I was greeted this morning by a picture of a very morose Tom DeLay on the front page of The Dallas Morning News under the headline “Defiant DeLay indicted in election fund scheme.” Seems the Republican congressman from suburban Houston known as “The Hammer” has been doing a bit of money laundering.

This story brings me much glee which reached a crescendo when I was flipping around the new channel lineup on Sirius and landed on “Super Shuffle” (Ch. 12 or 6012 for Dish Network subscribers) where they were playing Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop.” This put me in mind of the raucous end to the 1992 Democratic National Convention in New York after the unlikely Bill Clinton took the nomination and ran with it all the way to the White House, where the Quantum President both delivered and failed on the promise of a progressive renewal - but that’s for another post. Anyway, as Mick Fleetwood and Co. were working through their signature song, I couldn’t help but look over at the paper sitting on the passenger’s seat, point at the picture of DeLay and do my best Nelson Muntz “HA HA!”

ESPN.com ran a story yesterday on Notre Dame coach Charlie Weis granting a young boy’s dying wish. A kid named Montana Mazurkiewicz from Mishawaka was destined to be a Notre Dame fan, named after Joe Montana with a prototypical Northern Indiana surname. You’d expect to hear a name like that called over the PA system on a chilly Friday night at School Field: “Mazurkiewicz on the stop, loss of two yards.” That’s what makes a story like this so tough to read.

I’ve never been much of a Notre Dame fan myself, but it’s hard not to pull for a guy who says “we have no choice. We’re throwing it to the right.” The right thing to do is not always the same as the correct thing to do. Good on ya Coach Weis for knowing the difference, and Go Irish.

From a recent conversation I had with someone:

Someone: “Did you hear what Louis Farrakhan had to say about the flood in New Orleans?”
Me: “No.”
Someone: “He said that white people purposely blew up the levees to drown the black people.”
Me: “Huh.”
Someone: “Isn’t that scary?”

First off, I haven’t verified the accuracy of this account, though it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that it was true, just another modern urban fable or, perhaps most likely, somewhere in between. I do know that some very frustrated residents of the Ninth Ward believed that the levees were purposely destroyed by the government to save the French Quarter and other more affluent neighborhoods in the city. Where they got that idea, I’m not sure.

In any case, this exchange launched me into full pontificating mode: “Scary? I suppose. Not as scary as Pat Robertson saying we should assassinate Hugo Chavez, though. The people that listen to Farrakhan are mostly powerless and disenfranchised which is why they’d be willing to listen to something like that. The people that listen to Robertson have power that reaches to the White House. You tell me which is more scary.” I’m paraphrasing my response there, and it’s probably better stated here than when it came out of my mouth, but the point was the same. Scary is as scary does. And as scary as fellows like Farrakhan can be, it’s a lot more worrisome to me when the loonies have influence over people who can actually do something about it.

…would be a really bad band name.

Vladimir Guerrero went 1-for-2 in the Angels 6-5 win over the Rangers last night. That was the 34th straight game in which he had at least one hit against Texas. It was also the 34th game he’d played against Texas in his career. It’s the longest active hit streak against one team, and I’d guess the longest in history to open a career against one team.

During the streak, Guerrero is hitting .440 / .490 / .828 (59-for-134) with 13 home runs, 13 doubles, 28 RBI and 30 runs scored with only 12 strikeouts. He’s also drawn 13 walks for good measure, 3 of those intentional.

In case you were wondering, allmusic.com doesn’t turn up any matches on Vlad and the Impalers, though I’d guess there are innumerable garage bands available in your local area for weddings, bar mitzvahs or lodge functions.

Found this linked from The Hardball Times a few days ago: fangraphs.com. It’s chock full o’ graphy goodness. For example, you can see that Derrek Lee’s batting average tracked much higher than his line drive rate during the early part of the season. Since then there seems to be a positive correlation suggesting a fair amount of good luck in his white-hot start to the year. Also, you can do year-to-year comparisons on up to three players. How can you not like this stuff!?

I also re-taught myself some basic Perl last weekend in order to do some data extraction and translation on plain text files for work. Exciting stuff. So I decided to practice on Retrosheet event files to determine the frequencies of the 24 possible out-baserunner combinations of all major league baseball games from 2000 - 2004. It took a while to shake off the rust, but I finally was able to run the program against nearly one million game events; it took about 20 seconds on my laptop to process all this data - Perl be praised! Turns out, nobody on with nobody out is the most common occurence, which seems to happen more often at the beginning of an inning. Who knew?! If you’re even remotely interested in these numbers, you have a problem. But, hey - you didn’t spend part of your weekend re-learning a programming language to figure them out:

(click to enlarge)

And to ensure that I am not cast down with the sodomites and MP3 stealers:
The information used here was obtained free of charge from and is copyrighted by Retrosheet. Interested parties may contact Retrosheet at 20 Sunset Rd., Newark, DE 19711.

The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
Not exactly an answer to the question What’s the Matter with Kansas? But it helps point out that there is a problem, and that’s the first step…

With Highest Honors
College isn’t going to do this kid any good. He’s ready.

…or does Supreme Court chief justice nominee John Roberts bear more than a passing resemblance to current South Carolina Gamecocks and former Florida Gators football coach Steve Spurrier? You decide, America:

And didn’t Spurrier once coach the Washington Redskins? Coincidence?

That’s the Cubs season before tonight’s 5-2 win over the Cardinals. 66 wins represented by the upward bars and 71 losses represented by the downward bars. The red bars are one-run games. The horizontal lines show homestands. If the Cubs ever win that elusive third World Series title, maybe I’ll have that season’s sparkline tattooed in a band around my bicep or ankle.

Make your own custom sparklines!

Sorry. Couldn’t resist.

So anyway, our church, Grace Avenue United Methodist, is putting together a program called “Waves of Grace” in which they are partnering with a church in Louisiana to find temporary homes for people displaced by the hurricane. They’ll use some intermediary company or agency to do background screening as well, so that alleviates some of the obvious concerns with doing a thing like this. In any case, we’re pretty much committed to opening our home at this point. Will let you know how it goes.

…they’re crazy.

My youngest, Andy, loves hitting off the tee and does really well for a two-year-old. There are two things that are a bit odd in his approach though: (1) he likes using an actual bat slightly more than half the time. Tonight, his club of choice was a hand-painted Mexican maraca. He was hitting some pretty nice line drives, though - with a Latin flair! (2) His pre-swing routine is a bit like a right-handed Ichiro. He squats down to address the ball at eye-level on the tee before taking a couple practice cuts. When he’s ready he coils up and sprays the wiffle ball to all fields. I’m a little concerned about the position of his hands, but if he can hit with a maraca, he can hit with anything. I’ll have to get video of that.

Mitch on the other hand has a more refined approach even though he’s developed a tendency to chop at the ball when he’s not hitting off the tee. I doubt he’ll be blessed with Vince Coleman-like speed and with fewer and fewer artificial turf stadiums, we’re going to have to level out that swing. Still, I’m pleased with the way he can hit a pitched ball at 4½ years old since I didn’t really figure it out until I was about 13. And he’s even shown an ability to hit right- or left-handed, though he usually sticks with hitting righty since that’s how he learned to swing. His only real problem is one that I have trouble discussing openly, but I suppose I’ll just come out and say it: He likes to pretend he’s…

…a Yankee.

Yes. A New York #$&@ing Yankee.

That one’s my fault. When I went on a business trip to New York a couple years ago, I came back with a Yankees cap and a FDNY “Junior Firefighter” cap. The Yankees cap was supposed to be Andy’s, but Mitch took an instant liking to it (probably because it was supposed to be Andy’s) and he’s rarely seen without it.

I don’t know what to do. Help me.