Well it played a small role in a petty spat, but the people involved were fairly famous. Author Malcolm Gladwell was ripping author Steven Pinker, who had unfavorably reviewed his new book.  One of his criticisms was the fact that:

"Pinker’s third source was an article in the Columbia Journalism Review, prompted by my essay, that made an argument partly based on a link to a blog called “Niners Nation."

He uses us as a belittling shot, obviously unaware of the quality analysis happening here daily. 

The article he references was this one, which was actually a review of some Football Outsiders stats.  Ironically I think Gladwell cited his own stats from F.O. in the original piece on QBs that caused the argument.  So its all pretty convoluted and unresearched on his part.....but funny place to come across the site.

I got to go see the Conn. Defenders play in New Britain last night, nice game, 6 - 4 victory as covered in the Minor Lines thread.  Seems like almost no one on that team is over .250, but the offense looked great.

Anyway, got to reading about the team a bit, and came across this recent article from a local writer:

Defenders' Affiliation Has Been a Giant Pain

Sounds like no one is very happy with the situation.  Only other opinion I found on the subject was a Defenders blogger that agreed. The attendance is the worst in the league.

Looking at other AA options, there are a bunch of teams that are coming up for renewal this year, but very few that might actually consider moving.  Seems like SF/Norwich is about as poor a geographical situation as there is in AA ball......maybe Seattle would prefer it to West Tennessee, the cold might work out a bit better for them.  Ideally they'd end up somewhere in the Texas League.

http://www.slate.com/id/2100652/

In a recent interview with ESPN's Gary Miller, Chicago Cubs outfielder Moises Alou revealed that during baseball season he urinates on his hands to toughen them up. Alou, one of the few major leaguers who doesn't wear gloves while batting, is backed up by Yankees catcher Jorge Posada, who says, "You don't want to shake my hand during spring training."

Urea, a major component of urine, is a compound also used in many commercial moisturizing creams as a skin softener. It's an active ingredient, for example, in Carmol 10 and 20 and in Dermal Therapy Lotion. (The makers of these lotions are not distilling urine, by the way; their urea is manufactured in a lab.)

Like watching a car wreck, I couldn't help but check out the Game of Shadows excerpt in Chronicle......mentioned this:

Bonds had gone from a size 42 to a size 52 jersey; from size 10 ½ to size 13 cleats; and from a size 7 1/8 to size 7 ¼ cap, even though he had taken to shaving his head

I'm not gonna try to talk about his feet growing 10%....but the size of his head has often been cited as evidence of his freakishness.  1/8" in 10 years?  People are telling me they can see this with naked eye, let alone it being "humongous"?

I'm preaching to the choir here, yeah.  Just nuts.