E.K. NATION

Here's last night's unassisted triple play by Asdrubal Cabrera. Looks like he didn't know how many outs there were for a moment, because after the second out, he almost starts to run off the field, then he realizes he can tag the runner and get one more out. Nice play. But you gotta know how many outs there are.

On YouTube, we're finding several clips by The Batting Stance Guy. He's got some 3-to-4-minute-long clips of impressions of baseball players' batting stances in recent years. And this is very entertaining stuff, although I suppose only if you know who these guys are and know how they swing the bat. I can do Will Clark and Willie McGee, but this guy can do a bunch, including those two, and pretty much everything is spot-on and usually hilarious. Here he is, doing Yankees, Red Sox, Cardinals, and a bunch of guys from the 80s and 90s. I fully expect that he will do more...

A condensed version of the Sports Night episode "The Giants Win The Pennant! The Giants Win The Pennant!" Of course it's better when you see the full episode, and of course it's even better when it's watched during the show's two-year run. And maybe the next paragraph is why I posted this link. The line "He hit a baseball" might not seem like it means much when read here, out of context, but it makes sense the way Josh Charles reads it near the end of the clip. Sports are important, but there are important things in life than sports, and sometimes we forget that.

To a special dog: I lost you yesterday. Your name was Bandit and you were a Siberian husky and you were one of the reasons why dogs are the finest species that walk the earth. I will always remember how your spot was the little corner in the staircase. I will never forget that night when I let you out into the front yard thinking that since you were feeling sick you'd do your thing and come right back in, but no, you suddenly took off and I had to chase you wearing nothing but boxer shorts at 2:00 in the morning on a sub-freezing December morning. I will always remember how you were a "talker"; the way it seemed that when you had something to say it was almost as if you were actually saying the words "bow wow" in your growl. I will always remember the "'Dito Dance". And of course, I will never forget the time when you chewed through two leashes in the span of a half-hour while we were eating dinner and raced around the house and down the street, making me chase you twice more. The tears I cried at midnight Friday when I got home and you couldn't walk out to the front yard and I realized something might be dreadfully wrong, and on Saturday morning when you couldn't get up and you whimpered all the while, and Saturday afternoon in "Noodles' Lobby" at Dove Lewis, and yesterday after Siri and I had our final discussion about the toughest decision a dog lover can ever make, those tears were all of sadness. Every tear from here on out, however, will be out of joy for having known you, Bandit. I was never your official owner, and I didn't get to live with you in your last couple years of life, save for those weekends when I dogsat you and Maggie, but I always felt you were my dog anyway. I don't believe in heaven or in any afterlife, but you're one of the reasons that I hope beyond all hope that there actually is some sort of afterlife where I will be able to see you again. I love you, buddy, and I'm going to miss you for the rest of my life.