Monday link-o-rama

It's been a while since I enriched everyone's hump day with a panoply of links. So rather than make you wait, I present Cole Slaw Blog's first Monday link-o-rama, a.k.a "Shit you can read when you're not doing work.":

• No one's really known quite what to make of the offense binge in baseball. Huffy sportswriters predicted a season of banjo hitting now that steroids were clearly not being done by anyone at all, but runs and homers are still up. I think someone suggested maybe the balls were being stitched tighter. The seamheads at Baseball Prospectus have actually gathered and studied data (Joe Morgan, Cardinal Bellarmine and others, please avert your eyes ). Their conclusion: The pitchers who competed in the World Baseball Classic have sucked this year, and said sucking accounts for a lot of the league-wide jump in ERA.
• More baseball. Here's an article on Barry Bonds and race. Here's another. To me, race doesn't totally explain the difference between the public and media response to his charge at the record books and that accorded to Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa. But it's also certainly not not an issue, either. Thankfully, our nation's greatest thinkers -- sportswriters and TV commentators -- are on the case to unpack everything for us. Much like that snotty maitre'd at Chez Luis, I weep for the future.
  
• Just to make it three baseball links in a row: Apparently, minor league baseball is getting what it deserves for hiring scab umpires: There's real evidence of hometown bias. (via Deadspin).
  
• Comments gadfly Crunk Raconteur brings up a good point: Imagine the media response if Bill Clinton or Al Gore claimed to have caught a perch three pounds larger than the record. Yeah, I thought so.
• In monkey news, zookeepers at the London Zoo had to walk around with mustard-covered cell phones to get monkeys to stop stealing them from zoo-goers. Mabye my co-blogger is right. His career advice to me has consisted of constant and repeated pleas for me to become a zookeeper. And, well, I do like putting condiments on my personal effects.
  
• OK, one more baseball-related item, but it's not a link. At a Derby party this weekend, I noticed a guest drinking from a paper cup with a curious tilted 'E' logo on it. Closer inspection revealed that it was indeed a cup from Enron Field. The guest said he got it at a pizza place on Seventh Avenue, between 25th and 23rd. Readers, you know what to do ...