Links of the Day for 5/8/06

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• Johan Santana took a no-hit game into the 7th inning Sunday before allowing a seeing-eye grounder to Ivan Rodriguez, and it was fun to listen to Herb Carneal and John Gordon in the middle innings as they adhered strictly to the old superstition about never mentioning a no-hitter until it’s broken up, and nearly burst from the excitement. At one point, Carneal danced on the edge of cosmic acceptability when he said, “Two baserunners for the Tigers in the game…” [long pause here, even for Herb] “…a walk… and a hit batsman. Santana’s first pitch to Inge in there for a called strike…” Classic stuff, and it got Intern Sam thinking about superstitions, and ballplayers, and well, we’ve all got our favorites, right? (How about the shortstop who was terrified of the letter ‘x’? Or the Twins’ own Gene Mauch, who never washed his underwear after a win?) Here’s a great list of some of the strangest…



• Some of the best writing and research on the Twins stadium shenanigans at the Capitol is happening on a blog authored by a Minnesota Senate staffer who says that today could be a very important day for the Twins bill.



• Anyone watching a baseball game on TV over the last couple of years has probably heard some commentator or other griping about the lack of inside pitching in the modern game. Since the guy griping the loudest is usually the unbelievably pompous Joe Morgan, many fans might be tempted to assume that a lack of chin music isn’t an actual problem. After all, there are still plenty of great pitchers around, right? But the fact is, (and Intern Sam shudders to type these words,) Morgan is right, and this weekend, Gordon Wittenmeyer took a stab at explaining why…



• We’re just going to assume that there isn’t actually a Twins farmhand named Josh Medwell. On the off chance that there actually is, we absolutely, positively, do not want to hear about it.



• How tough is it to be a Royals fan? So tough that one 34-year-old fan is throwing in the towel in seriously public fashion. Dismayed by years of futile rooting, Chad Carroll started an eBay auction, offering “my loyalty to the Kansas City Royals (jersey included)” to the highest bidder, and promised the winner the privilege of picking another team for Carroll to support. A Yahoo!Sports columnist offered $198.50, and the Northern League’s Kansas City T-Bones took a run at Carroll’s loyalty as well, but in the end, it was a group of Chad’s buddies who pooled their bids to win the auction. Happy ending, right? Wrong. One of the teams under consideration as Chad’s new rooting interest is the Pittsburgh Pirates.