End of the Week Randomness

Lazy as I wanna be... I walked to the library today like a good boy, but not much work has been done. I'm hoping a little office time later this evening may be more productive. God knows it'll be quiet.

• I got an email yesterday from a member of the KC Press Corps taking me to task for the content of my Tuesday night rant regarding the media's coverage of the Arod/Boras/World Series controversy. With a little more perspective, I think one of the problems with the piece was that I started off complaining about ESPN specifically, and ended up riffing on the overall state of "the sports media" as a whole. Said emailer also took offense to my claim that the coverage of the Royals here at RR was "better, deeper, more intelligent" than anywhere else, pointing out that I've broken, umm, zero stories here, and rely on the work done by the professionals for my content. This is certainly true, and was something like the moment in The Office when Michael breaks down and calls Ryan out as someone who has never made a sale. Its pretty obvious that just about all true blogs -- JoePo's doesn't really count -- aren't really breaking stories, at least in the highly mediated world of sports. While I've never broken a story, its also hard to imagine how I could, even if I wanted to do so with all my heart.(Does anyone find it fascinating that its actually easier for political bloggers to take a primary role in coverage and rumor-mongering than it is in something so completely meaningless as baseball?) Anyway, the emailer made a valid point to me, and I do think we are actually pretty lucky as Royals fans: the Star has stayed committed to a heavy coverage of the team and between Rob and Rany the Royals never stray too far from the radar of the net set. Nevertheless, I'm pretty proud of the unpaid, mostly annonymous "work" we do here at RR, which includes the activity in the comments. Although it came off as a blast, I made the comment more as a bit of pride about how good I thought this site was, not that the Star sucked. Insight, at times, is a process, and I know what makes the blog strong and interesting is the community of readers, not the individual wisdom or whatever of a lone voice.
• Speaking of the professional media, Lynn Herring breaks down the Zumaya injury, surgery and recovery.
• (Disclaimer: This is 100% not-baseball related.) I finished reading Malcolm Bradbury's campus novel Eating People is Wrong, which I'd long heard was a classic of the genre. I'm not so sure about that. Odd little book, mostly dedicated to proving some obscure point about the pitfalls of being a liberal humanist or something. That we should all be committed Christians or Communists seems to be the point, although I'm honestly not sure. In some ways it works as a proto-anti-political-correctness novel, but then again, who actually likes political correctness anyways? Basically every character comes off as unlikeable and a social failure, although not totally in a truly humorous way. What I did enjoy about the book was its description of what life was like in the pre-internet, pre-cell-phone, tea and pub social world of a 1950s British University. The kind of setting when even telephone use was only reserved for emergencies and so on. And thats really the book, the social world. Its one of those campus novels where we lack a single scene that takes place in a classroom, and only one or two that take place in an office. (One of my favorite books that actually has classroom scenes is Isherwood's A Single Man.) The truest note of the book seems to be the fact that the primary female character, a history grad student named Emma, is systematically pursued by every male in the book, simply because she's moderately pretty. Moderately. There's also quite a bit of very English fussing about class and manners and how to behave at tea, which is sorta fun to read in a "why is this important?" way. Its no Lucky Jim or Small World, but its alright.
• Beyond the Boxscore ponders what Bob Gibson's career would have been like if he pitched in a larger ballpark. I think you know where this is going.
• The Cardinals have a new GM, and apparently no one is very happy about it.
• The team blog has posted pictures of some Royals employees in costume... That one hot dog has a pretty smile.
• Clone Chronicles talks ISU-KSU.
• Mike Sweeney is second all-time on the Royals HR leaderboard, with 197 HRs as a Royal. (Ugliest. Sentence. Ever.) It doesn't look like he'll catch Brett (317) or even break 200 as a Royal, but its pretty amazing how big a lead he has on any other current Royal. Emil is at 38, Teahen and DeJesus at 32 and 31 and thats basically it. Berroa blasted 45 homers as a Royal, but he's probably topped out as well.      
• Turns out the Yankees can still buy a World Series ring, here's how.
• I find myself more and more curious about the NBA, but then when I try to watch a game, I get bored.
• Lovely Royals Review t-shirts are still availible. I hear they are very popular among women ages 20-25 across the midwest.
• Has anyone actually watched Cavemen? I did last week, sorta as a joke, but actually found myself laughing out loud. The show's presentation of yuppie/hipster culture is pretty accurate, and there's a tremendous amount of attention to detail in terms of clothing, how they setup their apartment, what they eat, etc. The writing is also a little edgy. I'm sure the show will get tanked any week now, and its somewhat deplorable that it began as an ad, but there are some smart people working on this thing. For a sample, check out this clip.