Perhaps, it's the unthinkable.  But it occurs to me that the Orioles have evolved into the familiar position of having crappy pitching and the unfamiliar position of having a decent offense that looks to only get better over the next several years.  Such an imbalance would seem to be the perfect time for a trade.  But that brings up another unfamiliar situation the Orioles find themselves, we now hold the contract for arguably the most valuable prospect in the entirety of baseball, young Mr. Matt Wieters. 

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Joe Buck admitted this morning on Colin Cowherd's show on ESPN Radio that he rarely watches sports on television and that he feels baseball is too big of a time commitment for people to be able to follow.  Buck noted that The Bachelorette is part of his television viewing repertoire however. 

I've never liked this fucking guy.  I've never liked FOX's coverage of the sport.  But to hear that this spoiled little shit doesn't even fucking watch sports and then has the audacity to make lame ass excuses about it, pisses me off to no end.  Can some of the lawyers around here tell me if it's possible for the government, or any other semi-functional entity, to take control of the broadcasting rights away from FOX on grounds of the incompetence they put in their announcing booth?

You can hear the offending clip here.

I love finding new, interesting websites.  It goes without saying that the Internets are an unbelievable resource, that over time just continue to grow and in many ways improve.  Trouble is, there's just so damn much out there, sometimes it's hard to get your bearings and without a little guidance or a tip.  So I thought since we do a lot of OT stuff on music, movies and even tv shows on here, it might be time to steer a discussion back to the medium we're all taking part in. 

Just as a starter, what I'm asking is for you to name five or so great websites.  Can be any topic (sans porn or other sexy-time sites, please), any format - blog, database, search engine, plain & simple html.  Try to think of something a little off the beaten path though.  We all know The Google is good for searching for stuff and Photobucket is a good place to store image files.  The idea should be to try to turn people on to something new, a good resource, a great way to find stuff, a music blog with opinions you value etc. etc.  You get the picture.

What on God's Green Earth is it going to take to convince the Orioles front office that Terry Crowley should have packed his bags and stopped pretending to be a Hitting Coach years ago?  How about these numbers:

O'S TEAM STAT     RANKING AMONGST MLB CLUBS

AVG   .246               27th                       

OBP   .317              25th

SLG   .392               20th

RUNS    227            25th

2B         87                25th

The outlier amongst the offensive stats is HRs where we're 12th in MLB and, astonishingly, 4th in the AL.  Although what this tells me with our crappy OBP and Runs stats is that we've got a bunch of jackasses, with (surprise, surprise) no plate discipline, swinging for the fences and hitting solo dongs since nobody can bother to get their ass on base on this team.

So what the fuck is it going to take?  We've known for years now that The Crow's "philosophy" about hitting is basically a mixture of "do whatever the fuck you want" and "be aggressive".  The man has been much more comfortable with a cheerleader pom-pom in his hand than a bat for years on end now.  Can someone in the FO please wake up about this jackass before he fucks up Adam Jones' future in the Major Leagues?

In following up on a conversation I had at the NYC is Birdland meetup last night, I'm posting the first in what could be an ongoing, off-topic, but Oriolecentric CC Travel series: "O"ly  Planet.  The first edition will be Chicago, Illinois - The Windy City, for no other reason than that I'm visiting there next week on bid-ness. 

Unlike, Lonely Planet, "O"ly Planet should only be comprised of advice and recommendations from people who have actually been to the destination in question and preferably have a decent knowledge thereof.  So if you've been to, or, even better, lived in Chicago feel free to give your recs on good food, neighborhoods, bars, activities etc. in the Windy City.

via www.chicagoaerialtours.com

This has been cause for some confusion in my week.  On Monday I was sitting at a Hot Dog stand and on the radio The Doors' song The Crystal Ship started playing.  It's a catchy tune - or a pretentious pile of shit, depending on which way you look at it.  Regardless it's been stuck in my head for several days now, and it's brought to the fore in my mind a completely trivial, unimportant question.  Are The Doors good or bad? 

When I was a ne'er-do-well in high school, The Doors were cool by me.  I even owned an album of theirs, Strange Days, which wasn't exactly the best musical invesment I ever made - but still, I was happy enough listening to it from time to time.  As I got older though I began to view The Doors as simply a passing, adolescent fancy.  Morrison's breathy, overwrought vocals, his poetry, the sheer "heaviness" of the whole thing just struck me as a pile of poo.  It got to the point where, when, several years back, Blender Magazine declared The Doors "The Worst Band of All Time", I cheered.

But now I'm not so sure.  Any band that sticks around for this long must have something going for it - right?  Anyway, I figured I'd run it up the flagpole and see what the community feeling was on this relic of the 60's - The Doors.