Baseball Flotsam and Jetsam

Miscellaneous baseball thoughts and observations.

I have to laugh at all the regular baseball writers who have written about wondering what Curt Schilling will say about his 1-hitter on his blog 38pitches.com. I'm amused by all the writers talking about Schilling's blog for 2 reasons; 1. it is tacit confirmation that it is better to hear direct from the athlete himself without the filter of a sportswriter and 2. Schilling hasn't posted anything yet but all the people going to his site to check to see what he has to say must be really driving up his traffic numbers. The same scribes who belittle Schilling and his blogging are helping to make his site more successful... People think that Manny Ramirez has been slumping (and according to his usual numbers he is) but after hitting .327 in May and .423 so far in June - his season batting average is up to .288 and climbing... The Red Sox are lucky not to be seeing Brandon Webb in this series against the Diamondbacks. I'd rather see Randy Johnson every day of the week than see Brandon Webb... John Donovan has a nice take on Bud Selig and MLB being intent on "putting the screws" to Jason Giambi to speak honestly and openly to George Mitchell and his committee. I think this has more to do with trying to punish Giambi for breaking the MLB unwritten rule of omerta than getting to the truth. Just remember that Selig was the guy who signed a full page love note in USA Today to Rafael Palmeiro in July of 2005 when Palmeiro got his 3,000th hit even though Selig KNEW that Palmeiro had failed a steroids test in May of 2005. Donovan makes an excellent point that maybe Selig is pressuring Giambi because they know something the rest of us don't and they can use that as leverage. You have to remember that speculation is that Giambi was honest with the BALCO grand jury in large part because they also had something on his brother Jeremy. Supposedly Giambi's "honesty" helped keep any criminal charges off his brother. Maybe Selig has similar dirt to use against Giambi?