links

the official chase utley site got a makeover. looks good. damned good.

once upon a time, craig biggio was bill james’ favorite player.

now forty years old, jonah keri commemorates bob gibson’s 1.12 ERA season. my favorite anecdote: It was just so hard to beat him,” recalled Cubs slugger and fellow Hall of Famer Billy Williams. “One year, Roberto Clemente hit a line drive that hit him right in the shin. He pitched another five, six innings to finish the game, then it turned out he had a broken leg.” wow.

i asked, chase answered

phillies beatwriter todd zolecki recently invited his blog-readers to submit questions for his sitdown Q&A with chase utley. yours truly submitted a question. not only did zolecki choose my question, it was his favorite…

Question: There are two cages over a pit of lava and both are descending. In one cage there are blueprints for revolutionary emissions-free technology. In the other is Shane Victorino. You can only save one. Which one do you save? – Greg G., Washington, DC.
Answer: OK … I’m going to have to save my centerfielder. I’m saving my centerfielder, yes. I have his back. Hopefully he’d do the same for me.

The look on Utley’s face when I asked that question was priceless. If he thought I was crazy before, he certainly thinks so today. But give the guy credit, he rolled with the punches and answered the questions well.

the full transcript of the Q&A is here. audio is here.

seems that zolecki and utley both got a kick out of the question. makes me wonder if i should have sent them my follow-ups:

in all seriousness, i have victorino tied up in my basement. what are you prepared to do to get him back?

also, why won’t your sister accept my facebook friend requests?

i think i made the right decision.

***

note: this post also appears on allswingsconsidered, another baseball blog i do jointly with a few friends of mine.

jeremy brown, we hardly knew thee

moneyball’s bad-bodied catcher announced his retirement over the weekend.

also in the news: henry waxman’s not sure last week’s steroids hearing was all that necessary. if you didn’t think it was necessary, you shouldn’t have convened it. when you’re the chairman, that decision rests with you, not with clemens’ PR team.

also also in the news: carlos beltran thinks the mets are the team to beat in 2008. more to come on this prediction, the aptly dubbed “weekend at bernie’s II” boast.

man, machine or super-hunk?

a friend passed this along this morning. words simply do not do justice.

your tax dollars at work(?)

staff salary expenditures for the house government reform committee (the committee holding the roger clemens hearings) totaled $6.39 million through the first three quarters of 2007, which puts the year’s total at about $8.5 million. that sets the base day-to-day operating cost of the government reform committee at $23,000 and change. add in another $165,000 for each of the forty-one members of congress sitting on the committee and that bumps the cost up to $42,000.

wednesday, the american people paid $42,000 to find out that roger clemens’ wife tried HGH five years ago. henry waxman and the rest of the government reform committee can and should find better ways to spend our money. for starters, how about looking into their colleagues in the senate and why they’ve so eagerly piggy-backed onto the white house’s plan to extend the protect america act? the house stood tall on protect america today and deserve a pat on the back for that. now if they’d only call an end to the roger clemens dog-and-pony show…

resources:
+write chairman waxman and let him know you’d prefer stricter oversight of the executive branch, not-as-strict oversight of roger clemens’ wife’s stomach
+check up on who’s giving money to government reform committee members, courtesy of opensecrets.org
+unrelated shoutout to uno the beagle. as a beagle owner i must give props.

united countries of baseball

nike’s partnered with mlb for a neat promo called the “united countries of baseball.”

all you have to do is tell them your name, DOB, zipcode and email address and they’ll tell you whether you belong in the right part of the country according to your sports allegiances, or if you need to be resettled indian removal act style.

no thanks on giving you my email, but i am looking forward to seeing how the borders get redrawn. are there any doubts that the white sox republic gets swallowed up by cubbyland, or that philadelphia’s resistance fighters in the poconos get crushed under the wheels of yankees nation as it manifests its destiny? i say no.

also, florida needs to be redesignated “unincorporated territory.” here be old people and alligators, not baseball fans.

if hillary clinton were a ballclub, she’d be the new york mets

consider:

both were media-anointed frontrunners at the outset of 2007.
both dismissed their adversaries in the season’s earlygoings as deluded upstarts.
both refused to acknowledge the wheels were coming off down the stretch, then both saw their double-digit leads slashed to bits in a matter of weeks.
both have spent millions of dollars they have no business spending this winter in the hopes of reclaiming their frontrunner status.
both have annoying new york fanbases. very, very annoying new york fanbases.

if you ask me as a phillies fan if the johan santana signing worries me, i will honestly and forthrightly tell you no, ten thousand times over. the phillies remind me of someone, someone whose charisma, humility and singularity of vision give me hope for the future.

and last i checked, he was in pretty good shape.

the mets signing santana scares me about as much as hillary loaning herself five million dollars to fight in ohio and texas scares me. we will not be denied this fall. yes we can, philadelphia. yes, we can.