Welcome Back, Mauer

The best catcher in baseball, and the best Twin since Puckett, returns to the team Friday. Now, the season can start for real.

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Bye Bye, Souter

News Item: Justice David Souter to retire from Supreme Court
Souter is, I believe, the first Supreme Court nominee to retire who I remember being first nominated.
Who will succeed him? I’m guessing judge Sonia Sotomayor. Not only would she be the first Hispanic Justice, but she ended the baseball strike in 1995.

Sports Radio Moment of the Day

ESPN 950’s Mike Missanelli was working up a populist lather on his show today, in reaction to comments from ESPN radio national host Colin Cowherd.
I don’t have the words right in front of me or a transcript, but Cowherd was ranting against “local radio,” and how callers are idiots who don’t know anything. Specifically, he referred to Andy Reid- who spends 20 hours a week watching film and sleeping in his office- and how stupid radio callers who bash him every Monday morning know nothing compared to him.
Not really sure where to come down on this. On the one hand, Cowherd is a fool, as anyone who’s listened to him for five minutes can attest. Plus, it’s not generally wise for a radio host to bash “local radio,” especially since just about every ESPN station that carries Cowherd also airs local shows. The On the DL guys have been rightly bashing ESPN for making fun of silly local guys in their commercials, while at the same time airing Mike and Mike bikini waxing contests; now we have Cowherd employing similarly faulty reasoning.
But on the other hand… Cowherd is completely right that a great many talk show callers, in Philly and elsewhere, don’t know what they’re talking about, and that people like Andy Reid know much, much more about football than the average talk caller (or for that matter, host) ever will. One of the best things about the Eagles organization is that they don’t listen to the talk radio callers; if they did, they would have done things like draft Ricky Williams in 1999 and throw Donovan McNabb overboard in favor of Terrell Owens in ’05.
I know sowing outrage and exploiting anger is a big, big part of talk radio, whether it’s sports, politics, or shock jock stuff. But this is ridiculous, on both sides.

Political Radio Moment of the Day

News Item: Boston station suspends Jay Severin for anti-Mexican commentsThe Globe:

Jay Severin, the fiery, right-wing radio talk show host on Boston�s WTKK-FM radio station, was suspended today after calling Mexican immigrants “criminaliens,” �primitives,� �leeches,� and �women with mustaches and VD,� among other incendiary comments.

This is not to excuse Severin, who’s a pretty reprehensible character. But it’s always weird, what gets people suspended in radio. Severin was on in Philly for awhile, and he said stuff like that every single day. I don’t think I ever heard his show without hearing the word “crimaliens” at least a few times. His show was pretty much all bash-the-Mexicans, all the time, even before he was trying to blame them for starting swine flu.
This would be like Howard Stern being suspended for talking about lesbians.

How Not To Fence

A note to potential thieves: If you work at Walmart, and steal a bunch of iPods, and you hope to sell them, it’s probably not wise to advertise them on a bulletin board in the same Walmart that you stole them from. I delve into this, and more, in the latest Week in Electronics Retail Crime column.

The Year’s Worst Column

It’s gotta be Byron York, arguing in the Washington Examiner that due to “sky-high ratings among African-Americans,” President Obama’s approval ratings “appear a bit more popular overall than they actually are.”
So what, black people’s opinions don’t count as much as white people’s? Ta-Nahisi tees off, as do David Weigel and Matt Yglesias.

Unfair and Unbalanced

Fox News gets increasingly crazy over 100 days: