Well, Angel blog antidotes for particularly bad losses of late do include adorable cat GIFs.

But last year Trout usually had Hunter and Pujols behind him. And it's not like this year's middle hitters have been racking up HRs. Sosh does seem to think in theory rather than the current reality.

Everyone's voices were okay, but there were times where it sounded like a foley artist was getting in some practice.

But only because the answer is an obvious "no," I hope.

I think the odds of Wallach card guy having a vinyl White Album are much better than White Album guy having a Wallach card, but man, that would be a mind-blowing trade.

Is Ferguson doing the outfielder version of a photobomb? Hey, I can find a relation. The way Wynn instinctively starts to follow through on the non-throw reminded me of how catchers will instinctively squeeze their mitt on a non-catch. As in the Halladay clip! (I always find it a kind of amusing quirk of human physiology).

"But in the same way that the Beatles sound more like something that would come out today than something that would have come out even five years earlier than they did"... I dunno, have you heard music these days? It's kinda crazy how modern broadcasts (or maybe just Fox) will make a point to fix a camera on pretty much everyone of interest before the potential final out, including every player on the field, and then showing each guy's reaction. It's somewhere between cool and excessive.

If I found out my new lawyer was collecting every single Tim Wallach card in existence, ever, I'd probably go from awe to confusion to let-me-explore-my-other-legal-options...

"Ben from Lost" kinda looks like Nate Silver.

He busts the new school stats And dusts the old school raps. Don't waste your outs buntin' When you're out pebble huntin'. He's cool like Moe Dee When he writes for BP. He's boss like Danza With the rap extravaganza. He does the disco breakout, like the fish that saved Pittsburgh. And his mic will cut out, when he rocks with Ben Lindbergh. He ain't a commie, and he ain't a fascist. Everybody wants him like he was Jeff Mathis. When his blog's runnin' hot, yours is just mild. When he trusts his stuff, he's effectively wild.

I just recently came across an excellent Sesame Street dub of the Beastie Boys song Sure Shot, which contains the boast, "I got more action than my man John Woo And I got mad hits like I was Rod Carew." http://vimeo.com/m/27009580 Granted, the song is almost 20 years old. They also did one in Hey Ladies, which is even older: "There's more to me than you'll ever know And I got more hits than Sadaharu Oh. "

My scouting report here would be: |> GREAT STUFF |> Needs more (paragraph) breaks

Those will make excellent desktop wallpapers... tiled even!

I make transposing typos like "David Muprhy" all the damn time, so... I feel a little bit better now.

Angel fans won't be satisfied until Vernon's disembodied head enters a permanent orbit of Cybertron. Or Mike Scioscia.

Hockey may have the strongest inherent home advantage because during stoppages, the road team has to put their players on the ice first, and the home team can react accordingly. The road team also has to put their stick down first in faceoffs. Sam links to a review of the book "Scorecasting," which looks into things like this. It attributes HFA to refs being biased to the home team because of the crowd, but that review is skeptical. Is it possible the amount of scoring has anything to do with it? As far as postseason goes, it seems basketball's the one sport where the better teams usually win series. Baseball and hockey are low-scoring, and their playoffs are a crapshoot (a few years ago, the 5-8 seeds won the first round in the west). So wouldn't luck seem to be a bigger factor when scores are lower? I have no idea if this pertains to soccer playoffs, but they don't play series do they?

Not that Cabrera's old, but I do wonder if it's like the Oscars, where a young actor might lose a close race because he'd supposedly get his share of chances later on in his career. Then again, in sports there's obviously no guarantee of a long career.

I agree a double's a double. It's a matter of production, not a weightlifting contest. Both ways help the team the same amount. Of course once they're each on second, I'm sure both guys would rather have the faster guy out here. If a guy keeps hitting moon shots to the warning track, that obviously shows more power than a guy hitting liners in the gap, but it's not too useful.

I think Selig has ruled that out because they need to be able to plan ahead for the accommodations and such for the WS. I guess knowing which league will host game 1 & 2 narrows it down to two cities while the LCS is going on? If they went by team's W/L, they'd have to plan for three? I guess it must be a legit reason or else they would just go with best record, but I think the NBA and NHL manage to go that route. And it used to be that MLB just alternated leagues every year.

Well, he might've just made a fly out. It's so easy to make fun of the guy. Poor Vern. Well, not literally, of course.

Oh, and I enjoyed the blog by the Thrice guy. I'll need to sample them on YouTube.

If you say "Mark Trumbo" enough times, it starts to not make sense. Trumbo and Trout's full names were used so often, it reminds me of how that's a crutch often used by football analysts ("Brett Favre this," "Brett Favre that"). But maybe it's more common than I realize. I've noticed Steve Nash is often referred to as only Steve Nash. (And that Dwayne Wade is often referred to as D-Wade, even though it takes more time to say than Wade, and he's not likely to be confused with other Wades in the NBA). At least you didn't ape the football guys by saying that Mark Trumbo is a BASEBALL player, a rising star in MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL.

What about the Google auto-compete suggestions that come up when you search for male athletes/celebs? It seems you often get "girlfriend," and sometimes... you get "gay." And I'd feel bad for any prospects named Santorum.

Yippee-kai-yay, mama jamma!

G - A - R - Y to the D. My beats are bigger than my OBP. To get knocks, y'all, ya can't walk, y'all. Ya gotta hop, y'all, outta your socks, y'all. Your sucka PAs, can't hack it like DiSar. You're trottin' 90 feet? Well you won't get too far. So why look when you can swing away? I got more whiffs than a Sommelier.

I'm sure there's a good reason not that I can think of one. Maybe it just looks cheap to drop it on purpose? But it's not without risk. There's no guarantee that it won't backfire and put the defense in a worse position (sort of like why you actually have to throw four times for a IBB). I don't know about simplicity though. Even without the rule, there's still a lot of arcane stuff. But not quite as bad as football if you ask me.

Even made-up nicknames can't beat the all-time great: Oil Can Boyd. The current state of sports nicknames is a travesty, what with the unimaginative likes of "A-Rod," "D-Wade," and "Car-Go." Although I'm a bit disappointed that "P-Bo" hasn't yet caught on for Peter Bourjos...

We got to (freely) enjoy his stuff in the Orange County Register before he made it to the big time here, and it's nice to his work more widely appreciated. I think the blog post that got the most reaction was when he wrote a faux Jay Leno monologue dedicated to Jeff Mathis. It sparked much outrage. And confusion from those who couldn't remember Leno actually cracking wise about Mathis. But Kevin liked that one...