Links of the Week or So

I had big plans for today's post, but paying work gets in the way again. I did sort of try to watch the big non-exhibition exhibition game while I was doing said work. And I'm told it was a good game, but without being invested in it, I kind of missed all the interesting stuff, I think. I came away from it with the feeling that it was terribly boring. I didn't think at the time that the ball Crawford caught was going to clear the fence, but even if it was, it didn't strike me as that great a catch. A very nice one to be sure, but Crawford, phenomenal outfielder that he is, makes a better catch than that just about every day of the season. MVP material, really? Maybe that's why I came away disappointed--no real standout performances. I would've loved to see Pujols go all hey-I'm-the-best-right-handed-hitter-you've-ever-seen on everybody in his home park. But anyway.

• Topical and timely! It's a transcript of what the Sotomayor hearings would be like if they were conducted by the 1977 Royals instead of the SJC. It's...funny. Not terribly coherent, but funny. I can't decide if it would help one's appreciation of it to know more or less about the players involved. And it took me a while to realize he meant "the members of the 1977 Kansas City Royals, but in the present day, armed with their personal experiences of the past 32 years," not just the team straight out of '77 from like a time warp or something. Anyway, it's an experience.
  
  
• Also timely, at least as of yesterday! wezen-ball's look at best players never to be All-Stars. I'd still say Tim Salmon or Kirk Gibson has to top the list; it depends on where you come down on the whole peak vs. career thing. Shouldn't we weigh peak even more than usual when you're considering stuff like this, since if a guy's had some really big years, it's that much more of a surprise that he wasn't an All-Star? That said, though, Tony Phillips was a really solid player too, and I'm sure he deserved at least a couple nods. One of the few utility players who could really play any of the five or six positions you could put him in, and an ideal leadoff hitter (for what I'm looking for, anyway).
  
  
• I might've failed in my quest to complete Minerva's poetry challenge last week, but look! This week's? Already done, baby! Funny thing is, we didn't plan that. She was planning to do that type of poem anyway.
  
  
• More interesting stuff from Tango: Jamie Moyer = Jack Morris. Almost exactly, as of today. And yet, one of those guys is kind of a running "old guy" joke while the other will probably end up in the Hall three or four years from now. I was kind of proud of my snarky comment to that post, I have to admit.
  
  
• This Dayton Moore quote has finally convinced me that the Royals are trying to be tragically, snobbily, pathetically hilarious. The haughty ineptitude is too perfectly executed to be real. In other news, I don't really understand the pleading rules of our court system, and as an attorney, I don't see why I should have to. Next time I'm asked to file an answer to a complaint, I'm going to scrawl "DINT DO IT" in crayon on the back of an old receipt with my right (non-dominant) hand and mail it to the judge. My bosses would be cool with that, right?
  

I wish that this were a Royals shirt. Or Dayton Moore himself. But anyway, it's what I think of whenever people are being both incredibly stupid and incredibly self-aggrandizing or condescending: