Yuniesky and Yorvit: Broken up

The best two names on any one team will be no more. The M's signed Japanese catcher Kenji Johjima, and will be looking to move Yorvit Torrealba (who they got for Randy Winn). That means that the only Yorvit and the only Yuniesky Betancourt will no longer be on the same team. Bummer. Here's to hoping that Yorvit is traded to the Dodgers... to catch for Yhency Brazoban.

Yorvit:
Yuniesky:Kenji ("Yoko"):Yhency:

Steroids.

1. Well, it looks like McCain has succeeded in breaking the union. I am pissed, because I thought the current regime (in place for all of one year) was good enough, with Shame being a primary factor, that it should have been continued for several years.

At least players start with a clean slate. Everyone is at "Strike 0" right now. Even Matt Lawton. But that probably means that players who claim that new positive tests are results of previous detected (and punished) usage will be punished again. (If I really wanted to, I could find the name of the Mariners' pitcher who was punished in the Minor and Majors for one usage.

2. I do think 50 games is too much for a first offense. Maybe 15/75 would have been more reasonable (when you get your first positive, you'll really need to think about what you do from then on out, but if you've never tested positive, why be so paranoid about everything?)

3. But at least the issue appears to now be done with and columnists will have to find some other crap to get into fits about. (Pitch correcting for pop singers, when everybody assumes that they're making those sounds with their God-given talents would be a good start.)

4. Dear Democrats, please nominate someone I can vote for (not Kerry) in 2008. If McCain is the GOP nominee, I can not and will not vote for him. My vote is here for the taking. Come get it.

Football.

It's about this time each year that I start paying attention to the football season: days are shorter and colder. Baseball is really over. The Deer hunt is over. Now, I am not as big a football fan as I am a baseball fan (I'd prefer more punting and kicking), but I still have random thoughts about the sport:

1. I love Jake Plummer's beard. He reminds me of Matt Guerrier, with the Hockey/Voyageur beard. Neither look that good with bare chins. I can't think of any other pitchers or quarterbacks with that look, so I think it's a great combo of distinctive and best option.

2. Paul Edinger, Vikings Kicker, is like a baseball player. He can ground softly into a double play with a runner at third (miss a chip shot or extra point) or hit a walk off (long game-ending FGs). I love the fact that games played by big crushing men are decided by erratic feet of small men like Edinger.

3. I'm not a Vikings fan like I am a Twins fan. I want the Twins to win. I want the Vikes to entertain me. These last years have been dang entertaining for someone who doesn't necessarily hope for success. My favorite ever Vikings game is the last-game loss to Arizona that kept the vikings out of the playoffs in 2003. No way they don't win that game, until they lose it. If I knew German I'd give that game and season a name like Einsturzende Neubauten, but meaning "fantastic collapse." Second-favorite, giving up 4 touchdowns in 2 minutes to Seattle in 2003. 2004's backing into the playoffs at 8-8, and then winning the first game, in Lambeau was equally entertaining. Yesterday's no-offense win was great in the same vein. Thank you vikings for a lot of fun. I think, If the Gary Anderson missed FG against Atlanta, or the giving up the ghost to the Giants would happen now, I could get through it and smile.

Here are my non-football thoughts of the week:
4. My son, "PTBNL" better be named by Dec 8, because that's the day he's going to be born. C-section birth.

5. BatGirl has cancelled her Star-Tribune subscription due to the dumb writing of a columnist. And that columnist is not even Jim Souhan. Apparently, under her "Anne Ursu" daytime disguise, she reads Katherine Kersten's columns (although I may be slightly more favorable of Kersten's politics than Ursu*'s, I think she's a talk-radio writer, trying to get a reaction out of people more than to advance any opinion). The reader representative, Kate Parry, has the Story:

"I've decided I am going to cancel my subscription today. ... Essentially the newspaper has condoned discrimination and bigotry. While I recognize that a columnist's position is not the paper's, by publishing these views the newspaper is at least saying they are worthy of dissemination; I doubt the newspaper would publish a column suggesting something racially discriminatory," wrote Ann[sic] Ursu, an author living in Hopkins.

Yet somehow, this doesn't feel fair to LaVelle.

*Note, first that Parry seems to have mis-spelled "Anne," so it is possible that there is another author in the Twin Cities, "Ann Ursu," but I find that unlikely. Also, I have attributed this political opinion to Bat-Girl's daytime guise rather than her true personality, BatGirl, whose only political opinions can be boiled down to: "Build it."