Farmer Ted

Finally saw it last night On Demand. "Yeah, looks like a division sign." You can't make this shit up, really. Great music, too.

A sad day.

The Bedard trade is part of the O's getting younger. Bedard is only 29 for crissakes.

Benson and his wife looking to move up I-95. From the Philly Inquirer. The Phillies continue to talk with Gregg Clifton, the agent for free-agent righthander Kris Benson. The team has seen Benson, 33, throw twice in private sessions recently. Benson, who missed last season recovering from shoulder surgery, is looking for a one-year contract with performance bonuses. Today could be an important day in negotiations because Benson is scheduled to throw for a few teams tomorrow. If those teams like what they see, that could change the dynamic of negotiations between the Phillies and Clifton. "Trying to get to the finish line," Phillies assistant general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. said. "I know the player is interested in playing in Philadelphia, and we have interest in signing him. But it takes two to tango, and at the end of the day we have to be comfortable and they have to be comfortable." If Benson signs, he would compete for a spot in the rotation with Adam Eaton, Chad Durbin and Travis Blackley.

I would have predicted Jose Valentin and his porn 'stache to be seen at a cock fight.

Bernard "Innocent until proven" Gilkey, unheralded star of Men in Black.

Chicago Sun-Times: The White Sox are expected to announce today that they have reached agreement on a two-year, $11 million contract with free-agent reliever Octavio Dotel, several sources close to the situation said Monday. The Sox also had been looking at signing starting pitcher Bartolo Colon, but with Dotel on board and Colon wanting more than a one-year deal, those talks have gone all but silent.

This is the last year the Dodgers will have spring training in Vero Beach. A trip to Dodgertown may be worthwhile.

Baseball Prospectus had this to say about DWright's counterpart in DC. Not sure I agree with the last sentence. Ryan Zimmerman's raw stat lines have been held down by his home park, RFK Stadium, which just killed power, especially right-handed power. Zimmerman's home/road splits do not reflect this gap: he's slugged .501 at RFK in his career, .435 on the road, but a guiding principle of performance analysis is that an individual's home/road splits, even over two years, do not mean that player isn't being affected by his home park. We know what RFK did to run scoring and power, and moving to a new park should enable Zimmerman to convert some of his doubles to home runs. Throw in development -- he's 23 this season -- and you have the recipe for a breakout. David Wright might well have been the most valuable player in the National League last season; Zimmerman will be a better player than Wright in 2008.

The Minnesota Newsies starting to latch on hard to this story now. The Johan Santana trade discussions have reached a quiet but crucial stage. The Twins know what they can get. And they realize none of the packages will appease their fans, who might never forgive them for trading the two-time Cy Young Award winner. For now, the Twins and the three most interested Santana suitors -- the Mets, Yankees and Red Sox -- are regrouping, trying to decide how far beyond their comfort zones they will go to close this deal. The end result might leave some Twins fans gasping for breath. Lately, the Twins have seemed most intrigued with the Mets' offer. The Mets are offering some combination of the following five players: Carlos Gomez, Fernando Martinez, Deolis Guerra, Philip Humber and Kevin Mulvey. Minneapolis Star Tribune

Ty Wigginton signs a one-year deal with Houston. Xavier Nady avoids arbitration and scores $3.35 million deal for 2008 with Pittsburgh.

Was there a few weeks ago and got my annual $20 ticket. Wifey bought her father, a Bostonian, a ticket with the BoSox to win. That, I believe, was 4-1.

Yup, Lucnhbucket, this sounds like the start if a new book.

Did the Palm Beach route and drove up. Damn if the game didn't get rained out. Went back to my pad in West Palm Beach (the Hilton right near the airport and I-95), did some work from the room, and hit the Ft. Lauderdale Hooters later that night (I wasn't as lucky as Chipper Jones if you know what I'm sayin). Just watch out for Jim Leyritz driving around FTL.

I'm a proponent of the Mets moving the AAA squad to Brooklyn but I know there are obstacles to that.

Could the government of Singapore demand naming rights to Citi Field after this? NEW YORK (AP) -- Citigroup Inc. is expected to announce thousands of job cuts after posting dismal results for the fourth quarter, when the bank's mortgage-riddled portfolio lost billions of dollars in value. Citigroup swung to a loss of nearly $10 billion in the fourth quarter as it took a write-down of $18.1 billion for bad bets related to the mortgage industry, the bank said on Tuesday. On the hunt for cash, the nation's largest bank said Tuesday it also got a $12.5 billion investment from outside investors, including $6.88 billion from the Government of Singapore Investment Corp.

The guy who runs the Progressive show. A big fan of the ganja. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_B._Lewis

Tim Bogar named coach with the Rays.

Did I see Mike DeFelice just signed somehwere? on edit: yup, Tampa Bay, minor league deal

Feb. 28 Boston College vs. Boston Red Sox

When I was working in radio several years back, the station's legal suits always addressed the on-air staff once a year and firmly said "never record a listener calling in without their consent or them knowing." Even once per day, we ran a promo tape about prize winning eligibility that mentioned all winners must consent to the staff using their voice, if recorded, for on-air promos and publicity. Well, where the hell does this stand?

From ESPN.com. The hole Clemens is digging gets bigger and bigger. The last question is the best. He said, he said: In the Mitchell report, trainer Brian McNamee claims he injected Roger Clemens with steroids more than a dozen times over the course of three different seasons, usually "in the buttocks." Meanwhile, Clemens told "60 Minutes" that McNamee never injected him with steroids, but rather with vitamin B-12 and lidocaine, the latter an anesthetic that Clemens claimed was "for my joints." Does Clemens' explanation make medical sense? Page 2 talked to a pair of experts: 1. What is lidocaine, and how does it work? Dr. Ken Dretchen, pharmacology department chair, Georgetown University: It's a member of a class of compounds that work as local anesthetics, which means it's injected close to where there's a nerve area to decrease sensation and pain by deadening the nerve fibers. Dr. John F. Dombrowski, director of pain medicine at the Washington Pain Center and former president of the D.C. Society of Anesthesiologists: We've all had experiences with it. We've gone to the dentist and had a tooth numbed up, or a dermatologist to get a wart or mole removed. They inject it under the skin to make it numb. 2. So would it work for joint pain? Dr. Dretchen: Joint pain means you have pain fibers being excited, being set off with irritation or inflammation. If you inject lidocaine near those nerve fibers, you can decrease their transmission of pain signals. However, most people would treat [joint pain] with anti-inflammatory drugs. Dr. Dombrowski: In our practice, I use local anesthetics for what is known as myofascial pain -- run of the mill, my neck or back hurts, muscular-skeletal pain that comes from stress or overuse. If you're working at a computer desk all the time and your neck and shoulders are in knots, and you can push on that spot and say, "Oh my God, it hurts," that's the perfect spot for an injection. And if we're using that, we're probably also using a little bit of steroids. 3. Wait -- steroids? Dr. Dombrowski: Steroids are like alcohol. There are different kinds. For pain, I'll use a corticosteroid, like a cortisone shot. Those are done to joints and muscles to decrease inflammation. They will never make you big, unlike anabolic steroids such as testosterone. I would never use an anabolic steroid for pain management. 4. Right. So would it make sense for a pitcher to inject lidocaine? Dr. Dombrowski: If it's your pitching arm, I could see injecting the shoulder to loosen up, throw some better heat. That's not unreasonable. 5. How long do the pain-relieving effects of lidocaine last? Dr. Dombrowski: It's very short-lived. Four, six, maybe eight hours at most. Local anesthetics are a Band-Aid approach. They help you feel a little bit better. Lidocaine would not do anything about joint inflammation. 6. Can you get pain relief in your joints by injecting lidocaine into your, well, buttocks? Dr. Dombrowski: No. Never. Unless Clemens was limited by hip pain or whatever in his buttocks, then no, that's not what you do. You use big deep muscles for injecting steroids. But you would never treat shoulder or elbow pain in that way. If what he was injected with was truly lidocaine, his butt cheek would be numb. And that's it. Dr. Dretchen: Just a blind injection into the gluteus area, that would be a strange usage of the drug. When you go to the dentist, would you get an injection into your arm? Of course not. Patrick Hruby is a columnist for Page 2.

Clemens has officially filed a defamation suit against McNamee. This basically gives Clemens another excuse not to answer questions before Congress ("I can't answer that question due to pending litigation") rather than pleading the 5th before Congress.

And what's that guy doing with a mini digital camera/camera phone in the front row? The wardrobe director for this flick blows.

I think the Mets were going with the blue smurf cleats with those unis, not black.