Well, it looks like the baseball gods are aligning for next Tuesday to see Felix start against Greinke at Kauffman in KC. Both pitched today and both teams have off days tomorrow making the 27th their next start.  I don't think there are too many midwest M's fans on here, but I will be driving a couple hours up there for the Monday and Tuesday games, doing some tailgaiting, and will be watching from the party deck in right-center field if anyone wants to meet up, drink some beer, or make fun of the Royals fans.

The usual spot I go to is right by the home bullpen, but will definitely be making a stop before the game by the visitor's pen to love on Felix a little bit.  

Anyways, I don't have a great grasp of the area so if anyone knows any good pre or post game bars and such, that would be great as well. All I know is that Boulevard products taste so much better up there than the town I live in.

Also, this is Seattle's only trip here this year and its buck night so dollar hot dogs and soft drinks, WOOHOO!

So I have been anticipating this series since the schedules came out.  Luckily, I did not actually purchase tickets in advance and am currently trying to figure out what games to go to.

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I think someone mentioned in a game thread last week about gettin some LL-style pwning on Xbox live so here's a post where I guess people can post their gamer tags and brag about how much time they waste following the M's and playing video games from our mother's basements.  I reserve my real GTE for COD4 matches so be warned.

Mine is the same as my screen name here.  That is, hcoguy, not literally 'the same as my screen name here.'  That was too long so I settled for this.

Norton just punched his ticket out of camp.

Morse-mania is safe.

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Thanks to some sort of glitch, I have gotten ESPN's insider access for the better part of a decade absolutely free. Anyways, Gammons latest blog mentions a few funny lines.

The headline is "M's making a run at the Angels"

His bullet points are in strange places, really weird.

He's got a quote from Jonny Mac warning us against underestimating the Angels. No shit sherlock.

After talking up how good Bedard is he says, "remember that Garland is six months younger than Bedard and has 52 more career wins..."

Also, "Torii Hunter will be a huge help turning Howie Kendrick into a star"

That last quote has its own bullet point with nothing else added and is at the bottom of the post well after the "lead story". How will this happen? Why does he think this? Nope, nada, nothing else.

What do you guys think about getting him to play second and hit 8th? Last year was horrendous but he should be better than Lopez offensively and probably defensively as well and not cost an arm/leg since the Tigers seem to not value his defense. Plus, we would no longer have to see him robbing M's of line drives down the 3B line.

Firejoemorgan.com, as many of you already know, rocks. Latest post takes apart a Jon Heyman article.

Go read it.

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So... has anyone ever studied home effects historically? Why is it that teams typically win more at home, specifically good teams. I understand the idea of building a roster of guys conducive to one's home park but the M's offense at least, is counterproductive to that end and is still succeeding at an impressive rate at home. If you don't buy arguments for clutchiness, momentum, or grittiness, is there any logical explanation for home success? DMZ's published writings on groundskeeping come to mind but surely there is more to it than that...

Angel Vermin

This is disgusting and just one more reason to overtake them for the division. Think of the children that could get bitten by over-sized rats. In fact, I think the Angels should have to forfeit any home games where an opposing team's player had "flu-like" symptoms. Obviously, it was from the food.

I joke, but seriously, fuck the angels.

Go read his new blog entry. I have to go to work and am too disgusted to attempt to critique it. Some highlights: He specifically denounces those who gave Bavasi a "standing ovation" (hmm where did that come from?), He goes on and on about how perfect Gagne is and points to all the "holes" in the pen. The funny one is mentioning Lowe's surgery but neglecting Gagne's. He wants us to count all the blown leads after a starter leaves the game and blame it on standing pat at the deadline. That should be easy, they can probably get counted on the left hand of a disfigured fireworks stand salesman. I hate going to work pissed off.

The worldwide leader's "premium" insider-only Rumor Central has Seattle interested in Mark Loretta as a fallback option. Ummm, right, fallback out of contention option.

That's the bad news. Good news is that apparently the Rays want to keep the 37 year old Reyes as well as Wheeler since he has a mere 1 million dollar option for next year.

Jayson Stark is the mentioned source so it could all be a bunch of horseshit.

Also, our hated rivals, those freakin friars, are trying to get Mariner-killer Mike Lamb. Already planning for next year's interleague play apparently.