Milano Strikes Fear In Hearts of Former Major League Boyfriends

This may be the first time I’ve uncovered enough material to necessitate two baseball-related posts in the same day.

First it was the Philadelphia Phillies going all Keeping Up With the Kardashians on us. Now we hear that Alyssa Milano is releasing what may or may not be a tell-all book about her sexual escapades with several MLBers.

Entitled Safe at Home: Confessions of a Baseball Fanatic, Milano’s book, as she puts it, was originally intended to be a take on the game from a woman’s perspective, but it soon turned into more of a personal introspection and full-blown memoir.

Furthermore, the die-hard Dodger fanatic even took the extra steps to have manager Joe Torre compose the foreword.

The book is due out Mar. 24 and should be another epic chapter in baseball controversy.

Time Magazine Nearly Canonizes Obama For Budget Speech

In a gush of mainstream media liberalism—or perhaps an overflow of emotion generated by a new president’s first call to action—Time magazine reacted to President Barack Obama’s budget speech on Tuesday the way a fat kid would wonder the aisles of a candy store, suddenly in love with every sweet treat known to man.

Drunk with anticipation and overzealous in expectation.

Labeling Obama as the great median through which the conversational tone of Bill Clinton mixes with the stately oratorical skills of a Ronald Reagan, Time suggests the newly appointed Commander in Chief for the first time took the reigns of his presidency, all the while capturing the aura of the great Franklin Delanor Roosevelt.

Wow. That’s three pretty good comparisons for a man who might end up being the second coming of Abraham Lincoln.

Contrasting Monday’s entitlement summit (whatever that is) to his speech before Congress Tuesday, the magazine praised Obama for speaking to America in a direct tone, giving a sense of leadership, as if a president would act any other way:

If the entitlement summit was a conversational concerto, the budget speech was a full-blown symphony featuring a percussive series of simple declarative sentences that conveyed a sense of command…

To the writer’s credit, he stops short of crowning the former Illinois senator as the King of Kings:

All is not joy for Obama, of course. He has to govern. He has to manage situations — the banks at home, the deterioration of Pakistan overseas — that might prove unmanageable. For all the spiritual success of his budget speech, there were precious few details about his policy priorities.

Personally, I have nothing against President Obama; I am neither wholly Republican nor staunchly Democratic. I do not reject the idea that Obama has the ability to capture the attention of an audience, for he does it far better and with much more charisma than his predecessor.

But one stance I do levitate toward is disagreeing with supremely confident thinkers who insinuate Obama will bring about quick fixes as he blows his winds of change across America. If solutions are brought upon our problems, it will be because we as citizens decided that our government plays but a minuscule role in making our lives better.

Not because an invigorating speech told us everything will be okay.

[Photo Credit: Callie Shell]

MLB Network Looks To Reality For Programming

The infantile MLB Network has decided to take its piece of the reality television pie.

As if the endless hours of World Series highlights were somehow fake.

The network, which launched back on Jan. 1, has announced its production team has been frenetically following the every move of the members of the Philadelphia Phillies’ bullpen.

On the mound, inside the pen, within the depths of the team shower and around the training table where pitchers get lubed with anti-inflammatory ointments. It doesn’t matter.

This is all-access. For six weeks beginning June 1, we will be given unprecedented freedom to peer into the professional lives of pitchers who see live action but once every four to seven days.

Among them, right-hander Clay Condrey.

“I think it’ll be pretty neat.”

But don’t worry about Condrey and his fellow hurlers letting their new-found celebrity get to theirs heads. After all, these are hardened ballplayers.

“I ain’t no star,” Condrey assures us.

Someone get this guy a speech coach before cameras start rolling.

Here’s to betting the USC Song Girl show rakes in higher ratings.

[Photo Credit: Philadelphia Inquirer/Daily News]

“Inglorious Basterds” Is Tarantino’s Next Masterpiece

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Here is Quentin Tarantino’s latest creation: Inglorious Basterds.

All we need to know now about the film, which is scheduled to be released in August of 2009, is that Brad Pitt plays the part of Aldo Raine, a lieutenant sent to Nazi-occupied France during World War II to lead a band of Jewish-American soldiers (called Bastards) in killing Adolf Hitler regime members, primarily by scalping.

Knowing what we know now, it’s interesting to take a look at this piece that ran in New York magazine last July, which speculates whether the script the magazine acquired (hand-written cover sheet and all) was actually produced by Tarantino.