The award for the first Michael Jackson joke I’ve heard since his death goes to my coworker Joel, who did a great job of deadpanning the setup. The exchange went a little like this…

J: Did you hear? They just got the autopsy results back for Michael Jackson, they said he didn’t die of a heart attack.
Y: What? Really?
J: Yeah, he died of food poisoning.
Y: …what?
J: He was eating a 12 year-old wiener.
Y: …I’m reporting you to HR.

Fantastic stuff.

Let’s just get some quick baseball links out of the way to start…

– Because I can’t stop expressing my gay man-crush for Roy Halladay, here’s an ESPN article that’s a must read – The game’s ultimate hitter-pitcher duel? Albert Pujols vs. Roy Halladay. Fun article, except one of the current MLB players asked was Tampa Bay Rays middle reliever Joe Nelson, who was one of the minority and picked Grienke as the guy to watch over Halladay. Pft, forget Joe Nelson. While gushing about Pujols, he mentions “I’m glad I’m pitching in the AL East.” which is a pretty stupid statement, even if you ignore the fact that National League teams give pitchers a spot in the batting order instead of designated hitters which are a guys that get paid to do literally nothing else but to hit a baseball real good. The four best offenses in Major League Baseball play in the AL East (ranked #1 through #4 in team OPS) and the fifth team – Baltimore, 14th in team OPS – still has a better offense than the best hitting NL Central team – Milwaukee, ranked 15th. This is less a statement about how good Pujols is and more of a statement of how stupid Joe Nelson and his 4.70 ERA is.

– My two favourite Blue Jays highlights from the last couple of series…first, Scutaro’s sneaky steal of second, just a great heads up play off the walk. I bet you didn’t even know you could do that. I try to do this like almost once a game in softball off a single if the outfielders are slow to get it back in…only I get called back to first each time because the umpire’s already called time and I just look like a huge asshole. And second, here’s Rod Black’s voice cracking as he gets way too excited after Adam Lind’s home run (although granted three home runs in the first is kind of hype). Just really funny to me.

– Also, here’s a bizarre Dick’s Sporting Goods commercial featuring Jimmy Rollins. I’d like to say that I model my shortstop softball game on both Marco Scutaro and Jimmy Rollins…but both are above average defensive players, and comparing me to the 2007 NL MVP Jimmy Rollins would be ridiculous.

(I’m currently crushing the ball at a clip of .591/.679/1.091 in coed rec league right now, whereas Old Man Rollins is scuffling along at a very disappointing .211/.254/.328 pace. I am like three times the hitter he is right now, he’s nowhere near my level.)

– Here’s some more miscellaneous videos as I just empty my Notepad file of all baseball related stuff…former Seattle Mariners AAA prospect Josh Womack has some crazy bat skills. I had to watch it three times over to even understand what he was doing, that is some crazy stuff. Too bad he didn’t actually have any legitimate bat skills…he’s not on the Tacoma Rainiers roster any more and I have no idea if he’s still even in professional baseball.

– A crazy clip of a guy slicing through a baseball in slow motion with a samurai sword on a Japanese variety show. Crazy in the sense of like…why are they doing this?

– More Japanese goodness, check out this crazy guy employing questionable tactics at the plate to interfere with the catcher’s attempt to throw out a base stealer…one, two, and three! I have no idea who this is or when this is from, but checking the dates submitted and such you can tell it’s fairly recent. He is being heavily criticized in Japan for doing this, but what I can’t understand is why the umpires don’t just call interference. This is the textbook definition of the rule. I also don’t understand why he hasn’t eaten a punch in the mouth from these catchers or a baseball to the face every time he goes to bat. Imagine if you saw someone do this in an MLB game…he wouldn’t make it out of the diamond alive. Still…it’s pretty funny.

– The Tampa Bay Rays semi-recently had a Western road trip on which they decided to enforce a cowboy styled dress code, either because they want to build team chemistry, or because they want to build team chemistry…and are all homosexuals. That guy at the bottom in the eye-searingly loud American flag shirt? Everybody’s favourite replacement level outfielder Gabe Gross!

That concludes the baseball portion of the links.

– This picture gives me endless amusement.

That concludes the post.

You think baseball’s about feelin’ good?