Add my name to the Gleeman/Bonnes chorus: the Twins’ Wilson Ramos-for-Matt Capps move was NOT a good idea. Capps is a decent reliever, sure, but saves are overrated, he’s only under control for one more year, and I feel like they could’ve gotten more for Ramos, who last I heard was one of the top catching prospects in baseball.
Hopefully they’ll prove me wrong. But a starter would’ve been better.
Rock DJ/Howard Eskin son Spike, on WIP’s blog (who knew there was one?):
Repeat after me; Cliff Lee is gone, and hes never coming back.
Now breathe deeply.
Repeat after me; Donovan McNabb is gone, and hes never coming back.
Count to ten. While were at it
Repeat after me; Brian Dawkins is gone, and hes never coming back.
This will be a very helpful exercise, I promise.
But… but…
News Item: “How I Met Your Mother” creators admit last year was subpar, vow to do better
And I have some confidence they will, as its been the best sitcom on TV for three of the last four years. But the show was completely rudderless last season- there was no overarching story arc, and quite a few total clunker episodes. And while I’m not one to complain about “hey, why haven’t we seen the mother yet?,” the fact is the creators seem to have run out of good stories to tell, with the exception of the mother one.
Because in a show called “How I Met Your Mother,” when it gets to be season 6 maybe it might be time for the mother to show up.
A wonderful piece by Walter Kirn in the Times about how we don’t watch sports, movie or politics anymore- we watch the behind-the-scenes machinations of same a lot more. I’m fascinated by that stuff, of course, but sometimes the real thing is much better.
Serwer on the Republican belief that Barack Obama and Eric Holder are, in fact, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale:
The implication that Holder and Obama are sympathetic to, even protective of, the racist, anti-Semitic New Black Panther Party in the absence of any evidence, suggests that, no matter how integrated they are into mainstream society, black people who don’t have the conservative stamp of approval are always secretly plotting how to get revenge against white people. The implication is that you can never trust those people, no matter how they talk, dress, or act, because deep down, they’re all King Samir Shabazz.
I like this, although the beard’s gotta go:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
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And don’t even get me started on “Snooki-gate.” You just know eventually there’ll be a conservative freakout that Obama DOESN’T WRITE HIS OWN SPEECHES!
Deadline:com: Metrodome calls off Target Acquisition
Both companies are British; “Metrodome” is a film distributor and “Target” is Target Entertainment. Neither has anything to do with the Minnesota Twins or their former or current ballpark.
News Item: Rachel Weisz to star in film “The Deep Blue Sea”
Note: It’s an adaptation of a 1952 play that has nothing to do with SLJ or sharks. But I think the producers should get creative…
Sure, he had an electrifying debut, and is the Phillies’ most highly-touted offensive prospect since Howard and Utley. But I imagine there’s another thing- there are a whole lot of people in Philadelphia named “Domenic,” or some spelling variation thereof. I bet at least 70 percent of Phils fans have at least one relative by that name.
There’s a similar dynamic at play in Minnesota, where there are roughly 70,000 people with the last name “Peterson.”
It now looks as though the Phillies are one step away from an all-Roy ace tandem, as the team has agreed in principle to acquire Roy Oswalt from Houston, pending the pitcher agreeing to waive his no-trade clause.
Now Topic A in Philly all year has been that the Phils screwed themselves before the season in trading Cliff Lee, with talk radio conventional wisdom that the team was once again too cheap to compete with their rivals (i.e., the Yankees), while hamstringing themselves with a $140 million payroll. “Why give themselves a self-imposed salary cap?,” Joe Talk Radio Caller says daily. “No other team has one!”
The Oswalt deal, assuming it’s completed, turns all that on its head. Oswalt is an ace pitcher, signed for more money and more years than Lee, which would seem to indicate that maybe the Lee trade wasn’t about money- and really was about prospects- after all.
The Phils’ stated reason in trading Lee was that the “cupboard was bare” in terms of prospects- and after the Lee, Halladay and other trades, it was. But the Phils’ farm system has improved a lot this year- their two A ball teams, in Clearwater and Lakewood, are chock-full of prospects.
Let’s not forget: the Phillies didn’t just “trade Cliff Lee.” They traded ONE YEAR of Cliff Lee, which is why it’s so ridiculous to call this the “worst trade in history” or whatever else the 610 morons say. Lee wasn’t going to re-sign with the Phils without going to free agency. And while Lee is a better pitcher than Oswalt, two and a half years of Oswalt, I believe, is more valuable than one of Lee.
(Sure, they should have made a better trade, and from a 2010 standpoint, the Lee deal sure looks like a mistake. But worse than trading Ryne Sandberg and missing his whole Hall of Fame career? No way.)
And about that self-imposed salary cap: Every team, other than the Yankees, has one. It’s called a “budget.” But the Phils have a much higher one than most teams- the fourth-highest payroll in the game. And the “cap” is neither immutable nor the same year-to-year- the team has added a veteran starting pitcher at the deadline four straight years (Moyer, Lohse, Blanton and Lee), and dramatically increased their payroll every year over the last (when they won it all in ’08, it was around $90 million.)
So let’s let the “Phillies are cheap” meme now die forever, along with the “self-imposed salary cap” argument. And enjoy September and October.
So how about that Domonic Brown?
Stephen Silver, Writer 