With no outs in the ninth and runners on first and third, Kendry Morales came to the plate to bat from the left side against Gavin Floyd.  Ozzie Guillen immediately went to the pen to bring in lefty Matt Thornton to get the platoon matchup.

Kendry Morales, standing at the plate, smiling and watching Thornton warm up: You are wonderful
Thornton: I’ve worked hard to become so
Morales: I admit it, you are better than I am.
Thornton: Then why are you smiling?
Morales (switching to the other side of the plate): Because I am not left-handed!

(Unfortunately he only hit a sac fly, but I needed to get that in here somewhere.)

Dang, screwed that one up.  I forgot the “Because I know something you do not know.”

It’s a bad sign when I mess up quoting a Princess Bride line first thing in the morning.  It’s going to be a long day.

John:

Thank you for the advice. It’s refreshing to see someone who took a year off from school. Quite frankly, I’m getting sick of school and feel like going straight into law school would bring on more negatives than positives.

I went high school to college to grad school and started fulltime work as a librarian at age 22.

But now I have a lot of accumulated vacation and I go all over the place.

Like Cleveland last year.

And Bob:  Since I know you love Ohio so much I have to ask: do they ever make you take business trips here to Columbus to see OCLC (or whoever the Dewey decimal system people are)?  We’re quite proud of that as a city, you know.

If so, we’ll have to meet up sometime to exchange public servant talk.  Note: my mandated cost savings days were due in part to a budget compromise that restored library funding, so you’re buying the first drink.

Craig, turns out I’ll be in the Columbus area (Granville) next week.  Maybe we can catch the Clippers-Indy Indians game Thursday night, if I can get out of work on time.

Never thought of it that way, lar. Though to be fair, they’ve been the Clippers for 30 years, even when the Yanks and Nats were the affiliation.

Greg—I may be able to do next Thursday. Buzz me offline.

I know this is off topic, since I’m not talking about law school or the Princess Bride (I know it sounds cliche, but the book was an order of magnitude better, BTW) but doesn’t anybody else think that the Sergio Mitre Experiment in NY should be over by now? 

The guy started by giving up 4 runs in 5.2 innings, then gave up 4 runs in 5 innings, then 5 runs in 3 IP, then 3 runs in 3.1 IP (last night).  He’s allowed 38 baserunners and 15 earned runs in 18 innings of work, and nobody’s even talking about bumping him from the rotation. 

Let the Red Sox keep running an obviously ineffective starter out there every 5th day.  There’s no good reason for the Yankees to do it, too. 

Speaking of which, has anyone noticed that John Smoltz has only one start against even a mediocre team offense?  Five of his seven starts have come against Baltimore (3), KC and Oakland, three of the five worst hitting clubs in the AL, and another came against Washington, who’s mediocre in the NL but would be 3rd worst if they were in the AL.  The only decent hitting team he’s faced is Texas and he gave up 6 runs in less than 6 innings of work.  What are they thinking?

lar -

You may be on to something with Pirate and Clipper connection as the Columbus team used to be affiliated with the Pirates prior to their long-term affiliation with the Yankees.  John Galbreath (former Pirates owners) are from Columbus and he was instrumental in bringing the team back to Columbus.

I could never make sense of how Clipper related to the team as the Scioto River that runs through Columbus cannot handle much more than a bass boat.  Also, had someone try to tell me that Columbus sailed on a clipper ship but that would have been impossible as they were primarily a British ship from several centuries after 1492. Another time someone claimed it was in honor of Joe DiMaggio but that cannot be true because the Clipper became the name when they were with the Pirates.

Maybe there is some kind of pirate/clipper ship connection I am not aware of - it makes much more sense than any other explanation I have heard.  Not sure if Craig will agree with me but Columbus has struggled with naming it sports team. For example, Columbus Bluejackets (NHL), Columbus Crew (MLS), Columbus Horizon (CBA?), and Ohio Glory (some football league).  Outside of an ECHL hockey team in 1990’s named the Chill, Columbus has dropped the ball/puck on the naming sport franchises.

Moose is right. We suck at naming teams.  When the NHL expansion franchise was announced I was strongly in the “Mad Cows” camp. It was topical, Columbus is a cow town, people who ring those bells at the Columbus Clippers games could have repurposed them for hockey. It would have been awesome!  But no: we get the “Blue Jackets.” Which may be a civil war reference. Or may be a bug.  Or, based on the mascot, is kind of both. Blah.

But then again, when you’re in the middle of Ohio, have no notable topographical features, no interesting native fauna, and not even that much in the name of history, whaddaya gonna do?

James Thurber was from Columbus. He wrote that story based on the Red Barber phrase.  Let’s call the baseball team “The Columbus Catbirds.”

Makes more sense than anything else.