Thome is already impacting the team in a positive way by mentoring some of the younger players on their hitting.

Besides Paulie, Crede said this in reference to Thome: "He's not only a great hitter, an accomplished hitter, but he's also a guy who knows the game. I've learned a lot just from the past [few] days hitting with him on the field."

I hope Thome and Paulie can rub off on Anderson and some of the other younger hitters.

i think of them as beautiful and sharp, but that picture looks pretty damn hazy and smoggy.  this town is growing faster than it can handle.  almost 1 million people in this valley, roughly 200,000 of whom moved here after I did in '91.  if you need a job in construction, this is your town.

what is the air quality like in CHicago these days?  I read with interest a string a couple of weeks ago about Chicago real estate and the resurgence of areas close to the Cell. Is that for real, or just  an upturn in a wave of ups and downs?

Tucson has struggled for years with the revitalization of its once vibrant downtown.  It always seems promising but never really gets off the ground.  Take for example, the baseball stadium and sring training complex, which should have been built on a vast tract of vacant land just west of downtown- every sane person in town demanded it.  For political reasons, though, it ended up in an area (read: supervisorial district) that is, shall we say, not particularly conducive to attendance, especially during the AAA season.

I see first hand how the location of Tucson Electric Park absolutely kills attendance for the Sidewinders.  Unless you'd like to spend some time in the Juvenile Detention Center or in the loony bin at Kino Hospital, there ain't shit to do down there other than park your car in a large parking lot and watch AAA baseball.  No bars, stores, restaurants, etc, ad nauseam.

Knowing that attendance is a fickle beast, and that the Flubs obviously benefit from Wrigleyville and all that smarmy bullshit they (usually) substitute for having a good baseball team, what can you guys tell me about the southside of Chicago's potential to be a little bit more, shall we say, nurturing to the baseball experience at the Cell?  I mean this in terms of things to do, see, eat, drink, be at, park near, or otherwise enjoy near the stadium.

This is a factor that affects the team's bottom line, hence its ability to compete, and one that I can't judge at all.  I'm guessing the Sox aren't going to win the series every year for the next 88 years and will need more than KW's aggressive attitude to compete longterm.

On a night when Major League Baseball announced its all-time Latino Legends team, longtime White Sox star Minnie Minoso was denied admittance to the team’s locker room Wednesday to join in the World Series celebration at Minute Maid Park.

“They won’t let me in; they say they don’t know who I am,” an exasperated Minoso told this reporter as credentialed media, players’ wives, children and various peripheral members of the White Sox organization and MLB paraded in and around the champagne-soaked clubhouse.

Minoso, 82, a Cuban-born star who spent 12 of his 17 major-league seasons with the White Sox, has a statue of his likeness at U.S. Cellular Field. Earlier this year, the statue inadvertently was damaged by a fan. Wednesday night, Minoso went searching frantically for White Sox authorities to help him gain admittance to the clubhouse or the area just outside the locker room, but he was not made to feel like a celebrity by MLB security.