Snake Swallows Bunnies

I can't believe I'm the first guy in the league -- and to our shame we are all guys (though are we all manly in our guyness?[even the experts disagree]) -- to choose Snakes in a Plane as a team name. Can't say it's helped the team much, but there's a natural "reorientation shock" not unlike how you must feel after "sexual reassignment" surgery so I expect to start some serious slithering soon.

Brother Swift has turned to the Marfa Dogs. My understanding is that it's a sparkling movie short about dogs in the town of Marfa, which is Texas.

The Snakes will bite the Dogs on the butt.

Hiss.......

The BCL Gets Serious

The BCL is not bilingual; his simul-lingual, meaning sometimes he seems to be speaking English and Irony at the same time. But now I'm serious. I would -- probably will -- despise it when Barry Bonds passes Hank Aaron in career home runs because I am old enough and Southern enough and liberal enough to admire how Hank Aaron handled the passing of Ruth amidst the hate and derision. I'm still looking for a reason to admire Barry Bonds for anything.

That said, I am eager for him to pass Babe Ruth so the penumbra of racism around Bonds and the home run record will be at least a trifle dissipated. I don't know if anyone other than Junior Nazis for Bush -- can't be more than 35 million of those -- care about/have noticed that it's another Whitey going down down down when Bonds gets 715. Bonds seems to think it's an issue, or he chooses to appear to think so to divert attention from his own faults and flaws.

I want to see the Ruth/white boy congery off the table so we can focus all our attention on more important things: Bonds is a boor, Aaron is really a bit of a hero and even though who holds certain records can't matter much it does matter some. But not because of a fat white man. You're thinking of Christmas.

Methinks the Wieder Doth Protest Too Much

He stands astride the league like a Colossus (beneath Moore who stands astride the world). His voice falls on us down below like rain from a high cloud.

Tomorrow We Get Standings

And then we can have opinions on who is likely to cash checks. Hard to say anything this early. Colon has a mystery injury. Johnson was certainly hammered last time out. Halladay has a twinge in his forearm, but perhaps someone is obscuring the truth. Schilling? An animal but you have to hold your nose, politically speaking to own him.

Which I did last year. My good angel -- the one who is a member of Moveon. org. didn't seem to like it.

Why the BCL Drafted His Pitching as He Did

What do they say about generals who make the mistake of fighting the last war?

Not me.

Because last year I bought Schilling for big bucks (and he went down) and because I then tried to buy other "lightly" -- or formerly as in recently -- injured pitchers for small bucks (Lilly and Piniero/so soon so feeble feeble feeble) this year I decided to buy second tier pitchers at the going rate, thus staying away from the dangerous extremes. And that's what I did. I bought Conteras, Clement and Garcia at more or less full price, but I don't think of any of them as damaged goods.

If I'm wrong, tell me.

And I bought Sabbathia for fifty cents because he's a second/third tier pitcher and.... Of course, he's hurt. Same mistake as last year. And as all my many fans will recall I bought Kenny Rogers for $2.50, which I think is fifty cents too much, though I was reasonably certain everyone except Brad thought it was $2.25 too much.

Last year I spent six or was it seven bucks on relief pitching. This year I spent less than half that, buying all of Detroit's saves (I hope) by getting Jones and Rodney. And that sums up my pitching draft.

Whatever else my approach was, it was different.

THE SAME THING EVERY OTHER BLOG IS ABOUT TODAY

KATRINA: THE SNOTTY TAKE

For the first time in his years in office, Bush seems to have run into something that has actually left him visibly rattled, in stark contrast to 9/11, which he quickly grabbed and ran with in a burst of heroic posturing. The problem, I think, is that England doesn't have hurricanes. Or much else in the way of big-ticket natural catastrophes such as earthquakes or tidal waves or swarms of tornados. Which means that Winston Churchill never had to respond to such.

And Bush's role model for national leadership was Churchill, whose biographies he read avidly while prepping for the presidency, and to whom he aspires to be likened by historians. W entered office dreaming of being to the US what Winston was to Britain--a great wartime leader--and as events would have it, the wartime part of that equation proved extremely easy to engineer and realize. Just the other day, Bush explicitly equated our Iraq adventure with World War II, and who cannot appreciate the many similarities between the Wehrmacht and the Sunni roadside bombers.

But Churchill's life and career offered nothing remotely like a template for dealing with a monumental natural disaster. A major American city has deteriorated into a raw, anarchic Baghdad-by-the-Bayou. Alas, this is not a situation where W can simply pick up the phone and sic the greatest military establishment in world history on the problem. This kind of problem requires ingenious and rapid solutions, not simple overwhelming force. Very simply, Bush doesn't know what the hell to do, and, as he has filled his government not with technocrats or managers but with ideologues, he has no one able to tell him.


KATRINA: THE OUTRAGED TAKE

If you go to the official FEMA site, it lists a number of recommended charities to which to send your donations, along with links thereto. First on the list is the Red Cross. Second on the list is Operation Blessing, a fundamentalist organization of alleged charitable purpose run by Pat "Kill Chavez, For Christ's Sake" Robertson. Pat, who will surely characterize the inundation of Nawleans (whose devastated center somebody in the media will equally surely christen "Pond Zero") as divine retribution for the city's tolerance of vice, celebratory excess, occasional nudity, hedonism and homosexuality, has never encountered a human tragedy that he was not ready, willing, and able to exploit for economic gain.

It's just nice to know that amid all the madness and chaos, FEMA hasn't forgotten that its first duty, as a government agency, is to ensure that, whatever the disaster, the administration's brownshirt baptist base gets a good healthy taste of the action.


KATRINA: THE SAPPY TAKE

Instead of the Saints playing their home games at Houston or Dallas or Atlanta or some combination thereof, they could play each of their home games at a different NFL stadium around the country as the home-away-from-home team, or, at least for this season of their travail, as America's Team, in the sense that New Orleans has become America's city. Each "home" game could also be a fundraising event at that facility and in the host city for the survivors and the charities in New Orleans.

Maybe this is just a saccharine concept, but if anyone out there thinks it has merit and cares to pass it on, possibly to someone who might take it further, be my guest.

TAKE ME OUT TO THE POETRY READING

You'd think that the first American writer to have his own bobble-head doll included in the official Baseball Hall of Fame bobble-head doll collection at Cooperstown would have been someone on the order of Roger Kahn, or Roger Angel, or even Ernest Lawrence Thayer ("Casey at the Bat"), but no. That honor went, on Wednesday, to Jack Kerouac. The Kerouac bobble-head was commissioned by the minor league Lowell (Mass.) Spinners in 2001 as part of a promotional event. Other than the fact that Jack was a Lowell native, I don't know that he had any connection with the team or, for that matter, the sport. The Spinners cranked out 1,500 of them before destroying the mold, and given the sheer uniqueness, rarity and oddness of the concept, I'm guessing that each one is now probably worth its weight in Reggie Jackson rookie cards. The Cooperstown folks offered some vague blurbish "treasured American literary figure" blather by way of explanation for Kerouac's totemic induction, but I'm still unclear on why they bestowed this honor on him. One could kill a lot of time at this point making insipid wordplays -- On The Road Trip, Dharma / Brooklyn Bums, and so forth, but one suspects that he's already exhausted the average person's interest in this item.

I'D WALK A MILE FOR A CAMEL HEAD

"SYDNEY, Australia (AP) 4/8/05 -- Qantas Airways Ltd. on Friday suspended a baggage handler who was caught on video opening a passenger's bag which contained a camel costume, donning the head and wandering around the airport tarmac.

"The costume's owner said he was waiting inside the terminal at Sydney Airport earlier this week when he glanced outside and saw the baggage handler wearing his camel head. He said he was shocked and reported the incident to the airline.

"Qantas Chief Executive Geoff Dixon said a security camera had recorded the baggage handler opening the bag and trying on the camel head. He said the baggage handler had been suspended and could be fired pending further investigation."

Okay, let's review: You're working as a baggage handler, one of the definitive dead-end, toilet-scrubber, drive-you-absolutely-insane-performing-mindless-drudgery occupations, and you're probably considering suicide for the 900th time, and as usual at such times, you open a few bags for a bit of brief and blessed diversion, and what do you find? A camel costume! Complete with camel head! This can only be a gift from God Almighty. I don't think "miracle" is too overwrought a word. Thirteen years working the Sidney International offload conveyer line, and you've never even heard of anyone else coming across a camel head. What do you do? An imbecilic question. You PUT THE CAMEL HEAD ON AND YOU CAVORT AROUND THE TERMINAL. Why? Because you'll never have this chance again. Because there can be no other reason for you having stumbled across this camel head. It is God's message to baggage handlers the world around that, even in their living hell, there can be deliverance and divinely inspired solace. And anyway, if it's good enough for the Bohemian Club, it's good enough for you.

The International Brotherhood of Baggage Handlers should make it a stipulation in their next union contract that, for one minute each month, members around the world shall be allowed to pause and refresh their spirits by doing "the camel walk." And that Aussie worker's locker should be made a shrine.

Is Left Field a Problem? Not If We All Just Try to Get Along.

You know how Jeffrey loves to mess with you like he's playing 3D chess with Mr. Spock on the original Star Trek. Well, when he told me RF was deep with talent this year I figured: pawn to the Rings of Saturn. But no. He's right. Whether or not to take Swisher -- he of the twofer in Balt. -- is going to be a bit of a dilemma since the options are many. But LF is a different kettle of hand-eye coordination. Who are some of these bums? The good news is that the DHs -- Ibanez at Seattle and Ford in Minnesota -- are both left fielders if you go by at least some of the depth charts I have been consulting. And Casey Blake in Cleveland was inked in as the LFer there until Gonzalez pulled his hamstring. Arguably he is a LFer as well. I propose this is how we look at it. Any objections?

Thinking about the draft, particularly 1b, 2b and Nick Swisher

Today I bought a Baseball Weekly that had complete spring training stats and had a nice long sit down at a local coffee shop making some notes. The myth is that I prepare and prepare but, nah, it's just me in the sun with a pencil stub and a reporter's notebook. Today I thought about 1b where I made a list 18 deep, counting most of the DHs as first basemen. I'll even tell you who my number 17 and 18 1bers were. Calvin Pickering and Josh Phelps. If you figure 80/80/25 is what you want from that position, these guys could do it. Probably won't but could. I'll have my eye on them. It shows how deep the position is. But when it comes to 2b, I won't tell you my 8th, 9th or 10th picks are since you might *use that knowledge against me.* Suffice it to say that I don't want to have to buy one of the tail-end guys at that position. That's why I say Chone Figgins is playing 2nd now. Let's leave him there even though Adam Kennedy will turn him into a super utility player when Kennedy gets back. If he gets back. Now for Swisher: This, I thought, is one vastly overrated rookie, and I was hopeful someone would waste a quarter on him in right hahahahaha. Tonight he hits two home runs. Maybe he is worth a quarter. Checking positions, etc., the first question I have is in regard to Shea Hillenbrand. He's dhing in Toronto, and the usa today depth chart has him at both 1b and 3b. Shall we put him at 3b where the pool is shallower? Come on, brave lads. Join the conversation.