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:

Just a Day: June 10, 2002

The ol' randomizer came up with a fairly recent one this time. Which is good, because it's already pretty late at night, and maybe I can get away with saying less than I would if I got myself absorbed in 1957 or something. (If you missed the first one of these, here's how it works.)

It's also another day with more than one very long game, which is kind of fun. It's interleague play, which is less fun (to me). In any case, onward!

• Jamie Moyer throws a complete-game, 123-pitch shutout, the Mariners thumping the Cardinals 10-0. It's Moyer's second consecutive game allowing no runs (he'd gone 8 in a win over the A's on the 5th), and runs his record to 6-2, 3.52. He had looked done as a 38 year old in 2000, then exploded back to win 20 for the first time in his career in 2001. He'd go on to have another fine season (128 ERA+, though with only 13 wins), then win 21 in 2003 at age 40. He's won 68 games (and counting) since. I know I just talked about him a little while ago, but it's always worth remembering what a wonderfully weird career he's had. Ichiro! has three of his 212 hits, and inexplicable fan favorite Charles Gipson singles, triples, walks and drives in two.
  
  
• In the same game, 32 year old So Taguchi makes his Major League debut and goes 0-for-3 for the Cards. I believe that Taguchi was the second Japanese position player to hit the Majors after Ichiro!, so it was fitting that he debuted opposite the first. Didn't turn out quite as well.
  
  
• The Twins beat the Braves, 6-5, in 15 innings. I've just remembered for some reason, as I'm looking this over, that The Common Man was at this game and told me about it at the time; here's hoping he hops on and tells what he remembers (if anything). It was a historic opportunity to watch the great Greg Maddux at the Dome...and he's very much off his game, giving up 5 runs in 7 innings. Luckily, Eric Milton matches him run for run, and the bullpens take over and make quite a show of it. Eventually, in the bottom of the 15th, 37 year old backup catcher Tom Prince singles, then somehow lumbers all the way around on a Cristian Guzman double to win it. That must've been quite a sight (or quite a double). Journeyman reliever Tony "the Vulture" Fiore goes three scoreless for maybe his most honest "win" of the year; that puts him at 4-1, and he ends the season 10-3.
  [Edit: here's the recap. Apparently Prince was running on the pitch, but it still seems like an awful lot to ask of the slowest runner on the team. Guzman: "I thought, 'hey, he can make it!'"]
  
  
• Game of the Day: The Marlins blow out the Royals in 14 innings. Yes, you read that right. The Royals score in the bottom of the 9th to tie it at 6. Florida scores two in the 12th, but so do the Royals. So it's 8-8 in the top of the 14th, and the Royals suddenly go all Royalsy: walk, wild pitch, fielder's choice, wild pitch, double, intentional walk, single, walk, walk, single, fielder's choice, popout. Seven runs come home in all that, and the Marlins waltz away with the 15-8 win. Pitcher Mac Suzuki was out there for better or worse, and thus responsible for all that ugly: four walks (five in his two IP) and two wild pitches. They actually let him into three more games after this one, the last three he'd ever get into (in the Majors, that is--seven years later, his career is still alive and kicking in one of professional baseball's little out-of-the-way places).
  [EDIT: recap. Amazingly, not a word about Suzuki's implosion. Derrek Lee homered twice for the second straight game, then hit 4 homers in his next 47 games.]
  
  
• There was apparently a partial solar eclipse visible in parts of the Pacific side of the world.
  
  
• According to Wikipedia (and uncredited), "the first direct electronic communication experiment between the nervous systems of two humans is carried out by Kevin Warwick in the United Kingdom."
  
  
• I was attempting to sell cars at a crummy dealership in Washington state. This lasted less than a month. Probably the worst idea ever. What were you doing?