I Shouldn't Have Come Back....

Casey at the bat
Alright.... I spent some time last week talking about how terrible Casey Blake is. Then... of course... he hits 3 homers in the last week. But he still has a terrible approach at the plate. Isn't it obvious that he goes up there looking for one pitch and one pitch only? If he doesn't get it.... he can look really bad. I don't have a problem with a guy doing that early in the count or when he's ahead in the count, but Casey does it when it's 0-2, 1-2, etc. How often does the opposing pitcher just lay in a belt-high curve in the middle of the plate and Casey lets it go by for a called third strike? Answer: too often. He's GOTTA change his approach when he's got two strikes. I'm not sure why he frustrates me so much when you've got Escobar and Crisp doing an even worse job at the plate.

If you haven't looked at Ford lately.... continue ignoring them
Is anyone else jumping for joy because Ford changed their ad slogan (and advertises a little less during Indians broadcasts) since last year? Who was the ad wizard who came up with that one? That commercial used to be the first one on EVERY SINGLE COMMERCIAL BREAK FOR A FULL YEAR!!! You know... "If you haven't looked at Ford lately, look again." I vowed never to look again at a Ford after that fiasco. Did anybody else notice this? Then, later in the year, they just kinda changed the jingle around and made it even more annoying.

Nicknames
On another topic.... Is anyone else getting annoyed with the terrible nicknames being given to the Tribe by the beat writers/fans? Can't a society that puts a rover on Mars and creates babies from 21-year cryopreserved male "fluid" come up with something better? I mean... Team Streak?!?! Hellpen?!?!?! These are the worst nicknames since all the mean kids called Corey Haim Leukoplakia in quite possibly the best film ever made.

This poor kid and Indians have some things in common

The Youppers
I was in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan this weekend (the U.P. to those familiar) and thus quite out of touch with what was going on. I was lucky enough to pick up AM 1100 during my drive up on Friday night to listen to the end of the game.... and even luckier that Tom Hamilton was calling the game at the time, not Matt Underwood (his homerun call needs some work). For those of you who've never been to the U.P., it's kinda like New York City in that scene in Vanilla Sky when Tom Cruise is running through the empty streets. Except, instead of skyscrapers, there are thousands and thousands of trees.

By the way, if you ever find yourself without radio or TV access and need an instant update.... try TELL ME. Just dial 1-800-555-TELL and follow the voice activated prompts. It's always good to have when you need a quick update.

Day Game Tomorrow
I wonder how much the productivity of Cleveland workers drops when there's a weekday day game. I don't know about all of you, but I'm going to spend three straight hours watching MLB Gameday. If someone comes walking by, I'll just use the Alt-Tab combo to quickly transfer to some pseudo-important document I'm not really working on. By the way, I've found that MLB.com Gameday is by far the quickest and most comprehensive game tracker online. I highly recommend it.

At some point soon, I'm also going to spend some time discussing why every big baseball fan should have a subscription to MLB.com's ALL ACCESS.

Other Stuff
Here are a couple of other links to Indians-related stories:

Buster Olney of ESPN.com talks about just how terrible the Indians' bullpen has been
Peter Gammons comments on the possibility of Omar going to the Cubs
John Sickels of ESPN.com compares Michael Aubrey and Ryan Garko
Is this Ben Broussard's cousin stalking Halle Berry?

That's all for now. For those of you afraid that me watching the game tonight will jinx our winning streak, I have two words: "SUE ME."