Forever Jeter

In his press conference today, Derek Jeter announced that he would like to remain a Yankee next year after his current contract expires.

Although this is like me giving a press conference to say that I will still love Derek Jeter tomorrow after I wake up in the morning, I'm still happy that he said it. You can watch the video, here.

Paul sent me a link to this video this afternoon, but I ignored it because 1) the subject of his email was "Jeter is going to end up on the PIRATES," and 2) I don't like to click on links. The result of this was that 1) I got angry at Paul and 2) I didn't know about Derek Jeter's press conference until ten minutes ago, when I saw it on the Yankees' Facebook page. The lesson of this paragraph is that internet links can sometimes lead to GOOD things. Who knew? If you send me a link this week, I will click on it.

(Unless you are Phil, in which case I promise to click on 50% of the links you send because you look at the internet too much.)

This is My Town

I've never been to Los Angeles, but thanks to their website, DODGERTOWN IS MY TOWN. Yeah! Matt Kemp's wearing a Casey Blake jersey with my name on it and high-fiving Andre Ethier. COOL!

The McCourts are getting divorced, Vincente Padilla got shot by his friend, and Manny Ramirez has just announced that 2010 will be his last year with the Dodgers, but I still feel optimistic about the team's chances. They're going to play the Yankees this year, which will be exciting. I'll bring my Dodgers hat so that I can wear it when Casey Blake bats. CASEY, IT'S YOUR YEAR!!! BREAK OUT!!!!! FANTASY ALL-STAR!!!!!!

Speaking of people who tanked my fantasy team last year, one or two weeks ago, Sam got drunk and warned me that he was going to address Grady Sizemore's nude photographs on our much neglected blog. "I'm going to make a post and it's going to be a post razzing [is this a word?] you for not being into those Grady Sizemore photos," is mostly what he said, "Come on, here's someone you spent a year toiling over and then this happens and you're not into it?!"

Listen Sam, when Grady Sizemore was just some handsome abstraction that I could daydream about meeting in the Continental Philosophy section of the Cleveland Barnes & Noble, life was great. Now that he's demonstrated himself to be a real person with an exhibitionist streak, a scary looking girlfriend and generally poor fashion sense (not to mention the fact that I've always known about his passion for The Doors), I can't help but feel slightly wounded. Unconditional love predicated on the knowledge of who a person is, as opposed to who I want them to be, is a feeling that I've reserved for only one professional athlete.

Now, here's some pictures I made that will make that last sentence seem completely disingenuous.

This blog just gets weirder and weirder.

Anyway, none of this means that I no longer like Grady Sizemore. I like him and I'll like him more once baseball starts again. I'll definitely go see the Indians when they're in New York. Maybe Sam can come with me. What do you say, Swebs?

New York, Ascendent

Per news reports, New York has taken a huge leap forward.

Detroit, however, has taken one huge step back. LINK

Sizemore (Uncovered)

With pitchers and catchers reporting to spring training this week, I thought it was worth rehashing a story that went curiously unnoted on TBB.

Back on November 29th of last year (ALMOST 3 MONTHS AGO!) deadspin broke the most TBB wheelhouse-y story imaginable: nearly nude pictures of Grady Sizemore surface on the internet!

Someone's got a big closet!

I've posted what I assume is SFW, but there are some others that are, maybe not quite...

Jenni, reached for comment last weekend, said, "gross". While I make no judgments about the pictures, I was pretty surprised considering Jenni's previous comments about Sizemore. See here, here, and here. And here for 3rd party confirmation. From Jenni's inaugural post:

I'm from the Midwest, so from the cradle I've been conditioned to like athletically built young men with honest faces. Grady Sizemore is the embodiment of my socially constructed desire.

Is it possible that these lewd photos have somehow shattered the illusion that any MLB player has an honest face? Or just Grady? I can't imagine they would have impacted the "athletically built" part...

But don't fear Jenni, Grady has finally broken his suspicious silence in an attempt to put this embarrassing (self-promotional?) episode behind him. As reported by Yahoo:

"This is a private matter," he said. "I never intended for any of this to get out. I hate to have to put everybody through this, but in the end it just wasn't meant to come out. It was meant for me and my girlfriend and it just happened to work out the way it did.

"You always have to be careful, but this was something that was stolen out of an e-mail account. It wasn't like we intended for these pictures to go anywhere. We weren't flying them anywhere. We weren't showing them to friends. This was stolen out of an e-mail account.

Come on, Grady! Embrace the limelight! Who knows, after baseball you may have a career as a Senator or something. Also, "flying them somewhere"? I'm starting to have some doubts that Grady is entirely up on how the interweb works. Baseball!

OMG

All You Need is Love!

(Not necessarily that kind of love....)

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

2010 Fantasy Baseball Preview

Remember last year when Sam and I evaluated every player in the Major Leagues and then ranked the teams by order of attractiveness? We couldn't have done it without MLB.com's Fantasy Baseball Preview. With the 2010 version now online, I'm ready to do it all again. Who will be this year's best looking team?

If you don't know that the answer is the New York Yankees, you KNOW NOTHING. Are we friends? Why are you reading my blog?! Scientifically sound Grady-metrics and other statistical evidence to follow.

I do want to say that seeing Ryan Braun as the league's #1 outfielder highly disgusts me. LOOK AT HIM:


BASEBALL PLAYERS, PLEASE STOP WEARING THOSE SHIRTS. I HATE IT. I HATE RYAN BRAUN. I LOVE BASEBALL! I CAN'T WAIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!