- When is signing one of the three best pitchers in Major
League Baseball to a long-term extension not a no-brainer? When you’re the
Seattle Mariners and you have concerns about the condition of ace Felix
Hernandez’s right elbow, that’s when. Late last week, reports surfaced that the
team and Hernandez had agreed to a
deal that would pay $175 million over the next seven seasons. By the time
Sunday afternoon rolled around, the deal was on the back burner because of
numerous issues, the most prevalent of which is growing concern over
Hernandez’s pitching elbow. Instead of a record-setting extension, Hernandez is
receiving a healthy amount of speculation and the issue is a significant impediment
to the completion of the new contract. Mariners general manager Jack Zduriencik
tried to downplay the issue, insisting that his ace has been on a normal
throwing routine in his preparations for spring training and is expected to
report with the Mariners' other pitchers and catchers on Tuesday. Once
Hernandez arrives in Peoria, Ariz. and undergoes his physical, “we'll get
rolling,” Zduriencik said. "I'm not going to comment on any of that other
stuff. It's ridiculous. I've watched him at (Safeco Field) for the last month
or so throwing, and he's his normal self.” If Hernandez does have elbow issues,
he wouldn’t be the first workhorse starting pitcher to suffer such woes. He has
already amassed 1,620 1/3 innings
in his career and is one of just four pitchers to have thrown that many innings
before their 27th birthday: Bert Blyleven, Fernando Valenzuela and Dwight
Gooden. Those three pitchers before the current era, when massive salaries have
led teams to become more protective of their young arms. Hernandez is under
contract for the next two seasons, so there is no rush to ink him to an
extension for fear of losing him to free agency. Still,, a struggling team like
the Mariners would do well to lock up their best player rather than wait………
- Well, this is a creative twist on the whole crazy, old
cat lady scenario. Darlene Flatoff of
Plover, Wisc. doesn’t have a dilapidated old home overrun with stray cats she
keeps feeding and treating like her real, human family. Instead, her now-former
home was overrun with pet rats and those rats are the reason Portage County
health official evicted her. "They've chewed out the floor boards," exterminator
Matthew Schneider said of the sad state of Flatoff’s mobile home. Court
documents tell Flatoff’s sad story, one that began in December when Portage
County Sheriff's officers were told about a severe case of rodent infestation
at Flatoff's mobile home in Plover. She was warned several times to get rid of
the rats and when she refused, the town condemned her property. The rats have
been growing in number since Flatoff was allegedly given her first rat as a pet
and now, hundreds of them have overrun the trailer and are its lone occupants
now that their patron saint of filth has been booted. "It shocked me a
little bit because usually people don't have that many rats for pets,"
Schneider said. Yes, but most people are at least fairly normal, something
Flatoff clearly is not. Officials in the mobile home park when Flatoff lived
said rats could be seen crawling around in the windows and the smell from the
filth and waste they create has become unbearable. Now that the enabler has
been evicted, Schneider and health department officials can focus on
eliminating the problem. "My plan of attack is to set up a whole mess of
live traps in there," Schneider said. "I'm going to live trap them and
then put them to sleep." He has been an exterminator for more than 20
years, but admits he has never encountered anything quite like this. At the
apex of the pest problem, health department officials estimated that roughly
300 rats lived with Flatoff, who told authorities the rats were her friends and
didn't cause any harm. She has since left the area and is living with a friend in
the southern part of the state while Plover officials are trying to decide what
will happen to the mobile home. A dousing of gasoline and a lit match should to
the trick………
- Residents of the United Kingdom eat plenty of odd and
slightly disgusting – haggis, anyone? – but even stuffed sheep’s liver seems
more palatable at the moment than what Brits have allegedly been chowing down
on of late. Perhaps the victims of an international conspiracy, British
consumers are learning that they may have eaten horse that was imported as beef. Government
officials have blamed an "international criminal conspiracy” and say the
situation has once again raised the troubling issue of how closely food is
monitored before it reaches Europe's dinner tables. Horse meat is a delicacy
elsewhere in Europe, but definitely not in Britain. The alleged conspiracy
includes stories of a complex network of slaughterhouses and middlemen standing
between the farm and the supermarkets across Europe and those stories have both
France and Britain vowing to punish those found responsible for selling horse
meat purported to be beef. Telling the two types of meat apart requires DNA
testing and since most companies have neither the time nor the interest to
conduct such testing on batches of meat, many parties along the line now say
they feel duped by suppliers. A French farm has already accused suppliers in
Romania, although no proof has been offered in that case. "This is a
conspiracy against the public," said British farm minister Owen Paterson.
"I've got an increasing feeling that it is actually a case of an
international criminal conspiracy." What’s the big deal with eating horse
meat, which is perfectly edible? Officials have expressed concerns that the
meat may contain a drug known as bute -- a common anti-inflammatory painkiller
for sporting horses but banned for animals intended for eventual human
consumption. The scandal has led British frozen foods group Findus to recall its
beef lasagna products after discovering they included horse meat. French
supplier is the party suggesting that the questionable meat came from Romania.
European Union officials have sent out a union-wide alert on the issue, which
has been at the forefront of food safety discussions since British supermarkets
found horse meat in beef burgers from Ireland last month. In the latest
controversy, French officials tracing the contamination of the Findus beef
lasagna said a Luxembourg factory had been supplied by the French firm Poujol,
which had bought the meat frozen from a Cypriot trader, who subcontracted the
order to a Dutch trader supplied by a Romanian abattoir. The entire story is so
convoluted that it almost begs for a movie script. Does anyone know if Daniel
Craig is available between Bond films………..
- Never has there been a better reason to like The Black
Keys than this. Not only did the duo of Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney combine
to win four Grammys Sunday night, including Best Rock Song and Best Rock Album,
but their success in accruing trophies has absolutely nothing to do with why
the Akron, Ohio natives deserve respect and praise today. No, the Keys should
get props because of Carney’s act after the show went off the air and he headed
to an after party at Chateau Marmont. As fans swarmed around him, reporters asked if he felt
that talentless Canadian pop hack Justin Bieber should feel slighted about not
even being nominated for any Grammys this year. Carney not only had no sympathy
for Bieber; he outright verbally cold-cocked the teeny-bopper icon right
between his well-manicured eyebrows with a haymaker. "He's rich,
right?" Carney asked rhetorically. "Grammys are for like music, not
for money ... and he's making a lot of money. He should be happy." In
other words, cashing in on the suspect musical tastes of 13-year-old girls is
one thing, but being recognized for making good music is something else
entirely. Anyone who objects to Carney’s point of view should take a step back
and look at Bieber’s life. He has never won a Grammy and probably never will,
but he makes a ton of money, can bask in the adoring shrieks of approval from
teen and pre-teen girls any time he wants to venture out in public and has all
of the Ferraris, Lamborghinis and other trappings of the rich and famous that
he has time to buy. Even if no academy or industry group is ever foolish enough
to act like his music doesn’t suck and hands him an award he doesn’t deserve,
he’ll still be rich and he can still date plenty of A-listers…….
- Elon Musk hasn’t failed in too many endeavors in his
business career, as his billionaire status attests. He may want to brace
himself for the possibility that his most visible failure to date is on the way
because Tesla
Motors Inc., the maker of electric vehicles he owns, is in a tailspin two days
after an über-negative first- person account about a Tesla Model S sedan
test-drive published in December by the New York Times. The story detailed a
scenario where cold weather reduced the car’s range between charges. In the
piece, the writer explained in detail how the Model S he drove failed to meet
the electric sedan’s 300-mile range “under ideal conditions” while driving in
temperatures as low as 10 degrees Fahrenheit. With that story circulating and
casting doubts on the already-sketchy view many consumers have of electric cars,
Tesla shares declined 3.5 percent to $37.88 on the New York Stock Exchange,
declining 4.4 percent on Monday, the biggest intraday drop since Dec. 13. Prior
to the report, Tesla shares had gained 23 percent in the 12 months through Feb.
8. This is the last news any company wants to hear as it prepares to build at
least 20,000 new models of any vehicle. Tesla will move ahead with that batch
of 20,000 Model S cars at its Fremont, Calif., factory and add the Model X
electric sport-utility vehicle in 2014, but the negative publicity casts some
doubt on the undertaking. Tesla has a lot of hope riding on the ability of the
Model S to make its electric car business profitable, but one disappointing test
drive on I-95 along the East Coast could set the effort back substantially……..
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