Damn baseball

Wow. So the Tigers magically pulled a deal out of their ass that landed them Miguel cabrera and Dontrelle Willis. I would bitch and moan about it but I'm impressed that the Marlins are stupid enough to trade away their two biggest draws, all the while bitching about how they can't get any fans. What's next? They trade Hanley Ramirez to the Angels for Reggie Willits and Jeff Mathis. As an Angels fan i'd be like, hell yeah, but as a baseball fan that would kind of suck. MLB should just hold an expansion draft with all of the Marlins players and send that team to wherever the Seattle Pilots and Washington Senators team logos are resting at this hour.

In other more, entertaining news, the Royals appeared to have signed Jose Guillen. They overpaid, of course, (I mean, are they going to go sign Reggie Sanders for 12 million dollars a year again too) but at least their acquisition brings me renewed hope that someday we will see Jose Guillen and Milton Bradley patrolling some outfield somewhere because, as we all know, the Royals are idiots and if they're willing to sign Jose Guillen perhaps they're willing to acquire Milton Bradley, perhaps for Mark Teahan and whatever other super-prospect they have going on over there.

I can picture it now - Bengie Molina hits a fly ball to center field

MILTON: I got it.
JOSE: No you don't you son of a bitch I got it.
MILTON: What's that mother fucker? You want to start some shit?
JOSE: Pendejo, let's go.
MILTON: Somebody toss me a water bottle so I can impale this mother fucker!

Mark Teahan runs over to corral the ball that has rolled to the center field wall

MILTON: What you doing white boy? You going to take my ball? You in with Jeff Kent, grand wizard or some shit?
JOSE: Wait a second, what's that SOB's name? Mike? Kick me off your team will you?

They both tackle Teahan and Bengie Molina gets the first extra base hit of his career.

Please baseball, gods, if you are willing to allow Johan Santana and Miguel Cabrera be traded for shitty prospects at least toss the rest of us non middle to east American baseball fans some kind of angry, easily aggravated bone. And toss Frank Francisco in that bullpen while you're at it.

Hall of Fame business

So every argumentative baseball fans annual wet dream - better known as the voting for the Hall of Fame - is fast approaching. Tomorrow or Monday I'll write who I think should make the Hall of Fame (while providing completely useless reasons why), but today, i thought it would be interesting to look at the random vote totals that some players have received in recent years.

2007: Harold Baines - In 2007, Baines year of HOF eligibility, he received a scant 29 votes (5.7%). Now Baines wasn't exactly the Jesus of baseball, but he was pretty damn good. He had a .289 career average, 384 homers and a respectable .821 OPS. However, the knock against him was that all he could really do was hit, and as a result, played DH especially after his original team, the White Sox, traded him (beginning his journeyman phase). He never hit more than thirty homers in a season, but he still, in my opinion, deserved to receive more votes that Don-fucking-Mattingly. Yay, Yankees are great, but Baines was his equal and for almost twice as long (and Baines' Baseball-reference page hasn't been turned into a cheap attempt at advertising).
Fun facts about Baines - he played for 22 season yet only managed to steal 34 career bases. Among the many players he was traded for were Sammy Sosa, Brook Fordyce, and the immortal Scott Chiamparino.

2006 Hank Morrison - Who the hell is Hank Morrison? I don't know if the baseball Hall of Fame has their own voting tallies incorrect but it says that a Hank Morrison received 5 votes in 2006 and I, for the life of me, have no idea who he is and neither baseball library or baseball-reference.com has any idea either. Maybe they mean, Hal Morris, but still, why the hell would you vote for a weak hitting Cincinatti Reds first baseman? That's like voting for Sean Casey.

2004 Cecil Fielder - In 2004 Cecil Fielder, yes the fat guy that I vaguely remember suiting up for the Angels - the one that hit 51 homers in 1990 and made all 25 remaining Detroit Tigers fans wet their pants received one vote for the Hall of Fame. That's one more than Bob 'dare you to pronounce my name correctly' Tewksbury and one less than Juan 'that ball is rarely gone' Samuel. If Chili Davis, a less fat, not as powerful first basemen that DH'ed for the Angels late in his career can get three votes, than why can't Cecil? It's those 2 years that Chili played for the Yankees I tell you. That makes the guy that votes for every Yankee on the ballot write his name in or something.

2000: Bill Gullickson - I was actually going to make fun of Bill Gullickson for receiving one Hall of Fame vote in 2000 because the only thing I remember about him was that he was a sub-par starting pitcher for those miserable early 90's Detroit Tigers teams. However, with a little bit of baseball-reference magic i found out that he was actually a relatively solid starting pitcher for the Montrael Expos during the 1980's and that he actually won 20 games one year! So now I think he should have gotten a couple more votes. I'm assuming that in 1987 when he pitched for the Yankees (albeit briefly) he must have crapped in Don 'we swear he's the new Dimaggio' Mattingly's shoes or something, otherwise he'd have like 17 votes.

Sean Taylor

This (I am almost 100 percent certain based on the mug shot the same name, similar location and random pictures of a seventeen year old with dozens of 100 dollar bills) is one of the guys that was arrested in the shooting of Redskins safety Sean Taylor.

$MR.FLORIDA$'s myspace.

Anyone else find it ironic that while he may be responsible for taking the life of Sean Taylor some of the friend's on his page have changed their photos to memorialize him?


UPDATE

His site was taken down. At least I can say i had it linked hours before the AP did, my gift to the 5 people that looked at my post!