I'll be honest, when I say that I cringe a little when I see Padres or San Diego themed kids books, because, even though they're kids books, there's a corniness to them that I can't shake. Like in Good Night San Diego, when the book depicts 15 foot waves and says hello to a pelican and an unnamed pier. The art in that one isn't so amazing either.

But, I will tell you that My Padres Baseball Game does not suffer from Good Night San Diego-itis. I'd recommend this to Padres fans as a nice book to read to a preschooler that doubles up as something for your Padres stuff collection once your preschooler has grown up.

Jenny originally wrote the book as a Father's Day, Birthday, Anniversary present to her husband, Steve. It started out first as a poem and she later glued photographs from their games at Petco into a storybook as a keepsake for her husband.

This actually explains the art in the book quite a bit. Brent McCarthy, the illustrator, has a comic book style, but the images of Petco Park almost look like painted over photographs, which they very well might've been. It was only published last year, but I think it'll be interesting to spot how many differences in the park there have been from one season to the next. Already, the cover (and the pages I scanned) show Everth Cabrera diving and the old Petco Park logo.

I read the book to Elliott, age 4, and he enjoyed it just for recognizing Petco Park and the song from the last page of the book that we had linked to before:

Actually, when I got to that page and started singing it, Elliott was pretty quick to point out that I was getting the tune wrong, which was weird considering he hadn't watched the video in a week. Photographic memory, that one.

Check out Jenny's Facebook page for more info and where/when she might be doing any local signings. I'm not sure how we can fit the book in with our Happiness Project, but I'm sure this would make a good gift for a young Padres fan that you know and giving gifts makes you happy, right?

Honestly, news media is a bit of a joke.

Of course the Padres new deal could be worth $75 million a year... If you want to rile up a fan base into believing that $75 million a year is cash that should go towards increasing player payroll. You could say that considering the fact that some day in the future - ten or twenty years from now - the Moorad group will eventually sell the Padres and the value of the Regional Sports Network that they will have helped start could maybe be worth like billions of dollars and if you divide up those billions of dollars that you stand to earn (should you decide to sell your stake 10 or 15 years down the line) then you, by GOD, should be spending that money that will be yours in 10 years to buy the most expensive player you can afford to buy because 2012 is our year.

I'm on a tagent... P.S. Krasovic confirmed Bob Nightengale's numbers, I guess... If you want to confirm them as bullshit.

Anyways. So now there's YASS (Yet Another Secret Source) that is saying that the Padres deal isn't actually worth $30 million, and it probably won't be worth $75 million, but f_ck-it-all let's split the difference and call it $40 million and then kinda vaguely say all the things that everybody believes so that we can just get back to speculating that it's actually worth a zillion dollars, which is what my source says.

The source added that when other factors, including a "signing bonus" and 20-percent equity in the new Fox Sports San Diego, are considered, the club could receive as much as $40 million this season.

Ohhhhh... So now there's a signing bonus and the 20% equity (which as far as I can tell still isn't spendable unless you want to take a regular annual loan out against it). And now the number is $40 million.

Incidentally, I still don't get how you "receive" $40 million if any of it is equity. Is Moorad planning on selling his share in Fox Sports San Diego as soon as he gets it in annual chunks? Who is this mysterious buyer going to be? My guess is Dennis Morgigno. He's apparently been sitting on a gold mine. If non-existent Fox Sports San Diego is worth over $3 billion, then, Channel 4SD, even in broadcasting to only half of San Diego, should probably have been worth $1.5 billion!?!?!

Corky's Pest Control must kill a sh_t ton of bugs.