MLB Bullets Is Racing To The Finish

"Now is the winter of our discontent, made glorious summer by this sun of York." See, I'm thinking Shakespeare was a baseball fan, because I'm always discontent when there's no baseball. And the whole thing about York was his love of one of York, Pennsylvania's favorite sons, probably either Vic Wertz or Butch Wynegar. So maybe he was an Indians or Twins fan.

• Alex Rodriguez might miss all of 2013, although Yankees GM Brian Cashman doesn't expect it will come to that.
• Frank Thomas has no sympathy for steroid users.
• You know how everyone in the crowd yells "Balk!" when the pitcher does that fake-to-third-throw-to-first move? I guess baseball got tired of arguing with the fans because from now on, it's going to be a balk.
• The Rockies have signed Jhoulys Chacin to a two-year, $6.5 million deal.
• In a fun article, Baseball Prospectus gets a deaf baseball blogger to lip-read umpire/manager arguments from 2012. Unfortunately, they never mention candlesticks.
• Here's a strange one. The Sacramento Public Library found a bible autographed by the players and manager of 1953 Pirates. It was apparently a gift to their GM Branch Rickey, but none of the living members of that team can remember signing it, nor does the Sacramento Public Library know who gave it to them.
• The Washington Nationals have announced a fifth racing president, and it's William Howard Taft. Really? Taft? Couldn't they actually get someone who was actually a good president? I can understand that a racing FDR might be in bad taste, but what about Eisenhower? Everyone likes Ike. And picking Taft is just another stick in the eye of poor Teddy, who had a very public falling out with Taft.
• John Hickey of the Mercury-News wonders if the Athletics might have one too many outfielders. There is a lot of ground to cover in the Coliseum.
• The winner of the fan contest to design a new alternate uniform for the Brewers has been chosen, and apparently it has a robot alien on the cap. I think that's what that is.
• Michael Morse is glad to be in Seattle again.
• Rays owner Stuart Sternberg says that MLB has given up on the Tampa/St. Petersburg market.
• Tigers manager Jim Leyland is glad to have Torii Hunter on the team.
• Ron Darling never thought he'd have a career in baseball.
• Paul Hoynes of the Cleveland Plain-Dealer thinks the Indians have had an interesting off-season.
• Finally, there's some evidence that Cuban shortstop Aledmys Diaz is lying about his age. But in this case, he's likely younger than he claims to be. The advantage to claiming to be 23 rather than 21 is that at 23, his signing bonus would not count against any team's international pool money. But if he's 21, it would.

The Hawkeye wrestling team beat the Golden Gophers.

And tomorrow will be another day closer to spring training, Buster.