in case you haven’t read it yet, the twins have picked up torii hunter’s $12MM option for 2006.

this pains me, and yet i think it was the right move.  i had wanted to compare torii’s ’06 stats to the stats of this offseason’s crop of free agent centerfielders (because, face it, we weren’t going to hand the position over to lew or tyner.)  thankfully, people have already done that for me here.  (thanks, twinsgeek.)  despite torii’s seeming loss of range in center, despite the complete evaporation of his patience at the plate in the second half, and despite that game two misplay that still haunts my dreams, i feel better paying him $12MM than paying someone else on that list less money.  well, maybe juan pierre, but the twins need another no-power speedster like they need a hole in the head.  and pierre’s on-base percentage isn’t that much greater than torii.

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Welcome to the 6th Annual Austin Bar Crawl!

Sorry for the extended delay, but it’s been a painfully busy summer and early fall for all of us.  But better late than never!!!

If you are unfamiliar with the ABC please check out our previous misadventures from 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005. Ahhh Austin… it truly is a drunkards paradise.

We were back to the core group this year of Matty, Dan, Wade, Alex, wadE, and Jason. It just didn’t feel right without Dan last year. We were glad to have him back.

With all the key players in place for this year’s crawl we made a pact that since we are getting a bit older (and we thought wiser), we should maybe have a person take a bar off as we did the rounds. Try and cut back a little bit. Why we thought we could reign in our excess in Austin is beyond me. Fools, we were! But we all made it through, though some were in much better shape than others, but we’ll get to that. So join us as we recap the 6th Annual Austin Bar Crawl.

http://www.simpleprop.com/wade/6th-annual-austin-bar-crawl/

So over on the side blog I’ve been running a quasi-daily category in which I single out a blog post or two worthy of your consideration. But today’s been a gold mine of sorts here on the tubes of the internet, so I thought I’d bring the whole thing over here for a longer post. Just sharing the love here, folks.

Let’s start with this fantastic idea going on over at Deadspin. I encourage all of you to support this if at all possible. I’m kind of shocked at the dollar amount they’ve already raised, but that’s no reason to keep it from growing larger still.

“KEEP FIRING, ASSHOLES!”

Much more after the jump.

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An article I read recently, sadly, didn’t surprise me.

It’s a long article, but definitely worth reading.  The quotes from internal memos, especially the Human Resource VP, are especially chilling.

There seem to be two fundamental forces at play here.  The first is Wall Street.  The second is the desire for cheap stuff to buy.   

When you combine those two, what WalMart is doing makes sense.  In a purely capitalist system, the purpose of the business is to make money.  To continue to make money and keep their stock price high WalMart needs to not only keep its profits at high levels, it needs to grow those profits; and when you’re as big as WalMart, one of the few options for profit growth is cost cutting (because you certainly aren’t going to raise your prices!).  As the article states, the company is simply applying the correct business strategy to align their workforce more productively to lower costs and maximize profit.

Simple right?

Not really.  Beyond the obvious, what stuck me as I read that article is that WalMart has created a 21st century version of the “company town”.  The means of battling a company town 100 years ago was “voice and exit.”  Employees could engage in collective action through strikes, and joining a union, or through individual actions such as quitting and moving to a better location.  But WalMart has done a terrific job avoiding that by creating a system where the only place their employees can afford to shop is WalMart, limiting the ”exit”.  They are also effective at eliminating “trouble makers” (like those pesky Unions), and avoiding “voice”. 

What is left is for the rest of us to utilize those same tools.  So all I ask is for you to think, before you shop at WalMart. 

KO strikes again.

Read the transcript; Watch the video.

If what he says is true, he could end up in Git’Mo for that one. As such, I applaud it. I’d offer to start collecting for his (and mine, and your) defense fund, but we all know that’s passé as well.