Royals 5, Tigers 4

Winner, winner -- chicken dinner! (as they like to say on the Internets). Whew! The first Big Donkey of the Day award goes to Alex Gordon. There are no Jackasses of the Day today, unless you count the ump.

More tomorrow.

Billy Butler likes to hit stuff

We can't believe we almost missed this on The Big Donkey, Billy Butler. Then again, we've been thinking today is April 1 all morning. Since when does baseball start in March? Oh, well. Here's an excerpt from the Butler story:

The reason he fell in love with baseball was “the fact you can hit stuff,”
so this has been his life’s focus since he was in the eighth grade, made varsity
and tied for the Jacksonville city home run crown. He makes it look easy
sometimes, so easy that you might miss the daily work that includes up to 400
swings.

When they wish'd-for come

Some fancy literature to get you in the mood for Opening Day...

We'll give a free Big Donkeys T-shirt* to the first person who can tell us the authors responsible for these two excerpts (leave your answers in the comments):

If all the year were playing holidays
To sport would be as tedious as to work
But when they seldom come, they wish'd-for come?
And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents.

AND

WHAN that Aprille with his shoures soote
The droghte of Marche hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,
And smale fowles maken melodye,
That slepen al the night with open ye,
So priketh hem nature in hir corages:
Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages.

*We don't have any Big Donkeys T-Shirts.

Opening Day: Please, Royals, don't suck this April

Royals Authority has posted blogger and regular people predictions for the upcoming season. Here a few Big Donkey predictions they didn't publish:

Royals officially adopt "Let's Groove" by Earth, Wind and Fire as the anthem played upon the conclusion of games at The K; Joey Gathright spends as much time in CF as David Dejesus; Alberto Callaspo spends more time at second than Grudz; TPJ is one of the worst regulars in baseball; Tomko and Guillen are the guys Royals fans most like to hate in 08.

Our prediction for today? Rain.

There are two reasons why the Royals might have a better shot at the division than you think: Todd Jones and Joe Borowski.

In the minor leagues, the St. Louis Cardinals and the Springfield Cardinals split an epic two-game series this weekend in Springfield.

Does anyone else see the renovations at The K as a metaphor for the season? Things aren't finished yet, but they are starting to look bigger and better.

At Big Donkeys, we don't like to take pleasure in someone else's suffering, unless it benefits the Royals. That's why we were so happy to see Curtis Granderson go on the DL. For the Tigers to tank, we think some combination of Granderson-Cabrerra-Magglio is going to have to spend significant time on the disabled list.

We'll be back with thoughts later today or early tomorrow, after the Royals play this big game up in Canada.

(Yes, we know Detroit isn't in Canada. It was supposed to be a funny.)

Speaking of Canada, there's this Opening Day omen from Gordon Lightfoot (actually this has nothing to do with Opening Day or April, but it's VERY important):

Lake Huron rolls, Superior sings
In the ruins of her ice water mansion
Old Michigan steams like a young man's dreams,
The islands and bays are for sportsmen.

And farther below Lake Ontario
Takes in what Lake Erie can send her
And the iron boats go as the mariners all know
With the gales of November remembered.

In a musty old hall in Detroit they prayed
In the Maritime Sailors' Cathedral
The church bell chimed, 'til it rang 29 times
For each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald.

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee
Superior, they say, never gives up her dead
When the gales of November come early.

Big Donkey politics

We are getting sick of politics, which is saying something -- because we are political junkies, in addition to being baseball junkies. But the analysis is getting OLD. With politicians, what you hear and see is what you get. Everybody said Bill Clinton was a big womanizer and a big liar. Big Donkeys loved Bill Clinton and said, wait a minute, there's more to the story. But there really wasn't. Same thing with Dubya. He's dumb. Sure, he went to Yale and Harvard, but he's still the dumb guy who let Darth Cheney call the shots. And Gore? He still the same self-important windbag he always was.

One dig on the media, when they're not being sewer astronauts, is that they oversimplify things for simplistic voters. But they really don't.

Barack Obama (and we're a BIG supporter) is too good to be true.

Hillary Clinton is evil.

John McCain is an old war hero who is half-crazy.

That's it. That's all you need to know. Pick your next president. There's really no need to consult Fox or CNN or MSNBC.

P.S. We know we said we probably weren't going to post anymore until Opening Day, but we really needed to get this off our Big Hairy Donkey Chest(s).

P.P.S. Mitt Romney is boring and stiff. John Edwards is fancy.

P.P.PS. It looks like Jose Guillen is going to play Opening Day. We hope he doesn't get too winded.

Formal Friday

The St. Louis Cardinals play the Springfield Cardinals tonight and tomorrow in Springfield, Mo. That means, if you've got tickets, you can watch two minor league teams go at it, plus Albert Pujols.

Big Donkeys is of the opinion that Ryan Shealy should be the R's Opening Day starter at first base. That means somebody (German?) has to go via a trade this weekend. We like Ross Gload. We just like him on the bench.

It's pretty cool that none of the Royals have really gotten hurt yet, unless you count Jose Guillen being out of shape and winded all the time. Maybe it's good that everybody got the flu and nobody really played too hard all spring.

Yes, we realize that Big Donkeys just jinxed the whole season. Meche and Bannister will probably both throw out their arms or get polio tomorrow.

P.S. We have given up on that whole link farm idea already. It's SO yesterday.

P.P.S. Big Donkeys is testing out a new idea we call Formal Friday. From now on (until we get called on it), we're going to wear business-appropriate attire on Fridays, which means we get to wear sweats and Chuck Taylors Monday through Thursday.

P.P.P.S. Not sure how much posting we'll get done (if any) in between beers this weekend, but, as you know, Monday is arguably the biggest day of the year. B.D. has to work on this holiday of all holidays, but we'll definitely be back at some point on Monday with lots of good, good stuff.

Good Times, Let's Groove

THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT: We at Big Donkeys feel strongly that the Royals should play "Let's Groove" by Earth, Wind and Fire after every home game at The K, and we know a little something about marketing and PR, people. Boston is famous for "Sweet Caroline," which is a song about being attracted to a little girl, for chrissakes. We assume (we don't even know, which is sad) that the Royals play "Kansas City," which is obviously a great song, but it just doesn't work in this case. If we were going to the game in Kansas City (Kansas City, here we come!), that would be one thing. But we're already at the game, and now the game is over. Earth, Wind and Fire send two very important messages: Let's groove tonight AND It's alright. That's all we really need. Let's face it, this song just makes you feel groovy, win or lose. And that's what we're all about at Big Donkeys. In the Bronx, they play Sinatra and nobody can take that away from them. They play it loud when they win and they play it low when they lose. In KC/Raytown, we need to hear "Let's Groove." And play that mother loud every night! THAT'S what we're talking about, people.

QUESTIONS:

For a guy who sucks at hitting, doesn't it seem like Jason Smith has a lot of pop in his bat?

Did Emil Brown really hit a big HR yesterday in Tokyo as a member of the Oakland A's?

Was that really Mike Sweeney scoring on Emil Clemente's big dinger?

It's too bad Huber got shipped to the NL with its archaic "everybody has to play a position" rule. (OK, we know that's not a question.)

When will this new generation of hooligans realize long uniform pants with no stirrups are stupid-looking?

How nice would the R's lineup be looking w/ a legitimate big bopper at 1B (especially w/ The Big Donkey at DH)?

How bad are the Cardinals going to be if Pujols spends significant time on the DL? (ANSWER: Probably not monumentally bad, just because they play in a crappy league full of crappy teams.)

Odalis Perez is the O.D. starter for the Nats!?

What makes the sky so high in Arizona?

Does anybody else think the mom from Gilmore Girls was/is hot?

When was the last time the Royals had a really effective platoon? (Sheridan and Motley?)

P.S. We enabled the "objectional content" feature because of the boobs, not because information on the Royals is usually objectionable.

Boobs, Baseball, Beer

We've got boobs, baseball and beer on our Big Donkey brains -- because we know how to MULTI-TASK, people.

We've decided this blog needs to be about more than just links. That turned out to be way too clerical for us. Actually, we don't have any idea what we're going to do. Stay tuned for the train wreck!

We'll be back tomorrow with something. Huber has apparently been traded for a PTBNL. DeLaRosa has apparently been released. Nomo has been stashed on the DL. And the Royals picked up a reliever from the Rockies. Lots of movement as teams start to steady their Opening Day rosters. You know the places to go to get details.

P.S. We'd like to make boob pictures a regular feature of this blog, but we've only painted two of them so far.*

*That would be two paintings, four boobs.

Skillsets and deliverables

Have you noticed that successful middle managers (and Sean Hannity) who have lots of skillsets and deliverables AND who live in the suburbs for reasons having nothing to do with public schools AND who choose to dine out at the Texas Roadhouse on purpose TEND to have humor and/or creative deficiencies? Sometimes these good Americans even get ANGRY at you if they sense you're doing/saying someting smart, interesting or fun. Kurt Vonnegut would have said this response is akin to dressing up in a full suit of body armor in order to attack a banana split. He probably would have said the same thing about baseball bloggers who constantly complain about everything and attack their favorite teams.

Having said all that, Brett Tomko sucks. We guess he was OK last night, but he still sucks. And do you really think he's going to do anything but suck once the season starts?

You know what sucks even worse than Brett Tomko? The Padres announcers, that's what. Listening on XM last night, we're pretty sure the one guy was on cocaine. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.) ANYWAY, we hope the Padres finish last this year just because we can't stand their announcers. BTW, we think the Royals would make the playoffs THIS YEAR if they played in the NL. Really.

SO we have decided this will be an afternoon blog. The posts will go up in the late morning or in the PM.

Here are a few links for today:

RANY thinks Alex Gordon has the skillset to deliver a lot of long home runs.

THE KURODA JUMP got Ball Star surfing the You Tubes for other amazing feats of courage and skill.

P.S. Our favorite college professor (who, unfortunately, is no longer with us) taught according to digressions. Her famous digressions were so much more valuable than the standard material we were supposed to be covering. She was also a spectacular chainsmoker, like Kurt Vonnegut, and a genius.

P.P.S. The only other spectacular chainsmoker we know (in addition to us) is our dad, who is also, incidentally, responsible for making us a Royals fan.

P.P.P.S. The only other genius we know is our good friend Rob McElmurry, who is a Mets fan.

P.P.P.P.S. OK, our son's cousin is a certifiable genius, too, but he's only 9, and he's not yet a chainsmoker.*

*The Royal We is officially starting to make us sound like Gollum.

Welcome to the next best thing, Royals fans

Over on ranyontheroyals.com, Rany Jazayerli is discussing the abnormally large pool of talented baseball writers who root for the Royals (Bill James, Joe Posnanski, Rob Neyer, and so on). It must be true that you have to suffer in order to produce really interesting ideas, and nothing is more interesting than failure in spectacular fashion. In addition to the professional writers, there are also a number of ambitious bloggers covering the Royals. That's where this blog comes in. This (hopefully) will be your repository for good Royals links, Zack Greinke quotes and whatnot, even updates on whether or not Space Monkey Tom will score or simply spank himself bananas. Big Donkeys is like the Drudge Report without the flashing siren and all of the unflattering photos of Hillary Clinton. Or maybe it's like MLB Trade Rumors, only more focused on the Royals and less dependent on black as a background color. Everything is about focus/fractions/fractals these days -- just ask Horton from Horton Hears a Who. Or, if he wasn't dead, you could ask Richard Feynman, who predicted, "There's plenty of room at the bottom!"

This is not a porn site. Big Donkey is one of Billy Butler's nicknames. It apparently has something to do with him having a big bat. And that's all we have to say about that, unless we decide to bring it up again repeatedly. By the way...Did you see where Kaz Matsui got put on the disabled list or something with anal fissures? Holy crap! That's got to hurt. (We're not giving you a link, you'll have too google it. This is where we draw the line.)

ANYWAY, Big Donkey can hit. We don't care if he can't field or even if he can't spell. Billy Butler is completely awesome at what he does, and we want you to think of the writers and bloggers that provide us with the wealth of Royals information contained in these links as Honorary Big Donkeys. (We could have called them Little Donkeys, but that would have just been mean.)

We plan to update Big Donkeys practically every day, usually in the mornings, unless we're really hungover. Nothing fancy. Incidentally, here's today's news from the Royals Blogosphere:

IN ADDITION to coming up with the term Pozterisk*, our favorite prolific Polish writer/blogger is, not unlike Shakespeare, attempting to coin even more new words -- like crapshootiness, which has something to do with the NCAA Basketball Tournament.**

*You have to read the man's blog to understand.
**No this doesn't really have anything to do with the Royals. Sue us.

ROYALS REVIEW is pondering the epic battle for the final spot(s) in the KC rotation:

Perhaps the historical precedent here is the War of the Three Kingdoms era when
England, Ireland and Scotland got their intercine warfare on in the middle of the seventeenth century. Longtime readers will note that I've never really been a fan of JDLR, having been blinded by his horrible numbers from the beginning, so we can call him England. Davies and Tomko are lesser entities on the fringe trying to assert themselves, but also being manipulated, all while sharing a common celtic heritage and a reputation for grit and non-flattering facial hair. Or something like that.

MEANWHILE, little Joey Gathright jumped over a tall Asian pitcher last night on his way to first base. No shit. Jumped over him, just like he jumped over that car that one time. Joey is like the Evel Knievel of baseball (minus the cool name). The Kuroda Jump, as it will now forever be known, is already up on the You Tubes. Sam Mellinger mentions the Kuroda Jump on his new KC Star blog, Ball Star. Also, Sam gives us a good Q&A with Poz's favorite pitcher, Brian Bannister.

P.S. We know that Sam and the others already do a good job of providing lots of links to Royals information. It's just that it's almost Opening Day and we need something to do.

P.P.S. We can't be certain that Posnanski is a Polish name. We're not paid here to be certain about anything.

P.P.P.S. The kangaroo in Horton Hears a Who reminds us of Hillary Clinton.

P.P.P.P.S. We're already regretting naming this blog Big Donkeys. It's truly disturbing. We should have gone with There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom or There's Always Last Year. But now we're too lazy to change it.

P.P.P.P.P.S. We have long felt like the thing to do would be to stock the outfield fountain pools at The K with largemouth bass. That way we could just go fishing when Tomko gives up 5 runs in the first. OK. That's enough until tomorrow, assuming we get around to it and we're not too hungover.