Such talent, the young Milton Bradley!
It seems he can sometimes play Vladly.
But he’s brittle and lame
And his last childish game
Got him fired for acting so badly.

I don’t really disagree that SportsCenter was better in the old days with Olbermann and Patrick. But I don’t think it’s quite fair to blast the current anchors. They have a much tougher job.

It’s far easier to be innovative in an immature art form. Certainly, you have to be talented to innovate at any time. But when an art form is new, you don’t have a whole library of clichés to battle against. Now, there have been over 25,000 SportsCenter shows. What’s left to do that hasn’t been done before? Is it even possible to avoid clichés at this stage? I think you’d have to be extremely, extremely talented.

Lately, I’ve been mulling what the predictors of quality are in daily art forms (talk shows, comic strips, blogging, baseball play-by-play, etc.) It’s impossible to create great work on a daily basis. You don’t have time to refine things.

Half the battle, I think, is just showing up. Longevity seems to be important in judging the quality of daily art forms. The reason Johnny Carson is viewed as being better than Jack Paar is probably because Carson stuck around longer. 40-year-olds don’t win the Ford Frick Award for baseball broadcasting excellence, 80-year-olds do.

You also need a certain level of competence. The best daily artists have moments where they break through the clouds of routine and let their brilliance shine through. But to get to those moments, they need to show up every day and go through the inevitable motions.

Some daily artists, like Gary Larson and Bill Watterson, won’t accept going through the motions, and quit when they hit the wall of clichés. Others, like Charles Schulz, find a way to change things up (getting Snoopy up on two legs) just enough to keep going.

Which of today’s bloggers will be the Carsons of tomorrow? We’ll see who sticks around for 30 years. In the meantime, damn the clichés, full blog ahead!

I’ve been bursting at the seams trying to hold this big news in. It’s been a secret for a long time, but now I can finally tell everyone about it.

Late last year, I got an email from Luke Harrison, a producer for the Tech TV cable channel. They were planning to do a reality TV show about the lives of bloggers called “Houses of Blog”.

Since Tech TV is a Bay Area company, they were looking for some prominent local bloggers who might be willing to participate. They’d come into our home, and set up some cameras, and film whatever we were doing. During the day, they’d send over a cameraman to do handheld shots and follow us if we leave home. We wouldn’t get paid, but we’d get a bunch of free gadgets and video games and other cool product placements.

I talked it over with my wife, Barbie. She was hesitant at first, concerned about the effect that fame might have on our family. But I said, “C’mon, this is Tech TV. Nobody watches Tech TV, you just flip past it on your way to some other channel.” So she agreed to do it, if the kids wanted to.

My 7-year-old daughter, Sofia, agreed as soon as she heard she might be on TV. Jodie, the 3-year-old, initially said “Be on TV I don’t want to!” but when I explained about all the fun video games she would get, she relented.

They started filming in January. The plan was for them to film for three months, and then they’d edit it together and show it in the fall. Those plans are now up in the air, after Tech TV was acquired by Comcast for $300 million last week. Tech TV is now going to merge with a channel called G4, which is only about video games. A reality show about bloggers might not fit their new format.

But we’ll see. Even if the new G4/Tech TV hybrid doesn’t want the show, they might be able to sell the program to some other network.

Anyway, they wrapped up their filming at the end of March. The rule was “No blogging about the filming during filming” so I wasn’t able to say anything about it until now. Luckily for me, my blog is mostly about baseball, so it was easy to avoid the subject. I can’t imagine how hard it was for the other bloggers they filmed who were more in the habit of writing about their daily lives.

They haven’t edited anything yet, so I haven’t seen any of the film, but I’ll bet our first episode is a doozy. WARNING: Spoiler Alert! I’m going to tell a few things that happened while they were filming. If you don’t want to know any details of the show, SKIP THIS PART and go to where it says END SPOILER below .

The very first day they started filming, we took Sofia to school and then headed to the hospital for Jodie’s doctor’s appointment. Jodie has had speech problems. She was very late to begin to speak, and when she finally did begin to speak, her speech wasn’t normal. We ran all kinds of hearing tests on her, but she hears fine. So then we ran some other tests, of which we were about to hear the results.

We arrived at the pediatrics clinic, and explained to them about the cameraman who was following us around. Dr. Chui agreed to talk to us on camera. We went into her office, and there she gave us her diagnosis. She thinks that Jodie has Habogad’s Syndrome, a rare genetic speech disorder. The symptoms fit her to a T: unusual skin pigmentation, garbled syntax, and a preference for hear books read backwards rather than forwards. Dr. Chui said there is no known cure, but we could try some experimental speech therapies to see if they would help.

Barbie wept. Jodie looked up at me and said, “Sad Mommy is. Why?” I explained that Mommy was sad that there is no medicine that could help Josie talk better.

“Talk better? Heh!” said Jodie. “Medicine? Heh! These I want not. Sad be not, Mommy. Talk I can.”

Barbie nodded, wiped her tears, and we headed home.

So while the morning was depressing, the afternoon brought good news. Or so we thought, at first.

We were sitting around the dining room table for lunch, when Josie shouted, “Coming now mailcarrier is. Quickly she walks, always in motion is she!”

I went to the mail slot and picked up the mail. It was there: the letter we’ve been waiting for. The letter from MIT.

Sofia had applied to MIT last November after she passed her GED and aced her SATs in September. She’s a brilliant young child, a prodigy really, and has dreamed of going to MIT ever since she visited their web page, and found a cute picture of an ostrich staring right at her. “That’s the school for me!” she declared. It seemed exactly the kind of school that would welcome a student who is a little bit different from the crowd.

We decided to open the letter before we had to pick her from from her high school. If MIT rejected her, she might be crushed, and we’d need to soften the blow. We opened it, and–good news! Sofia was accepted to MIT!

We went to pick up Sofia from school. We decided not to tell Sofia in the car; we’d wait until we got home. But there’s really no way to make a three-year-old keep a secret; it’s impossible. Jodie tried really hard not to give away the secret, but she just couldn’t keep herself from giving hints.

“Excited you will be when home we get,” said Jodie.

“Why?” asked Sofia.

“At home something is,” said Jodie.

“Yeah? So what? We have lots of things at home,” said Sofia.

“Something new we have. See it you will,” said Jodie.

“What?”

“Tell you I cannot. A secret it is. But waiting for it to arrive you have been!”

“My letter from MIT?” said Sofia softly. She looked nervous.

Soon we arrived home, and we let Sofia open the letter. She took one look and burst into tears.

“Sofia, honey, why are you crying?” I asked. “You were accepted!”

“I know,” she sniffed.

“So what’s wrong? Are you afraid of being so far from home?”

Sofia looked at the floor, and shook her head no.

“Are you afraid of being the smallest person in your school?”

Sofia shook no again. Jodie piped up: “Already smallest person in her school Sofia is. Size matters not!”

I continued. “Do you want to study something else besides string theory and particle physics?”

Sofia shook no.

“Then what is it, sweetie? Tell me.”

She sniffled again. “I was just thinking, that’s all.”

“About what?” I asked.

“MIT is near Boston right?” asked Sofia.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Does that mean there are lots of Red Sox fans there?”

I put my arms around her and gave her a hug. “Yes, sweetie, I’m afraid there are. If you don’t want to go to MIT or Harvard, that’s perfectly fine with me.”

She lifted her head up and smiled. “Thank you, Daddy. I love you.”

END SPOILER

Now, I have no idea how Tech TV is going to edit this all together, but that should make some great heartwarming television, don’t you think? And there’s three whole months of that kind of stuff! I’m so excited thinking about it, I can hardly contain myself. I can’t wait to see how it turns out!

I just hope this Comcast purchase of Tech TV doesn’t send the whole Houses of Blog project into the trash. That would totally suck. Let’s not even think about it.

So Will invited me, Ken, to join this blog, and I asked Will what he expected from me, and Will said “Write whatever you want Ken” and I thought “OK, simple enough, I can do that.” But then Will introduced me. It started off nice:

“He’s full of heart (sure) and humbug (definitely), intelligence (perhaps) and vinegar.”

Vinegar? I’m full of vinegar? Now I’m confused. What does that mean? If Will is expecting vinegar out of me, I’d better go do some research and find a definition:

Vinegar can be made from any fruit, or from any material containing sugar. [It is produced by] fermentation of natural sugars to alcohol and then secondary fermentation to vinegar.

Apparently, Will expects me to take something sweet, like baseball, and make it rot–twice.

My role here isn’t discourse; it’s decomposition.

—

So now I’m feeling a little déjà vu.

Ten years ago, I was working for a struggling database company called Ingres when Computer Associates bought us out. CA planned to lay off most of the company. The other database companies started recruiting Ingres employees like mad. Sybase hired an airplane to circle our building with a recruiting banner. Oracle held a special day just for us, and Larry Ellison himself showed up to encourage us to join his team.

Ellison was so charismatic that if he had produced a contract right then and there for me to sign I would have signed it, no questions asked. (Charisma wears off; I later declined an Oracle offer.)

Although I was dazzled by Ellison’s charm, I can only remember one thing he said. When asked what he thought about CA, Ellison paused, then said, “Well, every ecosystem needs its scavengers.”

An odd thing to say, really, considering that Oracle itself was scavenging for new employees out of the remains of CA’s kill. But heck, Oracle is a fabulously successful company. CA eats pond scum, and you are what you eat, but they’re also a fabulously successful company. Decomposition is good business.

—

Businesses are born, they merge, and they die. Blogs are born, they merge, and they die. If the baseball blog ecosystem needs a scavenger to feed off the rot, to pick upon the bones of last week’s news, I am happy to serve it. Being recruited, being wanted, being needed, whether for software or for blogging, is a wonderful feeling, even if I may not deserve it.

So thank you, Mr. Carroll, for the seat
inside your friendly bar across the street.

And Mike Crudale.

Yankees, Red Sox
I sing of arms and clubs, who forced by Fate
To fight each year in unrelenting Hate,
A song of Anger, Envy, Fear, and Pride,
Of damage done when zealous gods collide,
Where innocents are killed off in defeat
Or left as scavengers of stinking meat;
Great gods at war we mortals can’t avoid,
When evil empires need to be destroyed.

Oh, Muse! What causes lying at the root
Could launch this fierce preoccupied pursuit?
What gave offense and vexed an angry Boss
To vow for Boston loss on bitter loss?
We mortals cannot know; we only pray
That Fate will keep us far out of their way.

Blue Jays, Orioles, Devil Rays
Water wages war
silently. It finds fissures,
cracks, cuts, crevices,

and seeps in, slowly,
unnoticed, working within
to corrode its foe,

whose quiet weakness
is not exposed to itself
until it’s too late.

Tigers
I know I might hear some derision
For making the crazy decision
To pick Detroit first
When they should be the worst,
But I hate this entire division.

Twins
This winter, their talent decreased.
Their bullpen’s no longer a beast.
But they still just might snag
One more Central flag
Simply by sucking the least.

Royals
For years, they have seemed non-existent.
That’s probably why I’m resistant
To believe there’s a chance
They could win and advance.
I think they’ll be too inconsistent.

Indians
I like the way Cleveland plays D.
But still, there’s no way I foresee
Them winning this year.
They must perservere,
And hope one more season’s the key.

White Sox
They fill me with fear and foreboding.
Their talent’s been slowly eroding.
There could be success,
But my guts make me guess
That this whole team will end up imploding.

Joseph Campbell was born 100 years ago today, so it’s an appropriate day to express my gratitude to him.

Campbell is for me what Bill James is to baseball statisticians: the guy who opened my eyes to a completely new way of thinking. Back in college, I was struggling to understand why I was so obsessed with baseball. Campbell’s insights into relationship between myth, culture and human psychology provided me the answers I was looking for. Baseball is my personal mythology.

Now, I don’t buy Campbell’s story about myth hook, line, and sinker. As a guy whose personality type is that of an architect of systems, I can see that Campbell’s explanations don’t quite work as an architecture. DNA is the building block of life, and from that, springs forth a subconscious mind that spews a common form of myth? It doesn’t quite fit. There’s a missing step between DNA and myth. That’s partly what my Keeping Score in the Arts series was about: how a simple brain architecture can produce the complex set of behaviors we see in human culture.

Nonetheless, Campbell’s insights are invaluable to me. Campbell’s mantra of “Follow your bliss” also helped me feel less guilty about my obsession. All my baseball activities: watching on TV, going to the ballpark, reading, blogging, writing silly poetry, playing fantasy games: that’s my bliss. No apologies.

So where do I go from here? Will Carroll recently asked a similar question, wondering about blogging as a career. He said we need to ask ourselves, “What’s in it for me?”

Short answer: youneverknow. If you follow your bliss, one thing will lead to another. But what that other thing will be is a mystery. As Campbell put it:

If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in your field of bliss, and they open doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.

So I’ll follow my bliss, and go dancing through doorways, just to see what I will find. Happy Birthday, Joseph Campbell, and thanks for the advice.

Am I a jinx or something? Just hours after I had written that the A’s bench is not a bottomless pit, my statement gets tested. Mark Ellis is out 6-8 weeks after dislocating his shoulder in a collision with Bobby Crosby.

We’ll soon find out how valuable Ellis’ defense really is. If Hudson and Mulder start giving up a lot more hits than usual this April, we’ll know why.

Although Frank Menechino is also hurt, the A’s shouldn’t miss much offensively. And this illustrates what I enjoy most about watching Billy Beane work. You can talk all you want about Hudson, Mulder, Zito and Chavez, but Beane’s real genius shows up in the 35th-40th men on the roster. He creates depth at every position. When Ellis gets hurt, he not only has one competent backup, he has three (with Baseball Prospectus projections):

The entire division has only one middle infield backup, Eric Young, who is a better hitter than the A’s fourth-string second baseman. That’s why Billy Beane is so good. And that’s why I said the A’s can win a war of attrition.

I just wish I wasn’t so right so soon.

Angels
When Moreno decided to add
Kelvim, Bartolo, and Vlad,
He took on some debt.
But I’m liking his bet:
This could be the best team they’ve had.

Athletics
Their fielders aren’t out of position.
Their aces don’t sit by omission.
Their bullpen and bench
Aren’t a bottomless trench:
The A’s just might win by attrition.

Mariners
They never make trades that are bold.
They let all their players get old.
If somehow this team
Wins despite a bad scheme,
Bavasi’s a wizard: Behold!

Rangers
Soriano-for-ARod: a rarity.
It gave them a future with clarity:
Nix those not among
The Mench who are Young
Arming Blalock with hope and Teixerity.

Dan Werr has posted some very cool maps over on Baseball Primer. Check them out. My favorite map is the one which divides the US into areas based on which MLB ballpark is closest.

For those of you who enjoy puzzles, here’s one for you, based on that map:

My house is very close to the dividing line between two teams. That made me curious which ballpark I was actually closer to. So I pulled up some maps and a ruler and measured. As the crow flies, it looks like it’s about 5.2 miles to the nearest ballpark (7.7 miles by car). The second nearest ballpark is 5.6 miles away (but 13.5 miles by car).

So I live about 350 yards from the dividing line. Which ballpark do I live closest to?

Also, I can walk about 350 yards from my house and see one of the ballparks. Which one?

John Dowd, the Pete Rose investigator, recently theorized that George Steinbrenner pressed Bud Selig for Rose’s reinstatement because it would help Steinbrenner’s own Hall of Fame chances. Denials everywhere.

Dowd’s theory I shouldn’t discuss,
But I must say I like all this fuss:
When we take George and Bud,
Drag their names through the mud,
We annoy them like they annoy us.

I’m cursing my dumb ISP.
For email that I didn’t see.
I suddenly found
My web site was down
From a change in my static IP.

Yesterday, my ISP suddenly changed the IP address of my web server. This means that if you tried to go to www.humbug.com, you were likely being sent to the wrong machine.

Silly me for assuming that buying a “static IP” meant my IP address would be static.

My ISP had given me a week’s warning, but I rarely check the email address they sent the warning to, so I didn’t see it until it was too late. It took me over six hours to notice the problem and then fix everything that needed fixing.

I apologize for any inconvenience. You may now return to your regularly scheduled humbug.

Phillies
In advance of the Phillies’ new dwelling
Wade went out Wagner/Worrelling.
With the wicked new hurlers,
And better Pat Burrellers,
A title is what I’m foretelling.

Marlins
The Marlins, refusing to budge,
Would not give a contract to Pudge.
Winning without him?
I’d certainly doubt ’em,
But champions, we shouldn’t judge.

Expos
Despite that the Expos lost Vlad,
With Nick, Jose, Carl, and Brad,
Their lineup’s a winner.
Though pitching is thinner,
I don’t think this team will be bad.

Braves
Two Bushes, two war-in-Iraqs.
Meanwhile, just one Bobby Cox.
A thirteen-year reign
Is hard to sustain.
He’s due to start taking some knocks.

Mets
Matsui and Reyes–I’m skeptical.
Though Cammy’s a gold glove receptacle,
And the Mets seem improved,
I am not very moved;
I sense they will still be ineptical.

Ever think about the space-time continuum?

What if Moneyball was a biblical story? A young scout plays Adam. Billy Beane is Eve. Everyone is living in the Garden of Eden, happy in their ignorance. Bill James is the serpent. He tempts Beane to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. Beane gives the apple to the young scout. Joe Morgan is God. He gets quite wrathful about this turn of events. Hilarity ensues.

Beane may not be perfectly cast as Eve, but we’ll give him the part because he is so hairy.

I haven’t followed college basketball at all this year, but my Final Four is still intact in the Baseball Primer pool: Duke, Georgia Tech, Oklahoma State, Connecticut. I owe it all to the psychic powers of my Grandma Agnes.

When she died I had a dream. She came to me and said, “The space-time continuum moves in mysterious ways. When the great leader of your land is caught lying and unwillingly removed from power, you shall receive my gift.”

So I’ve watched with keen interest while Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, and Dubya have all been accused of lying. Alas, impeachment never succeeds. But If I win this pool, everything becomes clear. Grandma Agnes was actually referring to Martha Stewart.

Mark McClusky wonders how to make his girlfriend love baseball. I think the only proven method is osmosis.

My oldest daughter is osmosing baseball. Much to my delight, she chose a baseball theme for her 7th birthday party this weekend. It’s fascinating to watch her interest in baseball grow. She’s not really into the competition or the players much; her interest seems to be mostly cultural: the styles, the music, the history. I wonder if it’s just her, or if this is the Women-Are-From-Venus path into the sport.

My wife did her best Martha Stewart imitation for the birthday party. She transformed the backyard into a baseball stadium. Every kid had their number retired on the wall:

One of the party games we played was pickle. The kids got to run the bases and the adults tried to tag them. It brought back forgotten memories of hours upon hours spent playing pickle as a kid. With the modern aversion to stolen bases, and the hyperorganized nature of youth activities these days, I wonder: do kids play pickle anymore?

Party poopers: I have just been informed that our undocumented acquisition of bunting will come under investigation by the SEC.

Why? It makes no sense! Does somebody up there hate us? They didn’t say that. Read the book. Joe Morgan moves in mysterious ways. Hilarity ensues.

Brian Micklethwait on his Culture Blog said, “Critics who explain why TV shows are so good are the most dangerous kind, because they stop you ever enjoying it again.”

My baseball audience can imagine the question this way:

Critics who explain why baseball teams are so good are the most dangerous kind, because they stop you ever enjoying baseball again.

In either case, I think this is wrong.

Judging from the hostile reaction to Moneyball, it’s a common fear: that if you explain the mechanics of an art form, the enjoyment you get from it will cease. But this fear is based on a faulty understanding about how the brain stores knowledge.

The brain has two different systems of data storage:

• declarative memory, a conscious form of memory where facts are stored, and
• nondeclarative memory, a subconscious form of memory for pattern recognition, motor skills and habits.

I have proposed that our judgments of any kind of art, whether it’s a TV show or a baseball game, come only from the subconscious system.

Decisions arising from the subconscious system are instant and automatic. Our conscious decisions are slow, rational and deliberate. But we don’t need to deliberate very hard to decide whether we like a TV show or not. It just happens. Our judgments about art match the characteristics of the subconscious system better.

As you observe a TV show, or a baseball game, your subconscious system notices all kinds of patterns. The patterns you’ve seen many times, you learn to ignore. Those are clichés. If you see something unusual, though, you need to create a new memory for this new pattern. We like it when that happens.

On the other hand, when a critic explains a pattern to you, a different kind of memory is created. The critic is not giving you an actual pattern, but a fact about a pattern. An actual pattern would be a nondeclarative memory, stored in your subconscious. But the fact is a declarative memory. It’s conscious.

My hypothesis claims that you don’t use your conscious memories when you make your judgments, only your subconscious ones. If I’m right, knowing a fact about the artwork should not have any bearing on whether you like an artwork or not.

I know an awful lot of people who understand the facts about baseball inside and out. They know all the statistical probabilities for any given situation. But knowing these facts does not reduce their enjoyment of the game. That’s because the facts reside in a brain subsystem separate from the source of their enjoyment.

Facts are facts and patterns are patterns and never the twain shall meet.

Suppose you’re an indigenous reindeer herder on the frozen tundras of Kamchatka. You live in yurtas, like this one:

Every few days, as the reindeer graze the land barren, you pack up your home and move to another place, and rebuild your camp. You’re never settled, always changing. This has been your life for as long as you can remember.

Now suppose that suddenly, someone swooped you up and flew you off to a luxurious mansion on a warm tropical island, and said OK, now you live here, and you’ll never have to move again.

What would you do? Perhaps you’d be happy about the easier lifestyle. More likely, though, you’d be in total shock.

Well, as an A’s fan, that’s pretty much how I feel today after the A’s signed Eric Chavez.

A’s fans are nomadic. We settle down for a while with some players, let them graze awhile, and then move on to something else. Reggie, Catfish, Rickey, Canseco, McGwire, Giambi, Tejada…our players always leave. The team itself has moved twice, and is always threatening to move again. We’re used to it. We know we’re just a whistle stop on a journey to some other place, and everyone else is just passing through.

So now I’m sitting here, trying to think about Eric Chavez sticking around for six or seven more years, and well, I can’t do it. It’s beyond my ken, completely incomprehensible. But give me some time. I think that maybe, eventually, I could get used to this.

Some people take baseball far too seriously, and criticize anything and everything. It reminds me of Teddy Roosevelt’s quote:

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who at the worst, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

So when a Baseball Primer thread turned critical of young blogger Aaron Gleeman, I felt the need to respond:

To those who say a baseball blogger’s heft
is insufficient: Go jump in a lake.
May the ice cold water shock you awake
to learn that baseball is best left bereft
of gravitas. Though passion immerses
us all, this is not the crucifixion.
The aim is not Shakespearean diction.
It’s just a blog. A guy who converses
about a topic he enjoys. Enjoys!
A word that’s been forgotten here by some,
who feel the need to beat a bitter drum
and show superiority with noise.
Remember when you feel an angry urge,
that baseball is light verse, it’s not a dirge.

You go, Aaron.

Astros
With Clemens’ and Pettitte’s new faces
The Astros are tossing all aces,
While their hitters’ abilities,
Despite some senilities,
Puts plenty of runners on bases.

Cubs
If you trust that my dreams can foresee,
A wild card contender they’ll be.
Why not in first?
Perhaps they are cursed,
Despite adding Hawkins and Lee.

Cardinals
Pujols is worth an ovation.
I also profess admiration
For Woody and Morris,
The thing I abhor is
The rest of the Cardinal rotation.

Reds
I like what the Reds have been doing,
The youngsters that they’ve been pursuing.
Though Wagner, Kearns, Dunn
Will end up outwon,
They’ll still be a team that’s worth viewing.

Brewers
The Sexson trade leaves me unsure:
Is their whole brand new infield a cure?
It matters little;
Their pitching’s too brittle.
Just wait ’til those farmhands mature!

Pirates
Pittsburgh’s a passionate city.
Being stuck with this team is a pity.
There’s no way to waffle:
This team will be awful,
But at least their home ballpark is pretty.

Padres
It came to me once in a dream:
The Padres will have a good team.
I will trust this strange vision;
They will win the division
Or I’ll pinch myself, sit up and scream.

Giants
Maybe Alfonzo will hit,
While possibly Durham and Schmidt
Along with Robb Nen
Will be healthy and then
They won’t just be Bonds and that’s it.

Dodgers
This team is on loan, not invested,
But at least it has been dePodested.
From L.A. to the farms
They’ve been crawling with arms
But with bats they have been uninfested.

Diamondbacks
They used to just Schill ’em and Rand ’em.
But now they have broken the tandem
Of Johnson and Curt.
I know both were hurt,
But these moves, I do not understand ’em.

Rockies
While Walker, Wilson, Burnitz
And Helton will each get his hits,
Chacon will get saves,
And Jennings earn raves
But the rest of this team is the pits.

Will Carroll’s question about why we blog (“What’s in it for me?”), sent me into deep thought over the weekend. Then, I happened to come across a whole list of old SNL Deep Thoughts on Eve Tushnet’s site. I think the answer to Will’s question is this one:

Perhaps, if I am very lucky, the feeble efforts of my lifetime will someday be noticed, and maybe, in some small way, they will be acknowledged as the greatest works of genius ever created by Man.

I couldn’t have said it better myself. And I encourage you to come back to my site, because Tushnet also posts:

Before a mad scientist goes mad, there’s probably a time when he’s only partially mad. And this is the time when he’s going to throw his best parties.

Speaking of parties, there’s a new one starting up today called Hardball Times. Sounds like fun.

The five of you who read my mad scientist essay about our two brain systems will recognize that 99.9% of the baseball blogs out there are trying to talk to our logical System 2 Android Brains. Half of our brains are being neglected by the baseball blogosphere! So when a blog makes the attempt to talk to our System 1 Animal Brain, it should be encouraged.

That’s why I encourage you to go check out Mariner Musings, where Peter White has a whole series of haiku about Mariner players.