Taking out the garbage

Carl Pavano and Jason Giambi were kicked to the curb today. The only shocking thing -- the Twins decided to clutter up their clubhouse with Pavano, the player equivalent of a secondhand, seriously cat-clawed couch, something you'd find outside a frat house. Don't they have some AAA pitcher they could call up rather than stink up a perfectly good Twins uni with that steaming pile?

The best thing Giambi ever did? This commercial. And he didn't even do much besides acting scared and beeping the horn.

Edit: John Smoltz, the face of The Home Depot and the Atlanta Braves for many years, has been disposed of in Boston after a glorious 5 losses in 8 starts.

Media mutterings

The media buzz this week:

• Evangelists' knee-jerk reaction to social media: Changing childrens' brains


• Reaction to the reactions


• ESPN restricts social media interactions of its employees


• And the beat goes on at the New York Times: Controversy over error-ridden Cronkite article

Wednesday Web Roundup

The best of the wild, wild Web. If it's a little sparse this week, it's because I just decided to do this last night. I promise it will be more abundant next week.

• Six-year-old blogs about baseball. They start young nowadays, don't they?


• Jon Stewart explains how Fox helps breed conservative outrage (RT JesseNewhart)


• Military's knickers are in a twist over social media.


• From vscpu: Hilarious viral video (Note: comic gore.)
  


• Also from vscpu: More of his top 25 video games of all time.

Cincinnati is for lovers

The great downside of MLB.tv? Having to listen to the opposing team's commentary team. These Cincinnati Reds commentators -- and no, I don't care enough to list their names here -- are so annoying. One of them, the younger-sounding man "A", keeps sucking up to the older one "B" at least 5 times during this game, and it's still going on.

For instance, A complimented B for having the mental acuity to figure out a trivia question, going on and on about his brilliant, deductive reasoning. Then, when they were bemoaning the Cincinnati Reds lack of winning, A called B "a half-full kind of guy." The others I fail to remember, but it comes just short of "The brilliant light in his eyes and his warm, gentle smile make my heart go flippity flop!"

Dudes, it's a broadcast booth, not a dinner date. Keep the love talk for after hours!

No more fantasy baseball posts this year, 'tis depressing

Firmly entombed in last place, I must now concede the year, and look forward to rebuilding my dignity next year.

What went wrong? Perhaps I was just too patient, waiting for players to turn it around and heat it up when they had no gas left in their lamps *cough* Berkman, Harang *cough*. And my pitching stats were particularly rank -- for instance, I haven't won the holds category all year. So all in all, a bad effort and a bad year for Captain Choke, which certainly lived up to its name this year.

What does this mean for the direction of this blog? That, my friends, remains to be seen.