Kendall Royalty (distill the life that's inside of me)

The Royals suck. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. And so on.

Suh should have won the Heisman.

So I got this book for my birthday, Freakonomics. I've heard of it. Haven't started reading it yet. From what I gather, these guys are doing with economics what Bill James did with baseball. It does make perfect sense that the crime rate will drop with an increase in abortions, etc.

Speaking of abortions, the Royals suck.

Speaking of economics, Jason Kendall sucks.

So I'm supposed to be grading a huge pile of papers and writing a bunch of magazine stories, but I just can't bring myself to face either task right now. Maybe it will all be easier than I think?

Speaking of delusional thinking, Dayton Moore sucks.

So my son lost another tooth this weekend and he was demanding money for it. I told him he wears the same shoe size as me already (for crying out loud) but to put it under his friggin pillow, and then I forgot all about it. Apparently I later wandered into the room drunk and woke him up to tell him goodnight. The next morning he said he thought me coming into the room was "some kind of pathetic tooth fairy attempt." Anyway, I felt bad and gave the little bastard 20 bucks.

The next day I dropped Junior off at a birthday party and had a few hours to kill, so I ducked into Archie's. They were having a big Christmas auction to benefit the Good Samaritan Boys Ranch. My kind of place. Lots of old professional drunks and the occasional young and troubled woman-girl.

Which reminds me of the fact that I stopped into the Daily Pub the night before because I had an hour to kill before picking Junior up from swimming practice. Unfortunately, there weren't any hot troubled girls in there. But a really old, really drunk bag lady tried to hit on me. She slurred all of her words, but I distinctly heard her ask me to dance and then she asked me to take her to Red Lobster. As much fun as both of those things sounded, I declined.

Speaking of Red Lobster...insert something here about the Royals or a Royals player or Tiger Woods being cooked, boiled alive, or something like that (hopefully something funny).

Where can I get a Swedish nanny?

I have decided that it's best to keep Callaspo and DH him. What the hell, we need his bat. Keep Meche too. In fact, just get some kind of CF and catcher and let's roll with it. No need to get more bad players to add to this mix.

Here would be the position players:

C - Kendall?
3B - Gordon
SS - Yuni
2B - Getz
1B - Butler
DH - Callaspo
LF - Fields
CF - Coco?
RF - Dejesus

Bench - Bloomy, Pena, Maier, Guillen (Aviles)

But does anyone think DM might try to sign Rick Ankiel? He just seems like the kind of guy who would fit in with the plan, good or bad.

P.S. Isn't this stuff about Alex Rodriguez and all those women just plain crazy? I can't believe he cheated on that super foxy Swedish nanny of his.

P.P.S. If nothing else, we've already gotten rid the following this off-season: Olivo, Jacobs, Teahen, Bale, etc. Except for Teahen, that is most definitely addition by subtraction.

Winter Meeting Wonderland

First. Junior and I took our yearly trek to the mall Saturday morning. It wasn't that bad. Well, it was a little overwhelming at first -- so we headed straight to the food court. Then we hit about four stores like nobody's business and got all of our shopping done. Even the traffic jam getting out of the mall war zone didn't diminish my enthusiasm for having that over with.

Question. If the Royals signed Old Pudge and Bedard and found a decent young centerfielder with promise somehwere, would you consider this off-season a success?

My answer: That depends. If they really do non-tender Jacobs and Buck and if they can figure out some way to get rid of Guillen, then yes.

Question No. 2: Would you rather trade with the Mets or the Cubs?

Dayton's answer: That depends. Which team has the most players who were in the Atlanta organization at one point?

Question No. 3: What's the difference between a golf ball and a Cadillac Escalade?

Tiger's answer: I can drive a golf ball 400 yards.

P.S. Sounds like Dayton did a good job in signing this Cuban pitcher kid.

We can't win Afghanistan

Sending 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan to try to win the "war" is like signing Kyle Farnsworth to a $10 million contract in an attempt to shore up your bullpen, even though you have little chance of actually winning anything and you already have budget woes.

Seriously, you could put a million troops in that place. And for what? What exactly are we trying to accomplish? I get it that we've got to do what we can to keep Pakistan from becoming a failed state with The Bomb. Is that what we're fighting for? I guess it's going to be sort of like a Korea situation, only more dangerous. We'll have to keep Americans on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border forever.

This should have been evident a long time ago...but, by virtue of our HUGE over-reaction to 9-11, the terrorists won. We are fighting two "wars" we can't possibly win, Americans are more divided than ever, and the "civilized" world is falling apart morally and economically. Osama couldn't have dreamed a better outcome. Hell, the neo-cons and Rove-Palin types are the best imbedded allies he could have possibly recruited to fuck up dumb America. (You can probably include Pelosi, etc., in this crowd, too, for different reasons.)

The entire mess isn't President Obama's fault, of course. He's probably doing what he has to do in Afghanistan, which is sad. He's a thinking man, but we're not a thinking people. I just wish he'd do a better job, at least, when it comes to things like job creation.

And can somebody tell me why "cap and trade" isn't the stupidest idea on Earth?

The obligatory Cy Young post

Way to go Zack! Everybody else can suck it!

I had no idea that Kyle Farnsworth is No. 40

So I went out with my brother and Mets Fan Rob and some other folks to celebrate my 40th birthday. I was forced to wear a Farnsworth jersey all night. Also: There may or may not have been psychedelic drugs involved. At one point Mets Fan Rob, who was clearly having flashbacks, was drinking shots and shouting "Yo la tengo! Yo la tengo!" But neither Elio Chacon nor Richie Ashburn was anywhere in the vicinity.

P.S. Wearing the Farnsworth jersey didn't hurt my shuffleboard game one bit. In fact, despite the jersey and all the stuff in my bloodstream, I kicked ass. (This is partly because I've figured out the way the board warps at the Daily Pub.)

P.P.S. My brother and I once bet a car on a game of shuffleboard. (I won.)

Disdain for deliverables

In the corporate world, deliverables is a trendy code word often unintentially used to describe finished products that are safe, boring, and thoroughly uninspired. People who use the word are usually dumbasses who are climbing the corporate latter. It's a word that Trey Hillman would definitely use if he were helping to run General Motors into the ground.

Dayton Moore lives in a world of deliverables. Thus far, he has delivered Jose Guillen, Mike Jacobs, Yuni Betancourt, Kyle Farnsworth, Kyle Davies, Ryan Freel, Brett Tomko...and so on. These deliverables, of course, have not delivered. Because they suck. Suck is not a word that is used nearly enough by uninspired ass-kissing dumbasses who run things.

Jose Guillen isn't safe or boring in the way that a Chevy Malibu is; he just sucks. And he knows it.

That is why Jose Guillen is smarter than Trey Hillman or Dayton Moore.

Unless you can afford Yankee quality deliverables and best practices, you should take another approach.

IT'S NOW OFFICIAL: DM has delivered us Josh Fields and Chris Getz. I'm not sure how I feel about this yet. Mark Teahen was one of my personal favorites...but he had to go. This seems like a pretty good return for Teahen.

P.S. Fields has the most upside of any of these players, and he played quarterback at Oklahoma State, so I like this trade.

P.P.S. Looks like we'll be active this off-season, thank God. Right now, you'd have to think that Callaspo will DH against RHP. Fields will DH against LHP and Callaspo will play 2B.

P.P.P.S. Surely DM will non-tender Jacobs now, right? And Buck. With Teahen, Coco, Olivo, Yabuta, etc., off the books, we're already saving some significant cash.

P.P.P.P.S. Please, DM, for the love of money, just go ahead and cut Guillen. We still need to go out and find a CF, RF and catcher, plus some lefty arms.