A quick reminder to all you hungry baseball fans out there: because of the stolen base in this year’s World Series, Taco Bell is giving away 1 free taco to everyone in America from 2-6pm.  We just grabbed ours, and it was well worth fending off the mob of homeless kids.

At 8 PM EST major league baseball’s annual Home Run Derby will take place at Yankee Stadium. This year’s field is made up of Lance Berkman, Ryan Braun, Grady Sizemore, Chase Utley, Josh Hamilton, Justin Morneau, Dan Uggla and Evan Longoria.

I’m gonna go with Lance Berkman from the NL to win it, with Josh Hamilton of the AL coming in second. Unfortunately, and rather ironically, there are no Yankees participating, no thanks to A-Rod. Check out Jayson Stark’s thoughts on that situation .

After three blown home run calls on nationally televised games in May, Major League Baseball is apparently looking to instill instant replay by August 1st. This according to a report by USA Today, citing two ranking MLB officials.

I think that instant replay will be a proper asset to umpires on disputable HR calls. But I think the line needs to be drawn right there. In no way should instant replay ever effect a judgment call such as a tag play or balls and strikes. We’ll see how it all pans out.

This year has been great as far as bad contracts are concerned in the major leagues. With Andruw Jones, Miguel Cabrerra, Eric Gagne, the crown jewel of all bad contracts Barry fucking Zito, and now Dontrelle Willis all complete flops, GM’s around the league have to be even more wary of spending the big dollars on extensions for younger players and those big free agent fish.

It was announced today that Willis, or “the human earned run” as I like to call him since he was traded to Detroit (note the 10.32 ERA), has been sent down to Single A. I’m sure it’s just to “work things out” or whatever, but the truth is his numbers had declined steadily for the two seasons previous to Detroit acquiring him during the off season due to the fact that he can’t seem to mix in a strike every once in a while.

Detroit as a team fucking sucks this year after many predicted them to be world series contender, and after putting Jeremy Bonderman on the DL earlier in the day things don’t appear to be looking up any time soon. They have one of the highest payrolls in the bigs, and I looked forward to seeing that lineup come together on the field, but such is the way of baseball. After all, who would have predicted Tampa Bay to be 38-26 at this point in the season?

Jake’s blog about Paul Pierce reminded me about another recent incident involving a Boston athlete. Coco Crisp got hit by a pitch in the first inning against the Rays a few days ago - and had it coming because of his ridiculously hard slide in to 2nd base the day before - but instead of walking down to first base like a man, he charged the mound. He didn’t fare so well, as there were a lot of swings and misses, which pretty much his entire career as a Red Sock.

Even so, a good baseball fight is good for the soul sometimes. Enjoy.

Red Rays - Devil Sox Brawl - Watch more free videos

I used to collect baseball cards when I was a kid because, well, every dude does at some point. I am a HUGE baseball fan and some of my fondest memories were opening up a pack of 89′ Donruss and seeing a cool new Rated Rookie, and a Will Clark or Mark McGuire. I studied the stats like a nerd, and compared collections with my friends. I started keeping track of a lot of player’s careers, and learned a ton about the game.

I stopped collecting over time because I grew pubes and started being more interested in trying to get girls to let me touch their boobs and actually playing baseball then looking at a bunch of pictures of adult males on cards. But today I was in a candy store and saw a pack of Topps, and decided I was going to re-live a bit of my youth, so I bought it.

First of all it was 2 fucking dollars! Bull shit! I don’t want to sound old or anything (but I’m old as fuck) but when I bought cards they were 75 cents. But whatever, it’s been a while. But then I opened up the pack and there was a grand total of SEVEN cards inside. SEVEN! RIP OFF!!!

So I paid about 28 cents per card and got a couple of mildly decent ones, but in general I feel ripped off. When I have a kid I ain’t shelling out 2 bucks a pack for that shit. I’m telling his ass to get on the tube and watch Baseball Tonight on ESPN and learn from Peter Gammons’ old ass.

I did get a piece of bubble gum that was surprisingly fresh though, which I’m chewing now, so it wasn’t a total loss I guess.