The collected thoughts of sportswriter, bookworm, & food critic Keith Law
New first-round projection is up. As I noted in the comments there and on Twitter, I heard after it was posted that the Rockies are “heavy heavy” on Matt Hobgood for one of their two picks.
Radio hit on Baseball Tonight this evening.
UPDATE they just posted my NYC radio hit with Seth Everett.
Ticket to Ride is a very cool game, by the way. I need to update that boardgames post, once I survive the draft.
I’ve mentioned many times that my daughter is a big fan of PBS Kids programming, both on WGBH, our local PBS affiliate, and on the cable channel Sprout, which airs kids’ shows 24 hours a day. (That doesn’t make me a fan – I can’t stand Caillou, and I think Angelina is a mean little drama queen.) A reader who works at WGBH noticed this and asked if I’d be willing to donate some time to help the station raise money, and the result is this entry in their current auction: Scout with ESPN’s Keith Law. The winner gets to tag along with me to a minor-league game (or a Cape game, if that’s more convenient) at some point this summer. Proceeds, of course, go to WGBH.
Back on the baseball front, I’ve got a draft gossip piece up on the site, and I’m assuming most of you saw my first top 100 ranking for this year’s draft, which was posted just in time for #3 James Paxton to show up for his last start missing 2-4 mph on his fastball. Good times.
This high school coach should be fired. (Hat tip: BBTF.)
Apparently, dish hero Alton Brown will be appearing this weekend at the Monterey Bay Aquarium to talk sustainable seafood. If you go, I want a report.
Jack Kerouac was kind of into sim baseball. Go figure. (HT: BBTF and Shysterball.)
No radio/TV for me this weekend due to a very important birthday party today.
I’ll be on XM Radio channel 144 with Bill Pidto and Bruce Murray on Tuesday at 9:25 am EDT, and will appear via phone on First Take at either 10:50 am or 11:25 am EDT, time TBD. I’ll also be on with longtime friend Jeff Erickson’s Fantasy Focus Internet radio show, although we won’t do straight fantasy content. If you remember Jeff’s radio show on XM, this is the same show, but he moved it online after the Sirius-XM merger.
My most recent post on my main ESPN.com blog now has BP video of Buster Posey. There’s also video up of Tim Wheeler and Drew Storen in my most recent draft blog entry. I should have more draft notes and videos later this week.
Jason Whitlock had some strong (and dead-on) words about Selena Roberts and accuracy. Shysterball had similar words last week. I’ve pointed this out previously, but Roberts has gone after A-Rod at odd times before, like writing her 2007 World Series post mortem about him, even though he hadn’t played in that or the previous series. Squawking Baseball takes aim at Roberts’ implication that A-Rod couldn’t have tripled his bench-press ability without the use of PEDs.
Is Twitter the CB radio of Web 2.0? (HT to Shysterball.) I kind of hope not, now that I crossed the 1000-followers mark.
JoePo is obsessed with cycles. I couldn’t agree less; I think cycles are boring – statistical oddities that hold no interest for me. One reason is that a player who goes 1b-2b-3b-hr has hit for the cycle and goes on that list that some guy keeps that gets trotted out the next time some Joey Bagodonuts goes 1b-2b-3b-hr, but some other player who goes 2b-2b-hr-hr had a better day and doesn’t make any list, unless there’s some other guy keeping some other list that he really doesn’t get to trot out that often because no one gives a crap about guys who went 2b-2b-hr-hr.
This clip cracks me up: auto-tuning the news. (HT to mental_floss from their post earlier this week auto-tuning.) I’m not sure which I like best – the facial expressions on the guy “talking” to Katie Couric, the angry gorilla, or the ever-present tambourine.
I’ll be on ESPNEWS via phone at 2:20 pm EDT sometime in the next hour. Stay tuned.
Also, thanks to those of you who chimed in on the water heater. We went with a tank over tankless; the configuration of our basement was going to make the installation of the tankless very expensive, so even after the rebate and tax credit it was an additional ~$1500 to go tankless. We don’t really want to stay in this house for that long anyway, so making that kind of investment just for the psychic value (having the “cool” toy, helping the environment) didn’t make sense.
UPDATE #2: I’ll be on the Herd today at 1:40 pm EDT.
I’m mostly recovered from what was probably just a nasty stomach virus – the PA I saw in the ER yesterday couldn’t explain why my lower back would hurt like this, but I’ll give her a pass because she was cute – but I can, in fact, confirm that I’d rather watch pitchers take fielding practice than spend three hours in an ER. And I hate watching PFPs.
This list of Blackberry shortcuts was gold for me. For some reason, my blackberry jumps to the bottom of the list of messages from time to time and I didn’t know how to get it to the top (newest messages) of the list.
Klaw links: Audio clips of me with Ryen Russillo debating the top ten starters in the game, on AllNight, and on Chicago baseball tonight on ESPN 1000. My blog entry on Zack Wheeler is up, with video up later today. UPDATE: One more, from Tuesday, on the radio version of Baseball Tonight.
You can find clips of my appearances on AllNight and the Doug Gottlieb Show on espnradio.com; the Gottlieb link may only be for Insiders, and my hit is about a half-hour into the clip.
I’ll also be on our Seattle affiliate around 12:25 pm PDT on Friday and on 790 the Ticket in Miami at 11 am on Friday.
Klawchat is still tentatively scheduled for 4 pm EDT on Thursday. I may have finished Lonesome Dove by then.
And we have our first malcontent in response to my decision to stop accepting Facebook friend requests from total strangers. Kevin R.’s response to my message asking him to follow the fan page instead:
omg, that is so pretentious…have a lovely day…
After which he promptly blocked me from even responding to him.
Speaking of Facebook, Slate’s Big Money site has an op ed on why Facebook’s current model won’t work. It’s interesting – I’ve said before that I don’t know how Facebook thinks it’s going to make money off of me – but I don’t know that I was convinced of anything. I guess it’s better than this travesty, an article that trashes MBA educations, written by a guy who hasn’t actually been to business school but appears to know all about what’s taught there. (For the record, I’ve said before I’m not sure that business school is a good financial decision for most people, and it certainly wasn’t for me given the career change I made after attending.)
This weekend doesn’t just mark Opening Day in MLB, but in baseball leagues all over the world. Japan’s NPB started up last night; Korea and Germany start tonight; and France and Sweden (yes, Sweden) start along with MLB on Sunday. The Dutch Honkbal Hoofdklasse starts next Saturday.
A simple recipe for lemon squares. Not quite my cup of tea – where’s the chocolate, dude? – but the picture is appealing.
Links over at the Four-Letter: Yesterday’s chat, my Wednesday hit on The Herd (around 6:20), my Thursday hit on First Take (and no, that’s not my photo), and our MLB preview package, with two sentences from me on each team covering one rookie hitter and one rookie pitcher who could make an impact in 2009.
My annual breakouts piece is a photo gallery this year with shorter text from me. And yes, I still love Rickie Weeks, even though he’s not on there.
I’ll be on First Take via phone at 10:20 am on Thursday, and KTAR at 9:24 am Arizona Time. I’ll be on Baltimore 105.7 FM tonight at 9:30 pm.
Yes, there will be a Phoenix food post soon. It’s mostly done, but I’ve got some more preview stuff to hand in to ESPN.com first.
There will be a Klawchat on Thursday at 1 pm.
So can someone explain this Cutler thing to me? I keep hearing how the Broncos have to trade him. Isn’t he under contract? So he wants a trade. I want a million dollars, a night with Ashley Judd, and a pony. If I’m Josh McDaniel, I’m staring at two options:
1. Keep Cutler and make it clear to players and agents that I am in charge.
2. Trade Cutler for 80 cents on the dollar* and show everyone that the lunatics are running the asylum.
*This is my assumption, as someone who doesn’t really know football, because Denver would be seen as somehow unable to keep Cutler, and because I doubt you ever really get full value when trading a top-ten quarterback.
Erik Kuselias was subbing for SVP on the Tirico/VP show today and kept saying how Cutler has “leverage” – but does he? He’s an employee of the Broncos. If they decide to bench him for four games to teach him a lesson, as long as they’re paying him and abiding by the letter of the contract, they are within their rights to do so. I’ve heard no mention of a contractual obligation on the part of the Broncos to avoid hurting Cutler’s feelings, nor does he have a no-trade clause or a no-discussing-a-trade clause or a no-even-thinking-about-a-trade-even-while-you’re-on-the-throne clause. If Cutler doesn’t show up for a required camp or workout, you fine him. You may be able to suspend him without pay, which would be true in MLB. But just like I don’t give in to my daughter when she throws a tantrum, a GM shouldn’t give in to a player (or agent) when he throws one.
Am I wrong?
A few of you have already noticed that I set up a fan page for myself on Facebook, which I have to admit feels a bit presumptuous. I just learned that Facebook has an upper limit on the number of friends a person can have of 5000, which I’ll hit in about a year and a half at the rate at which friend requests have been coming in of late. I figured I should get ahead of the curve and am no longer accepting friend requests from people I don’t actually know.
I don’t intend to unfriend any of you who are already friends with me – well, unless you piss me off – but would encourage you to follow me through the fan page, which I’ll update regularly with links to ESPN content and media appearances.
Speaking of which, I’m doing a phoner on First Take on Monday at 11:25 am EDT on ESPN2, and am tentatively scheduled for a hit on Phoenix’s KTAR 620 AM on Thursday at 7:20 am Arizona time.
Copyright © 2011 Curtail Theme on the Genesis Framework