Just wanted to point out some recent developments with three AL Central managers.

Ron Gardenhire
Problem: Hunter Wendlestedt
Cranky Action: After getting ejected by Wendelstedt for arguing balls and strikes, Gardenhire told reporters, “I expect more than that from a major league umpire, especially from a guy who comes from a baseball family. His father, Harry, was a great umpire, but I have no respect for Hunter anymore.” On Friday, Gardenhire said Wendelstedt has “an attitude,” adding that he made a lot of bad calls but “didn’t probably think so because he’s god, as umpires go.” Wendelstedt’s response included an invitation for Gardenhire to attend his umpiring school to learn what a balk is. On Saturday, Gardenhire said, “If he’ll agree to take the classes over again, I’ll go with him.”

Ozzie Guillen
Problem: Beanballs
Cranky Action: Guillen pointed out he didn’t think the Indians were throwing at his players, but he is frustrated by his players getting hit. The Sox have been hit 44 times this season, which is the fifth-highest total in the majors. Guillen said he doesn’t care if he gets suspended for retaliating. “[On Saturday] I get upset, they hit one guy and they throw in into another guy,” Guillen said on Sunday. “I got upset. I know for a fact they’re not throwing at nobody, but enough is enough. I have Konerko bruised all over the place. Around the league, be careful because we’re going to hit people. I don’t care if I get suspended because I need to protect my players.”

Jim Leyland
Problem: Steroids
Cranky Action: “I could care less what anybody else thinks,” Leyland said. “If David Ortiz said he didn’t knowingly take anything, I believe him.” Leyland spoke before the Tigers played the Minnesota Twins. Detroit opens a series Monday night against Ortiz and the Red Sox. “I don’t know how stuff like that comes out,” he said. “Confidential, that’s exactly what that means to me, confidential. I think that’s kind of unfair.”

Leyland doesn’t blame the media for uncovering names of players and predicted another player will be identified in a month. “I know the media has to report information,” Leyland said. “I’m not blaming the media, but they’re not going to let it alone. I’m not blaming anybody because it’s news and that’s what you people do for a living.” In any case, Leyland is “sick and tired” of the ongoing saga. “We’ve made mistakes, there have been some guys who admitted it so you know it was there,” he said. “How many people? I have no idea.”

Eric Wedge and Trey Hillman, who manage lousy teams, are rays of sunshine compared to that trio.

Fasolamatt sent us that image on Sunday from the Kingfield farmers’ market (where they sell delicious almonds). You have a woman, a man, a Favre jersey and some lovely hand bags with which to work. Let’s make a caption!

Our effort: An area Vikings fan shops for sustainable, locally grown produce so that he can let it rot and throw it at Brad Childress’ house.

Golf is a ridiculous sport.

By any reasonable measure, I am a horse-[redacted] golfer. I am not even as good as most of the casual duffers that I know. And the worst part of the situation is that I have drastically improved. I used to be Rosie-O’Donnell-and-Osama-Bin-Laden-make-a-sex-tape bad. In fact, I have never scored a birdie in my life and pars are rare events.

For better or for worse, however, I find myself drawn to the game. It can still be reasonably fun if you do see some improvement and it’s always a good time if you’re out with the right group of folks. There happens to be a local nine-hole course that I like to frequent in my neck of the woods. It’s challenging for the horse-[redacted] golfer such as myself, but it’s also forgiving enough to give those of us who are godforsaken at least a modicum of hope. Luckily, my occupation allows me to enjoy a round on a weekday and I headed out there Friday with a couple of folks. The day began poorly and ended poorly. Most of the middle wasn’t that great either. But one hole did stand out from the rest.

My favored course has a par-five sixth hole that runs about 493 yards from the white tees. It’s not the lengthiest hole, but it does have a small strip of water that separates the green from the end of the fairway. The temptation for the big hitters, of course, is to risk the water and go for the green in two. But it’s a tricky proposition because, although small, that strip of water seems to be a ball magnet.

Had I hit my drive completely cleanly, I might have been tempted to take the risk. After all, my score was already in the toilet, so what’s a little more water? But I didn’t hit it cleanly; which is not to say that I hit it poorly. It actually was a pretty good drive. It was one of those shots that went really high and consequently didn’t go as far as one might have liked. But it was straight and sitting in the middle of the fairway, so I was in no position to complain.

Now that getting to the green in two was an abysmally stupid proposition I decided to play it smart. I decided to take out the five iron and try to place it at the top of the end of the fairway, before it started sloping down into the water. I didn’t want to be too close to the water, because the lie got a little tricky on the downward slope. All I was hoping for was a nice, clean opportunity to put it on the green. The five iron felt like the perfect club to give me plenty of distance, but not too much distance. So, I lined up the shot and gave it a mighty whack. It just so happened to be that this was the one-out-of-fifty shots that I hit where the execution completely paralleled the plan. The ball flew true and straight and ended up sitting at the top of the end of the fairway, right before the downward slope.

At this point, it was clear that this hole was one of those rare opportunities where I might be able to post a score that an actual golfer would tolerate. In these all-too-unique moments, one’s mind begins to wander to all sorts of things. In the small handful of times in my life when I’ve found myself in this position, I’ve tried to not think too many crazy things such as how great it would be to hole it out or, conversely, how if I card something like an eight after being in this position that I will begin throwing my clubs one by one until one of them gets stuck so far up in a tree that I will be unable to retrieve it and I will leave it there as a testament to my crapitiousness. As I walked up to my ball, I briefly thought about the best-case scenario and then disgustedly put it out of my mind as quickly as possible. I then thought about how, with a quality shot, I might get close enough to finally score that elusive first birdie. But I put that out of my mind as quickly as possible as well. Golf, I have found, is a sport that is designed to punish you for anticipating good things. So, all I thought about as I lined up my shot was hitting a good shot. I mentally measured the force I would need to put the ball over the water and on the green with the pitching wedge. Once I had made my calculations, I gave it what I thought was the proper swing.

It was as if it was being filmed for a movie. The ball did everything that it was supposed to do. It bounced on the front part of the green before the hole. It bounced a couple of more times before it starting rolling toward the cup. It all happened so quickly that I didn’t even have enough time to finish thinking, “you know, this has a chance to …” before it was in the hole. I scored and eagle. Perhaps more importantly, two other people saw me score and eagle.

Again, the rest of the round was terrible. My next best score on a hole was a bogey, and I may have only done that on one other hole. After I had managed a nine on an earlier hole I had quit keeping score for the round. I am a horse-[redacted] golfer. I really am worse than most of the other people I know who golf. But, until something changes, I can now legitimately and unequivocally claim that I have carded the best score on any one hole of anybody that I know. Even though I have still yet to shoot a birdie in my life.

Golf is a ridiculous sport.

If you could tear yourself away from Kurt Rambis’ steely glare or the Twins’ holdover starters being the moldy bread for what could have been a nice, fresh Carl Pavano sandwich over the weekend, you might have noticed that one of the biggest stories developed Saturday morning when Deadspin published photos of Rangers slugger Josh Hamilton partying with a few ladies early this year before the season started. Any question about whether the photos were doctored or whether the story was legit … well, those were squashed just a few hours later when Hamilton confirmed it was all true and that he had succumbed to a lapse in sobriety (and also made questionable moral decisions with the ladies in the pictures).

It was, of course, a big deal because much has been made about Hamilton’s battle with his demons. Substance abuse derailed the early part of his career, and his turnaround was among the feel-good stories of 2008. But there are bigger questions at play here. Among them:

*Is a lapse in sobriety news that should be published? Well, we could start from the standpoint of “how would you like it if every time you screwed up, it wound up in the newspaper?” But that’s not really a meaningful starting point. Of course none of us would like it. And, to be sure, few of us know what it’s like to have our ethical and decision-making slips made public. That said, Hamilton opened himself up to this, to a degree, by talking so candidly about his problems and his transformation. In that sense, he sounds like a politician stumping for family values who then gets caught with a prostitute — even though when confronted with the information, Hamilton was exceedingly contrite and human.

“Honestly, I hate that this happened,” he said. “But it is what it is. You deal with it. I realized that, obviously, I’m not perfect, in this ongoing struggle, battle, that is very real. A lot of people don’t understand how real it is.”

It was also reported that Hamilton told his family and team officials about the incident immediately after it happened. For some people, that would probably be enough of an admission — that it didn’t need to be made public because he wasn’t hiding it. But with Hamilton batting just .235 with 8 HRs this season, there is at least enough information to wonder if this was an isolated incident or, even if it wasn’t, if the fear of it happening again and/or being made public was enough to help derail Hamilton’s season. That makes it newsworthy.

It also represents another shift in Deadspin. Never mind the edgy headline — this was news, and the site knew it (as the roughly 600K page views of that initial post will indicate). Back in the day, such pictures might have been treated differently by the site. They’ll still pick their battles over there, but Deadspin now reads much more like an alternative sports news daily than a blog dedicated to amusing and offbeat stories. That’s not good or bad … just different.

*Does the public really want to know these things? Well, Josh Hamilton fans certainly didn’t want to know. The general public? Well, that will continue to be a fight to the finish. Some people want only the warm and fuzzy side of the story in all cases. Some are callous and cold-hearted to the point that they want to know the most sordid details in any situation. The rational middle can take these things on a case-by-case basis. There are surely things Twins fans wish they didn’t know about Kirby Puckett. And there are probably people locally whou would feel differently about this story if it was about Joe Mauer or Justin Morneau. Is it better to settle for a myth or attempt to understand the truth? That’s not for us to decide for everyone else, though we would imagine regardless that most people wanted Josh Hamilton to stay sober.

We welcome your thoughts in the comments.

Jon Marthaler makes every Saturday even more pleasurable with links for some leisurely weekend reading. Other times, you can find him here and here. We hope he endorses the use of that light-hearted picture of injury-prone new Twins pitcher Carl Pavano, which was sent to us by Kenny C. via this blog, which has an image at the top that is NSFW. If you are reading, Carl Pavano, please note that the vast majority of the readership hopes you steer clear of the operating table and provide some quality starts. Jon?

——————

Salutations, all. After a one-week Rand-imposed repose, I’m back with another edition of the weekend links. If this is your first time with us, a little explanation: I piece together 4-5 links every weekend that generally just barely manage to completely fail to have any sort of unifying theme. I make a few cracks about the weather, mention an extremely minor sport or two, and later Stu comes along and provides us a soundtrack and a few cracks about hockey. It’s all quite diverting on a Saturday.

All that said: on with the links!

*The first event in the new Gopher football stadium is coming up soon… which makes it a perfect time to take a look back at the old stadium. A team from University Libraries put together an absolutely tremendous digital repository of stuff - pictures, letters, brochures, programs, videos - all relating to Memorial Stadium. If you haven’t seen it, prepare to clear three hours from your schedule. (Feel free to start off with a WCCO TV report on the project, including an interview with Shane Nackerud of Greet Machine fame, who was instrumental in putting this project together.)

*John “Twins Geek” Bonnes is looking on the bright side for the Twins - and looking to the future. (Given that the Twins have lost six of seven since the post was written, maybe that’s for the best.)

*Canis Hoopus wants you to get interested in the WNBA. It’s good to see that somebody besides me is willing to embark on impossible, fringe-league-related crusades.

*And finally, unrelated to anything (except meat): RandBall’s own roughkat pointed out this chart, which is possibly the greatest graphic in the history of the internet.

On that note, it’s time to shut down for another weekend. Do stay inside. Mother Nature has turned on us, and it is a terrifying (and humid) sight to behold.