huh?

Safe to say that 2010 might have been the weirdest year to date for professional baseball. All sorts of weird stuff occurred throughout all aspects of the game. Take for instance some offensive strangeness. Ichiro Suzuki led the American League in hits again. Nothing strange about that. Here's where it gets weird. He scored less runs than the man who got the fewest hits in the National League and qualified for the hitting title. Yeah. Ichiro had 74 runs on 214 hits. Mark Reynolds had 79 runs on 99 hits. Astro Michael Bourn was caught stealing third and stole third on back to back pitches. How you say? Atlanta's Tommy Hanson sniffed out the first attempt but dropped a throw when Bourn was in a run down, allowing him to get back to second. Score that CS/E1. Next pitch Bourn does it again. And makes it. Wha? Bengie Molina hit for the cycle this year. A player does it every year pretty much. Thing is, Bengie is statistically the slowest runner in the MLB. The cycle requires one to hit a triple, which he did in his last at bat of the game. The one and only time that year out of 416 at bats for Bengie. Yeesh.

33-year old rookie John Lindsey finally made his debut in the Major Leagues after a 16 year minor league career. He was announced as a pinch hitter, but the other team switched pitchers. Joe Torre then sent up Andre Ethier instead of Lindsey. He waited 16 years to make it to the show, and never played. Only in baseball. Avid Eckstein struck out nine times in his first 226 at bats of the season. Rick Ankiel struck out nine times in a row in one month. In one Pacific Coast League game, Royals prospect Mike Moustakas had as many homers (three) and RBIs (eleven) as Rusty Ryal had in 101 games and 222 plate appearances for the Diamonbacks. Carlos Gonzalez had an extra base hit 10 games in a row. Brandon Wood had an extra base hit in six games on the year. Sweet swingers Joey Votto and Buster Posey didn't hit an infield pop up all year. Holy bejeezus.

Only in baseball.

Well that's weird.

So a story surfaced recently. Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox expressed "extreme interest" in a 1970s criminal investigation of New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner for illegal campaign contributions. Then-FBI director Clarence M. Kelley relayed Cox's concerns in a memo back in 1973, sent to the bureau's Cleveland office, saying that agents needed to make sure the probe received "the same, immediate and preferred handling" as other criminal cases then growing from the Watergate scandal. The memos were released along with 400 pages of Steinbrenners FBI file. Most of the material concerned Steinbrenner's illegal contributions to President Nixon. Associated Press and other news organizations requested the file under the Freedom of Information Act following Steinbrenner's death in July. There are references to Steinbrenner's pardon later by President Reagan as well but nothing about his career as the Yankee's "Boss."

Among other things mentioned, the FBI was investigating whether employees were told they would be reimbursed by the company for campaign contributions, another violation of campaign finance laws. Steinbrenner was indicted in 1974, and two weeks after Nixon's resignation in August of that same year, the Boss pleaded guilty and was fined $15,000. Executives in Steibrenner's American Shipbuilding Co. told FBI officials in signed statements that they received bonuses after making contributions to Nixon's campaign. What can we say. The Boss knows how to get stuff done.

Non omnis moriar.

So it turns out that the founder of the "whistle-blowing" site, WikiLeaks, has a back up plan. In case of the shut down of his website, Julian Assange has circulated throughout the internet an encrypted file cache that is suspected to include information on British Petroleum and Guantanamo Bay. The "poison pill" is what it's called. One file was identified this week by The Sunday Times, called the "insurance" file, has been downloaded by tens of thousands of supporters from all over the world. Assange has issued a warning that should any government attempt to stop his activities, they risk triggering a new deluge of state and commercial secrets. Military papers on Gitmo have yet to be published, and were supplied by Bradley Manning, Assange's primary source until his arrest. Other files that Assange possess include aerial footage of a U.S. airstrike that killed Afghan civilians, BP confidential files, and Bank of America documents.

One of the files that is available for download from WikiLeaks is entitled insurance.aes256. As its name suggests, it is encrypted with a 256-digit key. Experts say its most likely unbreakable. The United States' Department of Defense says that it is aware of the site's insurance file, but it has been unable to confirm the contents of the package. Assange has warned that should he be detained of if the website should be permanently removed from the internet, he will release the files. It has been suggested that the files are unredacted, posing a possible security risk for coalition partners. Amazon, the host of the website, refused WikiLeaks access to the servers last week, and EveryDNS.net, the site that provided WikiLeaks with its domain name has also cut them off from service. They are now existing through a domain provided by the Swiss Pirate party, which champions internet freedom.