1. Craig Depken continues to do Heavy Lifting on the plan to fleece Arlington TX taxpayers for a new stadium for the Dallas Cowboys. (Why not fleece Dallas since it has "naming rights"?) He has some particularly good stuff about the (to put it mildly) lousy economic impact study done by stadium proponents.

2. My friend John Charles Bradbury over at sabernomics.com has put together a fun statistical model for estimating how much major league baseball players are worth based on their performance. One can have loads of fun tinkering with players who are over/underpaid.

3. Regarding Josh's Barry Bonds post: First, an anecdote that might help put Bonds in perspective. During a recent Braves game, one of the announcers stated that Bonds has drawn more walks than Chipper Jones and J.D. Drew combined this season. Jones and Drew are both high OBP players who draw 100 or so walks a year; it's not like saying Bonds walks more than Ichiro (see below).

Second, as amazed as I am by Bonds (see next item), I find the hype over his hitting HR number 700 a bit excessive. Yes, he's the third player to do, but he was also the third player to ever hit 698 or 699 (or 701 as he did today). Much like "Dow 10,000." the 700th HR is given more significance than it warrants because it's a nice round number.

Third, a question to ponder. Is Bonds performance over the past 4 seasons the best string of 4 seasons ever put together? I'm inclined to think so, but it's been awhile since I read Allen Barra's "Clearing the Bases."

4. I'm much less impressed by Ichiro's quest for the single season hit record. While it is probably good entertainment for Seattle fans who have little else to cheer this season, I wonder if he wouldn't be more valuable to his team's on-field performance (admittedly a lost cause at this stage of the season) if he'd be more selective at the plate. He's only drawn 43 walks in nearly 700 plate appearances; I'd be surprised if he draws 2 or more walks in the last two weeks of the season.

5. In Friday's WSJ, Allen St. John previewed this weekend's Yankees-BoSox series. An excerpt:

Perhaps more importantly, Boston's new closer, Keith Foulke, sports a 1-1 record, a 1.86 ERA, and is 2 for 2 in save opportunities, stats that trump Mariano Rivera (0-1, 3.12 ERA, 2 for 3 save opportunities).

This comparison struck me as being based on too small a sample (especially the save opportunities) to be meaningful. (The ERAs were both based on 7 appearances vs. the other team before this weekend.) But what do I know? While channel surfing last night I saw Foulke pitch well and Rivera take the loss.

6. As a transplanted North Carolinian, I'm pretty much at home in Georgia. The one big exception--football vs. basketball. Folks here are nuts about the former (I'm still practicing the Go Dawgs bit); folks in NC prefer the latter. (When's the last time you heard any upbeat news about Duke or UNC football?) Given my preference for roundball, I was disappointed by the ACC's recent expansion moves. I fear the loss of home-and-home regular season scheduling will diminish the conference; the addition of Va Tech and Miami basketball won't help matters either.