The Futility Infielder

One final thanks to everybody with whom I've buried the hatchet over the past weekend. The folding metal chair riot is over, we're all a little wiser now for our past foolishness, and we've moved on. Now to some more lighthearted stuff...

* One of the nicest things that's happened to me over the past year with relation to this site is that I've made a few face-to-face friends in my vicinity. Alex Belth was the first, and Greg Spira and I have hung out a few times as well. Now the past weeks have brought a couple more. Last Thursday, I had dinner with Alex Ciepley of ball talk at a Vietnamese restaurant in Chinatown. Alex and I had met once before -- I rousted him into an all-too-brief burgers-and-beers gathering with Alex B., Greg, and my pal Nick a couple weeks back, but this was just two guys chattering nonstop about the Cubs, the Yankees, DIPS, PECOTA, the postseason, and the offseason, you name it. Eventually the discussion turned to Alex's bold Baseball's Top 10 Gay Icons piece of a couple weeks ago, and he said the response had been overwhelmingly positive, which was very refreshing to hear -- hell, I got flamed for writing about Todd Jones' league-leading homophobia last summer.

Alex sent me a pretty funny email the other day, following Will Carroll's expression of support for my opening salvo in this past (lost) weekend's cyberbrawl. Will, who's been a helpful source of knowledge as I've gone through my shoulder surgery and rehab, wrote about me, "He may only have one arm, but he comes out swinging. I don't think I'm the only one that's got his back." Alex saw this and wrote me:

so i'm sitting here at my computer friday evening, thinking, "my god! am i the most clueless person ever? have i really spent two evenings with this guy and never noticed he had a FAKE ARM???"

embarrassed as all hell, of course, i wrote will for more information: he informed me of the running joke regarding your labrum surgery, much to my relief.

i seriously had thought i was going insane...

In the midst of all thiis weekend's tension, that had me ROTFLMFAO, as they say. Speaking of the shoulder, after a brief but scary setback caused by overly aggressive/ambitious physical therapy, it's been responding very well to a more moderate program, and while the light at the end of the tunnel is still a couple of months away, at least I can now see it. The key with the recovery is getting the muscles at the back of the shoulder to pull the scapula down so that the socket opens up and the arm moves correctly without impingement. When those muscles haven't been working right for about nine months, it's a bitch to re-teach them. Mine have finally been getting the education they so sorely needed.

* On the subject of meeting up, recently I discovered that I have a reader in my own building. Ameer's his name, and he saw a piece of outgoing mail I had left on the doorman's counter, paperwork headed to Baseball Prospectus, and realized that I was the same guy whose blog he reads and who had just written the BP articles. We've emailed back and forth, and on Monday night finally got together for industrial-strength pints at the German beer hall down the block. He's an A's fan with a very Moneyball/stathead take on the game, so we were right at home chatting about Billy Beane, Scott Hatteberg, the Big Three, the blog scene, and that insane Peter Gammons gossip report from Boston Dirt Dogs which I came across during Quotegate. Of course, we had some good laughs about that whole mess too. Very cool to find more likeminded folks in the neighborhood; now that I'm a minor celeb in my own building, my head can barely fit through the door.

* Long missing in action, Giants fan and Barry Bonds' personal statistician John Perricone has launched his redesigned Only Baseball Matters website. He's already got his gloves off, excoriating Jints GM Brian Sabean for overpaying some Grade-D roster filler while passing up a chance to sign Vladimir Guerrero. And speaking of Giants blogs and torn labrums, check out Fog Ball's Tom Gorman's take on reliever Robb Nen. Tom's a certified Emergency Medical Technician, and he knows his way around the old wing. Nen's had three surgeries to repair a torn rotator cuff and a torn labrum. The former's in pretty serious shape (40% torn or more) but from my understanding of the latter, Giants fans shouldn't get their hopes up about the guy ever being a productive pitcher again.

* Baseball Outsider got my attention with a snazzy-looking site. Time will tell about their takes on baseball. I'm going to have to disagree with Brandon Rosage's view of the Dodger sale, which was written a couple weeks ago:

And besides their beautiful gem of a ballpark in Chavez Ravine, I haven?t been able to get past one simple thing: the Dodgers are owned by Rupert Murdoch; a man that is perhaps more evil than George Steinbrenner, Al Davis and Carson Daly combined.

The biggest thing the Dodgers have going for them right now, besides Gagne and Dodger Dogs, is the pending sale of the team to Boston real estate developer Frank McCourt. MLB Chief Operating Officer Bob DuPuy said the baseball owners group will likely vote on the sale Thursday.

Is there an emoticon for "cringe"? Not once in the article is McCourt's shoddy cash-flow situation acknowledged, and for that matter, neither is Shawn Green's injury when discussing his relatively woeful '03 production or chances of rebounding. I won't even get into Rosage's pinning the Dodgers' hopes on Paul LoDuca jacking 20 homers and a .450 slugging percentage or Juan Encarnacion suddenly learning to get on base. Rookie mistakes, let's hope. He's just one of four columnists, however, and the site is chock full of features (somewhat confusingly so), so check them out and make your own call.

• Speaking of the Dodgers, I once held that you haven't lived on the edge until you've gone through a pennant race with Jose Offerman as your regular shortstop. Back in the abbreviated 1995 season, Offerman made 35 errors and fielded .932 as the Dodgers narrowly won the NL West (and if you think those numbers are bad, check out his BPro card). Offerman, who left the majors in a nasty huff in 2002, spent 2003 in the independent Atlantic League and just resurfaced in a minor-league deal with the Twins. The Sports Retort touches all the bases of his career and has a first-hand perspective on the torment Offerman has caused Dodger and Red Sox fans. It's Awfulman.