The Keanu Reeves All-Stars

With a third of the season gone, it seemd like a good idea to try to throw together some early all-star teams. To make it a little more entertaining, we're going to name the teams after the movies of everyone's favorite actor, Keanuuuuuu Reeeeeeves!

The teams are put together in three ways. First, is the old-fashioned batting average, home runs, rbi teams that you could get from radio show hosts, beat writers, and bar drunks any time in the last hundred years. We're going to call this the Bill and Ted Team. The next team will have leaders by position in OPS. This will be the Devil's Advocate team. Last but not least, we will put together a team based on Paul DePosta's system, 3 times OBP + SLG, which will of course be the Matrix team.

We won't do designated hitter, because that always just goes to Edgar, or pitchers, because we'll save that for another day. Also, no children or animals were hurt in the writing of this blog entry.

Bill & Ted Devil's Advocate Matrix

American League
1B Carlos Delgado Carlos Delgado Carlos Delgado
2B Alfonso Soriano Bret Boone Bret Boone
3B Hank Blaylock Hank Blaylock Hank Blaylock
SS Nomar ARod Arod
LF Carl Everett Melvin Mora Melvin Mora
CF Vernon Wells Milton Bradley Milton Bradley
RF Juan Gonzalez Aubrey Huff Aubrey Huff
C Jorge Posada Jorge Posada Jorge Posada

You want a American League MVP award winner? How about Jorge Posada? He has twice as many homers as any other catcher, and twice as many walks. He leads them all in OBP and SLG. He's second on the Yankees in homers, third in OPS, and their only regular with a Yankees World Series ring who hasn't been on the disabled list (Yes, they've had that much turnover).

National League
1B Todd Helton Todd Helton Todd Helton
2B Jeff Kent Jeff Kent Marcus Giles
3B Scott Rolen Scott Rolen Scott Rolen
SS Edgar Rentaria Alex Gonzalez (FLA) Rafel Furcal
LF Albert Pujols Barry Bonds Barry Bonds
CF Preston Wilson Jim Edmonds Jim Edmonds
RF Gary Sheffield Gary Sheffield Gary Sheffield
C Benito Santiago Benito Santiago Benito Santiago

NL MNP? I don't know. How about Rolen?

The Paul DePodesta Medal of Honor toady goes to:

Aramis Ramirez of the Pittsburgh Pirates! Aramis went 3 for 3 with two walks and a stolen base!

and . . .

Brian Schneider of the Montreal Expos! Brian went 2 for 2 with two walks.


Robert Dvorchak of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette mentions that Ramirez went 3 for 3, but doesn't mention that he reached base safely 5 times.

Joe Rutter of The Pittsburgh Tribune Review doesn't mention Ramirez at all.

Rutter can be reached at jrutter1234@aol.com

Robert Dvorchak can be reached at bdvorchak@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1959.

I want all of you to mail them and say:

On Base Percentage is the most important statistic there is in baseball! Please recognize Aramis Ramirez for his performance in yesterday's game, in which he reached base safely in every at-bat. Also, please inform the ballplayer that they have received the Paul DePodesta Medal of Honor for this achievement, as given by Eisenberg Sports, at http://eisenbergsports.blogspot.com.

We can change the world, people! One beat writer at a time! Just copy and paste the message. Then email me, letting me know you did it. You can do it!

Change, Change, Change - Shea Hillenbrand for Byung Hyun Kim

The old Red Sox regime never did anything like this.

The Boston Red Sox executed a long-term plan to perfection, not that anyone in Boston noticed. All anyone here is talking about is, if they like the deal, how Byung Hyun Kim should be in the bullpen, or if they hate the deal, how much they'll miss Shea's bat. What they've completed missed is this: the Red Sox have known since last year that their third basemen of the future is Kevin Youkilis, not Shea Hillenbrand.

Who is Kevin Youkilis? He is currently the thirdbaseman for the Portland Sea Dogs in AA. In Portland, Kevin is on base at a .427 clip. Well, it's only May you say? Two years ago, In Lowell, his OBP was .517. Last year, he started the season in Augusta with an OBP of .433, moved on to Sarasota, .431, and finished in Trenton, .464. That's right, his .427 for this year is LOW for him. These are numbers that put you in the All-Star game. These kind of numbers put you on base 60 more times a year than Hillenbrand.

So the Red Sox put a plan in motion, took their time, and carried it out perfectly. Identifying Hillenbrand as a commodity they could live without, they signed Bill Mueller as a stopgap, who has given the Sox an added bonus of playing way over his head. Then they went about shopping for a pitcher, not someone to plug a whole while they made another desperate reach for a Championship, but a legitimate arm that could reshape their pitching staff. And they found one in Byung Hyun Kim. Kim is only 24, but his stat line for his career already looks like this:

323 innings 151 walks 380 strikeouts!

This is a serious young thrower we have here, and the Sox know it. They're not worried about patching up the bullpen. They'll find other guys to do that. What they see is a rotation that for once, is not built around retreads:

Pedro
Derek Lowe
Tim Wakefield
Casey Fossum
Byung Hyun Kim

If you had to deal this rotation for the Yankees rotation of Clemens, Mussina, Wells, Pettite, and Weaver, you wouldn't do it. The Yankees staff has accomplished a lot more, but I'll guarantee you the five Red Sox pitchers listed here will win more games in the next five years then those Yankees pitchers.

An increasingly common wonderful day for a Red Sox fan.

I'm having two teeth pulled in about an hour and a half, so I'll just say that the winner of the Paul DePodesta Medal of Honor is Ronnie Belliard of the Colorado Rockies. He got proper press coverage because he was 5 for 5, and writers notice all of those hits. But if you want to find email for the Boston Globe, you can always give them a hard time for not knowing who Kevin Youkilis is.

The Associated Press vs. Modern Thought

Milton Bradley seems to be the first person affected by what may some day be referred to as The Eisenberg Jinx. The subject of the very first full length article on Eisenberg Sports due to his 31 game on base streak, Bradley went out and turned in his only baseless performance of the season. Since then, with the pressure raised by the story off of him, Bradley has begun a new streak, currently at 6 games, and has been on base in 37 of the 38 games he has played.

But none of this is why I bring up Milton today (as the only writer in America with anything nice to say about him, I feel we can be on a first-name basis). Why I bring up Milton is last night's box score line:

3 AB 2 runs 3 hits 1 RBI 2 Walks O strikeouts

Milton Bradley came to the plate last night five times, and reached base five times. This perfect performance has inspired a new award I'm going to give out daily, which from this point forward shall be known as the Paul DePodesta Medal of Honor, after the Oakland A's executive who may have changed the way we all think about on-base percentage. The award will be given out daily to any player who plays a full game and gets on base each time, without being thrown out on the bases. We will also give out the Voros McCracken Medal Of Honor ( named after the guy who figured out that once the ball's in play, the pitcher is no longer in control), for any pitcher who throws at least 90 pitches, allowing no homers, and having at least three times as many strikeouts as walks.

With that said, today's PDMOH goes to:

Milton Bradley of the Cleveland Indians for the previously mentioned performance!

Bobby Abreu of the Philadelphia Phillies for the following stat line: 2 AB 3 runs 2 hits 3 rbi 3 walks and 0 strikeouts, with the two hits being a double and a homer!

And the VMMOH goes to:

Jon Garland of the Chicago White Sox: 8 innings 5 hits 0 runs 0 walks 6 strikeouts against the mighty Blue Jays!

Shawn Chacon of the Colorado Rockies: 8 innings 2 hits 0 runs 0 walks 6 strikeouts in Colorado!

This is where the ASSociated Press comes in. OK, that's a cheap shot. We're better than that. Let's try it again.

This is where the Associated Press comes in. I go looking at the ESPN stories that accompany their box scores, and they all turn out to be AP. Nothing wrong with that, I think, and they seem to give the pitchers their due. Garland is described in the headline as "sparkling". Chacon "baffles". Now the words "sparkling" and "baffles" sound more like words that Beckham used when he first met his Spice Girl wife, but at least they are trying to convey the importance of the performance. Which brings us to Bradley and Abreu, who, by the way, both happen to also be Swampscott Gators.

Milton is not mentioned until the very last paragraph of the AP story, and then only to say that he drove Jody Gerut home on a single. Abreu is mentioned early in the story, but that is because he hit a three-run homer. In each case the phrase "reached base safely in all plate appearances" never appears.

So its only the AP. They just do the stories for ESPN. There are other sources. Well true, there are other sources. I went on to Sporting News. AP. I went to Yahoo. AP.

I decided to stop checking other national outlets (we'll do that on other days) and go to the local newspapers. I do this through Jim Furtado's Newstand, which I'll provide a link through later today.

The Philadelphia Inquirer has a story written in it by Todd Zolecki, titled "Phils Subdue the Mets with 5-Homer Eruption". Good enough, five homers are certainly the dominant thing in the game. But Abreu's performance is not mentioned outside the context of his 3-run homer.

The Cleveland Beacon Journal has a story written by Sheldon Ocker, titled "Gerut Rocks Detroit". Gerut went 3 for 5 with a homer, and through out two runners. There are 28 paragraphs in the story. In the 28th, Milton is mentioned.

"Milton Bradley singled three times, scored two runs and drove in another."

Well, Ocher got the three hits, finally, but seems to find no importance in the walks.

People, we can do something about this. The AP is a Dinosaur that will only be defeated when the environment changes around it. But Zolecki and Ocker are human beings. Human beings can grow, and adapt.

I want all of you, yes, all three of you, to email Mr. Zolecki and Mr. Ocker, and say:

On Base Percentage is the most important statistic there is in baseball! Please recognize Bobby Abreu(Zolecki) and Milton Bradley (Ocker) for his performance in yesterday's game, in which they reached base safely in every at-bat. Also, please inform the ballplayer that they have received the Paul DePodesta Medal of Honor, as given by Eisenberg Sports, at http://eisenbergsports.blogspot.com.

We can change the world, people! One beat writer at a time! Just copy and paste the message, making sure to take out the names for the other email. Then email me, letting me know you did it. You can do it!

Contact staff writer Todd Zolecki (Abreu) at 215-854-4874 or tzolecki@phillynews.com.

Messages for Sheldon Ocker can be sent to socker@thebeaconjournal.com

So I go over to Aaron's Baseball Blog this morning, just like I do every morning because 1. it's really good and 2. he writes it either very late at night or very early in the morning, which gives it a sort of "hot off the presses" feel, and I'm somewhat frustrated because he's written an amazingly thorough review of the Toronto Blue Jays, which I wanted to do, mainly because I bet fifty dollars at the start of the year that they'd win more than 78.5 games, and it was a great gloating opportunity. I move on to his favorite links list, dismayed over the loss of a potential story, and thinking how cool it would be to make even the "Down on the Farm" portion of the list, when WHAM! There I am! Eisenberg Sports! Just eight spots below John Sickels! Here's Sickels, writer of the most widely read minor league prospects book in existence, and me, blog writer for one week, together! Thank you Aaron!

Last night I was going through the box scores on ESPN, checking on the results of my fantasy players, when I see that the Orioles have beaten the Angels 12-4, and Sidney Ponson, also pitcher for the Swampscott Gators, got the win. This wasn't a surprise to me, as I had seen the score earlier and the Orioles were way ahead, but what stunned me was Sidney Ponson pitched THE ENTIRE GAME, throwing 133 PITCHES!

I wanted to reach through my monitor, tear Orioles Manager Mike Hargrove's heart out, and feed it to the squirrels in my backyard. Here you have Ponson, always injury prone, pitching this year with a TORN LABRUM in his shoulder, and somehow having his best year ever, and you're leaving him in to pitch all nine innings of a 12-4 game?!

End of 6: Ponson has given up two runs this inning. Score is 8-2. Leaves him in.

End of 7: Score is 12-2. Leaves him in!

End of 8: Ponson gives up a run. 12-3. LEAVES HIM IN!!

Disgusting. I go to my TV to catch the end of the late games, and I'm thinking about how if I had an army, I could just declare Hargrove a Weapon of Mass Destruction and send all of my soldiers after him, but the games don't capture my attention, and I start flipping through channels. Celebration at Big Sur is on!

Celebration at Big Sur is the greatest hippie flick of all time. It makes Woodstock look like Fear Factor. There's all these old (then young) folkies - Crosby, Stills, and Nash, Neil Young,John Sebastian, Joan Baez, Joanie Mitchell - playing out on the California Coast at what looks like someone's home. There seems to be only a couple of hundred people there, and there is no stage. All of the bands are playing by the pool. It's really odd to see Neil Young singing "Down By the River" three feet from the edge of the pool. There's peace and love all around. It's beautiful.

The best scene is when Stephen Stills is playing on one side of the pool, and everyone else is sitting on the grass, and some guy on a lot of acid decides he's had enough, gets up, and starts yelling at Stills. Stills tries to ignore him, everyone is so peaceful, and other people try to stop Bad-Acid Trip Guy, but its no use. Finally, Stills cracks, and goes after him! The last thing you expect in this movie is that Stephen Stills is going to try to beat the crap out of somebody, but there it is. People hold him back, and when he finally regains his composure, which takes a few minutes, he goes back to the microphone, and says something like "I was having a bad feeling, there, man. But I want to thank my friends for Loving Me out of It." Every thing is beautiful again

I decide that if its good enough for Stills its good enough for me. I'll forgive Mike Hargrove as soon as this scene comes on. I leave the movie on as I finish reading Moneyball, waiting for the scene to come on, and it never comes. I must have just missed it. I couldn't believe it. I watched the whole last hour of that movie for nothing.

Watch out Hargrove.

Manny 3, Nomar 4

Grady Little could not manage the Oakland A's. I'm reading Michael Lewis' Moneyball, the book that is to the baseball stat freak what Eminem is to the suburban gangsta wanna-be, and it is that opening sentence that keeps running through my brain with every page I turn. Red Sox followers could come up with a bunch of different things to fault Grady on, from his handling of his pitching staff to his refusal to admit that Doug Mirabelli is his better catcher against lefties, but I want to stick with something very traditional, which is batting order.

There is evidence that batting order has no effect at all, that you could throw your hitters out there in any order, and produce the same number of runs over a full season. The more traditional view is that you need a speed guy first, a guy who can bunt and hit and run second, your best hitter third, your power hitter fourth. I'm somewhere in the middle. I think that over the course of a single game a batting order can matter a whole lot, but that the old definitions are ridiculous. Just put guys who get on base in front of your power hitters, and you'll be fine.

I'm not even going to go into Johnny Damon hitting leadoff, even though he's having a harder time than anyone of getting on base. The thing that drives me absolutely nuts is Nomar 3, Manny 4. I'm sure that what Grady thinks is this:

"Well, Nomar hits for a high average, and Manny hits more home runs, so I'll hit Manny behind Nomar. Nomar will see better pitches to hit, will get lots of hits, and Manny will drive him home."

I'm also quite certain this is as far as it goes. And I bet that Grady decided this when he took over the job last year, and hasn't thought of it since. Even though his system can't and doesn't work, and he sees it every night, all he is capable of doing is blinking his eyes like Homer Simpson, and staring blankly off into the cold Fenway night

Why doesn't Nomar 3 Manny 4 work? Several reasons, including:

1. Nomar doesn't get better pitches to hit. Actually, he barely gets any pitches to hit. There are currently 178 major leaguer hitters with enough at bats to qualify for a batting title. In the category of number of pitches per at bat, Nomar ranks 178th.

2. Manny doesn't often get to drive him in, because Nomar is often standing on second. Last year, Nomar tied for the league lead with 56 doubles. And when Nomar is standing on 2nd, and first base is open,

3. Other teams pitch around Manny. Manny now trails only the otherworldly Barry Bonds in intentional walks, with 12.

Sometimes, Grady even goes out of his way to find places for Manny not to hit. I was at the Sox last Sunday against the Indians. Grady had given Manny the day off, even though Manny had three hits the night before (that's another argument). With the score 6-1 and two-out in the eighth, Nomar doubles to left, and Damon and Walker scores. The Indians bring in Billy Traber to pitch to David Ortiz. Grady decides to use Manny as a pinchhitter for Ortiz.

Now, one can imagine Grady thinking "Maybe Manny can hit a two-run homer to tie it", not bothering to think about what the other manager might do, even if a two-run homer could tie a 6-3 game. Wouldn't the Sox have been better off waiting to see what Ortiz could do, and possibly have Manny up with runners on 1st and 2nd, or a 6-4 game with Ortiz at first? Even if Ortiz fails, you still have Manny available in the ninth. If Manny walks, you have 1st and 2nd with Kevin Millar (who has a .678 OPS for May) batting, down 6-3, And you guarantee that your best hitter will not get a chance to hit.

Sure enough, Eric Wedge being better than, although not older than, a little league manager, walks Manny, unintentionally, but intentionally, on four pitches. After Millar singles Nomar home, with Manny going to third, Grady puts in Damian Jackson to run for Millar, before Nixon strikes out to end the inning. The Red Sox will go into the ninth down two, with Ortiz and Millar out of the game, and Manny never getting to swing the bat.

If Manny were hitting in front of Nomar, Manny would continue to be his patient self, and see more good pitches because teams wouldn't want to walk him with Nomar on deck. But right now Grady Little is the Red Sox' opponents' greatest weapon in regards to containing Manny. With Theo Epstein being as new school as you can be, and Grady certainly fitting all "good ol'boy" criteria, it is hard to believe that these things are going unnoticed. I'd bet big money that Grady is gone next year. The question is, will anything be done in the meantime?

Another New England Writer Kisses Up To Clemens

I am so sick of hearing about Clemens, and the last thing I want to do is to continue the conversation. His history with the Red Sox has been rehashed so many times, you would think that by now the press would get it right. I let a story in the Globe pass by the other day, but this one is on ESPN, and I couldn't resist ripping it to shreads.

The story is written by Sean McAdam (http://espn.go.com/mlb/columns/mcadam_sean/1558838.html). Is is so full of half-truths that it is amazing ESPN would have anything to do with it. As McAdam says "But had Duquette looked closer -- or more objectively -- he would have found some explanations for Clemens' blue period with the Red Sox." Alright Sean, let's be objective.

This is what Sean terms as the "evidence".

Part 1: Changes for Roger

An "unnamed Sox official" says Roger was in a "transition phase" during the last four years of his Sox contract. John Marzano says, in reference to the split-finger fastball, that "it took him a while to command that pitch".

McAdams is doing a story about Clemens' last four years in Fenway, and as his "objective evidence", the only source he quotes in the entire article is former Red Sox backup catcher John Marzano. Feeling that ANY catcher will give an argument about a pitcher the air of authority, McAdams doesn't tell the readers that while Clemens' last four years with the Red Sox was 1993-1996. Marzano's last game with the Red Sox was in 1992. In other words, he wasn't there.

This is evidence of what? Is McAdam trying to say that the Red Sox should have known that after four years, Clemens was finally going to turn that around, and learn how to throw that pitch effectively?

2. Clemens Always Worked Just As Hard

Unnamed official: "I never saw a drop in his intensity."

Marzano: "We took long runs by the Charles, and early in the morning during Spring training."

This is laughable as an example of objective evidence of Roger working just as hard during his final years with the Red Sox as he did with the Blue Jays and Yankees.

3. Poor Support

Here at least, McAdam tries to use some numbers, blaming blown leads and poor run production for part of Roger's problems. But he never mentions that Roger played on some pretty bad teams before that, and it never seemed to bother him.

Sox winning %, 1989-92 .506
Roger's .664

Sox winning %, 1993-1996 .542
Roger's .506

Jay's and Yanks, 1997-00 .539
Roger's .690

Roger's team's had a higher winning percentage those last four years with the Sox than the four immediately before and after. He had his worst winning percentage during those same years.

But won-loss stats aren't always meaningful. Here's ERA +:

89-92 132, 211, 164, 175
93-96 105, 177, 115, 142
97-00 226, 176, 97, 137

Would the Sox have benefited from signing Roger? Sure. Would they still have gone after Pedro? Who knows? But here's the big question that doesn't seem to get asked: What would Theo have done?

I'm guessing that current Sox management, faced with the same situation, might have done exactly what Duquette did, just a little more diplomatically. Pedro's dedication has never been an issue, although his health has, and you don't see the Sox rushing to give him a long term deal.

I wish the press would get off Duquette's back already.

Alright, this thing is addictive.

The Humanitarian Bowl will now be the final bowl game before the fraud that is the BCS Championship game. Because that's what America wants to see after their New Year's Day football bonanza, an indoor game in Boise, on a blue field of concrete, between the 40th and 50th best teams in the country.

Break it Like Beckham

David Beckham says his broken wrist will not keep him from Manchester United's US Tour in July. The question is whether or not big money in Madrid will.

If a new blog explodes on the universe, and it is not listed anywhere, does it make a noise?

Spending the weekend trying to figure out how to get listed on search engines for free.

Why LeBron James Matters To Baseball Fans, or Why We Should Fear Nike

Caught most of the Jersey-Detroit basketball game last night, mostly because I held 20 dollars of my Dad's friends Bob's 200 dollar bet on Detroit, but also because the Pistons are somewhat interesting to me. They have Chauncey Billups, who I cheered for in the Fleet Center as the Celtics made him the # 3 pick in the draft the last time I cared about the lottery, and Chucky Atkins, who was the star point guard at USF when I lived down the street in Tampa. It was during this game that I learned about LeBron James' 90 million dollar deal with Nike.

I believe that The New York Times ran a story recently stating that the African-American representation in MLB is down to 10%(although I can't find it), but it doesn't take a study to figure out that your favorite major league team doesn't have many African Americans on it. Basketball is King in urban America, and probably has the highest level of participation of any sport in the country, but it ain't the NBA that can take down a huge MLB talent source. It's the shoes, man. Gotta be the shoes.

James will make 4 million dollars from the NBA, certainly a great lottery ticket to have, but the Nike deal is Powerball. James today is the hero of every high school and middle school big time athlete in the country, bigger than not only Carmelo Anthony, who is barely older than him and has already won an MVP award from the Final Four, but also Michael Jordan, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Brett Favre, Lennox Lewis, and anyone else you can think of. This morning, before, during, and after class, all of the kids who have already met Nike officials, been invited to a Nike camp, or know someone who has, want to be like LeBron.

For fifty years MLB had every African American kid playing baseball and wasted it, then for 30 years African Americans had an enormous impact on the game, and for a while their numbers have been dwindling. There has been an enormous increase in the number of Hispanic players in the last twenty years, from many different countries, and now there is a growing Asian population of players. What is the future for American baseball today because of this? Well, it will survive, maybe even thrive, but something will be lost. Somewhere there is a little Willie Mays, a tiny Rickey Henderson, who is making a different choice.

Let's play time travel with Dave Winfield. Big Dave made his MLB debut on June 19, 1973. Let's make his circumstances the same, except put him in thirty years later, June 19, 2003. He is a Gopher at the University of Minnesota, and he is the first and only person to be drafted in three sports, by the baseball Padres, basketball Hawks and Stars, and football Vikings, in his home state of Minnesota. He is being offered good money to join the Padres, maybe a million, but he's just seen LeBron's contract. What does he do?

Kind of sad, really.

Milton Bradley's streak ended last night in the on deck circle during the bottom of the eleventh inning, as the Indians went down in order. Oh well.

Milton Bradley's Consecutive Games on Base Streak Reaches 31

Milton Bradley is best known for throwing off the shackles of a ridiculous name only to become something of a Bad Boy of baseball, sort of like an Albert Belle for a new millenium, minus the Hall of fame bat. Albert, at least, could always fall back on talent, so people would excuse some of the things he did. But Milton? You can't find anyone to say a kind word about him anywhere. There was not a preseason mag or site that considered him a potential star on the rise, even though he is younger than Marlon Byrd, who everyone was plugging for great things in centerfield with the Phillies.

When Eric Wedge pulled him from the lineup and benched him last week for not running out a flyball, the press nodded knowingly. Nobody commented on the fact that Wedge, part of the "terrible or non-playing young white people" group that is making a power run in baseball, ran the amazing streak of making Bradley his # 3 hitter, then his # 4 hitter, then benched and publicly ridiculed him, all in the same week.

Meanwhile, Mr. Boardgame Company ( I'm surprised that none of his critics have referred to him as Mr. Bored Game Company) has had a hell of a start to the season. Here are his major stats up to now:

batting .339 (tied for 4th)
OBP of .438 (also 4th)
Slugging .522 (20th)
OPS .960 (11th)

Compared to other American League centerfielders, Bradley is dominating. He leads them all in OBP and OPS, trails only Rocco Baldelli in batting, and only Vernon Wells in slugging. Think about the difference in press this year between Baldelli, Wells, and Bradley. And if those stats aren't enough, there's the streak.

31 consecutive games is not record breaking, although there doesn't appear to be a record for this. According to Clevand Indians Report (www.cir.blogspot.com), former Indian Jim Thome led the majors last year with a 55 game streak. Elias Sports Bureau has Joe Dimaggio's 56 game hitting streak as also being a 74 game on base streak. Dave Anderson of the New York Times wrote a whole column about this in May of 99 when Derek Jeter reached 45 games from the start of the season.

But Milton's streak does lead the majors this year, and I'm hoping it continues, just to see how long it takes for the press to buckle, and give the assumed-devil his due. We'll set the over-under at Jeter's 45 for the first major recognition of Bradley's accomplishment. Go Milton!

Just so everyone knows, I didn't choose the colors. There is a very limited choice of settings, and the setting I liked the most looked like a Miami Hurricanes helmet, so that had to go. Let's say the red is for my Red Sox, the orange for my Gators, and the beige . . . well, I don't know.

ENC is coming!