Sometime in the last week or so Pablo S. Torre and some of the basball writers at Sports Illustrated found a large vial of crack cocaine, sat down in a circle, and smoked every last rock until they craved more. They then went out, scored a few more hits, and passed out. When they came to, they read the article they had somehow put together for the yearly SI baseball preview in their stupor. They were collectively shocked that they had picked the Milwaukee Brewers to finish third in the National League Central division behind the Reds and the Cubs. As it turns out they were buying the crack from the SI editors, so it appears everyone involved was way too frickin' high to correct this obvious error.

   Also in this baseball preview issue was a lengthy article about NL rookie of the year RUNNER-UP! Troy Tulowitzki written by Tom Verducci. Verducci had written a wonderful five page article about ACTUAL! rookie of the year Ryan Braun, but he ran out of rolling papers just before the issue went to print and needed to smoke a fat one to come down from his previous crack binge the night before, so he used the Braun article because he thought it would have more lasting power than the Tulowitzki one. Verducci was able to blast off a quick 1/2 page blurb about Braun before his deadline, so at least we have that.

   These statements are only speculation of rumored musings I've heard. But when I called Sports Illustrated to see if they had any comment on this all I got was their answering machine which was playing Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water".    Damn I love that song!

Kerry Wood can only pitch one inning a day, then his arm turns into a pumpkin.