It’s not often that baseball players are compared to football players. Usually it’s a sign of respect for strength, speed or agility. This is not one of those comparisons.

Kendry Morales hit a walk-off grand slam in the 10th inning to help the Angels beat the Mariners yesterday. Ooh that’s good. He quickly rounded the bases and decided to channel Bill Gramatica at home plate. Ooh that’s bad.

Morales ended up with a broken leg. He had to be fitted with an aircast and carted off the field. Dave McGinnis is still not amused.

For your Memorial Day weekend listening pleasure: Butter

Is there anything worse than working the Friday before a holiday weekend?  Ok, maybe the Monday after a holiday weekend is pretty awful, but you get the point.  It’s Friday around 2pm and the office is empty.  Your friends are three or four margaritas deep at the Starboard and you’re sitting on hold with the IRS to check on the status of a client’s tax return.  My only advice?  The summer’s a marathon, not a sprint; save some bullets for the dog days.  For those unlucky souls trapped behind a desk today, this blog’s for you: 

• Dwayne Wade, LeBron James, Joe Johnson and reportedly Chris Bosh will sit-down to discuss their plans for free agency.   

I think this is awesome for so many reasons.  For one, it actually shows some forethought from professional athletes.  Second, it puts the NBA and its owners into a very uncomfortable place for a change, which is great.  Lastly, the vision I have in my mind of these guys sitting down and talking is just too, too hilarious.  Where’s this “summit” going to take place?  A strip club?  Personally, I think it’d be awesome if they came up with an “Oceans 11” type plan to band together and take over the NBA.  Then I realize we’re dealing with guys who have about five years of college between them, so that’s unlikely. 

• Major League Baseball is investigating umpire Joe West’s ejections of Ozzie Guillen and Mark Buehrle.

Gonna put on my lawyer hat for a minute, present the facts and let you figure this one out: Joe West has been an umpire for over 30 years.  MLB fired him in 1999, but due to a labor snafu he was rehired.  It’s widely assumed he is one of the worst umpires in baseball.  He also has a publicist… and a website where he sells his country western album.  Hey Ozzie, what do you think of Cowboy Joe: Read the rest of this entry

Its not every day a baseball fan gets to catch a ball from the stands, even if its just tossed to you by an outfielder during batting practice, but if you do ever get the chance and you impressively catch it in your beer, with minor spillage…then my God you owe it to everyone around you to do exactly what this gentleman did.  Chug it down with that baseball teabagging you in the end.

Yesterday Brian Westbrook sat down with the NFL Players Association for an interview about his offseason and his career.  In this interview, B-West had a few things to say about the Redskins and his offseason visits with teams and a couple things he said really stuck out to me.  First:

Q: How did your recent visit with the Washington Redskins go?

A: It went really well. I enjoyed them and the coaching staff. I’d love to be a part of that organization. They have a quality organization—I just have to find out if I can fit into their system.

Ok, nothing super interesting there, just typical “Please sign me!” type stuff, except for the fitting into the system thing.  I think what he’s really saying is that he’s not sure he wants to split carries with the “Return of the 2005 Running backs SUPER STARS!” backfield the Redskins currently have on their roster.  Apparently he’s not sold on Mike Shanahan’s VOLTRON theory on old running backs…neither am I.

Let us continue…

Q: Being from the Washington, D.C. area and playing your high school ball at DeMatha, how special would it be if you were to play here?

A: Of course it would be special to play in your hometown, where you were born and raised and still live. Of course it would be special to be on a team with a winning tradition.

Wait a minute here, a winning tradition?  In Washington DC?  Maybe if he’s talking about DeMatha but I’m not sure he really believes that the Redskins really have a great winning tradition.  Sure from 1971-1976 they made the playoffs for 5 out of 6 years.  Also, we all know what they did in the 80s and early 90s…but since 1992, this team has made the playoffs just 3 times.  3 times in 18 years.  Hell of a tradition there, huh?

This team has been in DC since 1937, do know how many times they’ve made the playoffs since they arrived in Washington?  22 times.  Yes, just 22 times in over 75 years.  As a comparison, the Dallas Cowboys didnt come into existance until 1960 and you know how many times they’ve been to the playoffs?  30…in almost 30 less years.  Winning tradition in DC?  Hah!

Lets move on, here’s what else he said about the Redskins: Read the rest of this entry

Watch enough sports and you’ll get the feeling that while analysts seem like pretty nice guys that enjoy interacting with the fans, don’t ever forget: you never played or worked in the game, so leave the heavy lifting for us.  When you’re younger, you tend to give them the benefit of the doubt because, well, what do you know anyway?

Of course, as you get older, those feelings of reverence dissipate… rapidly.  AOL Fanhouse “columnist” Steve Phillips is a prime example.  Setting his personal foibles aside (he’s not exactly husband of the year), before Phillips became a prominent personality on ESPN’s baseball programming (and was subsequently fired – for personal reasons), he was also General Manager of the New York Mets. 

Phillips, much like his former colleagues at ESPN, never miss a chance to point out that while casual fans (especially those who are statistically inclined) may love the game, they’ll never “get it” because they didn’t play the game.  It’s a convenient tool to keep most fans from being critical when a commentator suggests guys that walk too much “clog the bases.”  So at the end of the day, who do you trust more: the guy who drafted David Wright; or the guy named “Rob” who probably has never set foot in a locker room?  Logic unfortunately favors the former.

Well, that’s an interesting question, because for every David Wright and Jose Reyes acquisition that Phillips throws around, there’s an overpriced and aged Mo Vaughn or Jeromy Burnitz also lurking on his resume (just above the Jason Bay trade). 

But don’t you dare tell Steve Phillips that you could have done his job any better.  It’s impossible.  Don’t even think about it. Being a GM is tough: you gotta watch video, answer phone calls and go to games.  You don’t know – you didn’t play the game!  Really Steve?  Would stupid fans like us be ignorant enough to suggest a Roy Oswalt for Stephen Strasburg trade, straight up?  Oh wait, you just did that yesterday. 

I’m not trying to pick on Phillips, although his ineptitude has bothered me for a long time, but it’s stories like this that highlight the old boys’ club culture that pervades most sports: you’re either in or you’re out.  So, unless you played the game years ago, you better know someone else who did.  Sure, things have started to change, but the fact that guys like Phillips can still command a presence in baseball is sad: fans deserve better.      

And you know what?  He may have never set foot in a locker room, but Neyer seems like a pretty nice guy who knows his stuff (and who also apprenticed under Bill James — you may have heard of him).