The Dude abides

Jim Caple, writing about Lebowski Fest taught us that real "The Dude" didn't bowl, only drank White Russians for too long and never met up with nihilists.

"They called me up and said they were doing this movie and had cast it with Jeff Bridges and John Goodman. And I'm like 'Uh oh,' worried because I'm on the cusp, and it could go either way, with Jeff Bridges or Goodman [playing me]," Jeff (The Dude) Dowd told Caple.

If you like the movie, it's worth reading.

MLB player tests positive for swine flu

Yeah, swine flu is still around.

Texas Rangers starting pitcher (or "staring pitcher" as the typo in the caption to his photograph says) Vicente Padilla has contracted the H1N1 flu, though his symptoms are subsiding.

Several Rangers players have been hit with the flu this week, including Eddie Guardado, Omar Vizquel and David Murphy. Catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia was scratched from Friday night's game against Kansas City due to the flu.
[...]
"Without speculating, I think it is reasonable to expect that we may find some of our other guys have it," Levine said. "We've been medicating our players. We would use the same medication and the same kind program to rehabilitate them and they've all shown improvement. Those are the positive signs."

The Rangers played the Kansas City Royals... let's see if any Royals come down with the swine flu.

Worker at plant that builds iPhones commits suicide after losing iPhone prototype

From The New Yorker:

Interesting details are emerging in the Chinese press about the case of Sun Danyong, the twenty-five-year-old employee of Foxconn who committed suicide in Shenzhen last week after being interrogated about a missing prototype for a new iPhone.

The second part is here.

A sickening story.

How great was that Dwayne Wise catch?

From Baseball Prospectus (Subscription required):

Had Nyjer Morgan made the catch in the eighth inning of a dreary Nationals blowout loss, it would have been the play of the day. Wise made it to convert the 25th out of a perfect game for a team in contention. We hype things to the moon these days, and we become jaded because of it, but this catch is worth every bit of hype you can crank up. It was sublime.

If you didn't see it, you can see watch it (and some other great clutch catches) below, courtesy of ESPN.

What happened to the perfect game ball?

So what happened to the last game ball of Mark Buehrle's perfect game after first baseman Josh Fields made the final out? ESPN is on the case:

"I found out later I screwed up," Fields said Friday morning on the "Waddle and Silvy" show on ESPN 1000. "I held on to it as long as I possibly could during the celebration after the game, and I think one of the MLB authenticity guys came out and was mugging me down pretty hard and saying 'give me the ball.' And I didn't know that I could say 'no don't take it.'

"So I ended up giving it to him, thinking he was going to put his little authenticity sticker on it and give it back to Buehrle. So as of right now, I guess the MLB has it."

They should give it to Buehrle?