Does this send a bad message to children? Probably, but what doesn't these days? If you're relying on sports to shape your kids' lives, you can probably go out and blow their college fund on a 50-inch plasma and a killer sound system right now, because they're probably not going to need it. And let's be honest -- things are more fun when there's some chicanery going on. It's why people keep going back to watch pro wrestling despite the fact that in every tag team match one guy distracts the ref, enabling his partner to pummel his opponent with a folding chair unmolested.

Speaking of Wickman, there are certain things you want your closer to do. Nearly causing your heart to explode on a nightly basis isn't one of them. Perhaps someone would be so good as to tell him that. Wickman has 33 saves, and he's pitched in 50 games. I didn't look at the box scores for all of them, just the pitching lines, but it looks like every time he's pitched, he's come on at the start of an inning. Of those 50 appearances, he's retired the side in order 15 times. In those 33 saves, he's gone three-up, three-down 10 times. The other two guys I Iooked at were Joe Nathan and Mo Rivera. Nathan has put the side down in order in 26 of 54 appearances, including 19 of 32 saves. Rivera's done it in 28 of 52 games, including 20 of 33 saves.

I've fallen in love with retrosheet.org. I was able to pull up the play-by-play of the first game I ever went to: Indians-Yankees, July 3, 1976. (Unless it was July 4. The game I went to was bat night, which I assume wouldn't have been the same night as the fireworks on the Fourth. If anyone knows for certain, shoot me an e-mail.) Anyway, the most interesting thing I've seen on the site: White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen was the victim of the hidden ball trick three times as a player, including twice in six weeks. I wonder if anyone watching that said, "Yeah, that guy's got manager written all over him."

The Funniest Thing I Read This Week

The first two lines Anthony Lane's review of Asylum in The New Yorker: "It is a joke, of sorts, to take a love story of unquenchable ardor and set it in England. To set it in England of the nineteen-fifties, however, may be stretching the joke too far."

Idiot of the Week

Welcome back, Lawrence Phillips! Am I the only one who wonders how one-sided this pickup game was, though?

Thanks for stopping by, and stay classy.