The Hound Of Ulster

THIS is a big story.

Outfielder Manny Ramirez’s stormy relationship with the Boston Red Sox appears to be over.

A baseball source has confirmed Ramirez has been traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers, ESPN.com has learned. The Red Sox will pay remaining $7 million of Ramirez’s contract, ESPN.com’s Peter Gammons reported.

What do we give up?  Andy LaRoche and Bryan Morris.  LaRoche has struggled with his power and his health, but has star potential.  Morris had Tommy John surgery, but huge upside.  Drafted right after Kershaw, I think.

Still, we pay Manny nothing, and if the headache is as great as everyone says, he’ll walk at the end of the year.  Not too bad for a serious bat.  I will make every effort not to watch him play defense, though.

Oh, and I’d much, MUCH rather have just kept Bay. I think McCourt’s love of all things Boston got in the way.
 

Last night’s Dodger/Giants game featured a truly unusual PLAY.

The madness started one batter after James Loney broke a scoreless tie with a two-out sixth-inning single off Giants starter Matt Cain. Casey Blake followed with a double down the left-field line, sending Loney to third base. When Giants left fielder Fred Lewis misplayed the ball along the edge of the box seats, Dodgers third-base coach Larry Bowa waived Loney to the plate. Lewis recovered in time to get the ball to shortstop Omar Vizquel, who relayed the throw home to Bengie Molina to get Loney out by at least 15 feet.

But third base umpire Angel Campos already had called the ball dead before Loney was thrown out. Campos saw that Lewis had bobbled the ball and knocked it up along the padding that separates the box seats from the playing field.

Originally, the umpires gathered to send Loney back to third base and keep Blake at second because the ball went out of play. But after more discussions, it was decided that Loney was eligible to get the base he was headed toward plus an extra base (home). Blake was sent to third.

I saw the play.  Saying he was out by fifteen feet is insulting to tape measures everywhere.  The ball got to Vizquel as Loney was rounding third.  Omar took his time and “made sure of himself,” otherwise Loney would have been out by 70 feet or so.

This is odd, too:

Chan Ho Park followed Johnson (1-0) with 13 scoreless innings. Jonathan Broxton, who has taken over the closer’s role with Takashi Saito on the disabled list, got the last four outs for his fifth save.

That’s a lot of scoreless innings.  Oh, and it’s also a typo.  Try “1 1/3″ on for size.
 

That title’s awful.  And it’s the DUCK’S fault.  He may not have intended me to become obsessed with the punability of my post titles, but I can’t seem to stop now.

Meanwhile, Manila’s police cars will be SPONSORED by McDonald’s.  And this isn’t some sort of bizarre endorsement deal.

Police in Manila are looking to convert their patrol cars to run on a mixture of diesel and used cooking oil from McDonald’s, officials and the company said Tuesday.

With oil prices at crippling highs, the project would convert cars in the Makati financial district to run on a mix of 40 percent diesel and 60 percent cooking oil, its police chief Senior Superintendent Gilbert Cruz said.

Used cooking oil will be donated by Makati outlets of the hamburger giant, said McDonalds franchising manager Buth Salaya.

Other restaurants are also considering donating their used cooking oil as well, Cruz said.

I wonder if they watched THIS.
 

How does one combat something like THIS?

Four suicide bombers believed to be women struck a Shiite pilgrimage in Baghdad and a Kurdish protest rally in northern Iraq on Monday, killing at least 57 people and wounding nearly 300 in one of this year’s deadliest attacks, police said.

The U.S. military is recruiting and training women in Iraq’s police force, and trying to enlist them to join U.S.-allied Sunni groups fighting against al-Qaida in Iraq. But such attacks are becoming increasingly common, even as overall violence is at the lowest level in four years.

Women are more easily able to hide explosives under their all-encompassing black Islamic robes, or abayas, and often are not searched at checkpoints because of sensitivities.

They’re playing with a different set of rules than we are.  Or maybe they’re simply ignoring the rules altogether.  Still, this doesn’t seem to be the solution:

After the explosion, dozens of angry Kurds opened fire on the offices of a Turkomen political party, which opposes Kurdish claims on Kirkuk.

A terribly tragic, frightening state of affairs, but how exactly is that going to help?

We are dealing with a  very, very different mindset, it would seem.  The careful and intentional cultivation of irrational rage is deeply troubling to me.  Even if the situation calls for a response, that sort of outrage seems like it cannot possibly be helpful.
 

Tommy More sent me a pair of enlightening, entertaining Obama pieces, particularly relevent to his Messiah COMPLEX.

The British - at least some of them - are not quite as TAKEN with him as he is, it appears:

In Jerusalem and in surrounding Palestine, the Child spake to the Hebrews and the Arabs, as the Scripture had foretold. And in an instant, the lion lay down with the lamb, and the Israelites and Ishmaelites ended their long enmity and lived for ever after in peace.

As word spread throughout the land about the Child’s wondrous works, peoples from all over flocked to hear him; Hittites and Abbasids; Obamacons and McCainiacs; Cameroonians and Blairites.

And they told of strange and wondrous things that greeted the news of the Child’s journey. Around the world, global temperatures began to decline, and the ocean levels fell and the great warming was over.

The Great Prophet Algore of Nobel and Oscar, who many had believed was the anointed one, smiled and told his followers that the Child was the one generations had been waiting for.

And neither is Charlie Krauthammer, though that should come as no SURPRISE.

Americans are beginning to notice Obama’s elevated opinion of himself. There’s nothing new about narcissism in politics. Every senator looks in the mirror and sees a president. Nonetheless, has there ever been a presidential nominee with a wider gap between his estimation of himself and the sum total of his lifetime achievements?

Obama is a three-year senator without a single important legislative achievement to his name, a former Illinois state senator who voted “present” nearly 130 times. As president of the Harvard Law Review, as law professor and as legislator, has he ever produced a single notable piece of scholarship? Written a single memorable article? His most memorable work is a biography of his favorite subject: himself.

But THIS article and the accompanying picture is perhaps the most interesting Obama-related thing I’ve seen today.  Again, like Krauthammer’s reaction to Obama, it comes as no surprise.  But it’s always helpful to see specifics.

The contributions add up to $315,533 to Democrats and $22,656 to Republicans — most of that to Ron Paul, who was supported by many liberals as a stalking horse to John McCain, a la Rush Limbaugh’s Operation Chaos with Hillary and Obama.

What is truly remarkable about the list is that, discounting contributions to Paul and Rudy Giuliani, who was a favorite son for many folks in the media, the totals look like this: $315,533 to Democrats, $3,150 to Republicans (four individuals who donated to McCain).

Let me repeat: $315,533 to Democrats, $3,150 to Republicans — a ratio of 100-to-1. No bias there.

Not sure it’s quite fair to pull Paul and Giuliani out of those numbers, though I can understand the reasons why Tate thinks it’s a legitimate move.  Still, that’s picking at nits.
 

This is one of those days where I keep running across ”end of the world premonition” stories.  We have alien VISITS being supressed by the Government on one hand, and 50-year-olds PLAYING “professional” “basketball” on the other.  We have the Governator THREATENING to do something unpopular, and we have the twenty-fifth anniversary of one of the great “scorched earth” MOMENTS in all of sports.

And then there’s THIS, which is a slightly different kind of apocalyptical indicator:

Air Force officials say three ballistic missile crew members in North Dakota fell asleep while holding classified launch code devices earlier this month, triggering an investigation by military and National Security Agency experts.

The probe found that the missile launch codes were not compromised, but the incident comes on the heels of a series of missteps by Air Force that has put the service under intense scrutiny.

Officials called the incident a “procedural violation,” and said the Minot Air Force-based crew had code devices that were no longer usable, since new codes had been installed in the missiles.

Since I know nothing about the procedures employed in these instances, I’m sure there a way in which everyone falling asleep makes perfect sense.

I just can’t think of what it is at the moment.
 

For fairly obvious reasons, THIS film has come to everyone’s attention recently.  Gilliam’s stuff is crazy, so the loss of his lead star might not impact his work as much as one would expect.  And he’s got an I’m Not There-style homage in the works:

Star Pulse reports that Terry Gilliam has asked Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell to pay tribute to Heath Ledger by taking turns playing his role in the scenes he did not finish filming. That means four different actors will be playing one part.

I have no idea how those particular four came to be involved. Oh, and the synopsis suggests that it’s not quite an I’m Not There situation:

In the present day, immortal 1,000-year-old Doctor Parnassus leads a traveling theater troupe that offers audience members a chance to go beyond reality through a magical mirror in his possession.  Parnassus had been able to guide the imagination of others through a deal with the Devil, who now comes to collect on the arrangement, targeting the doctor’s daughter. The troupe, which is joined by a mysterious outsider named Tony, embark through parallel worlds to rescue the girl.

…

Actors Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law were cast to replace Heath Ledger, portraying transformed versions of Ledger’s character while traveling through a magical realm.

Unlike the Haynes film, there is a semi-plausible explanation for the multiple actors.  And Christopher Plummer plays Dr. Parnassus.  (How old is he now, anyway?)
 

Is that reduntant?

ESPN’s Jayson Stark, the king of bizzare baseball trivia, has a couple of fascinating tidbits in his LATEST.  He calls it his “Mystery Man Division.”

• Lost cause dept.: It wasn’t the line (1 IP, 1 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 1 BB, O K, 1 very wild pitch) that made Mariners catcher Jamie Burke’s 15th-inning July 6 journey to the mound such a memorable adventure. It was the portion of the box score that went: “Burke (LP, 0-1).”

Burke’s claim to fame: He’s the first catcher to wind up as the losing pitcher in any game since Hall of Famer Roger Bresnahan pulled it off for the 1901 Baltimore Orioles.

• Hit and run dept.: Thanks to some mad-genius lineup-maneuvering by Ron Gardenhire, Twins pitcher Bobby Korecky showed up in the “wrong” half of the box score in a crazy May 19 game against Texas — and came out of it with this historic line: 1 AB, 0 R, 1 H, 0 RBI.

Korecky’s claim to fame: He was just the third AL pitcher in the DH era to get his first hit and first win in the same American League game. And you can only imagine what a thrill that was. “I started running, and I was saying, ‘Wow, this is great,’” he said. “Then I realized the right fielder could throw me out if I didn’t hurry up. I never would have heard the end of that.”

There are so many crazy possibilities in baseball.  And even crazier is how many times those crazy possibilities actually come about.

This probably only of interest to “us Dodger fans,” but it is not particularly good news:

Juan Pierre’s rapid recovery from a torn knee ligament suffered June 29 could have him on a Minor League rehab assignment in a matter of days. He originally was expected to miss four-to-six weeks. 
 

It’s stale, sure, especially given all the NY Times editorial stuff flying around today.  But THIS has been pretty underreported, methinks:

Just back from a tour of two war fronts - Iraq and the Afghanistan-Pakistan region - Adm. Michael G. Mullen said he expected to witness improvements in Baghdad and across Iraq, but was surprised by how well a 17-month-old U.S. troop surge has worked.

“I won’t go so far as to say that progress in Iraq, from a military perspective, has reached a tipping point or it is irreversible,” Adm. Mullen, the Joint Chiefs chairman, said at a press conference with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates. “But security is unquestionably and remarkably better.”

Sure, 400 “incidents” a week is still a ton, but that does seem somewhat remarkable.

As does THIS:

“Violent crime in the city of Chicago is out of control,” Blagojevich said at the bill signing ceremony. “I’m offering resources of the state to the city to work in a constructive way with Mayor Daley to do everything we can possibly do to help stop this violence,” said the governor.

The summer of 2008 will be remembered as especially violent. Blagojevich said there’s been a child shot nearly every day since June 26, with 29 Chicago Public School students shot since last fall.

Wow.
 

 

Some THOUGHTS and crazy theories.  Watch for spoilers.