1. Go to www.SMAKTONES.COM.
2. Click on Ringback under Choose a Style (you'll have to scroll down).
3. Click on Rich Aurilia under Ringtones.
4. Tell me this isn't the awesomest thing you've heard since “Would you believe a double?”

It seems like no one can stop talking about Aurilia. Joel Sherman says in today's New York Post:

The Mets can be pretty certain their pen and lineup will be strong next year. They need to find a second baseman, preferably righty hitting, and an intriguing possibility is Rich Aurilia, a New Yorker who was signed to his first pro contract by a Rangers scout named Omar Minaya. Minaya loves free agent Julio Lugo. But so does new Cubs manager Lou Piniella (who had him in Tampa Bay) and the Red Sox, so the price is going to get steep.

What the heck? Aurilia had the opportunity to go free agent last year and couldn't get a nibble; this year the press can't stop talking about him.

Dude's gonna cash in.

I know that this is old news now, but I'm desperate to continue pushing that Spiezio photo off the front page, so here's something I intended to link to last week.

Josh Bacott at JoeSportsFan.com tells us how the Mets and Cardinals spent their unexpected night off when game one of the series was rained out in the article The Rain Delay. My favorites:

David Eckstein – Walked around Times Square, wearing his newly purchased styrofoam Statue of Liberty hat and hit every single spot on his “Explore New York” tour map.

Jim Edmonds – Four words. Shop till you drop.

Albert Pujols – Put his full uniform on, spikes and eye black included, and stared at a picture of Tom Glavine for six consecutive hours without blinking.

Tom Glavine – Crossword puzzles. All night long.

Plus, the very best one:

Jose Valentin – Did what he does on every Wednesday night – groomed his mustache.

Gotta love those Valentín mustaches.

Major League Baseball has struck a deal to put team logos on caskets and urns. Starting next year, the dearly departed fans of the Yankees, Red Sox, Tigers, Phillies, Cubs, and Dodgers can spend their posthumous existence entombed in their team colors.

Each urn will be stamped with a message saying Major League Baseball officially recognizes the deceased as a lifelong fan of that team.

If the pilot project goes well, they could expand to include more teams. If waiting for the next Reds' World Series wasn't enough to keep you going, hanging on for the availability of a Reds-themed final resting place certainly is.

Go read the story on ABC News. You can also check out Eternal Image, the company that will be making the coffins and urns. Among their other themes are Precious Moments, and the urn is just a disgustingly cute as the little figurines your aunt collects.

So Fire Brand of the American League wrote up a lengthy discussion of the benefits of Boston acquiring Adam Dunn, including making room for the right-handed bat of Kevin Millar.

And, since the author is committing a total blog foul in leeching my bandwidth by placing a photo from RHM on his own site, I think I'll do a similarly heinous thing and repost his article in its entirety. Though it's not really that heinous, since I'm at least including a link to the site. SOME of us have manners.

Like I said, the article is lengthy, so I'm putting it below the fold.

UPDATE 10/26 -- The author of the article, Evan S. Brunell, was nice enough to write and let me know that weasin' my bandwidth isn't actually illegal while my reposting his article is. So if you want to read it again, you'll have to follow the link.

As if the strawberry Kool-Aid dye job that on that nasty little wad of fuzz on his face wasn't enough to scare any would-be one-night companion away, Scott Spiezio also sports this tattoo of his woman on his arm. According to bumpshack.com, the lady is his girlfriend or perhaps wife, Jennifer Pankratz.

Bumpshack suggests that the tat saves him the effort of buying girly magazines, but since its on his own arm, I'm not sure how he's going to much enjoy it without an elaborate mirror setup. Good thing he got it on his left arm.

If I were Ms. Pankratz, though, I wouldn't be too pleased to see that the tattoo rendition of myself featured The Ladies draggling down halfway to my knees like that. No, indeed, if I were Ms. Pankratz, I would have spent too much good money to keep them skyward-oriented to be happy about that at all.

Go Mets!

This week on the podcast we feature special guest Rich Aurilia. Can you believe it?

Rich and I chat about stuff like:

• Who we want to see win in the playoffs
• What went wrong and what went right in the 2006 season
• His response to the report that he and Jerry Narron had a tiff
• Plans, hopes, and possibilities for 2007

I don't know about you, but to me it doesn't sound promising at all that he'll be back with the Reds next year. Alas, the Reds have plenty of worse veterans to fill in for him.

We close out the show will a clip of Heart of a Hero, Raquel Aurilia's contribution to Cincinnati Clutch Hits, still available online from the Reds Community Fund Shop for $15.

Episode 27: Rich Aurilia on 2006, 2007, and Everything in Between (11.2 MB, 16:19)

Bronson Arroyo is the lone representative of the Cincinnati Reds to who will tour Japan with an exhibition team of American major leaguers.

In other Bronson news, he felt the need to blab to the Rhode Island News about how he can't wait to get back to Boston:

“I still miss playing in that uniform, especially when I turn on the TV and they are 10 games out of first place and there is still a crowd that is maybe more enthusiastic than any crowd in the game,” Arroyo told the Lawrence (Mass.) Eagle-Tribune in a story published yesterday.

“You never know what's going to happen in the next couple years.”

You've got to admire the guy for his utter lack of worry about alienating the fans for the team he currently plays for.

I recommend the comments on Redleg Nation to see some of the alienation in action. Among my favorites:

That act is tired, and I'd hoped Arroyo would've gotten it out of his system after the year he had in Cincinnati.

Arroyo's at his peak, so trade him and let him go back east. Doesn't want to be in Cincinnati? So good-bye!

And the best in my book…

Hey, Bronson! Obviously the Red Sox didn't want you. Sell the house and stop living in the past, man. At least the sun shines in Cincinnati.

Now that the A's are out of the postseason after losing in the second round, I think that Michael Lewis should re-release Moneyball with a new subtitle: “Billy Beane's Step-by-Step Guide to Winning the First Round of the Postseason in Just Eight Simple Years.”

There's no doubt that the A's have had a prodigious number of wins with the resources they've had in the Moneyball era. But what has it gotten them? A baseball team is an entertainment business; a group of professionals putting on a show while patrons spend money on concessions and souvenir t-shirts. This team, despite their unlikely number of playoff appearances, has to put a tarp over the top tier of seats to cover up how empty they are.

It's an organization that's suffering from Dutch door action. They can't see the forest for the trees: they're so concerned with putting together 90 wins a season that they aren't noticing that they had less than 2 million visitors during the regular season. But at the same time, they can't see the trees for the forest: they're so dependent on the aggregate in their playing philosophy that they can't win when it actually matters.

I'm afraid that this is what Wayne Krivsky is trying to do to the Reds. Reds fans have been clamoring for a winning team, and rightfully so. Cincinnati is a baseball organization with a proud tradition that the team has not been living up to for the last few years. But at what cost will we win?

Who's your favorite Red? The one you actually hope to see when you go to the ballpark. Chances are, it's Ken Griffey, Jr., Ryan Freel, or Adam Dunn. Now, why is that your favorite Red? Be honest: it's not because of his win-shares, is it? These are likable characters who also have the ability to put a charge into a game with a well-placed fantastic play.

So, would you rather have a team that's fun but can't win or a boring team that makes it to the postseason?

I want both. The teams that are a success--not just division winners, but also winners of the hearts of fans--are exciting as well as effective. And that's what it's going to take to save the Reds from covering the Red Level with a tarp.

The Chicago Sun-Times is reporting that the Cubs have chosen Lou Piniella to take over for Dusty Baker:

By the end of next week, Lou Piniella is expected to be named the 48th manager in Cubs history.

Told Friday by the Sun-Times that all signs pointed to the job being his, Piniella stepped back, smiled and politely declined to comment during a pivotal day in the process.

So if the fact that the Reds totally jumped the gun in extending Jerry Narron's contract didn't dash your hopes about getting the firebrand, this ought to help.

He ought to be an interesting character to come up against in the series against the Cubs, though. I wonder: will working for the Cubs compel him to make odd personnel decisions and over-love the veterans? Or would he have done that regardless of where he managed in the NLC?