Milton Bradley is still a Cub. It would be funny if he remained a Cub through the remainder of his contract and he just sat in right field when it was their turn to take the field and picked grass. But alas, there will likely not be any sitting in right field; the Cubs are working to get rid of Bradley. Bradley wants to go. It’s going to happen.

But where? Well, there was that Rangers talk about a week ago, which made a lot of sense. But according to Robothal, the Rays are still a very likely suitor, and in a smaller market on a team managed by Joe Maddon, I think that could work too. He’d fit in well as a DH for them. But this, also mentioned by Robothal? This make-a no sense:

The idea, while described as a longshot, is at least one way for the Cubs to trade outfielder Milton Bradley.

Bradley to the Blue Jays. First baseman Lyle Overbay to the Mets. Second baseman Luis Castillo to the Cubs.

The teams indeed have discussed the framework of such a deal, though not in direct fashion, according to major-league sources.

The Cubs spoke to the Mets about Bradley-for-Castillo, while the Mets spoke to the Jays about Bradley-for-Overbay, sources say.

I’m not speaking specifically about Bradley to the Blue Jays. (That proposed, unlikely three-way deal could work for each team.) I’m talking about Bradley for Luis Castillo straight up. Now, nothing against the Mets. I think they are a fine organization. But considering all the front-office turmoil last season, and the team’s epic collapse, wouldn’t Milton Bradley be the last guy you’d want to throw into that powder keg?

Though, who knows. Bradley’s attitude was supposed to be the difference maker in Chicago this past season. Hardy har.

It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly why big hats look stupid, since aesthetics are subjective and all that, but the general consensus is that David Wright’s helmet makes him look like a doofus. A motocross helmet would probably be a visual improvement. As it stands, Wright’s new look has drawn the most comparisons to the Flintstones’ Great Gazoo and Dark Helmet from Spaceballs. Not bad, but this is the Internet, folks. There are so many more jokes to be had.

Buzzy Beetle from the Super Mario Brothers games. If this analogy can be rightly extended, opposing pitchers should be able to dominate Wright by jumping on his head and drop-kicking him.

The big spaceship from Flight of the Navigator. Somewhere inside Wright’s helmet is an insufferable robotic eye voiced by Pee-Wee Herman that enjoys singing along to the Beach Boys. Kid’s name is even David. Seems pretty open-and-shut to me.

An extra from a Michel Gondry movie about baseball. I can almost hear Gondry’s whispery French accent. “I want to make a base ball movie. The batter, he wears helmet, no? Make him wear big helmet! Then he will fall into nightmare world made of papier-mâché!” Then he inaccurately mimes swinging a baseball bat.

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The thing about an unassisted triple play is this: there are several things that have to happen in order for it to be accomplished. Runners have to be moving; the fielder has to be on or around a bag; the fielder has to have that snap-second judgment that yes, he can in fact get three people out all by his lonesome.

But oftentimes when all these things line up, it spits out a horribly boring result. What is rare is also boring. Case in point, here’s the 15th unassisted triple play ever in MLB — and the first to end a game (sorry Mets!)  since Johnny Neun in 1927 — turned by Phillie Eric Bruntett:

Yeah, that was it. (Though the announcers certainly made it seem pretty exciting!) Maybe Bruntett should have started a brawl just to spice things up a bit?

Video via the Fightins.

A common staple of the proud history of viral marketing is the “oracle” — an Internet conversation bot that answers your questions with varying degrees of pertinence. (Burger King’s “Subservient Chicken” and the AIM-bot SmarterChild are two examples). Either peripherally or through “conversation,” they hawk the products of their corporate overlords. As such, they’re representatives of their respective corporations, so whenever a user asks them a question that’s unusually gloomy, they clam up.

Not so with Aquafina’s virtual representative. They’ve acquired the services of Mets third base coach Razor Shines (hahaha, “Razor Shines”) and designated him the “3rd Base Coach of Life.” He’s essentially a masqueraded Magic 8-Ball, and he has some pun-filled, terrifying advice to give you.

If you type cuss words into the box, as was my immediate first instinct, he answers with the obvious, “Maybe you should wash that mouth out … with a little Aquafina!” Cuss at him some more and he gets increasingly agitated until an umpire walks onto the screen and ejects you from the page.

The real fun to be had, though, is in asking macabre questions that don’t trigger the language filter. Hey, Razor Shines, should I jump off a bridge with a brick tied to my leg? Hey, Razor Shines, does Satan compel me to drown a sack full of kittens? The eeriness isn’t in Shines’ answers so much as the certainty of his answers.

Behind this facetious commentary is the sad reality that I’m now indirectly advertising for Aquafina and that this viral marketing effort has been executed to perfection. Whoops!

A Google Reader associate of mine shared this title card for ESPN.com’s “Highlight of the Night” video of Albert Pujols’ two-homer, five-RBI performance last night. It tells a story so rich that it almost could have been painted by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Moving pictures might tell a different story, but this scene, as captured here, clearly shows Pujols offering a high five to the Mets’ Omir Santos. Santos, meanwhile, looks like someone just stole his lunch money. Julio Lugo, appearing here as Pujols’ taunting little toady, is making the “oh burrrrn” face, while Colby Rasmus looks unsure of whether he should keep holding his hand up.

Or maybe this is how it went down:

RASMUS. High five, man! You just hit a grand slam, man! High five!
LUGO. That was cool! Do something else cool!
PUJOLS. All right. Ummm…okay, how about this. I’ll spontaneously generate a catcher with a career .300 on-base percentage with merely a wave of my hand.
RASMUS. High five!
LUGO. Ooooh! That was magic! …Why is he just standing there and staring at us? Doesn’t he have a soul?
PUJOLS. Well, no. I’m not God.
RASMUS. High…five?
PUJOLS. Tell you what, though. I’ll put a Domino’s Pizza logo on his arm.
LUGO. Wowee!
RASMUS. This offer for a free high five has expired. [walks back to dugout, slips on banana peel]

You know who needs a good punch in the face? The Double-A Binghamton Mets. All of them. They’re in last place, and some of them are allegedly drinking underage. Someone should go in there and challenge them to a fight. Just rip off his shirt and give ‘em the what-for and why-is. Sorry, I know this is sort of out of the blue. I was just thinking about the Double-A Binghamton Mets this morning while I was brushing my teeth, like I do every morning, and I figured it was time to get it off my chest. Imagine my surprise when my daily Google search for “binghamton mets fight fight fight” came up with this story today:

The Binghamton Mets clubhouse nearly turned into a scene out of WWE Raw recently, when VP for player development Tony Bernazard removed his shirt and challenged the Double-A players to a fight during a postgame tirade, multiples sources told the Daily News.

The story goes on to report that Bernazard allegedly called one of his players a part of female anatomy (I’m guessing he didn’t call him an “arm” or “foot” or something). It also speculates that Bernazard’s outrage was fueled by alcohol consumption on the part of underaged members of the team, but come on. There are just two guys under 21 on the roster, and they’re only a year and change away. It doesn’t seem like the sort of thing that a career baseball man like Bernazard would get rabid about.

Regardless, I applaud Bernazard’s decision to take off his shirt before getting all excitable. Remember Steve Ballmer? Never forget.

Moreso than any other team, the New York Mets have always been a team of extremes. They’ve been record-settingly horrible (40-120 in 1962) and inspirationally great (their miraculous runs in 1969 and 1986). On a less broad scale, the trend is consistent. Lately they’ve been a team of ups and downs during the regular season; unfortunately, the club’s sharply waning phases have come toward the end of a division race. (A read through the archives of Faith and Fear in Flushing perfectly captures this cycle of optimism, frustration and fatalism.)

It’s appropriate, then, that a Met would commit what is possibly the best defensive play of this half-full season, as well as what is possibly the worst. Daniel Murphy, who has spent a significant amount of time at first base and left field this season, made this play against the Dodgers last night.

This signifies a measure of redemption for Murphy. Earlier in the season, he performed the classic “I am going to sit in an invisible chair” error with remarkable aplomb, as seen below:

Mash these two moments together and you have a routine fielding of a grounder or a lazy pop fly. But Daniel Murphy is a New York Met. He has no use for the middle ground.