Millar being Millar

I've been thinking. The other day I said that I would make a terrible GM because I might be inclined to hire guys based on their looks but would that really be that terrible? Unless you're old, past your prime, and sitting out the last year or two of a massive contract, you have to have a certain level of skill to be a major league ballplayer. It's not like even the worst teams are pulling people off the street and having them play.

So an experiment was in order: a fantasy baseball team with the best looking players available for each position. Which is where I ran into trouble. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find twenty-five good looking baseball players? Especially pitchers. Pitchers are, in general, a homely group of guys.

It was during my search for an attractive second baseman that I came across this article about Kevin Millar. Sometimes I get nostalgic. This is one of those times.

So the story goes:

1) Ryan Dempster of the Chicago Cubs predicted a World Series win for his team.

2) Kevin Millar took exception to that claim saying: "I'm going on the record right now. We're going to shock the world. I don't know who Dempster is in Chicago, but if he thinks he's going to win the World Series, he has to come through us first. I'm going deep off Ryan Dempster."

3) Yesterday, Dempster responded with: "It's kind of hard to go deep off me when you're wearing one in the ribs every time up."

4) To which Millar replied:

Back in Fort Lauderdale, Millar held a printout of Dempster's comments and orchestrated an impromptu news conference.

"If Dempster threw it at my ribs, that means he's trying to go down and away," Millar said. "He has no command, no control of any fastball he throws, so he can't tell anybody where he's going to throw the baseball. The young man made the [2000]All-Star team with the Fighting Fish [ Florida Marlins] because they had to take somebody. The guy's lived off the 2000 All-Star stuff for many, many, many years, and I'm tired of hearing about it.

"There's a Budweiser sign in Wrigley Field. He'll try to throw the fastball down and away, and it might get away from him and hit me. The next at-bat, he's going to try to throw a hanging slider and I'm going hit it off the Budweiser sign."

Egad. You've got to love Kevin Millar.