Bartender Banter: A Bucket of Junk

Here are a handful of things I want to quickly touch upon now that we're back from vacation.

A Message from Mr. Tufts
A few weeks ago we received an email at TMS from Bob Tufts. It simply read,

"Thx. I liked being a filler - kind of like the Cubs existence in the majors..."

I was completely dumbfounded by this message at first as I didn't have a clue who this was or what he was referring to. Eventually I figured it out. Checking back at my All-80's NL Center Field post, I found my answer in the Chili Davis writeup where I wrote,

"Chili's card is ruined by Bob Tufts choading it up on the right. At least Brenly managed a World Series champion. What did Tufts ever do besides be trade fodder for the Giants to acquire Atlee Hammaker?"

Suddenly his comment made sense, thus marking the first time in TMS history a former major leaguer has written something about our site. My only response to his zinger I guess is, "Touche Bob, touche." I sense a Baseball-Reference page sponsorship in the future.

Bob seems like he's a pretty interesting guy too. I found this article about the leaks in the grand jury testimony in the BALCO case from two years ago, in which he posted a lengthy comment. Apparently he was blackballed from the league based on guilt by association during the Pittsburgh drug trials in the early 80's.

Thunder Matt on MySpace?
A while back I discovered that Matt Murton supposedly created his own MySpace page. Not only that, but he actually refers to himself as Thunder Matt. Even in his photos, there is one picture that was taken directly from our site. I also love that one of his 'friends' is Old Style. Seriously, the frickin' beer has a MySpace page. Good to see that inanimate objects aren't being left out of the MySpace revolution.

This marks the third supposed MySpace page of Murton. The first two being this one, and this one. This most recent one however seems to be the most active and the guy pretending to be Thunder Matt is making his presence known all over the MySpace realm.

I'd just like to state that Thunder Matt's Saloon nor any of it's bartenders are affiliated with this MySpace endeavor. Having said that, I do support his work in getting the Thunder Matt nickname further spread out there to the Cubs faithful.

The whole baseball player MySpace page is a bit weird in general though. I'd venture to guess that 99.9% of them are complete phonies. Like most of the ones I've seen the main photo is completely ripped off from the MLB.com player profile pages. Even if these guys actually had the time to spend creating and maintaining a MySpace page, wouldn't they have their own personal photos to add instead of the ones easily found on a Google search? Well, given his um, history, I guess I can't rule out Zambrano actually having a legit MySpace.

The Return Of Mr. Tony
Tomorrow morning marks the return of Tony Kornheiser to the radio airwaves. After taking a hiatus from his morning talk show to do the MNF gig, Tony is back on Washington Post Radio doing his show from 8:30 to 10:30am Eastern, followed by a repeat airing immediately after. I've already checked and the Post radio station does have a free online streaming broadcast. If you can't wait until tomorrow morning, perhaps this will tide you over.

In Other News....
Felix Pie and Alfonso Soriano are hitting it off so far at Spring Training camp as Alfie looks to be a mentor. Meanwhile a despondent Jacque Jones sits in the corner sharpening his knife collection.

The Cubs announced a deal where Under Armour will have their logos on the outfield walls at Wrigley. Well actually it'll just be on the doors in the outfield wall. My feelings? Eh. I don't see this as reason for some big public outcry. And to those that say all these ads are destroying the old nostalgic ballparks, well I guess you're right. I mean can you imagine if such legendary places like Ebbets Field had advertisements all over it's outfield wall? Oh, wait....

It looks like the Cubs and Zambrano are working hard to avoid arbitration and get a deal hashed out. Thank God. After an offseason where the Cubs were unloading dump trucks of cash on various free agents' lawns, it would be an absolute crime to not pay Z his money. I don't know if I could've handled seeing Carlos in a Yankees or even worse, a Red Sox uniform.

Norv Turner is the new head coach of the San Diego Chargers. Because when you can replace a coach that led your team to a 14-2 record, with a guy that has been wildly mediocre at best as a head coach with Washington and Oakland, you gotta make that move*.

*Apologies to Sports Guy for stealing one of his bits.