White Sox Announcers Are Homers And Other Obvious MLBullets

The Tigers and White Sox are now tied atop the AL Central, the Yankees have opened up a 1.5 game lead over the Orioles in the AL East, and the Braves have officially clinched a playoff spot ...

• The Wall Street Journal undertook a humorous and interesting, albeit limited, experiment, watching a local broadcast for each of the 30 MLB teams to determine which broadcasting crews were the most homer-ish. In the experiment, the Journal watched a home game in which the home team won, and counted the number of times a broadcaster referred to the team as "us," or used "me/my/our," or used an obscure pet name for a player, or moped after something bad happened for the home team. You will be unsurprised to learn that the White Sox's duo of Hawk Harrelson and Steve Stone are the most home-team friendly crew in all of baseball. You might be surprised (nah, probably not) to learn just HOW homer-ish they are: their count of 104 biased comments in a single game was 81(!) more than the next highest total, 23 for the Indians. Indeed, Harrelson and Stone outpaced the rest of the American League ... combined! The Cubs' team of Len Kasper and Bob Brenly were near the bottom of the list, with just three biased comments (for example, Bob called Alfonso Soriano "Fonsie," which, like, meh - that ain't exactly "you gotta be bleepin' me, Wegner!").
• Earlier this week, Marlins reliever/sometime closer Heath Bell said in a radio interview that he didn't respect his manager Ozzie Guillen because Bell says Guillen doesn't tell him the truth face to face. That created a stir, so Bell said he called Guillen and apologized. The only problem? Bell never actually spoke to Guillen - he left his manager a voicemail, which Guillen deleted because he didn't recognize the source number. That's just some serious SchadenMarlin right there, in a season full of SchadenMarlin.
• Reds Manager Dusty Baker suffered a mini-stroke on Friday as he was being prepped to leave a Chicago hospital, where he had been staying with an irregular heartbeat. He's expected to rest for a week before returning to the Reds for the playoffs.
• The World Baseball Classic dates and venues have been set for next year. The United States, assuming they advance from their first pool, will face a group that will include a couple of the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela. The WBC runs from March 2, 2013 to March 19, 2013.
• FanGraphs looks at the complex issues surrounding what seems like a simple decision not to include Melky Cabrera on the Giants' post-season roster once he becomes eligible to come off of suspension.
• Zack Greinke struck out 13 Mariners in just five innings of work yesterday. That's nuts.

Brett Taylor is the Lead Writer at Bleacher Nation, and a Contributor here at Bleed Cubbie Blue.