March 29, 2007
Link-O-Rama
- If you liked Mike Redmond and his naked batting practice, you'll absolutely love Brian Giles and his naked comedy.
- Despite the fact that he plays for one of the Twins' division rivals, Curtis Granderson has quickly become one of my favorite players (and one of my favorite bloggers).
- As a Frank Thomas fan from way back, I enjoyed this note about Japanese pitcher Masumi Kuwata from the Pittsburgh Tribune Review:
Kuwata did a double-take when designated hitter Frank Thomas dug in at the plate. Kuwata is 5-foot-10. The "Big Hurt" stands 6-5, 275 pounds. "When I pitched to him, he was terrifying," Kuwata said. "He looked like an elephant."
It sort of ruins the story, but Kuwata "got Thomas on a weak grounder."
- Soccer star Diego Maradona was hospitalized recently due to what is being called "excessive eating and drinking," which immediately takes over for "buy a house" as the No. 1 thing on my to-do list.
- If you only see one movie this year, make it Adam Sandler and Kevin James starring in the sure-fire blockbuster Jessica Biel In Her Underwear.
- I'll be posting my official season predictions here Monday, but if you can't wait that long or would rather get the predictions in video form, you can watch me on NBCSports.com's "Fantasy Fix" season preview show with Tiffany Simons and Gregg Rosenthal. I'm not sure if I'm just finally getting more comfortable with the whole call-in thing or the show's loose format worked well, but the final product turned out great this week and I got a lot of compliments from my bosses, so check it out.
- Who knew that the state of Minnesota had so many nerds who like baseball? Incidentally, I'm 24 years old and dropped out of school, despite what the otherwise-solid article about Victor Wang and Gross Production Average would have you believe.
- I'm confident that the man behind Twins Junkie, Trevor Born, will have a whole lot more success than I did with the "go to the University of Minnesota, get into the journalism school, and write for the Minnesota Daily" career path. As I wrote back in January, "At this point, my best chance for landing a newspaper gig might involve waiting a couple decades until Born is the editor-in-chief somewhere and hoping he remembers me." At his current rate, it'll be a couple years rather than a couple decades.
- When it comes to Torii Hunter, Emil Brown apparently hasn't been reading this blog.
- I'm probably a little too excited about this development, but the possibilities are pretty amazing. Plus, the bigger mixed martial arts gets as a sport and the more coverage NBCSports.com gives it, the better chance there is that I'll end up octagon-side at a fight one of these days.
- In case anyone is curious, James Morrison's concert at the 400 Bar last night was excellent. He sounded every bit as good as his album and even tossed in a nice cover version of Van Morrison's "It Stoned Me." It was great to see him perform at such a small venue and, considering he's from England and not particularly well known in America, I was shocked by the number of people singing along and the number of girls screaming at seemingly random intervals.
My cousin Annie, who had never heard Morrison before last night, thought he was good, but suggested that he needs some work on between-song banter. I agree, because between mumbling into the mic and a heavy Warwickshire accent he sounded like Charlie Brown's teacher. Interestingly, one of the few words of banter that I heard clearly was this one. Oh, and much like Morrison's banter, Annie wants the world to know that the bartender she chatted with at the 400 Bar "lacks substance."
She doubted that I'd print that here, but she was wrong.
- As expected, the Twins were forced to place J.D. Durbin on waivers yesterday because of his lack of minor-league options and the Diamondbacks claimed him. The likelihood of that taking place is why I ranked Durbin as the Twins' No. 37 prospect back in February, while Baseball America (somewhat inexplicably, in my opinion) ranked him No. 10. I'm not particularly upset about losing Durbin, but it's an interesting move given who the Twins decided to give the final roster spot to instead.
Remember the whole Corky Miller fiasco from a couple years ago? As with seemingly every other mistake they've ever made, the Twins have decided to ignore any lessons they may have learned from the experience, change the names involved, and let history repeat itself. Much like losing Durbin for nothing, carrying a third catcher isn't a huge mistake--especially considering Joe Mauer's recent injury scare--but it's another example of questionable decision-making when it comes to roster construction.
- If you ever find yourself with about 10 hours to kill, I highly recommend watching the first 20 episodes of Arrested Development in a row.
- They don't have a Twins version yet, but Maple Street Press has published a series of team-specific, high-end magazines previewing the Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees, Chicago Cubs, and Detroit Tigers. Each version includes a ton of excellent content produced by some big-name writers and the presentation is second-to-none. (Full disclosure: Last year I contributed to MSP's annuals on the Red Sox and Notre Dame football, but my contract with NBCSports.com precludes me from doing so now.)
- Howard Sinker of the Minneapolis Star Tribune has set up a blog-sponsored get-together for Twins fans on Saturday, April 7. I'll be there, as will Sinker, John Bonnes, Will Young, Trevor Born, Nick Nelson, and Nick Mosvick, and a couple other Twins bloggers may be in attendance too. It should be a fun time, whether you're interested in meeting some of us bloggers or simply want to watch the Twins play the White Sox with a bunch of other Twins fans. Here are the details:
Who: Sinker, Gleeman, Bonnes, Young, Born, Nelson, Mosvick, multiple Bloggers to be Named Later, and various other Twins fans and blog readers.
What: Eat, drink, be merry, watch Twins beat White Sox.
Where: Buffalo Wild Wings in Crystal (5590 West Broadway, to be exact).
When: Saturday, April 7, at 2:30 p.m.
Why: Because previous get-togethers have been a lot of fun and good attendance at this one means we can justify doing more of them in the future.
- That's it from me for this week, but not only is Monday Opening Day--seriously, Monday is Opening Day--if things go according to plan I'll be blogging about Johan Santana shutting down the Orioles from The House That Blog Built.