A little bit of this and a little bit of that:

More Curtis

Curtis Granderson opened up his mailbag again. This time he talks about the high socks (love the high socks), his at-bat music, and bubble gum. Hard hitting stuff? Not at all. Interesting? I think so.

I always liked how the Negro League players looked wearing their high socks, and I wanted mine to look like theirs. The only problem is that I couldn’t get socks high enough when I was younger. Now that I’m in the Major Leagues, I can get them as long as I want, and I don’t plan on bringing them down anytime soon.

Ducksnorts

Cyberfriend Geoff Young, proprietor of Ducksnorts a blog about the Padres, recently wrote a book which is now available. The Ducksnorts 2007 Baseball Annual is of course for Padres fans, but I still found it interesting as a Tiger fan. First, Geoff has a great writing style and is great at mixing stats and stories. Second, Randy Smith’s name came up quite a bit, and in a favorable light no less. I didn’t know that it was Smith who traded Sheffield for Hoffman, and picked up several other key members of San Diego’s 1998 team. I also didn’t know that Smith ever got the better end of the repeated deals he made with Kevin Towers.

If you’re interested, the book is available either electronically or in paperback.

Cobb on strategy

Hat tip to The Book Blog for pointing me to this article about Ty Cobb and his daring ways on the basepaths. Cobb talks about taking the extra base and how he worked out a lot of plays ahead of time, trying to calculate the odds of success. Neat stuff.

Other stuff

• John Heyman names his all under-appreciated team and Carlos Guillen is the infielder.
• The Dugout notes that Curtis Granderson has just about as many friends on MySpace as presidential candidates Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Dennis Kucinich, and Joe Biden.
• In need of masses: Tom Tango is compiling a community forecast for player performance. If you’re got some serious opinions on how the Tigers (or other teams) players will fare this year, submit you best guesstimates here.