Perhaps we’re too accustomed to seeing athletes and coaches making nice after games, but we still found it odd yesterday that Tom Brady sprinted off the field without, as far as we could tell, shaking the hand of Peyton Manning. There are plenty of pictures of Peyton shaking Brady’s hand after Colts losses. Also, cameras captured a rather lukewarm and brief handshake from Bill Belichick when Manning approached him. Belichick looked annoyed more than anything. Now, obviously these are intense competitors — two of the best in Brady and Belichick — who had just had the Colts pull a complete reversal on them. They had the game at 21-3. They also were one short third-down conversion from practically sewing it up with a little over two minutes left. They were understandably ticked off. But don’t you have to give an opponent a little more due, especially considering the history? We wish we could find video of the first couple minutes of post-game, but we can’t. You’ll have to trust our memory. Did anyone else find the behavior of Brady and Belichick lacked a little class?

UPDATE: Thanks to KChia’s Former Roommate for digging out the forensic Youtube evidence, a concise clip showing Frosty the Coachman stiffing Manning and coming within one more question of killing Solomon Wilcots with his glare. 

Can the pitcher, who floundered with the Nationals last season (11-16, 5.57 ERA) turn things around with the Twins, with whom he has agreed to a one-year, $3.1 million deal contingent on passing a physical? No clue. But if our guy La Velle E. Neal III is correct in guessing at a rotation of Johan Santana, Sidney Ponson, Boof Bonser, Carlos Silva and Ramon Ortiz, you have to like the move purely from a weight standpoint. Ortiz, checking in at a downright gangly 175 pounds on his 6-0 frame, stands in stark contrast to Bonser (260), Silva (246) and Ponson (250). Ortiz will be stuck at the top of the teeter-totter should the staff ever make a trip to the playground, but that’s a concession the Twins needed to make in the name of balance.

The publishing company already sacked “If I did it,” the train wreck of an idea in which O.J. Simpson was to detail exactly how he did kill would have killed his ex-wife. And now they have put the kibosh on “7: The Mickey Mantle Novel,” a pseudo-memoir about the ex-Yankees slugger which was set to go on sale in March but apparently enraged his family. What else is in the hopper, HarperCollins? “A Pictorial History of Jose Canseco’s Nude Sudokus?” Or perhaps “Smoking in the Post: The Stojko Vrankovic Story.”

Update: Will Leitch, the man with the magic fingers over at Deadspin, points out to RandBall that there is one book HarperCollins still plans to publish: His. “The Ballad of Ron Mexico.” Due out in fall 2007, or at least scheduled to be until Will falls prey to some terrible scandal involving a nectarine and a shaved yak.

See, this is the sort of random thing for which the Internet was made. Sure, you might argue that along with the high-speed technology, it has created a flat world, a la Thomas Friedman. You might think it has the capability to connect all of us in ways never before imagined. We prefer to think of it as a place in which photos of Eli Manning singing karaoke are readily at our fingertips. The rumor is he was belting out “Livin’ on a Prayer,” but we prefer to think he got about 4 minutes into “Rock Lobster,” grew completely disinterested, then tossed the mic to a rival karaoke team.

There is no “I” in team. But there will be, from now on, in RandBall. Not that anyone cares, but commenter Negative Nellie has made a very good point: It is silly to always use “we” and “our” in this blog. While it was initially done in an attempt to seem less pompous, it really just makes for awkward phrasing — and, ultimately, since there is no crack research staff or doting intern here at RandBall to fetch coffee, “we” and “our” is just plain inaccurate. So, when the situation calls for a first-person singular pronoun, “I” will be the letter of choice from now on. Now if I could just figure out why I even felt it necessary to try to explain all of this, I would be very happy. Needless to say, I will be posting something else VERY soon so this doesn’t stay at the top long.