My work schedule has gotten pretty ragged lately, with frequent trips for one project replaced by two separate projects operating out of two separate offices with two separate teams and requiring sporadic travel to two separate locations, including one a couple thousand miles away. I also recently moved to my first house, with all the wonderful purchasing, fixing, packing, unpacking and crying that doing so entails. So lately my days seem more than a little fractured, starbursted by being pulled in 4-5 different directions constantly. In other words, I have finally hit adulthood, or at least what 1980s comics portrayed adulthood as. Awesome.

       As part of my dying swings against the dark, I am trying to assert some dominance over my time, and at least get the puzzle pieces in the same room, if not on the same table. Where I can, I am doing more planning, and establishing certain benchmarks (e.g. eating the same healthy breakfast when I get up, going to bed at approximately the same time each night, etc.) for my day. While generally these benchmarks are in areas that are neutral in my enjoyment, I think it generally works better if you also do something you enjoy on a more regular schedule. And so, boiling the last 7 sentences (and the word “Awesome” with a period after it) down, I am going to attempt to write more frequently.

      I will attempt to mix longer articles (as I am used to posting) with some short notes about various sports and events. The winter meetings, as well as the general Hot Stove action, will continue to be a focus, but let’s face it: it’s basketball and football season. I will warn you that I love the NBA, hate college football (but still watch it religiously), and have wide-ranging feelings about college basketball depending on whether Maryland’s guards are dribbling balls off their feet as usual.

      I hope to bridge the gap between the in-depth analysis generally done on this site and the fun, bloggy style that can offer entertainment value to sports writing, without being overly crass.* I think that occasionally, with the well-thought out pieces in niche areas, we writers of this site tend to miss both small items that don’t warrant entire posts, or large picture items that are almost too obvious to talk about. I hope to be able to address those in the shorter, pixilated posts. Getting that out of the way, I have just three things for today, with a near perfect (for me) ratio of 1 baseball item, 1 other sports item, and 1 completely-unrelated-to-sports item:

    -  There is a truly bizarre article in the Philadelphia Daily News that might be of interest to some here. As far as I can tell, Stan Hochman has been saving a dull axe and just waiting to find a chance to grind the crap out of that thing. Thank god for him that Dick Allen was put on the post-1943 Veteran’s Committee ballot. A couple of interesting things in the article, which can be read here (http://www.philly.com/dailynews/sports/20081203_Stan_Hochman__You_take_Dick_Allen_the_way_he_was.html):

               1.) Hochman trots out something that Bill wrote a while ago, about a guy who is INFAMOUS for being a bore. Not to take anything away from Mr. James, but he was hardly the first (or last) to suggest that Allen was a disaster as a teammate or hurt his teams. This seems like Hochman wanted a chance to badmouth James (“a numbers guy who throws hearsay into his equations” according to good ol’ Stan) and praise Allen, who, coincidentally, has an inside position in the organization that Hochman covers.

               2.) Dick Allen has no idea who Bill James is, or what he was about, but was relatively blasé about the whole thing. Allen’s quote about stats is actually funny, since I think in most situations, sabermetrics appreciates guys who draw walks and don’t put up “traditional” stats.

               3.) “Between now and Monday, Allen may get carpal tunnel syndrome in both wrists trying to keep a lid on his hopes and dreams. He is in his mid-60s now, working with the Phillies in community relations, mellowed by time, weathered by sadness, feeling euphoric about the team winning the World Series.” If anyone can explain a single part of that sentence in a way other than “Stan Hochman thinks he knows how to spin words to paint a picture,” please feel free to try below.

        -  I can’t recommend College Basketball Prospectus 2008-2009 nearly enough. It’s not quite up to the level of BP’s annual baseball guides and previews, if only because they haven’t yet refined their statistical analysis and due to the frequent defections after 1-3 years of college, but it is a good read, and a useful guide for those who like to follow games with a little more knowledge than is imparted while Dicky V spits at your TV screen. In other words, IT’S AWESOME, BABY!!! A TRUE DIAPER DANDY!! I HOPE THIS PERIODICAL STICKS AROUND AND TAKES TIME TO LEARN FROM THE BEST AT BP!!!! BABY!!!!

        - In a similar recommendation vein, I just finished Bel Canto by Ann Patchett, and found it well-written and refreshing. For whatever reason, I don’t read that many books authored or edited by women not named Christina Kahrl, which is one of those things that disappoints me about myself, is imminently fixable, and hasn’t changed in the past 5 years. So it goes. Still, great book, easy read, makes you soft around the edges (where being soft isn’t such a bad thing).

* My humor tends to the more aggressive in this arena, but there are already (fantastic) places to find that. This site is supposed to be family friendly, and I think I can stay within those bounds. **

** There was no way I was getting out of even this short thing without a pointless asterisk (or two).