Pretty good football game last night, eh? I mean, when Jake, the Chihuahua/Pug mix, started dashing all over the field like he owned the place, I couldn't help but miss the voice of Harry Kalas. He would have made that a very special moment.

Seriously, though, I ended up enjoying the Super Bowl pretty well. It lagged for quite a bit in the middle there, but once Drew Brees started making those quick passes, the game took on a life of it's own. It was an exciting end. Congrats to all the Saints fans out there!

Now on to more important things: the baseball season!

There's been a lot of talk this offseason about the way the Red Sox have re-built their team since the season ended. With the departure of Jason Bay via free agency, and with the arrival of Mike Cameron and Adrian Beltre, among others, the talk has centered around how the Red Sox are trying to improve themselves defensively, at the expense of their offense. As you might guess, this has not gone over well with some of the more "traditional" voices. In fact, if you were to listen to the more extreme opinions, you might wonder how the Red Sox are going to score any runs whatsoever this year, or think that they'll be lucky to even compete with the Royals, let alone the Yankees or Rays.

I don't know if these people truly believe their complaints, or if it's just some weird mixture of disappointment at not re-signing Bay, a lack of understanding of defense in baseball, and a 24-hour newscycle that must be fed, but I find myself getting frustrated at the complaints. It's not like Jason Bay was ever an offensive juggernaut, or that Mike Cameron is an offensive black-hole, no matter how loudly people complain. The truth of the matter is, the 2010 Red Sox are going to be a fine team that will easily compete for the post-season all year. They're not going to hit 215 home runs, but they aren't going to hit 70 either. I honestly don't think fans will have much to complain about with that team on the field every night.

The complaints did get me thinking, though: what would a team that was built exclusively around defense look like? Not the Mike Schmidt and Albert Pujols school of defense, either, where it's balanced out by a great bat. The team I'm thinking of would consist entirely of all-glove/no-bat players - the more extreme the better. This seems to be what all the Boston opinion-makers are envisioning anyway. How would that team look in real life?

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So there's a big football game this weekend between the Indianapolis Colts and the New Orleans Saints. Who knew?

In honor of the big game, I thought it might be fun to take a look at the baseball history between the two towns. Currently, Indianapolis is home to the Indianapolis Indians, the Triple-A ball club of the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Indians play in the International League and, thus, play teams from Toledo, Durham, and Pawtucket on a regular basis. The Zephyrs call New Orleans home and play in the Pacific Coast League as the Marlins' affiliate. Their opponents are typically from Oklahoma, Tacoma, and Fresno. The two leagues do not participate in any type of interleague play.

The last time the cities of New Orleans and Indianapolis played a regularly scheduled, meaningful game against each other would have been in 1997, when both clubs were members of the American Association. The AA closed its doors after that season, though, and the league's teams were divided between the two bigger minor leagues.

Both towns have a much richer baseball history, though.

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Last week, the Pirates unveiled plans for their newest statue to be erected outside of PNC Park sometime next summer. As you can see from the picture to the right, it's an awesome depiction of one of the Pirates' most memorable moments: Bill Mazeroski's Series-clinching home run over the Yankees in Game 7 of the 1960 World Series. In the statue, Maz is seen rounding second-base with his arms spread wide in jubilation, exactly as it happened fifty years ago. It just might be the single best statue in Major League Baseball today.

But what would be its competition? Living in Milwaukee, I'm very familiar with the Robin Yount and Hank Aaron statues outside Miller Park. I've also had a good chance to see the Bob Feller statue in Cleveland, the Willie Mays statue in San Francisco, and a few others around the country. That's only a drop in the bucket, though. With 30 major league stadiums around the country, there are many, many statues that I've never had a chance to see - especially when you consider that, for the most part, teams can't seem to stop at erecting just one.

Using Flickr and a few ingenious searches (e.g., "comerica park statues" or "busch stadium statues"), I went on a little statuary expedition last night, trying to compile a list of statues found in the major leagues. Now, I make no promises that this list is comprehensive. I did my best to make sure that I didn't miss any statues at any given park, but, with the vagaries of people's tagging at Flickr and the sheer number of statues, I'm bound to have missed one or two or ten, or mis-classified those that I did find. If you happen to see any errors or omissions, please drop me a line in the comments. And if you can include a link to a picture of said statue, even better.

But what would a list like this be without a little personal taste thrown in? I've listed the thirty ballclubs and their roster of statues below, in order of my most favorite collection of statues to my least favorite (based solely on their pictures, of course). This is in no way scientific, so I can't say that the factors involved in each club's rank are perfectly consistent across the league. However, the factors did tend to focus on uniqueness, execution, and number (I tend not to like too many statues). I'll explain my choices as I list them. And if there's anything the internet has taught me, it's that most of you will disagree with me in some way. Which is fine. We're only talking about team statues, after all.

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UPDATE, 2/6/10: As of last night sometime, Amazon has returned the Macmillan books back to their shelves for regular purchase through the website. Authors can now receive the full benefit of seeing their books for sale on the internet's largest resaler. This is a good thing.

Has anyone tried buying Jonathan Mahler's The Bronx is Burning from Amazon.com this week? How about Eliot Asinof's Eight Men Out? Tim Kurkjian's Is This a Great Game, or What?? Praying for Gil Hodges? The Final Season?

If you have - or if you only just now clicked on those links - then you'll notice that, as of this writing, none of those books are for sale through Amazon. Sure, most of them give you a "Buy Used or New" option, but those are all third-party sales. Amazon gives you no method of buying these books through itself. And it's not just these five books. There are hundreds and thousands more books currently unavailable for purchase at Amazon.com; these are just a few of the baseball related books affected.

But why is that? There are many, many websites talking about this right now, and many of these are written by industry insiders and authors, so I won't pretend to be an expert. Instead, I'll defer to my main source of information on this, award-winning science-fiction author John Scalzi:

"It appears (if this article is correct) that Amazon has pulled Macmillan books from its online stores because it’s unhappy with Macmillan’s desire to up the price of their eBooks from $10 to $15. Macmillan, I’m assuming, wants to raise the price because it will make more money that way; Amazon, I’m also assuming, wants to keep the price lower because it has Kindles to sell, and low eBook prices is a fine motivator for convincing people to part with the $400 (or so) that Kindles cost. And looming over all of this is the iPad WHICH WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING AS WE KNOW IT FOREVER AND EVER AMEN, and for which, allegedly, Apple will allow booksellers more flexibility in setting their pricing (i.e., you’ll pay $15 for a new book at iBookstore)."

Macmillan, as I'm sure most of us are not aware, is a large publishing company. It's not like this is some small, local publishing firm that Amazon is trying to strongarm. This is a big corporation that is responsible for thousands of authors. By pulling all Macmillan books, Amazon has undermined the earning power of each and every one of those authors. Again, let me defer to Scalzi:

(Click "Read More" to continue reading.)

I spent yesterday at the "Brewers On-Deck" festivities, the annual fan-fest here in town. It was a good time (though I do think there could've been more free activities/presentations considering the $20/ticket I paid). The absolute coolest part of the day, though, is shown above. Sitting in the middle of the showroom, and with no ropes or anything around it, inviting fans to sit in it and take pictures, was the Brewers' bullpen cart from the 1970s. I mean, look how awesome that is.

I shared this picture via Twitter yesterday, and the illustrious Maury Brown of the Business of Sports immediately replied: "I declare -- nay, demand -- that the return of the bullpen cart return to the majors! Give me bullpen cart, or give me death!"

There is something weirdly appealing about a bullpen cart. I mean, how can you not want to see that giant, motorized baseball every game? I was all set to write about the history of the bullpen cart, but I ran across two problems: 1) there doesn't seem to have been a lot written about bullpen carts when they first started showing up (or, if there was, it's hard to find online), and 2) what is written was already covered pretty well by Paul Lukas a couple of years back. Among the notable findings in Lukas' article:

1951: White Sox reliever Marv Rotblatt becomes the first pitcher to ride into a game in Comiskey Park's new bullpen car, prompting an unimpressed New York beat writer to remark, "Chicago is going bush. Just like Cleveland." The car is only for White Sox pitchers, but the team later provides a black Cadillac, supplied by a local funeral home, for the visiting bullpen.

1982: The Mariners introduce a nautically themed bullpen conveyance called the Tugboat. It gets off to a rocky start on Opening Day when pitcher Bill Caudill steals the keys during pregame festivities, leaving the Tugboat stranded on the left-field line and delaying the start of the game. Things don't exactly improve over the next few days, as fan Lyle Huber later recalls: "The Mariners' pitchers refused to ride in the thing. I remember laughing hysterically as I watched Ed Vande Berg sprint in from the bullpen with the Tugboat racing along behind him. This lasted for about a week before they gave up."

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I've been waiting all week for the 2010 preview guides (Sporting News, Athlon, and Lindy's are my preferred choices) to arrive at a nearby book store so I can pick them up and spend the next two months thumbing through them. The team breakdowns are always the number one reason to read the various mags, but they also offer other reasons to purchase them.

Like this absolutely wonderful article on Orel Hershiser, from the 1989 Sporting News Baseball Yearbook. Orel had just come off of a season for the ages, winning the NL Cy Young Award and the NLCS and World Series MVPs. He was also still, technically, in the midst of a 59+ consecutive scoreless innings streak (eventually broken in the first inning of Opening Day). He was, needless to say, a hot commodity. So hot, in fact, that the guys at the Sporting News thought that these pictures were a wise idea (click to enlarge). Talk about a different era. (And here's a shot of the cover of the magazine for good measure.)

It's Friday, and I don't have much else to say. The Brewers fan fest is this weekend, and I'm looking forward to that. I doubt I'll be shelling out $25 for a Ryan Braun or Prince Fielder autograph while I'm there (though if I'm lucky enough to score a Robin Yount autograph ticket, I might not be able to pass that up). The $10 charge for Casey McGehee might be more my cup of tea, if for no other reason than to let him know that there's someone else from Fresno in Milwaukee besides him and Anthony Witrado.

Who knows. I'm just glad to be that much closer to spring training and the baseball season. Now if only those stupid preview mags will show up...

There was a lot of news yesterday - from Apple's unveiling of their Personal Access Display Device (wait - am I confusing that with something?) to the President's State of the Union address - but the most interesting baseball story of the day was the news that Andre Dawson will be inducted into the Hall of Fame this summer as a member of the Montreal Expos. For my friends who are Expos fans out there, I cannot be more happy. Major League Baseball's abandonment of Montreal is still a fresh wound, and news like this is might be the only salve that they'll get in the next 20 years.

Dawson, however, is less than excited. Citing the Cubs as "what really catapulted me to Hall of Fame status", Dawson expressed his "disappointment" in the Hall's decision and hoped that his preference "would carry a little more weight than it did." When asked if he would put a Cubs hat on during his inauguration, he didn't rule it out. He was quick to say that he would never do anything "that might be an embarrassment to someone or show someone up, that's not my character."

Dawson's legacy with the Cubs seems almost exclusively to be wrapped around the 1987 season, Yes, I know he played five other years with the Cubs and went to the All-Star game in four of them, but it's all based around that '87 season, when he signed the blank contract to move to Chicago and then proceeded to blast 49 home runs and win the MVP award for the last place Cubs. It's exactly the kind of thing that would make a fanbase fall in love with a player, so we can't fault them for that.

But it got me wondering about what things were like that March of 1987. Was Dawson really as excited to move to the Cubs for a paltry $650,000 as everyone seems to remember? Could he even have been? Let's take a look.

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It was pointed out on the web last week (kottke.org is where I first saw it) that, if the film Back to the Future was released today, Marty would travel back in time all the way to the year 1980. Not only did that observation cause a whole generation (or two) to feel ridiculously old, but it also helped to start a conversation or two about one of the greatest film trilogies there is.

In reading those conversations, I was reminded of something interesting shown in Back to the Future II. When Marty arrives in Hilldale in 2015, he's inundated with the technology of the future, including a "realistic" hologram of the shark in Jaws 19. He also sees a newsreel highlighting the news that the Cubs have won the World Series over Miami - a team that didn't exist in 1985, and whose mascot, apparently, is a gator with a bat. The news prompts Marty to go buy the Gray's Sports Almanac, and adventures ensue...

But what I love about it is the prediction for the 2015 World Series, between the "lovable losers" (who have yet to win a World Series) and the completely invented Miami squad. This is old news, of course, and urban legend that Back to the Future predicted the Marlins' World Series victories has been going around the net for years. It's still fun to see, though.

And it got me thinking about other movies or tv shows set in the future that have tried their hand at predicting baseball's future. I don't mean the Rookie of the Year or Major League or Air Bud type movies, where the whole point of the movie is what happens to a fictional ballclub. Instead, I mean the movies or shows that are set in the future and only casually mention baseball as a way to anchor their reality in something we might be familiar with. I think you'll see what I mean.

The list below are just a few of the movies and shows that I could think of off the top of my head. I know I've missed one or two or ten, so feel free to leave any examples in the comments.

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I mentioned this last week, but there's finally more information to share. As you can see from the big button to the left, the Wezen-Ball iPhone and Android apps are now available! Here's the press release:

We're proud to announce a partnership with Notice Software for mobile applications of Wezen-Ball and other Bloguin partner sites for the Iphone and Android Smart Phones (read the press release)

Although bloggers probably don't get away from their computers enough, we understand that you do. However that shouldn't hinder your ability to consume some of the great content across Bloguin when you know you're in a boring conversation, waiting for your friend, on the road, procrastinating at work, or stuck at a horrible movie with Nicholas Cage in it.

By downloading one of these apps you'll be able to:

- be notified of new content updates
- read and search through all articles
- see relevant content across the network
- and in a future release have the ability to read and leave comments

Click the button to the left (or right here) to see more screenshots and find out a little more information. To download the iPhone app, click here. For the Android app, just search the Android Market for "Wezen Ball".

The app is pretty slick. Now go download it and start using Wezen-Ball on your smart phone. Who could ask for more?

Last week was a pretty good week. Everyone seemed to love the Charlie Brown piece, and it got a lot of attention around the internet. That was nice to be a part of. I'm glad it made so many people happy.

Part of the hoopla last week was an interview I did with the CBC's "As It Happens". The interview was recorded on Thursday, but with all the real news from last week - all of it much more important than myself, of course - they weren't able to fit it in. They were finally able to squeeze the interview in to tonight's program.

You can head over to the "As It Happens" website and listen to the interview yourself. The show can be found here, and my interview is at the 15:08 mark of Part 2. I think it sounds pretty good, if you can get over my occasional "um's" and how I completely punted that final question.

Go have a listen and let me know what you think. Enjoy!