Me and the boyfriend have been apartment-hunting, and are currently on a demoralizing 0-for-21 slide. That’s right, 21 apartments viewed so far and 0 leases to show for it. So, I’m doing what any good manager would do: benching us. Clearly, what is needed here is a day to clear the head. And how better to clear said head than with some good hardball linkage?

First, Baseball Reference’s Stat of the Day blog has a quick take on winning with no hits, as the Dodgers did last night.

SportsbyBrooks weighs in on the issue that wouldn’t die: the unkillable pink Red Sox hat debate.

Towel Drills has the Ozzie Guillen-Lou Piniella “rap” commercial, which I hadn’t seen yet. It’s horrifying, and it makes me grateful that Boston only has one baseball team.

Half Street Blues has the news of a rather interesting (read: desperate) marketing ploy from the offices of the Washington Nationals: today’s first 10,000 fans who bring in any non-Nats baseball merch and trade it for a free Nationals hat, the one with the curly little “W” that looks like a pig’s tail.

In this week’s Metro column, I assess Curt Schilling’s HOF chances.

River Ave. Blues and Blogging the Bombers are both chuckling over today’s oddball Yankee lineup. Oh, that Joey Girardi! He’s such a kidder!

Razzball has an “interview” with “Spike Lee.”

Balls, Sticks, & Stuff has some simple steps to “Phix the Phils.”

“Eyre placed on DL,” begins the headline of this MLB.com piece. Naturally, I supplied the rest in the blink of an eye: “Expected to be out at least six weeks with malnutrition, exposure to typhus, smoke inhalation, and a broken heart. Will return only when Mr. Rochester finally calls.”

Do you often hear ghostly voices crying your name over the lonely moors? Tell me about it!

Only a few more hours left of Wednesday. A bit of reading to get you through the last hump of Hump Day:

Josh Beckett and Mike Lowell would like their ice cream machine back, please. (Bradford Files) And is lack of ice cream behind Beckett’s mysterious injuries this year? (Center Field)

What it’s like when Jose Canseco hits on your girlfriend. (Diamond Hoggers)

The six-man roster continues to loom. (Washington Post) Oh god, no.

Dusty Baker doesn’t like walks, so Joey Votto isn’t walking. (Vegas Watch) Moneyball haters, rejoice!

A backward glance at Nomomania (Sam Mellinger for the Kansas City Star)

“Jeter and others may be trying to get Paul O’Neill’s number RETIRED? Has the world gone mad?” (Joe Posnanski on behalf of LaTroy Hawkins)

Why are Kenji Johjima’s pitchers throwing him under the bus? (Detect-O-Vision)

Stephen Drew is a righthanded dude who bats left. (DbacksBuzz) After burning my right arm two weeks ago, I have discovered that I can do absolutely nothing with my left arm. At all. Tip o’ the hat to you, young Stephen.

And finally, earlier in the week, Coley wrote about Boston prospect Jed Lowrie’s potential as a super-utility guy for MLB Trade Rumors. Today, Joe Haggerty writes for the Boston Metro about why the Sox are grooming their prospects that way.

And as always, if you’re reading something we should be reading, let me know!

Via Deadspin and The Fanhouse, Dodgers Broadcaster Steve Lyons would like his homeowner’s insurance to pay for a little accident…that time a couple years back when he grabbed that woman’s wrist and demanded she show him her boobs, and then got sued. It was an Act of God, I’m tellin’ ya! But seriously, what would Vin Scully say? (Interesting aside: his official bio includes the line, “He has earned national notoriety as a staple of Fox Sports’ coverage of Major League Baseball from 1996-2006, where he earned an Emmy Award and two additional Emmy nominations during his tenure with the network.” I’m not sure “notoriety” was quite the word they wanted right there, but it certainly seems appropriate now.)

Over at Salon, King Kaufman has an interesting meditation on the no-hitter—why it’s superior to other athletic achievements and why he tries to jinx them at every opportunity.

DBacksBuzz notes that Randy Johnson did not fare well in his start for the AAA Tucson Sidewinders last night. ExtraBases notes that Bartolo Colon was strong in yesterday’s AAA Pawtucket Red Sox opener.

BlessYouBoys on Detroit’s April stupor.

DodgerThoughts defends bloggers against—guess who?—Murray Chass. The blog’s author, Jon Weisman, followed the New York Times columnist on Charlie Steiner’s XM talk show yesterday. Chass, predictably, used his airtime to rail against bloggers. Weisman gave a thoughtful, measured response, thus demonstrating that bloggers = more thoughtful, measured than Murray Chass. In his post, Weisman also notes that despite the knock that bloggers live in their parents’ basements, the only time when he’s actually moved back in with his parents was during his two-year stint as a beat reporter. (Hat tip to BrewCrewBall, where I read it first.)

And finally, Beyond the Box Score had a bunch of good tidbits yesterday (Bill James on Fenway’s left field, the first of many Joe Torre managing miscues, and what PETA would like to call the new Nationals ballpark (hint: it’s not Furmeat Field).

Dear UmpBumpers,

If you like baseball and you use Facebook, chances are you’ve seen the Bleacher Report’s ad for bloggers. The ad, when clicked upon, brings you here. If you click on MLB, on the front page you’ll see the headline “Ellsbury on the Fast Track” posted by an Alex Potter:

Of course, I had already read this headline. And as it turns out, I’d already read Mr. Potter’s article, too.

That article, which appears on The Bleacher Report under Mr. Potter’s byline, was actually written by Dan Shaughnessy and appeared in yesterday’s Boston Globe. Word for word.

Looking to see if the Bleacher Report had participated in other incidents of plagiarism, I Googled “Bleacher Report” and “plagiarism.” It turns out that BR has—but from the other side, when a writer at the Sporting News copied something from them. The Bleacher Report is “open source,” so “Alex Potter” may just be operating on his own. Nonetheless, you’ve got to think they would have some way of filtering what gets posted on their site—not to would just open them to legal troubles, no? Even if it’s just a spambot…why would 400,000 people a month read a blog that was written by spambots?

And on the blog’s “About” page, they claim that “every contribution bears the stamp of its writer’s personal convictions” (unless of course they bear the stamp of someone else’s unattributed personal convictions) and that “each submission is edited and rated by the Bleacher Report user-base, allowing individual writers to hone their skills and ensuring that the best analysis gets featured on the site.” I guess this means Dan Shaugnessy’s writing is good enough to be featured on a blog. That’s good news for Dan…but I’m sure he wishes it was under his own byline.

Oddly, in a bizarre coincidence, I wrote a column about a year ago that was very similar to one written by Dan Shaughnessy. Only mine was published about a week before Dan’s appeared. I wrote up some tips for a new Red Sox player to welcome J.D. Drew to town, and Shaughnessy wrote up some tips for a new Red Sox player to welcome Daisuke Matsuzaka. After first reading Shaughnessy’s column, I was out for blood—the similarities between the two, I was convinced, were proof enough of Dan’s nefarious intent! (Twirls mustache, or female mustache-equivalent.) But then I realized a) it wasn’t a very original idea and b) the likelihood that someone who grew up reading Shaughnessy’s columns would somehow finagle their way into his brain and think of his ideas before he did is much likelier than the notion that Dan Shaugnessy reads a fishwrap—it’s a term of endearment!—like the Metro, much less lift and idea from it. Coincidences do happen.

I guess that’s just by way of saying, sportswriting ain’t academia, folks, but word-for-word copying is never cool. Why anyone would plagiarize anything in this age of Googlability beats the heck outta me.

A very puzzled,

Sarah

Why read our long-ass HOA posts when you can read the “half-assed” haiku version on Babes Love Baseball? It’s like the Cliffs Notes of season previewing, only way awesomer.

ArmchairGM points out to Hank Steinbrenner that Red Sox Nation (which Hank called “a bunch of [expletive]“) has infiltrated New Jersey. I guess that makes up for all the Yankee fans in Connecticut, though I still consider those people traitors. And I’m sorry Hank, but Red Sox Nation is not a creation of ESPN. It wasn’t even a creation of the Red Sox, though marketing genius Larry Lucchino certainly capitalized on it. It was a creation of Dan Shaughnessy. Or maybe even Nathan Cobb.

And via Awful Announcing….wiffle ball fight! (Fight over wiffle? That’s just piffle!)

Speaking of the Sox-Yanks rivalry and of fighting, check out this story on Baseball Think Factory about a bunch of Sox fans in Cambridge jumping a Yankee fan at Central Square’s Cantab Lounge. The Cantab, which is well-known in the area for its Bluegrass Tuesdays, describes itself as a “meeting place for multi-ethnic, multi-generation” people. Apparently this diversity does not extend to sports teams.

Moving on down the Red Sox police blotter, Sox and Dawgs has a good guess what Boston scout Jesse Levis was doing when he committed that “lewd act.”

Baseball Reflections would like to know if Sean Casey is for real. So would I.

Jeff Pearlman at ESPN ripped Nomar a new one for not being happier on Autograph Day. And lest you think Garciaparra was just having an off-day, he showed the same surly demeanor when I saw him signing at Spring Training five years ago. In fact, since Nomar left Boston, I have heard so many stories about his sourpuss ‘tude that I have been forced to admit that my long-standing love for Nomie was unappreciated and undeserved. Oh well. It’s not the first time Sarah’s affections have been bestowed on an unworthy object. I’ve loved worse men than you, Nomar! So don’t go thinking you’re special!

The Sports Hernia looks at Dmitri Young and Nick Johnson and wonders what (or who) they ate for lunch.

At SI, Tom Verducci wonders if a pure DH could make the Hall of Fame. Specifically, David Ortiz. Plus, what Big Papi eats for breakfast (hint: it’s not mango salsa).

Corey Patterson finally got a job…a minor league deal with the Reds, finalized late on Monday…and according to Bus League Baseball, he may actually start the season over Jay Bruce, SI’s No. 1 prospect, which would be a shocking turn of events if it actually came to pass. But Bruce has a mild quadriceps strain, which may give Dusty Baker just the excuse he needs to go with crappy and old instead of young and talented.

And finally, from Can’t Stop the Bleeding, we bring you Joe Beimel’s number one fan.

The title of this post is a bit aspirational—technically, it’s still Saturday night. But I assume UmpBump’s readers are awesomer than I, and are not spending their Saturday night sitting at home, bored, and surfing the Interwebs. (Technically, I suppose I’m watching The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, but never have I been so bored by Brad Pitt.)

Only a few more hours of that blessed event, the weekend. Some fine readin’ to ease into the day:

Dugout Daily has an interesting take on the Scott Spezio situation. How come the Redbirds didn’t cut ties to LaRussa after his DUI, eh?

A couple of recent Metro columns from yours truly—how come athletes can’t quite apologize for juicing? And more love for the Tampa Bay Rays.

The Red Sox visited some real heroes at Walter Reed, and passed time with our fearless leader at the White House. Manny and Theo took a pass. Not only do I fault them both for skipping out on the troops, I regret Manny’s absence because I personally would have loved to see the Mannyisms-versus-Bushisms faceoff. (GB: “I know you’re working hard to put food on your family.” MR: “You can’t eat your cake before your birthday.”)

It appears Manny Ramirez was meditating at the time (Boston Herald).

But speaking of Theo, Bugs and Cranks wonders who would win in a fight? Him, or Hank?

If you had to guess, who would you say Miguel Batista’s idol was? With Leather wants you to know that if you guessed anyone but Kenny G….you’re wrong!

Steroid Nation has the goods on Barry Bonds and this positive drug test (so much for the he-never-failed-a-drug-test crowd—suckas!), including this quote from the man himself: “And I just — I can’t honestly believe that just because this piece of paper says something that there’s a problem.” B, I feel your pain. In fact, I believe I said those same words last time I got a speeding ticket.

And finally, big party at Jose Canseco’s house coming up (via the The Onion). I have dibs on the steroid-stuffed lobster puffs!

I can’t decide if today feels like Monday (endless and drab) or like Friday (haven’t I been at work long enough already this week?). But either way, I think it calls for some good lunchtime readin’.

Bill James has a piece over at Slate about why he “loved, and then grew tired of” Craig Biggio. Poor Craig Biggio. Cast off like an old shoe by his trusted paramour!

Rays Index rails against these Barry-Bonds-to-Tampa rumors.

It might be time for Kyle Lohse to write a personal ad like this one, posted at A Fan’s View from Section 220, a Star Tribune blog, since he’s no doubt feeling just as AOL’s The Fanhouse suggests in this diary entry entitled, “Why Doesn’t Anybody Love Me?” It’s not the first sign of Scott Boras losing his magic touch this winter, but it’s Kyle who could end up sleeping alone.

Fire Joe Morgan presents a day in the life of a VORPy.

I really enjoyed this piece by Rob Bradford at the Boston Herald, who interviewed JD Drew about his struggles last year and got a surprising explanation: he was just following in Big Papi’s footsteps.

One More Dying Quail hops on the ever-expanding Rays bandwagon. Full disclosure: this morning, I filed a column for the Boston Metro on just how awesome the Rays are going to be this year (and next year, and the year after that). I do believe the Tampa Bay Rays have now out-hyped Barack Obama.

Speaking of Tampa Bay jumping the shark, what is it about that team and marine life? Check out the giant hammerhead reeled in by reliever Scott Dohman over at The Big Lead.

Finally, Brock for Brolio has a list of the top 101 baseball blogs — and Umpbump is No. 12. Word.

Watch Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Kyle Kendrick wreak his vengence on Brett Myers (with a little help from Shane Victorino) at Balls, Sticks, & Stuff (shaving cream pie at 2 minutes, 47 seconds). The Phillies are having so much fun in camp this year, I think we need to give that fun its own specialized word. Anyone for Phun?

Joe Posnanski is predicting the Rays will be contending for a playoff spot in “late August, early September.” I’m as excited about this rebuilt Rays team as anyone, but that is bold, Joe.

And there’s more excitement building for the Rays, over at Squawking Baseball. It’s official: the Rays are the new A’s. Michael Lewis should be showing up in Tampa any day now.

Meanwhile, The Biz of Baseball has declared the Red Sox to be the 2007 MLB Organization of the Year. No complaints here! The runner up, not surprisingly, is Cleveland. But the honorable mentions provide perhaps unexpected takes on the Brewers, Angels, and Dodgers. Sorry, Tampa Bay Rays. Your takeover is not yet complete.

Obligatory Roger Clemens Update: The New York Daily News has found a guy who took a picture of Roger Clemens at that Jose Canseco party when he was just a kid. But as Baseball Musings points out, what’s the big deal about this one party? It’s not like it was some sort of steroid-swapping orgy, with HGH passed between man, wife, and even dog. Or was it…(Call of the Green Monster)

And finally, Soxaholix found a way to turn Curt Schilling’s comment about “medical egos” into a thorough ripping of Dan Shaughnessy. Somewhere, Curt is laughing.

The Phillies—manager, players, even beat reporters—played an elaborate practical joke on Kyle Kendrick by convincing him he’d been traded to Japan. Watch him get punk’d at Bugs and Cranks.

Yogi Berra’s museum removed its Roger Clemens jersey (for the children, of course) via Babes Love Baseball.

Speaking of museums, Daisuke Matsuzaka is getting one back in Japan, reports Center Field. And they’re also thinking of the kiddies, planning to “keep admission fees as low as possible in accordance with the wishes of people close to Matsuzaka for the sake of children who want to visit the museum.”

The steroids-Mitchell-Clemens drama continues tomorrow when Andy Pettitte arrives in camp. He’ll give a press conference at 3pm, according to The LoHud Yankees blog.

Via the Canton Repository: as the Yankees head into their last season in Yankee Stadium, Thurmon Munson’s widow wonders what will happen to her late husband’s locker, which has been kept empty since the Ohio native died in a plane crash in 1979.

In other Yankees news, via Sliding Into Home, it appears that in the Girardi era, players may be able to sport beards and goatees—so long as they are “neatly trimmed.” However, “unshaven looks” will still be verboten. I guess if you can figure out how to grow a beard without suffering through that tricky in-between stage, you’re golden.