Sort of long, as Posnaski tends to run. But worth it, even after reading dozens of these (and writing a few of them, depending on who is reading this).

"That team that spent $50 million more than any other team, that team with three sure Hall of Famers and as many as four others, that team that bought Milwaukee’s best pitcher and Anaheim’s best hitter and Toronto’s No. 2 starter and Boston’s favorite Idiot and the most expensive player in the history of baseball and so on, that team will win the World Series, and spray champagne on each other, and they will tell you that they won because they came together as a group and kept pulling themselves off the ground and didn’t listen to the doubters.

And then, if you are a not a Yankees fan, you will want to throw up. If you are not a Yankees fan, you are left hoping that next year the randomness of a short playoff series will get the Yankees and allow some other team to win so we can celebrate the hope of Opening Day. And that’s baseball."

Seems like as good a place as any to break the no-swearing rule. I'll restrain, but know that I'm thinking a lot of awful words.

Pretty cool "quiz" from the guys at Mistake by the Lake. Try to name the opening day lineups and starting pitcher for each team since '94.

I'm embarrassed at my performance, and am going to blame the fact that I've been working 14 hours a day for about 5 straight days. I got 108 out of 160 correct, and missed some pretty obvious ones, though I won't say who here yet. And there are some names on there about whom I had literally completely forgotten about. Worth your 8 minutes.

According to John Heyman, everyone's favorite and most trusted rumor source, when the Yankees called about Cliff Lee, Shapiro said the package started with Phil Hughes or Justin Chamberlain. Obviously will not happen, but sort of funny to think of what exactly the reaction around here would be.

Mildly entertaining, since last night's game wasn't.

Probably not a surprise given how Shapiro runs this team and how much respect he apparently has for Wedge. Another, fuller story to follow on Indians.com, apparently.

[Edit:] Not much more, but here's the full story by Castrovince on Indians.com.

I know there was a lot of bad talk and hard feelings when Jacobs sold the team at the beginning of the decade, but he certainly played an important role in the resurgence of the Indians and the success we saw in the '90s. Thoughts are with his family.

Courtesy of this week's Lazy Sunday over at The Diatribe, a little calendar that compares how far along in the season we are. The most discouraging analogy is to last year's Tribe; at this point last year, they were 19-19. And that was one of the most frustrating Tribe teams I can remember.

But the one that sticks out for me, probably because I'm a runner, is the marathon comparison. We're less than 6.2 miles into a 26.2 mile race. That's NOTHING. If you blaze out to a fast opening 6, it doesn't mean anything. If you start out slowly, you still have 20 miles to make a great race.

Where it starts to fall apart, though, is if you start too slowly, you just can't pace up enough. If you run 6 10:00 miles, then you've got to run 6:26s the rest of the way to qualify for Boston. It'd be a lot easier just to run 7:15s the whole way, but it can be done.

Apparently, just ordinary soreness from the surgery.

Not sure I buy it, but better than some of the alternatives.

Bartolo Colon threw 6 shutout innings.
For the White Sox.
Against Minnesota.

This cannot continue. Can it?

A couple years old now, probably been posted here before. Happy Opening Day!