Suburban Alabama Stove Trickle

MUSIC +++ FILM +++ SPORT +++ PHOTO +++ LINK +++ POORLY REASONED POLITICAL OPINION AND STUPID JOKE

SPRT
So, what do you know. The rich get richer, and the smart get smarter.

Milton Bradley to Oakland: a perfect fit. Now watch Paul DePodesta, tuning in on streaming video from his laptop, scratching his head wondering why Bradley's problems are so quickly forigven and forgotten. Helps you don't build a team on Kent, Weaver, and Drew. Meanwhile, Oakland keeps Zito and the rest of the stable, adds Loaiza (I guess if Beane signs him for three years and 21, he must be worth it... which also makes Morris worth 3 and 27) and loses nothing.

In a similar story, the White Sox managed to get the bunificent Jim Thome (if it's not a word, it is now) for the pedestrian Aaron Rowand, and now have added a potentially deadly starter -- think Freddy Garcia with a better strikeout rate -- in Javier Vazquez, and all they've lost from the Major League roster was an aging El Duque. El Duque is the Robert Horry of baseball: if you can carry him through an entire regular season, he'll help you in the playoffs. But baseball doesn't get sixteen playoff teams like the NBA.

Vazquez, as a veteran who'd been traded in the middle of a multi-year contract, had the right to demand a trade from Arizona, and did so. He said he wanted to get closer to his home in Puerto Rico, which is a suburb of Chicago. (Scott Eyre, citing a similar desire to be close to his family in Florida, also signed in Chicago. Chicago, AL?)

And in other news, I actually read on ESPN.com that Julian Tavarez is expected to get a four-year offer. Heck, before the Burnett signing, the last pitcher to sign for more than four years was... Chan Ho Park. So let's keep the hothead middle relief guys down to two years, and if he makes it without Ponsoning, re-up him.

FLM
The talented Michele Yeoh (Crouching Tiger) co-stars in a film adaptation of the book Memoirs of a Geisha. If you know one thing about Yeoh, know this: her husband's name is Dickson Poon.

Fantastic.

MR

QWTOFDY
"The struggle against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."
-Milan Kundera