You think Milton Bradley’s ties to Chicago are severed for good now that he’s no longer a Cub? Think again. Turns out he may still have a lingering obligation in town. Milton allegedly decided to stop paying rent on his $15,00-a-month condo on Michigan Ave. once he skipped town back in October. Not cool, bro. Not cool.

Some details, via the Sun-Times:

… The landlord and the realty company that helped lease the 24th-floor Park Hyatt condo, 800 N. Michigan Ave., are suing Bradley for $44,100 in back rent, late fees and interest through this month. And they’ll be seeking further rent until the lease runs out.

“Bradley abandoned the Leased Premises on or about Oct. 12, 2009,” the suit states.

Bradley was sent a “demand letter” for rent the following month, according to the suit. An “agent for Bradley” acknowledged the letter, the suit states. But the ballplayer never wrote a check, the landlord alleges.

All and all, this is chump change for a guy making $43,000 a game last season.  But hey: a lease is a lease. It’s a contract. Honor it, sublease to someone else, or suffer the consequences.

I mean, it’s not like he could just trade the thing away for another one if it didn’t work out. Oh wait …

It’s sort of baffling how many professional baseball players still don’t wear some sort of nut-related protection. Football’s the same way. There are an infinite number of ways your balls can be smashed, grabbed, crushed and bonked on any given play, and because a jock is occasionally uncomfortable, players just don’t use it. It’s sort of shocking. (Though I probably shouldn’t talk; I refused to wear a jock in soccer, even though the proximity of feet and soccer balls to a soccer player’s nether regions is frightening.)

Anyway, a lack of cup comfort is what led Adrian Beltre to the DL. Three weeks ago, he attempted to field a ball at third and injured his testicle. He was not wearing a cup. Now, he’s back, and even though he’s not talking about it, his manager is:

Adrian Beltre didn’t want to discuss whether or not he’d be wearing a protective cup for Tuesday’s start at third base. Beltre is getting fed up with the questions and jokes flying around the past three weeks since he injured a testicle while trying to field a ground ball without the proper equipment.

But while he says he’ll never answer that particular question again, manager Don Wakamatsu did the talking for him.

“Adrian will wear a cup tonight,” Wakamatsu said before Tuesday’s game.

This is the best part. Ken Griffey, you jokester:

When Beltre came up for his first at-bat, the theme for Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker” was played, a gesture from Ken Griffey Jr., whose MRI on his knee showed no structural damage.

If Beltre had any pull in Seattle, he’d get a photo of Samuel L. Jackson in a wheelchair superimposed over Griffey’s Jumbotron mugshot. The big jerk.

Via.

So, Ken Williams got a jaywalking ticket up in Seattle on Monday. He received a $56 ticket. (Mark Buehrle, anyone?) Eamonn had some fun with it yesterday. Someone even left him a nice comment.

But, Ozzie Guillen is having infinitely more fun than Eamonn or anyone else with it. In typical Guillen fashion, he yucked it up with reporters yesterday about Williams’ situation. If he had a standup routine, which he might think about implementing this offseason in Venezuela, these should all make the cut:

‘The police here don’t have anything better to do?” Guillen said, laughing. ”OK, if that costs you 60 bucks, how much does a drinking and driving cost here? Life in jail?”

[ ... ]

”My question to the city is, if you keep walking, what do they do? They shoot you? They chase you? It’s funny. That’s a lot of money. That’s a day of work for someone else. Maybe for Kenny, too.”

[ …}

”This morning I tried to get one on purpose,” Guillen said. ”I want to frame that thing. If that gets you on TV like Kenny … Kenny gets on TV for a ticket, I get on TV saying we’re going to hit people.”

For the record, I think Seattle cops bust out the taser on you if you keep walking. It’s what Seattle’s known for: rain, coffee and tasers.

When Ken Griffey Jr., future Hall of Famer/official mascot of the 2009 Seattle Mariners, decided to return to the Mariners in the offseason, he didn’t just do it for the sake of warm and fuzzy storylines. Sure, that was part of it. But Griffey also had a clause in his contract designed to pass on some of the benefits of his return to Seattle. That way, when fans started coming to the ballpark in droves to see their baseball McDreamy (Seattle “Grey’s Anatomy” reference! Sorry.), Griffey would get a piece of the action. Fair? Fair.

Fail? Fail:

His current contract says if he preserved his previous year’s statistics and helped draw just 259 more fans to each home game, he’d get a $1.25 million bonus. But the Mariners are actually seeing fewer fans pass the turnstiles this year, cutting Mr. Griffey’s potential bonus by $450,000, about 10 times the median household income in Seattle, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

I’m not sure why the WSJ includes the whole median household income bit there. I mean, you know, we get it: Ken Griffey Jr. makes a lot of money. He will make a lot of money whether or not Seattle’s fans come back from the fish market long enough (I literally have no idea what people in Seattle do in their free time!) to spend $50 on a baseball ticket. I’m familiar with this concept. I’ve made my peace with it. Please stop trying to remind me of the huge gulf in wealth between myself and Ken Griffey Jr., WSJ. Thanks.

Anyway, this rejection has to sting for Griffey. Not only are fans not returning in droves, they’re actually staying away in greater numbers than in 2008, when the Mariners didn’t even have the Griffey-led nostalgia campaign to fall back on. Maybe the Mariners need to double down. Is Jay Buhner available? Edgar Martinez? Alex Rodriguez? Randy Johnson? Let’s get the whole gang back together! It’ll be like a “Grey’s Anatomy” reunion! Because that is literally all I have to reference Seattle by that isn’t Kurt Cobain! Sorry, everyone.

Remember when Ken Griffey, Jr. was the best player at baseball ever, and you were a little kid then and so you loved him irrationally? He had earrings. He wore his hat backwards whenever possible. He flew around the outfield at a rate not seen since Willie Mays. And he was in this awesome commercial, which lives on now as a nostalgic relic of our misbegotten youth:

Of course you remember. Now feast your eyes on this unembeddable video from last night (grr, MLB.com), wherein Ken Griffey, Jr. fulfilled his horrifying destiny. The only difference is that instead of a fan-made sign, Griffey’s “hit it here” target was a Subway net promising $25,000. I want $25,000 worth of Subway. What time is it? Is it lunch time yet? What was I talking about again?

On Monday night, Japan beat Korea to win the World Baseball Classic. Since the United States was knocked out of contention the night before, interest sort of waned. The official scorekeeper submitted a scorecard with scribbles of F-16s and dinosaurs all over it. The Associated Press reporter fell asleep on his keyboard; it wasn’t until the next day that the AP broke the news that, “hhhhhhhhhhhhhh.”

Elsewhere in the world, though, it was a big deal. Ichiro Suzuki managed a two-run single in the 10th to put Japan ahead, and knocked a couple of killer quotes afterward.

After the tense finish at Dodger Stadium, Suzuki told the Japanese media that: “I’ve got it, you know. God descended on me.”

…In a reference to the benefit his erratic form has had on opposition sides, he quipped: “I had worn South Korea’s uniform, Cuba’s uniform and the uniforms of various other teams. But finally I wore Japan’s uniform.”

A high school substitute teacher of mine once predicted that the Japanese empire would resurrect itself and that “we’ll all be speaking Japanese by 2010,” and it’s a shame that never panned out, because Ichiro is evidently capable of delivering some serious poetry. Less eccentric than Rickey Henderson, but just as ambitious and more eloquent. Can you imagine how much better baseball would instantly get if someone like Ryan Theriot ditched the typical canned responses, like “It’s a shame both teams couldn’t win this one,” or “I gave 110% out there,” or, “you’ve got to give it up for [pitcher on my team],” in favor of a simple, “I AM GOD INCARNATE”? The downside, I guess, is that rowdy fans who normally go out and overturn cars would go and sacrifice lambs instead.

Sometimes, the Internet blesses us with pure awesomeness. Today, my friends, is such a day. Thanks to the brilliant work of ‘Duk over at Big League Stew, we have some video of Ichiro meeting Michael Jordan at the United Center, during what is believed to be the 1995-96 season. (Please, if anything, don’t miss Ichiro’s Tom and Jerry sweater. Rock on.)

The first three minutes are sort of boring, so fast forward to the 3:00 mark if you want to see the two actually meeting and interacting:

It’s been said a million time before, but this video just hammers it home even more: Jordan is global icon. That a young Ichiro was insanely excited and nervous to meet Jordan, and that he idolized the man even as a baseball player all the way across the world in Japan, well yeah, that’s just Jordan’s iconic status at work for ya.

If you want some more Ichiro/Jordan goodness, after the jump is a video of Ichiro attending a Bulls practice at the Berto Center and then carving a Christmas turkey for a suburban Chicago family. Seriously.

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