Over at MLB.com, you can vote for this season's This Year in Baseball Awards. As you take your votes to the polls, here are the Gaslamp Ball endorsements for your consideration this season.
Closer: Gotta be Trevor Hoffman. Chad Cordero may have you numbers guys drooling over your copies of the Bill James Handbook, but nobody defines a save like Trevor Time. Let's talk to the kid Cordero in a few years after he has the best entrance music in all of professional sports and an hour of the day named after him.
Performance: A-Rod's "Perfect 10" performance is probably most impressive, but we don't want to find out about any Gaslamp Baller voting for that whiny little prick (except for thenerdhater we suppose). Instead, vote for Randy Winn's cycle. Winn killed the Padres all season and we, being the good sports that we are, have no qualms about recognizing that fact. As jbox says, "Anybody can hit three homers in one night. R___ K_____ did it with a prostitute just the other day." (Rumors of Padres players with crabs or cavorting with the daytime prostitute are purely rumors. We can neither confirm nor deny them. -Ed)
Setup Man: How awesome is the Padres bullpen that out of twelve nominees for Setup Man of the Year, we have two of them in Linebrink and Seanez? You can't go wrong either way, but I'm hoping that the Padres faithful don't split the vote and let some shmuck in. Because of that, we're officially recommending that Scott Linebrink get your vote. (But nobody's going to blame you for voting for Rudy who is awesome as all get out).
Blooper: We won't give Chad Cordero the closer endorsement, but we will give it to him for the blooper category. His cricket bounce just beats out the Giant's "ballboy" falling over for the foul ball. Also, sticking 70-80 year old men on the foul lines and expecting them to get the ball is the equivalent of the clown at the rodeo, right? The guy is performing a somewhat important job as you don't want a line foul to pop anybody in the head, but at the same time, everybody in the stadium is just waiting for one of these old men to eat dirt in going after a slow roller. We feel really bad for them sometimes.
Rookie: Gotta be Willy Taveras, simply because he's so fast. We're talking Road Runner vs Speedy Gonzalez fast. We've also heard a rumor that when Willy really tries to leg one out, he often blacks out from his own G-forces.
Defense: We are heartily endorsing Ichiro Suzuki for not only his glove, but also for his little Asian ass which all of Gaslamp Ball is gay for. Especially Jonny Dub who has told us on numerous occasions that if he were forced to make out with a dude, it would be with Ichiro. A fact which we're OK with, but seriously do not need to be reminded of with phone calls any time the guy is on SportsCenter.
Manager: Keeping with the theme of dudes that we'd make out with, we're endorsing Ozzie Guillen for being the most romantic sonuvabitch since Cassanova. Not since Romeo overdosed on roofies have we seen a guy that romantic in the public eye. Ozzie Guillen rivals Brian Giles in the award for making out with the most players on his team. Imagine for a second if Ozzie Guillen was actually Brian Giles' manager. Those two. Together on the field after a win... Tongue kisses. I'm not even kidding. There would be hombre a hombre tongue kisses on Fox Sports.
Starter: You may think that it's Dontrelle Willis, but it's actually Jake Peavy. Seriously. We looked it up and everything.
Play of the Year: We're going to go with Khalil Greene's Grand Slam. Khalil's game winner just barely edges out David Wright's barehanded grab which we saw live and in person. Juuuuuust barely.
Hitter: For the last category of the day, we'll say Miguel Cabrera for some of the monster shots that he would crush at Petco Park. Just absolute blasts. Crushing, towering shots that had the Swingin' Friar puking in his robe and the Pad Squad huddled up and trembling in the corner like naked mole rats, only with clothes on.
So head on over to MLB.com and cast your votes and while you're at it, be sure to send in a nomination for our own Ted Leitner who is on a quest to get into the Hall of Fame. If you don't vote, then you have no right to complain when the voting doesn't go your way. Vote today!
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