Pujols polishes his wood

We here at Umpbump have done quite a few all-time teams. We’ve also cataloged quite a series of Hot Baseball Wives. In this post, I will attempt the acrobatic feat of bridging the twain. Yes, reader: The All-Hot Team.

For reasons of attention span, or specifically, the lack of it, I am focusing on current major leaguers. However, I’m happy to take your all-time hot nominees (and anyone I may have inadvertently left off) in the comments. The only criteria? A player needs to be physically attractive as well as moderately talented. After all, we want Team Hottie to be able to old their own against Team Canada, or the All-Mormon Team. Not to mention the All-Ugly Team, which is next on my list.

Without further ado, I give you:

1B: Albert Pujols (he’s pretty easy on the eyes, but his OPS is still the hottest thing about him)
2B: Chase Utley (would have been Ian Kinsler but Chase finally cut off this mess)
SS: Derek Jeter (one for the gentlemen out there!)

New life goal: be that t-shirt

3B: David Wright (yes…you can actually call him “Mr. [W]Right”)
RF: Nick Markakis (pronounced properly, it’s Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmarkakis)
LF: Ryan Braun (thanks to these Bette Davis eyes)
CF: Jacoby Ellsbury (thanks to…well…everything)
DH: Pat Burrell (soley on the basis of this photo and the fact that Ladies… proclaimed his ass the best in all of baseball. And I trust their judgment.)
C: Joe Mauer (more like “Joe Mrowr”)

Bench: Gabe Kapler, Curtis Granderson, Grady Sizemore, Torii Hunter, Ichiro*

*Don’t know what it is about outfielders, but apparently most of them are hot. This led to something of a logjam (so to speak), and hence a disproportionate number of OFs on the bench. Your suggestions for “hotility infielders” welcomed in the comments.

So hot, he's Cole

P1: Roy Halladay (likes to play “Doc”)
P2: Cole Hamels (the ace of the “staff”)
P3: Andy Pettitte (wants to know if you want to “Pettitte”)
P4: Rich Harden (Huh huh huh…his name is “Harden.” Heh heh, I said “Harden.”)

CL: Huston Street (nevermind the crooked grin; the name alone sounds like a Harlequin hero: “Oh Mr. Street!” she whimpered, melting into his arms. “Darling, he huskily murmured, “Call me Huston.”)

Our fifth starter is still up for grabs (so to speak…) so leave your nominations in the comments. The future of the All-Hot team is in your hands (so to speak).

(So to speak.)

Monday is Hot Baseball Wife Day here at UmpBump, and this week’s honoree is Rie Park, the wife of Phillies hurler Chan Ho Park.

Rie grew up in Japan, as a third generation Korean-Japanese (”Rie” is the Japanese spelling of her name. Her Korean name is “Ri-Hye”). Her father, businessman Park Choong-Seo, is the 76th richest man in Japan.

After graduating from prestigious Sophia University in Tokyo, Rie moved to America to study French Cuisine at the Culinary Institute of America, and actually worked for a time as a French chef before meeting Chan Ho.

The couple was introduced to each other by a mutual friend, and spoke several times on the phone before finally meeting in person. “He was really odd,” Rie recalled. “He kept calling me early in the morning for three straight days.” But when she finally met him, “it felt as though I had known him for a long time.”

After less than a year of dating the couple was married in 2005, in a wedding in Seoul that was attended by Chan Ho’s MLB buddies Hee Seop Choi and Jae Weong Seo.

The couple now has two children – a three year old daughter Elynne, born in 2006, and a 9-month-old daughter born last year, whose name does not appear to be known by the internets.

The two seem to be very much in love, with Chan Ho claiming that his wife’s cooking is even better than his mother’s and Rie saying that Chan Ho scores 100 out of 100 on the good husband scale, particularly praising him because he “willingly changes diapers and bathes the babies.”

Rie’s latest project is a Korean cookbook, entitled Rie’s Kitchen, in which she outlines over 160 different recipes she has cooked for Chan Ho during their marriage. All proceeds are being donated to charity.

More pictures after the jump…

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Has anyone noticed how much ESPN.com, especially their “MLB” page, sucks over the weekend? Maybe not, since the time when most people most obsessively check the internet is during the week, when they are at work and supposed to be doing other things.

But now that I am living in Japan, where due to timezone differences my weekend hardly overlaps with the US weekend, I really notice it. The front page hardly gets updated. Web gems don’t get posted at all. Don’t even think about new columns or blog posts. And breaking news stories and trades sometimes don’t get posted until as late as an hour or two after they are covered elsewhere.

All of which is in contrast to the workweek, when ESPN is pretty on top of things. Overall, the feeling is of a web enterprise that only has a couple people in the building on weekends.

In this day and age of the 24-hour news cycle, blogs, and viewers around the world, it really makes no sense for a website as prominent as ESPN.com to all but shut down over the weekend.

It’s cute and all when some sort of mega-news goes down over the weekend and a video gets posted wherein Buster Olney looks like he just got out of bed, but if a site like mlbtraderumors.com can afford to hire people to cover the weekends, ESPN should too.

My brother, a hard-nosed Cardinals fan, wanted to check his bank account, so he tried BOA.com thinking it would take him to Bank of America. He was wrong…

Update: Arg, whoever runs boa.com changed the picture, now a pair of creepy green eyes stare you down. Before the change, the site featured a large aereal view of old Busch Stadium in St. Louis adjacent to a snow-covered lot, and nothing more. Written in the snow in giant letters was the phrase: “CUBS SUCK.”

I was able to salvage this thumbnail:

Come hither...

When Apple announced the new iteration of it’s venerable cash cow, the iPhone 3GS, it did so emphasizing the speed of the device, capable of delivering faster web pages, loading applications in a snap, and, at least in the future, capable of utilizing AT&T’s faster mobile internet network.

Another feature that will no doubt take advantage of the upgraded horsepower will be streaming video, and because we know these MLB New Media Goons are ahead of the technology curve, Apple promptly partnered with MLB Advanced Media to showcase the live video delivery capabilities of the ubiquitous machine with its latest version of the MLB At Bat iPhone application.

And to complete this delicious new media menage a trois, AT&T gave MLBAM the exclusive right to stream live video via its 3G cellular network, a right previously denied to applications such as Skype and Slingplayer (remember them?).

This is where it gets hairy. It’s no secret that Apple’s extremely restrictive application approval process has been contradictory in giving the green light to certain kinds of applications while rejecting other, very similar ones. But now that AT&T is wanting to play VIP with MLBAM, it raises another set of questions.

AT&T denied Slingplayer access to its 3G network for video streaming saying it would clog up its 3G network, so why give the MLB New Media Goons the full spread?

From CNET:

But now AT&T is allowing MLB to do exactly what it would not allow Sling to do, which is stream live broadcast TV over its 3G cellular network onto iPhones. So what gives? Is AT&T playing favorites?

That’s exactly what Ben Scott, policy director for the advocacy group Free Press, thinks. The group issued a statement Thursday expressing its concern over what it sees as an inconsistent policy.

“We are troubled that carriers like AT&T are playing gatekeeper to the next generation of wireless Internet applications,” Scott said in a statement. “No Internet service provider should be allowed to pick winners and losers online.”

Two things: First, Net Neutrality

Up until this point, the Net Neutrality battle (remember kids, same Internet for all) was being fought on the Cable companies’ turf, in which Big Cable’s bandwidth cap threats could’ve impacted MLB’s own broadband hog, MLB.tv, but AT&T’s contradictory policy towards the MLB At Bat application seems to indicate that it will also have to be addressed on the mobile web.

(An interesting side note, MLB Advanced Media has been a busy little new media whore. Just a few days ago, Boxee, the media center that allows you to hook up your computer to your HDTV and watch TV shows and movies, announced that the alpha version of its software will give MLB.tv subscribers a way to watch games through Boxee on their TVs.)

Second (and here’s my conspiracy angle)

It’s quite curious to note that the kid not invited to the party is Sling Media, the maker of the Slingplayer application for the iPhone.  If you all remember, MLB has once before targeted Sling, which allows you to setup a box at home, and stream your cable or satellite service (or your shiny new public digital TV signal) over the internet to your laptop or mobile phone. Yes, you can stream your Sling connection to your iPhone, but it has to be done through a Wi-Fi connection (which necessitates a hot spot and not AT&T’s much wider 3G network).

Of course, MLB is not getting the double dip in broadcast rights once you stream the home team’s game when you’re away from home. And so you see, in my humble opinion at least, Bud Selig and his New Media Goons are getting AT&T to give them the 3G buffet while at the same time, Mamma Bell kicks Sling Media to the curve.

Full circle

Remember who bought Sling Media? Echo Star, the parent company for Dish Network, which never got a piece of the MLB Extra Innings pie.

Conclusion?

Clearly MLB Advanced Media is spreading its tentacles to as many areas of technology as it can. That is a good thing. But there seem to be some shady shenanigans going on behind the scenes. And what I don’t like is the fact that we have to keep paying an arm and a leg just to watch some baseball.

I am simply astonished to see how often Joe Torre is making Russell Martin catch all 9 innings in interleague matchups in AL parks so far this year.

Given Martin’s well-known wearing down at the end of the past two seasons due to overuse, and the fact that his poor performance this season may well be related, away games in AL parks seem like golden chances to keep Martin’s bat in the lineup while resting his aching body.

And yet, so far in 5 out of 7 such games so far this season, Joe Torre has pencilled Martin in at catcher, giving the DH duties to someone else. This makes no sense whatsover, especially since backup Brad Ausmus is a well-respected game-caller who is batting .305 with a .375 OBP so far this year and is getting paid very well for a backup catcher – he should be used. And even moreso, as mentioned, Martin could really use the rest.

I mean, I could understand if Joe Torre had some big bat off the bench that he really wanted to get into the game as DH, but the two guys he has been DH’ing instead of Martin are 37-year-old Mark Loretta (.635 OPS this season) and minor league emergency call-up Mitch Jones, neither of whom is anyone’s idea of a “big bat.”

Has there ever been a bigger gap between a manager’s reputation and his actual in-game lack of managerial skills than in the case of Joe Torre?

So this is the lineup that the Mets ran out there tonight against the St. Louis Cardinals:

1. SS Alex Cora
2. 1B Daniel Murphy
3. 3B David Wright
4. LF Fernando Tatis
5. RF Ryan Church
6. C Omir Santos
7. CF Fernando Martinez
8. 2B Luis Castillo

Wow. The Mets are in worse shape than I realized. Is it any wonder that Joel Pinero pitched a complete game two-hitter, only throwing 100 pitches in 9 innings?

So yeah, shades of 2007, it looks like God has taken a liking to the Colorado Rockies once more, as they are currently in the midst of a 17-1 tear.

But the single scariest thing about this whole team is not their ability to beat all comers despite being managed by Jim Tracy.

Nay, it’s the fact that Jason Marquis, of all people, is the “ace” of the staff, and that his current record is a ridiculous 9-4, which puts him on pace to win 21 games.

Yes, you read that right. Jason Marquis. Pitching half his games in Coors Field. On pace to win one score and one games this season.

Yikes. Maybe that’s not God’s doing after all. More like Satan’s.