached 1000 hits last week. Misero yo Ibata, indeed!

I was all ready to make a post last week called "Dragonbutt for Third!" after my pet Dragon, Masahiko Morino, went and hit three home runs in three consecutive games. As of April 4th he was a collective 9-for-17 with 2 doubles and 3 home runs, for a whopping .529/.555/1.176 line. The next day, Tyrone Woods said "I am not about to be outdone by Deanna's Dragonbutt", and went and smacked three home runs in one game to overtake the team HR lead, and since then Morino hasn't hit another homerun and has dropped to a mere .382/.405/.706 clip, behind Tyrone Woods's .344/.475/.875 line. Alas.

Also, in case you haven't seen yet, I released the first version of my Japanese box score translation scripts, and you can see the boxscores on the front sidebar at japanesebaseball.com. Exciting, isn't it? I've already got a bunch of changes I need to finish testing and put up there -- and soon I'll be generating player game logs and other fun stuff.

Ever since reading Pam Postema's autobiography a few years ago, I've thought it'd be really cool for a female umpire to actually make it to the major leagues. In fact, I'm fairly sure it'll happen someday, it's just a matter of when.

Ria Cortesio's taking another step towards that goal Thursday afternoon, when she'll be umpiring for a Diamondbacks-Cubs spring training game. She'll be the first female umpire to work a game between major league teams since Postema in 1989. (Yes, the Cubs still do count as a major league team.) Cortesio officiated at the Home Run Derby and the Futures Game at the all-star events last year as well.

In some ways, I feel like I shouldn't make a big deal out of this. For the most part, people don't usually write articles about random umpires out of AA working at spring training games, so to call attention to Cortesio just because of her gender seems a little unfair. Undoubtedly, she has to work under twice as much scrutiny as male counterparts in the profession because she's a special case. (Seriously, it was bad enough for me being a computer science major in college in the mid-90's. When you're one of four women in an algorithms lecture of 300 students, you can be pretty sure most people know who you are. It's really no fun.)

At the same time, though, I just wanted to say "Good for her!", and I hope she gets promoted to AAA this year -- for being a good umpire, not for being a woman, of course.

A few articles/quotes about Cortesio:

"Where I grew up, half the people are Cubs fans and half are Cardinals fans," she said. "I'm one of the smart ones." -- Ria Cortesio article/bio at pioneerleague.com from 2000

"I get paid to run around a baseball field and yell at people all day. It doesn't get any better than that." -- Cortesio article at sptimes.com from 2003

I've been sick this week with some sort of flu; you know, the kind that knocks you out so you don't feel like moving at all, but it also dehydrates you to the point that you spend half of your time thinking "I am thirsty... so thirsty... gosh, that bottle of water over there looks so good... but, do I really want to make the effort to move the five feet to get it?"

I have a pretty neat baseball project or two I've been working on in the sidelines though, at least while my brain is functioning properly.

Anyway, here are the some links to things as I've been catching up on the web:

The Veterans Committee decided once again not to elect anyone to the Hall of Fame this year. What's funny is the comments Mike Schmidt made about it four years ago as opposed to this year -- while he might be softening, I think his initial instinct of "It's hard to vote for anyone who didn't get in the first time around" is probably what's holding out some of these guys now.

(Of course, Mike Schmidt has apparently been talking a bit too much these days -- first he compared himself to Pat Burrell, then he had to apologize for inadvertantly calling Burrell "mediocre".)

Former Mariners outfield prospect Shin-soo Choo may end up stuck in the minors yet again as the Indians signed Trot Nixon. Poor guy. Maybe we should ask Cleveland if we can trade him back for Ben Broussard. No, just kidding.

If you like hockey and you like baseball and you like laughing, you may wish to check out the short of spring training with Clark, the Canadian Hockey Goalie.

The Onion reported that the MLB is no longer accepting new players. It's alarming how real some of the quotes in the article are!

The wealthiest man in baseball may actually not be the one that immediately springs to mind for most people, but instead, Matt White, a guy who's pitched all of 9 and 2/3 major league innings but has rocked the real estate market, so to speak, buying a piece of land for $50k that has a rock quarry worth around $2.4 billion. And yet, he's hanging around Dodgers camp as an NRI, trying to make the roster anyway. Why? "This is fun," he says.

On the other side of the planet, Paul White (no relation) is trekking through Japan blogging about spring baseball in various cities, and unlike my trip last year, he actually has a press pass and is getting paid to do this all, so his stories involve a lot more quotes from players and coaches. Check it out.

The NY Times has an article about the Yankees Japanese translators which is a good read, and Jim Allen, as always, has an incisive view of the relationship between MLB and the Far East.

I probably forgot to mention that Nori Nakamura signed a taxi squad contract with Chunichi, and Tuffy Rhodes seems to be on the verge of getting a roster spot with Orix. (Edit: Tuffy's signed, 1yr/$400k, and will be wearing Nori's old #8. Wow!)

In other news, in one of those "Dude, what gives?" sort of outings, the Marines beat the Hawks 5-1 yesterday. That in itself isn't so weird, but the funky part is Softbank starter Hideaki Takahashi's pitching line. He pitched 5 innings, threw 87 pitches, faced 21 batters, struck out 9, walked 1, and... lost the game by giving up 3 runs on 5 hits, 4 of which were doubles.

Not much has been said about Takahashi, as his top league numbers are nothing impressive, but on the farm team in 2005 he struck out 139 while walking 46 in 120.2 innings, and in 2006 he struck out 96 in 110 innings while walking 36. But that Lotte squad he faced and struck out a ton of yesterday was mostly a legitimate set of top-leaguers - Nishioka, Nemoto, Fukuura, Satozaki, Ohmatsu, Imae, Takehara, Saburo. This is yet another reason why Softbank scares me -- they've got such incredible pitching depth, it almost doesn't matter whether or not they ever get another catcher who knows how to hit a baseball with a bat.

I meant to have some more Japan trip pictures up today, but alas, I got sidetracked yesterday by going to a Super Bull party. Right after that crazy kickoff where the Bears returned it for a touchdown, two more people showed up, so we rewound it on the Tivo before they got downstairs and were like, "Okay, let's all pretend we just started watching," except that when the announcer said something like "The Colts have had some problems blocking their kickoff returns this year," we all lost it and started cracking up.

Peyton Manning is kind of cute, but other than that, I don't recall much from the game besides all of the rain and the ninety billion fumbles and turnovers, which were entertaining on their own. I brought my Terrible Towel with me, as did another Pittsburgh ex-pat, and so whenever anyone came in to check on the game and asked who was winning, she and I would yell "GO STEELERS!!!!" and wave our towels around. I also did a cheer of "E-A-G-L-E-S EAGLES!!!!!" at one point.

Yeah, see, everything I know about football I learned from marching band. (Before you ask: baritone/euphonium.)

Anyway, the 2007 Community Projections have been kicked off today, and the first one we're attacking is Kenji Johjima. If you somehow read this blog but not Lookout Landing or USSM, read this post to find out more. It's a joint effort between the two blogs this year, in Google Spreadsheets, which is a somewhat surreal experience, as you can sit there and watch other people play with the numbers.

Let's see, what else is up...

Last week the Japanese newspapers were reporting that the NPB is adopting drug testing measures. The penalties may seem light (first offense is a reprimand, second is a 10-day suspension, third is a year, fourth is indefinite) but when you remember that in Japanese society, nobody ever forgets any dishonor to your name -- think Kazuhito Tadano -- a reprimand and the subsequent media circus could be more punishment than you think.

Thanks to Gary Garland starting up his news translations at Japan Baseball Daily again, I feel myself getting sort of lazy, but we'll see. The one wacky thing to me is that he pointed out two new catchers who are being compared to Kenji Johjima, the new Softbank catcher Hiroaki Takaya, and the Chunichi high school catcher Nagamasa Fukuda. However, from my own observation during the Koshien tournament and the Kokoyakyu movie, the one I would most expect to put up Johjima numbers in the future is the Hanshin Tigers draftee Ryohei Hashimoto, from Chiben Wakayama HS. He has a beautifully powerful swing, and it's just a matter of whether he can get his game up to the top level in time to take over for the aging Akihiro Yano, I think (but I also hope they don't rush him like the Lions did with Ginjiro Sumitani last year).

Bobby Valentine mentioned in his blog that Bobby Buckner is at spring training with Lotte. Yes, he is related to Bill Buckner -- it's his son, a high school senior who plays shortstop. Apparently Valentine was college roomates with Buckner, too. Small world!

Speaking of spring training with Lotte, it is apparently so damn hot in Australia right now -- around 100 degrees -- that their practices were moved to 4pm from 10am. My favorite submarine pitcher Shunsuke Watanabe is blogging about it on his website, although to be fair, he's mostly using the hot weather as an excuse to drink lots of Australian beer and wine. Can you blame him?

Speaking of weird spring training food stories, there were some funny recent Hawks pictures in Miyazaki, including Sadaharu Oh receiving a seafood gift (that katsuo fish is like half his height), and the Hawks rookies are learning to make hot dogs? And this is not about food, but Hiroki Kokubo is in ur trenchcoatz stalking ur rookiez. Okay, not really.

Also, I dislike the new Hanshin uniforms, though I think this picture of Fujikawa saying "You got my old number!" to Esteban Yan is pretty funny. And look, it is Ryan Vogelsong.

The Hiroshima Carp have been covering a different player in camp each day for photos. So far they've done Soyogi, Higashide, Arai, and Kurihara. Kurihara says he's going to hit like 40-50 home runs this season. I have no doubt he could do it if he stayed healthy for the whole year. I want to get excited about the Carp this year, I honestly do, but I worry that doing so will jinx them.

I feel kind of bad for Mike Matheny retiring, but alas, these things happen. If his case study helps to prevent and/or treat head trauma and concussions from catchers in the future, though, at least he'll be able to make some impact on the sport, no pun intended.

You know we're big George Sherrill fans around here, and I never did link to his recent article on mlbplayers.com about perseverance and working your way up out of the indy leagues. It's an interesting read.

And on another lefty bullpen note, happy 22nd birthday to Eric O'Flaherty! I'm betting his birthday wish is to break camp with the Mariners this year...

I can't imagine there's anyone who reads this blog who isn't familiar with baseball-reference.com, but they are currently doing a survey to find out what features of the site people do and don't like, and what they should work on next, and such.

If you're one of the first 1500 people to take the survey, you'll get credited with $2 towards sponsoring a page, which means you could either sponsor some completely obscure player, or put it towards sponsoring a page normally. (I currently sponsor 11 players on b-ref. 10 are easily identifiable and the 11th is Doyle. Though, recently I'm thinking I should just subscribe to their Play Index service rather than sponsoring pages.)

Anyway, one of the questions in the survey was:

How many major and minor league baseball games per year do you go to?
a. 0
b. 1-3
c. 4-10
d. 11-500

Ummmmmmmmmmm.

500 games a year? Is that even possible? Even given the span of about 180 days that the baseball season covers, if you somehow went to 2 games per day, that'd still be 360, and you could maaaaaybe add in winter leagues to pad that number a bit more. But is there actually a locale where you could reasonably live and do that all year round? Are there even enough weekday afternoon games? I was dead tired after just going to two games in one day in Osaka, and besides doubleheaders, I've never done it over here. I'm pretty sure MLB scheduling tries to make it such that two major league teams in the same metro area are never in town at the same time anyway, although you could always drive between close cities such as Philly and NYC or DC, and/or attend minor league games.

As you can guess, I fit into that last category easily, but still. I'm sort of surprised that those are the delimiters. I would have put it at something like 0, 1-5, 6-20, and 21+, maybe. 1-5 is definitely in the range of "I go when my company or my friends give me tickets", 6-20 is in the range of "I go pretty often, I might even share a season ticket plan or have one of the limited ones", and then 21+ is "I have season tickets / I'm addicted to baseball / I'm stalking Chase Utley" territory.

I'm sort of curious, though -- what do other people see as the boundaries there? I really don't know what normal baseball attendance is -- when I was a kid I went to around 15 games a year, when I was in college I went to around 4 games a year, when I moved to Seattle I started going to 30+ games a year. My guess is that I'm on the high end, but I'm still stymied by "11-500".

This is the time of year for fan fests, and while there are several Fan Fest reports on Athletics Nation which make me jealous (they had like 16 players there and other coaches and front office guys), the best fan fest article I've read so far anywhere was Joe Posnanski on the Kansas City Royals Caravan, complete with a running tally of John Mayberry stories and countdowns to how long it took people to mention Gil Meche. Simply fantastic, worth a read. (Thanks to Steve Nelson for pointing it out.)

Jayson Stark writes about how Colorado Rockies players are using iPods in the dugout to watch pitcher-batter videos, among other things. I think it's a great idea, though the potential for distraction is pretty high. Now Richie Sexson can watch the tater-tot-kicking scene from Napoleon Dynamite right in the dugout! And the bullpen guys would be like "eh, we've got an hour or two before anyone'll need us... anyone got last week's episode of House on their iPod?" And just imagine the players deciding to plug their iPod directly into the soundboard to pick their at-bat music every day! (Thanks to eknpdx for pointing it out.)

Three Weeks to Pitchers and Molinas, an article on the Molina brothers. Of all the sets of three brothers in the majors, they are the only one where all three have World Series rings. (Thanks for 6-4-2 for pointing it out.)

It's not officially Ryan Madson Day anymore, but Jason at Beerleaguer got to interview Ryan Madson at a press event last week. It's only a 4-minute audio clip, but I thought it was a good interview. He sounds pretty aware of his role on the team and has some pretty incisive comments on what he needs to do to succeed, even just as a reliever.

Tom at the Balls, Sticks, and Stuff wrote a nice little article on Dummy Hoy the other day. You know I'm a sucker for history.

Erik Grissom at Phillies Flow points out that no matter how big Ryan Howard's accomplishments this year were, they're still not bigger than those of Chuck Klein's in 1930. Personally, I'm always amazed whenever I read anything about the 1930 Phillies season. Klein hit .386 with 40 HR, Lefty O'Doul batted .383, the team batting average was .315, and those two plus Pinky Whitney each had over 200 hits. And where did they finish? Dead last, losing 102 games. In addition, Klein had two 26-game hitting streaks that year, which was the post-1900 Phillies club record until Utley and Rollins blasted it away in 2005-2006.

Bobby Valentine agrees with me that Saburo should have had his eye surgery done earlier. Right before spring training is only a good idea if you want to have an excuse to not go to spring training.

Marty Brown, on the other hand, appeared at a Hiroshima Carp fan event the other day and signed stuff and (I think) helped cook and distribute Miyazaki oysters, in preparation for the team heading to Miyazaki for spring training. Also, it appears the Carp are broadcasting their spring training over the web again -- I'll have more details on that and other NPB spring training in a day or two.

I was mostly kidding about it, but yeah, the Angels avoided arbitration with all of their players. Scot Shields will make $3.4 million in 2007, and considering how he's a better pitcher than several closers, it seems like a reasonable deal. I've been a Shields fan for a while. He's an oddball, that's to be sure, but he's also the nicest player on the Angels by far now that Tim Salmon's retired. Shields always seemed to have time to throw a baseball to a kid after BP, or stop by to sign stuff or chat, even in the midst of quietly becoming one of the best relievers in baseball.

The list of 2007 Salary Arbitration Figures is up on mlb.com. It really freaked me out for a second because they have Lew Ford listed as being with the Nats. It's a typo, I think, but since I'd just read on Bat-Girl how Matthew LeCroy just signed a minor-league deal with the Twins, I suddenly got confused in my brain and thought there was some weird trade going on. It's annoying, though, because there are several players listed there where I seriously hadn't noticed them move to another team, and several where I was thinking that, but it's just typos. (They have Alexis Rios listed with Pittsburgh, too.)

Also, it seems like JJ Putz might actually go to arbitration with the Mariners. Crazy. Nevermind, JJ Putz signed a 3-year deal with the M's. Crisis avoided. Thanks, msb.

Teddy Beardado signed a minor-league deal with the Reds. I hope he's recovering well from surgery. Maybe he'll have a couple of years left in his arm after all.

The St. Louis Cardinals were invited to the White House yesterday. I first saw this posted on the Griddle, where he also posted a link to the transcript of the ceremony. Strangely, when seeing the picture of Eckstein presenting president Bush with a jersey in this article, I was suddenly totally reminded of David Wright presenting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe with a Mets jersey before the MLB-NPB All Star series this past fall.

Apparently we can blame the current snowstorms here on Jose Vidro coming to visit Seattle.

I had this post 90% written up over the holiday break and somehow completely forgot to finish and post it. Oops. Despite that it's two weeks late, I figure that since I did this last year too, I might as well continue with tradition. MLB.com did a summary of their own, but I had a different opinion on which ones were the best.

Basically, they go around and each team's beat reporter interviews someone associated with the team, asking various questions about the holiday season, which vary from team to team. Overall, the 30 teams were represented by 10 infielders, 4 outfielders, 9 pitchers, 4 managers, and 3 broadcasters. Yes, oddly, no catchers. I don't think it was on purpose.

This year's were on average a little bit more fun than last year's, but there weren't quite as many standout moments. Still, let's see:

Funny Ones

As usual, I think the best ones are when they pick on their teammates:

First Place: Aaron Rowand, Philadelphia Phillies

MLB.com: If Santa added a 10th reindeer, what should its name be?

Rowand: Phanatic.

MLB.com: What gift would you get for Jimmy Rollins?

Rowand: You can't get him jewelry or anything baseball-related, because he already owns everything. He's a tough guy to shop for. You know what? I'd make my own rap CD and give it to him, because he's into music and he can market it. It'd be called "MC-Row-dog." That would be my label.

MLB.com: Is there one teammate you really want to get something for?

Rowand: I'd get Cole Hamels a Flowbee. I mean, just look at his hair.

Second place: Nick Punto, Minnesota Twins

MLB.com: Next on your list is Torii Hunter.

Punto: I think I'd have to give Torii three hours of sit-down advice on how to play cards. He's just awful.

MLB.com: OK, last one and this should be good. What would you get the man whose locker is right next to yours -- Mike Redmond?

Punto: Geez, Red Dog is easy. There are so many things I could get him. But if I had to give one, I think it would be my green Speedo. He really seems to love that thing.

MLB.com: You mean the one that has become almost a good luck charm of sorts around the club?

Punto: Yeah, I think I'd actually frame that green Speedo and let him put in on the wall of his game room. I know he wants it because every time I put it on, he's always saying just how awesome it is.

Third Place: Jeff Francoeur, Atlanta Braves

MLB.com: If you were getting a gift for Chipper Jones, what would it be?

Francoeur: From a serious perspective, I'd probably get him a new gun or something that he could use on his ranch. From a joking perspective, I'd give him a new foot so that he could stay in the lineup all year.

MLB.com: How about for Andruw Jones?

Francoeur: Andruw has everything. He'd be impossible to shop for. I wouldn't even know what to get him. I guess I'd just get him a free car wash for all of his cars.

MLB.com: And for John Smoltz?

Francoeur: I'd get him tickets for a Michigan State football game so that he and I could go up together, and I could just sit there and make fun of him the whole time.

Honorable Mention: Dave Raymond, Houston Astros Broadcast Team

MLB.com: You were hired a year ago, just six days before Christmas. Describe how you felt when they told you they were hiring you, and just how merry was that Christmas?

Dave Raymond: Let's just say that I wasn't terribly concerned as to whether or not I'd get a Rubik's cube on Christmas morning. It changed Christmas dramatically, of course. It was more like a five- or six-day celebration. It was fun and a surprise.

That day was surreal. We came to the office. They went to give Roy Oswalt his bulldozer. I was just watching two grown men exchanging bulldozers.

MLB.com: What's at the top of your baseball Christmas list?

Dave Raymond: I just want to hang out more with Brad Ausmus and Mike Lamb. That's really all I want. I just want them once to acknowledge the fact that when we're out somewhere other than the ballpark and I'm within 20 feet of them, we're technically "hanging out." I want them to acknowledge that. They don't even have to speak to me. Like at the baseball dinner in January, Brad will be there and I will be there. Technically, absolutely, we're hanging out.

Also, I want more 18-inning games.

I am looking forward to the Astros getting back to the playoffs in their rightful spot at the top of the division. Especially should it come at the expense of the Cubs, who spared no expense in the offseason.

Honorable Mention: Scott Proctor, New York Yankees

MLB.com: What do you want for Christmas this year?

Proctor: To not get traded. I also told my wife I wanted an ATV, but she told me I couldn't have one until Camden, my 3-year-old son, could ride it. I've got about three or four years to go, I guess.

MLB.com: Who's more popular, Derek Jeter or Santa Claus?

Proctor: No offense to Derek, but I've got to go with Santa Claus.

Interesting ones

These interviews were put online on December 23rd. Ironically, that's the same day Brandon McCarthy got traded.

MLB.com: What's the best individual baseball gift you could get during the 2007 season?

McCarthy: Twenty wins and a Cy Young, I guess. Less than 50 home runs allowed? Something like that. I'll stick with 20 wins -- that would be nice to get.

I found this one to be particularly insightful, though I had initially been disappointed that the Indians interviewed broadcaster Matt Underwood instead of a player:

MLB.com: Well, we talked a little about shopping. What have you thought of the Indians' holiday shopping this winter?

Underwood: It's interesting. Mark Shapiro is like the guy who waited until the last minute to go shopping, and the store is kind of picked clean already. And I don't say that Mark's done anything wrong. It's just that there's just not a lot available. So he's looking at what's on the shelf to buy, and he's got to make do with what's available. I think he's done a good job with what's available. We knew they weren't going to go out and spend crazy on an Alfonso Soriano or Carlos Lee. That's not their style, and not many teams can afford to do that. Based on what's available, he's done a great job. You can say, "Maybe he could have done better on the trade route." But the asking prices on trades have been astronomical.

Everything they've done has been economically sound and operationally sound. You know, Mark's always been hesitant to give multiyear contracts to the bullpen guys because of the volatility from year to year. So what do you do? You sign Joe Borowski to one year with an option. Roberto Hernandez and Aaron Fultz were the same situation. It's very consistent. And the David Dellucci signing is a great move. It's a veteran with experience, and the guy adds some presence. It can't do anything but help.

This is a kinda cool story along with something weird. I mean, are baseball players allowed to admit they like Star Trek? Reds pitcher Todd Coffey thinks so:

MLB.com: Although you're not much into receiving, was there a favorite gift you remember getting when you were young?

Coffey: When I was 13 one Christmas, Mom and Dad got me a special gift. My mom wrapped it 10 times with different colored paper so she would know if I opened it. When I did open it, it was a 1994 baseball from the World Series that wasn't. It was a baseball made for the World Series (stamped), and it was the baseball game that wasn't. I don't know how they got it, but it's still on the mantle at my house.

MLB.com: Do you have a favorite holiday movie?

Coffey: One of my favorite movies is "A Christmas Carol," with Ebenezer Scrooge. I like the one that has Patrick Stewart playing Ebenezer Scrooge, because I'm a big "Star Trek" and Patrick Stewart fan. I love that story. It's a great story.

Other ones I found interesting were:
Freddy Sanchez, Pirates
Eric Gagne, Rangers
Buddy Bell, Royals
Ben Zobrist, Devil Rays
Randy Wolf, Dodgers
John Maine, Mets

Others

This is the list of ones where I'd see the player name and think "Oh cool," then read the interview and thought it was a letdown:
Brandon Webb, Diamondbacks
Chone Figgins, Angels
Mike Cameron, Padres
Brian Roberts, Orioles
Sean Casey, Tigers

In Seattle There's Plenty of Rain, Dear

And on one final note, of course, the Mariners contribution came from none other than Dobby The Bench Elf:

MLB.com: What would be the best present the Mariners could find under their Christmas tree?

Greg Dobbs: I think the best Christmas present they could get now would be the one that's under the tree, but they can't open it until the end of the season. That would be us being in position to win the American League West.

Obviously, they couldn't open it now, so I guess it would be a gift for next Christmas.

2007 HOF Inductees Announced.

The two shoe-ins were elected, and that was it -- Ripken Jr, Gwynn Sr. No Mac, no Bert, no Rice, no dice.

I honestly don't have much of an opinion on the McGwire issue. I'm surprised by the low number of votes, but not surprised that he didn't make it in, I guess.

Jay Buhner got one token vote, but the real close shave here went to Goose Gossage, who fell only 21 votes short of election this year with 71.2% of the vote. I'll take this opportunity as a baseball book nerd to plug his autobiography The Goose Is Loose, which earned him a spot in the Baseball Books Wall of Fame as far as I'm concerned -- it's pretty damn entertaining stuff.

Also, yesterday was 2006 inductee Bruce Sutter's birthday. It would have been much funnier if the results were announced then.

In completely unrelated news, but I don't feel like making a separate post yet, Esteban Yan will be playing for the Hanshin Tigers next year. Whoa.

I actually don't have that much to say, but I want to play with this new blogger beta thing. It says that it can now do post labels, which is really awesome. Post labels, and the ability to cut posts, were really about all I wanted, and now, look, they exist! Whee! Now I'll have to go back and label everything. Don't count on another post from me until sometime in 2009.

Anyway, let's see if I can make up some content.

Once upon a time, Jim Bunning was embarrassed to say he was the manager of the Toledo Mud Hens. Now, imagine what someone's going to have to go through with the reins of the Lehigh Valley IronPigs? Eeeek. I mean, Ooooiiiink.

I'm not much for roster speculation or the whole free agent circus, but I have to admit that I do bookmark the Free Agent Tracker this time of the year and check it most days. Today, at least, it was interesting to see that Kazuo Matsui re-signed with the Rockies. It occurs to me that it would have been funnier if he'd gone back to Japan to take Akinori Iwamura's place, though.

This is also the Awards Season, and today the Rookies of the Year were announced. Justin Verlander won it for the AL, and.. Hanley Ramirez for the NL? I thought Ryan Zimmerman would edge him out, and the Marlins rookie jar would fight among itself for other votes, but I guess not.

This year's Gold Gloves and Silver Sluggers were announced a couple of days ago as well. There's a lot of arguments to be made for or against the picks, but I thought the most interesting thing was looking at which players won both: Carlos Beltran and Derek Jeter.

Hmm, so Trey Hillman mysteriously is no longer in the Oakland manager candidate mix. Japanese press predicts that he will re-sign with the Fighters. That's good -- I think he's built a great relationship with the team and with the fans. Now if only certain Ogasawaras would make up their minds, we'd be in good shape!

Seibu is stringing out the Matsuzaka hype another day or three. On an almost completely unrelated note, I was at Target tonight and randomly saw the Upper Deck World Baseball Classic Boxed Set for sale for $9.99, and impulsively bought it. The selection of Japanese players in the set is a bit odd, though, the strangest being that there aren't cards for Uehara and Matsuzaka. I sort of figured both of them were a lot more hyped up than, say, Shunsuke Watanabe, who is included. I'd personally rather have a Watanabe card, of course, but I'm weird.

Anyway, I'm going to go publish this article and then go play with the new Blogger gadgets for a bit. Exciting!

Johnny Sain dies at 89

I was once at a pub quiz where one of the questions was, "Name one of the 'two days of rain' from the 1948 Boston Braves," and I had to rack my brain for a bit before I came up with Vern Bickford. 60 years later, "Spahn and Sain" is about all anyone remembers about that team, but most people still remember Johnny Sain as the coach who developed pitchers like Whitey Ford, Jim Kaat, and Denny McLain.

Sometimes I wonder whether coaches really make that big a difference on a team's pitching or hitting. But you take a guy like Sain, or current-day Mazzone, and know that there's something special there that sets him apart.

Congratulations to the St. Louis Taguchis Cardinals, who just came home with their tenth World Series crown!

I have to admit that I didn't pay much attention to the World Series this year, due to generally being either asleep or at work while the games were being rained out going on. What I did see was:

1) Jeff Weaver pitching in the World Series and Jered Weaver sitting in the stands.
2) Jeff Weaver winning the last game of the World Series. Who'd have ever predicted that one?
3) Ickle David Eckstein got the World Series MVP! He's shorter than *I* am!
4) Mayor Sean Casey kicking butt, while the rest of the Tigers took a catnap.
5) A team that won 5 regular season games more than the Mariners won the World Series.
6) SO TAGUCHI!111!111!!!1!11!1

The latter is probably because my brain's been stuck on the other side of the Pacific for the last few months. But seriously, you've got to love the Japanese press, where the top MLB headline on Sankei Sports was カージナルス世界一に王手！田口の神技バントに運の神様降臨, or "Cardinals win World Series! Taguchi's divine bunting is like the fortune of God descending!" or something to that effect. But you see, it really was the case that Taguchi guided the Cardinals to this championship. You'll note that in the World Series, the only game they lost was the only game he didn't play in. Therefore, I nominate So Taguchi as the true World Series MVP.

On another note, you can now pre-order the BIG DREAM! Complete 2006 Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters DVD on amazon.co.jp. It claims to be 5 hours long with highlights from the entire season, which should be pretty cool! I'm really looking forward to it.

(Also, I went ahead and sponsored the pages of Shinjo, Seguignol, Micheal, and Macias on baseball-reference.com. Thought it was a shame they were all unloved like that.)

Johnny Callison died on Thursday, but I failed to notice in all of the Lidle hubbub. Phillies alumni and others remember him. If you don't know who Callison was, and didn't grow up in Philly, it's understandable. He came to the Phillies in 1960 when they were abysmal and was one of the big reasons they had their almost-miracle-until-the-collapse 1964 season; he should have been NL MVP that year, but missed it by a thread just like the rest of the team did. Both of my parents always spoke highly of him; my mom because she went to a lot of Phillies games in the 60's, and my dad because he got to meet a whole bunch of the Phillies at an awards dinner when he was 17, including Callison.

If you did know who he was, this is entirely unrelated, but you might enjoy reading Mike Berquist's series he's doing on the 1950 Phillies in his blog: intro part 1 part 2 part 3

The other thing I'm reading today is Jason Churchill's Mariners roster breakdown with the lookahead to 2007. Quite frankly, I'm totally not into roster speculation because I know I personally have no influence on what the organization does, but Jason's is worth reading because it's funny. For example, his comment on Jon Huber: "Would marry slider if Bush made it legal. Putz’s split is the ring bearer." Or Emiliano Fruto: "Good stuff needs better location. How about Cincinnati?"

In what may be a funny role reversal, Andy Green wants to play in Japan, and rumors link him to the Nippon Ham Fighters. I'm kind of concerned about his 2006 stats, but maybe that was a result of bench rot. He'd probably be an upgrade over Jose Macias at third base, if he could pound the ball in Japan like he did in the PCL in 2004-2005. Plus, his middle name is Mulligan and he was born on 7/7/77. How cool is that?

Also, as an aside, I'm going to probably start trimming my blogroll in a few weeks of baseball blogs that aren't updating in the offseason, as well as adding a few (notably, The Griddle since he's another Fighters fan, and the Baseball Book Review because, hey, baseball books, and Patrick does a book segment on Mariners Radio, too). I also decided to start collecting a page of Player Blogs rather than trying to keep a separate sidebar for them, especially since some are only for the postseason, some are defunct, some are in Japanese, etc.

If you haven't already heard, Buck O'Neil died Friday night. From all accounts, he lived a long, happy, and fulfilling life, even including things like playing in a minor-league all-star game earlier this year, at the age of 94. The staggering amount of baseball history he was witness to is pretty amazing. You can read some of his history here or here.

That said, today the Yankees got knocked out of the ALDS by Jeremy Bonderman and the Tigers. I was helping some friends out with stuff, and we checked on the game, saw Posada was at-bat with two outs in the bottom of the ninth, and I said, "Oh look! It's the Yankees last and best chance, Jorge Posada!" and boom, he hit a two-run homer. I shut up, and the game ended shortly thereafter.

On the other hand, the postseason schedules will continue to be eastcoasteriffic as the Mets swept the Dodgers out of the NLDS.

The Padres did NOT get themselves swept out of the NLDS, beating the Cardinals 3-1. You have to wonder what sort of crazy day it is when the only hits the Cards manage are 2 each by Little Davey Eckstein and Ickle Ronnie Belliard, and So Taguchi is the only man on either side to hit a home run, but hey, whatever. Chris Young gets major Marinerd points for being ninety feet tall and graduating from Princeton. Anyway, the only division game on tomorrow will be the Cards-Padres, Woody Williams vs. Chris Carpenter. Not looking encouraging for the Pads, but who knows?

As I mentioned, the Seibu Lions and Softbank Hawks are playing the first stage of the Pacific League playoffs in Japan this weekend. I listened to last night's game and tonight's over internet radio, and OH MY GOD WHAT A PITCHING DUEL IT WAS YESTERDAY. Talk about the game of the year. They had the best pitcher in Japan, Kazumi Saitoh, going against the other best pitcher in Japan, Daisuke Matsuzaka, and it was, as promised, an astounding duel.

Both Saitoh and Matsuzaka went the complete game, Saitoh throwing 115 pitches in 8 innings, Matsuzaka 137 in 9. Matsuzaka didn't walk anyone, but he did HIT four batters, which was odd for him as he hit three batters ALL YEAR. Saitoh was magnificent, allowing only three baserunners in the first six innings and striking out 7 in that time. The Lions turned double plays in the first and fourth innings, and I was joking that the Hawks hadn't turned any because you can't get double plays when your pitcher doesn't let anyone get on base! Of course, then he walked Alex Cabrera, who was immediately erased when Kazuhiro Wada hit into a double play.

The 7th inning was where all the action was in the game. Matsuzaka struck out Shibahara and Tanoue to start off the top half of the inning, but Yuuichi Honda singled after that, and miracle of miracles, so did Naoki Matoba. Munenori Kawasaki was hit by a pitch to load the bases, and then Naoyuki Ohmura, who is usually good with RISP, grounded out to first, ending the inning. Doh. The Lions' heart of the order strung together three hits in the bottom of the 7th -- Hiroyuki Nakajima and Alex Cabrera singled, and then Kazuhiro Wada, undoubtedly annoyed at his earlier GIDP, hit a line drive to left field for a double, scoring Nakajima, and despite Saitoh retiring the next three batters, two on strikeouts for a total of 9 on the evening, the Hawks couldn't score anything off Matsuzaka in the 8th or 9th -- heck, he got STRONGER as the night went on, as he struck out 5 of 6 batters faced in those last two innings, for a total of 13 strikeouts for the evening. Even weirder, 9 of those strikeouts were in the last 4 innings, and the other 4 were in the first 5. Either way, it was pretty likely that whichever side could manage to scrape one run together would win, and it happened to be that the Lions won 1-0.

I'm rooting for the Hawks to win this weekend, but that's mostly because I think the Fighters will have a way easier time against them than they would the Lions. (This is based purely on the fact that the Fighters were 7-13 against the Lions this year but 12-8 against the Hawks.) Fortunately, they indulged me tonight by beating the Lions 11-3. I thought the radio announcer was literally going to explode when he was calling Nobuhiko Matsunaka and Julio Zuleta's back-to-back home runs in the 9th inning. Matsunaka had a fine game, going 3-for-5 and knocking in 5 runs. Let's hope he can get it out of his system this weekend :)

Tomorrow, Fumiya Nishiguchi, whose name cracks me up, takes the mound for Seibu. He's been good this year, but not as mind-bogglingly good as people thought he was last year. He's also been iffy against the Hawks. Fortunately for him, the Hawks have Hayato Terahara on the mound, who's got great raw talent, but is still figuring out how to be a pitcher. He's been iffy against the Lions this year, but then again, he's been iffy against everyone, and you never know if he's going to go out there and get lit up, or if he's going to go strike out 10 in 6 innings. So, it should be an interesting game if nothing else.

Something that is way freaking cool is that the Yokohama Bay Stars actually list their players' at-bat music. So I can indeed confirm all the songs I thought I heard were infact the songs I thought I heard.

And absolutely completely randomly, Bobby Valentine mentions the latest addition to the menu of the fast-food chain Lotteria -- the Bobby Burger. Oh my. It has pineapples on it.

Not really, mind you. I'm just pretending to be clever.

The Marke Lowe Elbowe Lowe-Downe

So we all know that Mariners reliever Mark Lowe had surgery recently, and the M's make it sound like everything's all happy-fun, but Jeff Sullivan points out that this may be more serious than we think.

Summing The Summer

The Mariners mlb.com site offers a review of the season, which saves me the trouble of writing one. Aside from the fact that they seem to think our 30-year-old catcher is part of the "youth movement", most of what they have to say isn't unreasonable. It's true that when playing the AL West, we sucked enough ass to start a donkey farm, and it's encouraging that they call Snelling a keeper.

On the other hand, it's funny that Jon Huber ninja'ed Mark Lowe's reliever ERA title. Also, they left out strikeouts in the leader columns. It's obvious Felix leads the team with 176 -- heck, he was tied with Danny Haren for 6th in the AL -- but the funny story here is that Putz pushed himself up to 104 strikeouts when he closed out Saturday's game, putting him one ahead of Jarrod Washburn's 103. Apparently that made J-Rod the Washburninator bitter.

Guys Dig Chicks Who Know the Infield Fly Rule

Or so says David Wright.

Man, I bet he'd be even more impressed if he knew that at softball this year, I was playing second base, a pop fly was hit towards me, the infield fly rule was called, and I dropped the ball by accident anyway.

The Plot Thickens

A's 5, Twins 2

So my computer at work died this morning.
Good: I didn't have to do work for an hour or two.
Bad: I didn't have the A's-Twins Gameday ticker available.
Good: There's a TV in the lobby of my office building that was showing ESPN.
Bad: My boss caught me watching TV (but I explained to him that I was waiting to get my computer back from the IT guys).
Good: I saw Neshek pitching and Little Nicky Punto the Boy Superhero making an awesome catch in the stands.
Bad: I missed Kotsay's freaking inside-the-park home run. (I did get to see it later in the day on Sportscenter, though. I love how his jersey came completely untucked.)

Weird: The A's are heading home, and they're up 2-0 on the Twins. NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition. I sense a new nickname for Esteban Loaiza...

Mets 6, Dodgers 5

This one was probably a lot closer than anyone really wanted to admit.

But rather than an inside-the-park home run by one centerfielder against another, it featured two guys being thrown out at home plate on the same play, as both J.D. Drew and Jeff Kent reached home at the same time on a Russell Martin single, and Paul Lo Duca did what any catcher in his situation would do -- he tagged out everyone in sight.

In the grand tradition of the Dodgers -- you know, three men on third base and all -- this seems perfectly appropriate to me.

Eric Byrnes cracks me up

Unfortunately, I have no pictures or links for this one yet, but due to the Yankees game raining out, there wasn't much baseball to watch on TV by the time I got home at 7pm. On the other hand, I got to see the tail end of SportsCenter, which featured Eric Byrnes and Vernon Wells as commentators. Wells actually comes off as pretty conservative and intelligent from what I saw.

But Byrnes, man, he's just still so funny, and I swear he doesn't have nearly enough blood in his caffeine system. You can tell he's not really trying to be cool or announcer-like, he's just being candid and babbling about his ex-teammates on the A's, about the way different guys pitch, all the while talking about ninety miles a minute. Sometimes I think Byrnes would be a lot of fun to sit and watch a game with, although that might be because I also talk at a higher baud rate than most normal people.

Apparently he even said something about having "man-love for Derek Jeter" before I got home, but sadly, I missed it. Yeah, I know, the amount of man-love that ESPN has in general for Derek Jeter is somewhat apalling, but I love that Byrnes used a word like "man-love".

The Player's Blog-roll

I updated my earlier post to include all the ones I know of now that are actually blogging the postseason (Haren doesn't seem to be updating, so he's off the roll). These are actually pretty awesome to read:

Derek Lowe: "Tomorrow, we’ve got Hong-Chih Kuo going, and I know he’s a rookie and he’s only got one win -- and they’ve got Tom Glavine going and he’s got about a million wins -- but I like our chances."

Cliff Floyd: "[Mike] Cameron’s my boy. When he was here, with the Mets, we were like Frick and Frack. I was Frack."

Barry Zito: "This place is crazy, man. For whatever reason, they put a white roof on it. I guess nobody told them baseballs are white or something. We need to bring back those orange glow-in-the-dark balls we used to have growing up for games here."

Michael Cuddyer: "I've never been such a Royals fan in my life except for yesterday. It was a really cool situation."

While it's not a funny quote, I thought it was interesting that David Wright mentioned that his family couldn't come up for the weekday games, due to his brothers being in college and both of his parents working. That's both really cool and really sad -- I mean, it's not like he doesn't make plenty of money, but they're reputedly pretty down-to-earth and not going to do the whole quit-our-jobs-and-live-off-our-famous-son thing. On the other hand, I know that if *I* had a close relative playing in the MLB postseason, there's no way in hell I wouldn't be there to see it in person.

Stay Tuned

Upcoming posts from me will include my thoughts on the Hawaiian Winter Baseball league and which teams/players to keep an eye on, the 2006 roster of the All-Cute Team, and some funny statistics about my own baseball season, the oddest of which might be that in 56 baseball games attended this summer, I literally went to exactly one major-league game on a Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays...