One More Night

I have one more night out here, and I'm stuck in another crappy hotel with no car, so I might as well have a couple and see if there are any other thoughts rattling around in my empty head.

- How crappy is this hotel you ask? They don't get ESPN or ESPN2 (but they do have ESPNNews) and the only beer they have in the gift shop is 7 oz bottles for $4 a piece. If I actually had to pay for that, I'd be pissed. At least they have a bar.

- So at some point I mentioned that I heard the newest possible future Twin was Kevin Kouzmanoff of the Padres. I can't remember where I heard it and I haven't heard it anywhere since, so it's probably a bunch of poop, but I wanted to bring it up because I was less than enthusiastic about the proposition, and I wanted to say I was wrong. I would love to have Kouzmanoff aboard. Upon further review, he's actually a very solid hitter who is having his best year, OPSing .756. No great shakes there, but compared to Lamb (.545), Punto (.823 but no way that keeps up), or Buscher (.782 - ditto) he'd be a welcome addition. As Sidler pointed out, he'd be a great platoon mate for Buscher. Obviously for a platoon type guy you don't want to give up much, and the word is the Padres want an outfielder. No way they trade Gomez, Span, or Young - nor should they - but what about Cuddyer or Kubel? There's been far too much "trade Cuddyer" talk, so that should never happen, but I can see them trading Kubel. I don't want them to, if anyone I'd rather see them ship off someone like Chris Parmelee. There are a lot of young outfielders in the Twins' system, so they could afford to lose a guy like Parmelee. Plus, the Kouz hates to walk and swings at far too many pitches, so he'd fit right in.

- I forgot to mention the man Jack Cust as a three true outcomes guy last night. He's a classic.

- By the way, next week is Shark Week on Discovery, the greatest week of the year. Although I have to say it's gotten weaker and weaker. In the past, they'd just have a whole bunch of kickass shark footage and interesting stories. Now they take their "hit shows" like mythbusters and dirty jobs and fit them into shark motifs. So weak. But yet, still awesome. Like the Star Wars prequels. Yeah, you know you liked them.

- So you know how Brett Favre is just like Pete Rose? Because of the the way they were both above average players who became legends because they compiled stats over their 200 year careers? Well how about this whole "tarnished legacy" thing they have going on? Rose because of the gambling, lying and bad haircut. Favre because of the pill popping, alcoholism, infecting his wife with cancer, and now jerking around the team and fans that worshipped him like Jesus wishes he was ever worshipped. Seriously, everyone should just keep him out of the hall of fame when he finally retires in 2020. After twelve more years of playing the drama queen.

- Why is worshipped showing up with a line under in to indicate a misspelling? Isn't that word? Is there only one p in there? Like, worshiped? Hmm. Apparently so. I'm not changing it. My way looks better.

- Christ, they don't get comedy central here either. Nice city. NYC can go to hell along with Brett Favre and Kevin McHale.

- Good to see Mike Mussina still dominates the Twins. As ESPN pointed out over and over again, he's 21-6 (now 22 I think it hasn't updated yet) against them career, most wins against any team other than the Blue Jays (24-12). He actually has better ERAs against quite a few other teams (they don't do WHIP in team by team splits) but doesn't he just seem to dominate the Twins everytime? I still think he's a serious hall-of-fame candidate. He has a shot at 300 wins, which is already rare and getting rarer, but I think people forget just how good he really was in his prime. He finished in the top 6 in Cy Young voting eight times. I know I've written about this before, but it's just really impressive. I've always been a HUGE Mussina fan, and even I didn't really realize how good he was. It will be interesting to see how this all ends up.

- Just saw a movie for the Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated movie. First of all, the fact that they aren't promoting the hell out of this thing tells me it's going to be a nice little stinker. Not to mention that it looks like a trailer for a video game. But if you'll indulge my inner nerd for a minute - well, a minute more - there's a line in the trailer where someone says, "Skywalker is the only hope for the republic" or some such. Well here's the problem. This movie is supposed to take place between movie II and III (maybe I and II but that's irrelevant here) and at this point Anakin is just a padawan or at best a rookie Jedi. There's still an entire army of Jedi going. It makes no sense. No sense at all I tells ya.

- Weird things are happening in the basketball world. First, Brandon Jennings leaves to go play in Europe for a year before entering the NBA draft. Not all that weird for him, since he's apparently too dumb to get into college, but it does set a precedent that I can see money grubbing whores following in the future. Then, today Josh Childress signes with a team in Greece. And this isn't like Lew Ford signing in Japan because that's the only team that would take him. This is a contract for like 6 mil a year. And he's not the first to leave the NBA for Europe (my main man Primoz Brezec did as well as a handful of other guys) but he's the first american to do it. $6 mil is a lot of money. If Europe starts handing out big contracts to mediocre NBA players, this whole thing is going to get very weird in a hurry. It's just bizarre. Petty soon Escalade and the Professor are going to in the NBA.

- At one point today I drove through a town in NJ that had a huge sign that said "Home of Fairleigh Dickinson." Kind of a weird thing to brag about. Although it's about sixty times more prestigious than UMD, so there's that.

- X files 2: The Most Anticipated Movie of 1998!!!!!

- Wiley Wiggins is a funny name.

- So what do we think about this Francisco Liriano dust up? He's like 9-0 with 200 strikeouts and -4 walks in his last something starts, but the Twins haven't called him back up yet and his agent is throwing a fit, accusing the Twins of keeping him down for monetary reasons. (Sidebar: Two years ago Bogart made more money than Liriano). I think this is just reason #126 why agents suck. Liriano sucked when he was up earlier this year. Sucked worse than Boof Bonser. Why rush it when they are playing as well as they are? Give it time Frankie, give it time.

- I have no idea what I just stumbled into, but there is a report about the Vampire Rights Amendment, which is apparently a group of people who are trying to pass laws to help the Vamps. Wat? In case you want to take this too seriously, the show also called the VRA "one of the most polarizing political issues affecting the nation." But seriously, there are people who are serious about this. Two quotes I've heard on this show: The dude asked the girl who was getting her blood sucked by a "vampire" if she was worried about becoming one and she said, "Uh...no. You don't become a vampire by getting your blood sucked, duh (note: she really said duh). Plus, I get to be with someone who has been around for 200 years pleasing women, and that's awesome." and then they asked some rednecks what they thought of the vampires and the dude said "They are an abomination about the bible" and was seriously angry. This is, without question, the weirdest thing I've ever seen, and it was on HBO. I still don't know if it was satire or not. Either way - hilarious.

- Sarah Chalke still hot.

- Does anyone else think this whole podcast thing has ruined the Sportsguy?

- the U of Texas is retiring Kevin Durant's number. I know he had one incredible season, but he had one incredible season. I don't get why they'd retire his number. Shouldn't that be saved for players who, you know, had an impact greater than five months?

- And that will do it