Quincy

I preferred the old card games (I had Statis Pro and the SI/Avalon Hill All-Star Baseball Game) to fantasy since it involved more in the way of managing the game and strategy, plus good old imagination. But because of fantasy I know the Pirates infield, the state of the White Sox bullpen, you know, those dark mildewy places in baseball where people who don't have their team in that division know little about. I think this is a good thing, though seeing it in print I'm not so sure. I avoided it for years until a friend who desperate for a 12th person the day before the draft begged me in such a pitiful way I was afraid he'd melt like the Wicked Witch of the West. I think success in the fantasy game has little to with real baseball as steals are too highly valued, and face it, wins are a dumb stat, so are saves, and ERA is strongly influenced by parks (and obviously AL vs. NL too.) But all that aside, it keeps one plugged into the whole league and not just your own team. And I won't talk about team unless someone else starts talking about his or her team first.

A lot of the fantasy disinterest can be explained by: 1) He started the season batting 9th. 2) 1st base is loaded w/ talent across the league, so a 9th place hitting 1st baseman wouldn't garner much interest. 3) Lefties destroyed him, though this is a lesser point than 1 & 2. Now that he's batting 5th because and getting more RBI chances, especially with Hamilton & Cruz down he's getting picked up. But because most fantasy players have their 1st baseman locked up (the big guys like Pujols, Cabrera, etc.) and there haven't been many 1st basemen injured Moreland is getting picked up to play the UTIL (aka DH) position. Anyway, it's perfectly rational that fantasy players were slow to pick him up. And now we return to regular baseball.

I'm not much help but just saying thanks for the links as I like what I hear from the Midwest Funk and plan on ordering it. I haven't sampled the others but am very curious. I too have been needing some new & different funk. As far as recs, Rejuvenation by The Meters is top shelf.

But will he need them in prison? Okay, that was a little extreme on my part. So where is Matthew? Still celebrating the news and too drunk to post?

The bar we were at closes early on Monday nights so we had to head home for the 3rd OT. Dang, Zach nearly played an hour tonight! I'm hoping this one goes 7.

I lost track-is that his 8th team? Million dollar talent anbd a ten-cent head. Ding ding ding, you are correct, 8 teams. Remarkably only once has he managed to suit up for 140 games (even in those years where he played for 2 teams.) Baseball-ref has him making $35 million over his career, w/ $23 coming from Seattle.

MIlton Bradley is a Mariner no more.

Some nice highlights in the ESPN clips. It such fun to watch him get into trouble just to see how he'd get out of it.

Cruz may have to join Hamilton on the DL but like you get at, as long as you can get pitching like tonight some of those games may go your way while the big bats heal. I wasn't expecting anything fun & winning at all this year and the M's have done imitations of the Cubs August swoon with better teams than this, but to be hanging around in early May is better than I expected. What the hell, I'm even going to pretend that maybe the winning can extend beyond that.

An ugly one with 6 walks and just 2 Ks. He's been wild all year and maybe that worked for him tonight (along w/ 3 DPs.) Still, for a guy who was supposed to be the 2nd coming of Santana something doesn't seem right with him. An odd thing to say after a no hitter (and more importantly, a 1-0 win), but he still has a ways to go to return to that frightening form of '06.

They don't make it easy either. I tried tuning into the video via the free 2 weeks of mlb.com and got blacked out. For a game 3000 miles away? Whatever, at least they give me the audio on the iPhone app I paid for. If Figgins warms up & Ichiro & Smoak keep it up the team might just become entertaining enough to not be a complete waste of time.

Whoa, the M's sweep the Tigers in Detroit! Watch out BoSox. Darn the luck it will be the back end of the rotation, but as this could be it for the year as far as winning optimism for M's fans goes, I gotta ride it.

I'm visiting my folks and found my original copy. Unfortunately I no longer have anything to play it on.

Thanks for starting it. Jazz, blues or classical, you're involved in many a good recommedation thread.

Not sure. I was going to guess the '84 Tigers as they started 9-0 and were 35-5 to open. Pretty bitchin' eh? But they lost at home in the 10th game.

Wow, can't top the above! Happy birthday!

Yippie-yi-yo and a happy birthday! (Sorry about the tooth.)

I'm considering borrowing the Royals for this season at least. Because of Bill James, Rob Neyer and Joe Posnanski I actually got sick of the Royals getting so much ink for so little quality baseball. But James hasn't really written a ton about the Royals since the '80s and Neyer disappeared (at least from my haunts), and I've been skipping Pos's articles for a year anytime they're Royal specific. So no more Royal fatigue for me! And Billy Butler reminds me of Charlie Brown which is reason enough to root for a team. And if they fail I'll just jump onto the Indians bandwagon. I'll still check in on the Mariners though I have yet to listen to a radio broadcast. I'm still in denial about Neihaus and will have to face up to that eventually. In the meantime I'll cruise the airwaves with the iPhone app.

Cliff Lee was once sent down after being a starter for 3 full seasons and at an older age than Hughes. And when he came back he was CLIFF LEE. While there's no guarantee he'll have that kind of a dramatic improvement it's obviously a necessary move, and who knows, maybe it'll straighten him out. But there was a huge difference in the reasons why each were sent down. Lee was sent down because of location issues. He never had a problem w/ his velocity. Good point. It's just our Yankee fans here fret so much I was just trying to make them feel optimistic for a change. Whew, the Red Sox are playing mighty earlier this morning if you live on the west coast. I feel like such a slacker.

Oh enough about the games. What's really important is the Coca Crisp has gone Oscar Gamble!

Seattle's LF & CF is atrocious while they wait for Gutiérrez to get over his gut problems. In the meantime Langerhans has 10 strikeouts in 22 AB (at least 3 of his hits are HRs.) He's had a long career of doing nothing. Michael Saunders doesn't look ready for the majors either. I'm not sure if they intend to bring up James Jones once we get midway into May for the usual contract reasons or if M's fans have to suffer with guys who seem to be using whiffleball bats.

You'll be busy keeping up with Point Guard U! Jrue in Philly, Westbrook with the Thunder. The '6ers played the Heat well for a quarter and change.

I wouldn't go crazy about him. He came into Citifield batting .214 and courtesy of the Mets pitching left hitting .360. Oh I beg to differ. He's already established that he's a star ss and he's hitting his prime (now 26, turns 27 in Oct.) There's some of that Colorado altitude in his stats but not in the extreme of the days before the humidor. However I don't think he'll hit 80 homers or whatever crazy pace he's on.

Troy is playing out of his mind over in Colorado. I don't see how the Giants even make the playoffs with Tejada at ss. I'd be afraid the pitchers will get too hung up on Ks to keep batted balls away from him.

Cliff Lee was once sent down after being a starter for 3 full seasons and at an older age than Hughes. And when he came back he was CLIFF LEE. While there's no guarantee he'll have that kind of a dramatic improvement it's obviously a necessary move, and who knows, maybe it'll straighten him out.