Around The Bloghorn

Is any team thinner at catcher than the Phillies? The BeerLeaguer wants to know. The City Paper doesn't care. Not when there's light-hitting, heavily follicled Sal Fasano to profile. The alt-paper mines the cult of the throwback backstop. It begins:

The name is perfect. Salvatore Fasano. Sal Fasano. Big Sal. Close your eyes and try to picture the image behind the words. A lug, right? Gritty, dirty, hard. Say it to yourself. Sal Fasano. Sal friggin' Fasano. It's a welder's name. A bowler's name. As regal as a plunger. Sal Fasano is the guy who cleans your gutters, who installs your sink, who tells you how many screws he'll need to repair that thingamajig making noise in your basement.

At the same time Beerleaguer is sullying Sal, Fasano is becoming a wrap-up writer's punch line. The Canadian Press wrote over the weekend:

The Philadelphia Phillies offense is so hot right now that even light-hitting Sal Fasano is emerging as a threat at the plate. Fasano tied a career high with four hits Ryan Madson allowed three runs in a season-high 7 2-3 innings and Philadelphia beat Arizona 7-3 Wednesday for its fourth straight win. Fasano fell a triple shy of a cycle. He doubled in the second inning, singled in the fourth, homered in the sixth and singled in the eighth, raising his average 34 points to .281. Coming into Wednesday's game the backup catcher had a career batting average of .224 over nine seasons.

A Seattle Mariners blogger, meanwhile uses Sal for a little mental B-roll in a broad swipe at our catcher:

oftentimes, catchers aren't exactly the most fleet of foot; they're not the guys beating out grounders or stealing bases, they're often the guys lumbering towards first hoping their knees hold out. (Cue mental image of Todd Pratt, or Sal Fasano.)

It's not just the guys in the upper levels who idolize the Fu Manchued plugger. Why wouldn't an Ohio blog that calls itself Mattingly's Moustache go mad for Sal?

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What if the hunt for al-Zarqawi were a sitcom? "The show originally piloted in 2003, and found a regular place in the Pentagon Channel's prime-time lineup in February 2004, replacing the widely panned sitcom Mission Accomplished, now in syndicated reruns on Fox News." From Whiskey Bar.the Mp3 for free: "no, it ain't over/ but we're feelin' mighty strong/now that Zarqawi's gone."

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What if it were a song? Dr. BLT appended the lyrics of his latest tune to his comment on Blinq over the weekend and is offering a free Mp3 of the acoustic ditty with the line, "no, it ain't over/but we're feelin' mighty strong/now that Zarqawi's gone."

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It's bad enough people are punching cellphone numbers as they head out on the highway. Traffic.com now wants someone to blog from the road. They're looking for a correspondent with an audience, someone reasonably established who can take two weeks, starting about July 7, to drive from Philly to L.A., chatting up commuters, grabbing local color, blogging all the way.

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What's there to do when you're a race horse recuperating from major surgery? Barbaro answers your mail.

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"Technology has enabled the not-meek to inherit the earth" -- Maureen Dowd in the New York Times on crashing the Yearly Kos bloggers meet-up in Las Vegas. (Times Select only, sadly. But here's a tablespoonful: "Even as Old Media is cowed by New Media, New Media is trying to become, rather than upend, Old Media. Ms. Cox has left her Wonkette gig to be a novelist and Time essayist. Mr. Moulitsas and Mr. Armstrong wrote a book called "Crashing the Gate," and hit "Meet the Press" and the book tour circuit. Mr. Armstrong left his liberal blog to become a senior adviser to Mr. Warner. What could be more mainstream than that?") You can always read Adam Nagourney's coverage of the progressive political cyber-convention. Blogs, he says, are the left's talk radio.

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What kind of society is the link creating? A deep roster of Webby hitters came to Penn's Annenberg Center on Friday to talk about The Hyperlinked Society. Is it a society where we're hydroplaning across information, never really getting our feet wet? Or is linking pure intellectual freedom, unchained from media overlords? Is linking a self-less act? Or an illusion that protects the echo chamber? Jeff Jarvis, multi-tasker, live-blogged the thing. A host of contrasting points of view here.

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The U.S. Postal Service celebrates Gay Pride month. Accidentally, perhaps, Pax Romano notes. Anyway, the latest first-class stamp honors film and music star Judy Garland. Rufus honors Judy, too.

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The latest little offering from Time Inc.: Baby People.

First there was People.

Then Teen People.

The next step was inevitable. With headlines like "Naughty Nannies," "Designer Diapers," and "Urp! Shiloh's First Podcast," this could only be ...

more evidence that Peter Mucha doesn't sleep.

From his Steal My Ideas Please blog, which was news to me.