A few links and notes before I take off for warmer climes…

First off, there’s a lot of bad information out there about the arbitration process in baseball, and one error I have seen, heard, and been asked about repeatedly is how multiyear contracts factor into the process. The answer is that they don’t. Because of the disagreement over whether to consider AAV (average annual values) or actual year-by-year salaries, and the question of what sort of “security” discount the player might have taken, these contracts are usually ignored or discarded after cursory arguments in any arbitration negotiation or hearing. So the second year of Prince Fielder’s deal does not affect Ryan Howard’s hearing. (How could it? You can’t compare Howard’s “platform year” to Fielder’s, because the comparable season for Fielder – second time through the arb process – hasn’t occurred yet.)

“Subway:” A vintage song from Sesame Street – or so they say, since I don’t remember it at all even though it’s from my era. It’s, um, a bit dark for the target audience: “You could lose your purse/Or you might lose something worse/On the subway.”

SlapChop: I know JoePo has been talking about the Snuggie and the ShamWow!, but this is the best of the new breed of infomercials. The line at 0:37 is just priceless. I would work it into a KlawChat, but there’s no way they’d let it stand.

Easy Reader: It’s groovy. But mostly it’s a segue to talk about the new version of the Electric Company, which I caught by accident last week while trying to get Barney off my television before my daughter noticed. It’s good – very good. Not quite the same as the original, but the original – while brilliant – looks pretty dated now. The new version is a little more frenetic, and the opening song is a little awkward, but the sketches have some of that second layer of humor that good children’s shows have, there’s a lot of music (like this song by Wyclef Jean with Canadian jazz singer Nikki Yanofsky, who is very cute and can’t dance a lick), and the language is never dumbed-down for the young target audience. The breakout star here is Chris Sullivan, who plays the character Shock; he’s an an amazing beat-boxer, enough that I would turn and watch whenever he was on the screen. (I’m trying to figure out who he reminds me of – I’m leaning towards a cross between Jamie Oliver and Daniel Radcliffe right now.) My daughter’s too young for the show, although it did hold her attention for 15-20 minutes, and I’m hopeful that it will stick around long enough for her to grow into it.