This week’s column: I sing the praises of Kevin Calabro.

Another post by me–some silliness with top-10 lists and local political figures.

Huan Hsu used to write for the Weekly but moved to China to work for an Uncle’s business and work on a book. He wrote this entertaining piece on his adolescent struggles with Asian stereotypes and the success of Michael Chang.

My friend Bucky sent me this Washington Post op-ed a couple weeks ago. While one can cherry-pick events to show the similarities between eras, and while the author doesn’t provide much evidence to back his contention that the 1970s federal government was actually more inefficient than previous ones, rather than just perceived as such, he does lay out an uncanny array of ties between 1978 and 2008. It’s an entertaining read.

My friend/former co-worker and employer Doug Hiatt got a much-deserved write-up in the Seattle Times. Philip Dawdy’s longer (and highly entertaining) piece on Hiatt from a couple years ago can be found here.

John McCain may have gotten a little confused about the chronology of the surge and the Anbar Awakening, but CBS bailed him out. In covering the story, the NY Times turns to the ever-reliable war cheerleader Michael O’Hanlon for commentary. (A few questions: If Surge Cola were still around today, what would the surge do to its sales? It would have to help, right? Would they still call it the surge? Would people take the surge less seriously because it was seemingly named after a soft drink? Would Coca-Cola sue?)

Seth Kolloen put together a very funny graphic about former Mariners GM Bill Bavasi.

Sorry I’ve been so bad about putting up posts lately. Here’s this week’s column.

This week’s column is up.

…in the story I tell in this week’s “The Bounce to Ecstasy!” column: “Tell John McLaren You Saved Him a Buck or Two by Dialing 1-800-COLLECT“. As always, full archives of the column can be found here.

My most recent Weekly web column is up, and the title pretty much tells explains it. As the result of a site redesign over there, the archive of my columns has been moved here.

Famous baseball manager Earl Weaver was known for such feats of wrath as getting himself kicked out of both ends of a double-header (three times) and getting kicked out of a game during the exchange of lineup cards (twice). But his best-known bit of crustiness is this interview, which I named the number one sports tantrum of all time, despite doubting that it was unscripted.

Well, Baltimore Sun columnist Rick Maese did the legwork to satisfy the curiosity of Weaver admirers everywhere and find the real story behind Earl declaring that “Alice Sweet oughta be worried about where the fuck her next lay is coming from…if she’d get her ass out at the bars at night and go hustling around the goddamn streets she might get a prick stuck in her once in a while.”

Today, on his 73rd birthday, Longtime Mariners play-by-play announcer Dave Niehaus won the Ford C. Frick award. Every year, the Baseball Hall of Fame gives the award to a broadcaster for “major contributions to baseball.” The award comes with an automatic induction into the broadcasters’ wing at Cooperstown.

Having grown up listening to Niehaus and narrated innumerable childhood wiffle ball home runs with some version of his “swung on and belted deep to left field…this one will fly away…my oh my!” call, I feel the Hall couldn’t have selected a more deserving candidate.

Now all that remains is for his finest color commentator to join him in baseball immortality. Ronald Ray Fairly, you’re up.

“The wind at Candlestick tonight is blowing with great propensity.”

(Just thought I’d follow the rule that sports headlines must contain a bad pun.)

So it looks like the Mariners are going to remain in panic mode and sign Carlos Silva to a 4 year, $44 million contract. Silva and Jarrod Washburn will form a $20 million, two-headed monster in the middle of the rotation that really should be in the back of the rotation. If both are healthy and pitch full years, the Mariners will be paying roughly $100,000 for every strikeout they throw. Meanwhile, the Indians will be paying about $9 million for the full year services of C.C. Sabathia and roughly $300,000 for Fausto Carmona, and the Tigers $1 million for Justin Verlander and $4.5 million for Jeremy Bonderman. All of them are better than Washburn and Silva.

The point I’m getting at (in however a roundabout fashion) is that free agent pitching is generally overpriced and developing pitching from your own farm system (or someone else’s) is a much better bang for your buck. (Of course, if you have tons of money–which the Mariners do not–sometimes it pays to play the market, as was the case for Boston this year.) Billy Beane, the crown prince of squeezing the most out of a payroll, has recognized that for years in Oakland, and that’s why he didn’t re-sign players like Hudson, Mulder, and Zito. Only Hudson has come close to living up to his subsequent free agent contract.

The Mariners have the 7th highest payroll in baseball, but the team gets a relatively free pass from its fans for its inability to turn the money into anything approaching a contending team. It fails to develop its young talent because of a fetish for experience and “proven veterans” (proven to do what?): Keep in mind that batting practice pitcher Horacio Ramirez was acquired at the cost of young talent Rafael Soriano, who had a superb year as a reliever in Atlanta, with a WHIP of .86.

If the Mariners don’t want to chance it with Cha Seung Baek, Brandon Morrow, Ryan Rowland-Smith, Ryan Feirebrand, et. al. (I’m guessing at least one or two would turn out to be serviceable starters), then perhaps they should sign some pitchers to 1-year, stopgap contracts and continue to develop their young talent. This way, in a year, when Felix Hernandez is even better, Adam Jones is seasoned, Brandon Morrow has a third pitch, Jeff Clement is ready to come up, and Adrian Beltre and Ichiro Suzuki are still in their relative primes, the team will have some money to fill in the gaps and have a true shot at a World Series. (Dave Cameron at USS Mariner designs such a scenario in this post.) In the meantime, they’ll be no worse off than if they signed Silva.

The end of the year is the time for top ten lists. However, 2007 was not kind to Seattle sports fans, so we decided to make it a bottom ten instead:

10. May 24th - The Mariners lose to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays 13-12. Third base coach Carlos Garcia gets two runners thrown out at home. Explaining his decision to send not-so-fleety Jose Lopez home against the near legendary arm of Delmon Young, Garcia says, “It was the first time we played them. I didn’t know he had such a good arm. But now I know.” The club defends Garcia against fans who point out that the strength of Young’s arm is widely recognized and could have been gleaned by reading a scouting report, or merely conducting a google search. “The fans who are expressing their discontent are displaying an unsettling level of cultural insensitivity,” declares Howard Lincoln. When asked to identify the culture to which the fans were being insensitive, Lincoln replies simply, “losing.”

9. Date unknown - Wally Szczerbiak takes rookie teammate Kevin Durant under his wing, explaining to the young star that he can boost his scoring average by largely ignoring those pesky things called teammates. “Unless, they’re setting a pick for you, they’re not there,” he says. (This may not have happened yet, but it’s a scary thought, no?)

8. The Weekend of November 10th to 11th - Let’s start on Sunday: Moving like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle minus the Teenage Mutant Ninja part, Robert Swift has zero points, two rebounds, and two fouls in 12 minutes of play. As he struggles to lug his freshly tatted 280 lbs up and down the Key Arena floor, some fans wonder whether, knee injury or not, the new bulk will ruin the agility that was his previous strong suit. One night earlier, the player the Sonics should have drafted in 2004, Al Jefferson, scores 17 points and grabs 12 rebounds for the Minnesota Timberwolves.

7. January 1st - Ty Willingham’s Huskies look totally unprepared for their bowl game matchup with…oh, wait, nevermind.

6. December 12th - Unable to resist his stunning array of “out” pitches (as in “quickly headed ‘out’ of the park”), the Seattle Mariners tender Horacio Ramirez, the man who accrued more walks than strikeouts and hits than innings in 2007. “It was a difficult decision,” explains Bill Bavasi. “Had he been signed by a division rival, we might have been able to keep Richie Sexson’s batting average over .220 for the season.”

5. November 15th - Howard Schultz signs up to sponsor a youth basketball team.

4. August 28th - With the Mariners needing a win against the 1st place Angels to stay in the pennant race; with the bases loaded, the team down one run in the 8th inning, and Vladimir Guerrero due up, John McLaren digs deep into the throat of bullpen suckage to pull out Rick White. The barrel-stomached veteran, a piece of waiver wire flotsam that somehow landed in the Safeco bullpen (care to explain, Bill?), takes the mound and promptly makes a mound of his own. Two batters later, the bases — and Rick’s bowels — have been emptied, and the game is all but over.

3. Sundays, generally - Shaun Alexander sees tacklers, falls down.

2. December 3rd — Citing his dissatisfaction with the community center facilities, Schultz transfers sponsorship duties to an Oklahoma City car dealership, but asks if he can still attend the year-end pizza party.

1. November 1st — Sonics owner Clayton Bennett celebrates the newly begun Kevin Durant era by filing with the NBA for relocation of the team. Here’s to you, Mr. Bennett. May all your years be as bad as our 2007.

The Mitchell report is out.