Hire Jim Essian

In less (fewer?) than four hours, I'll be on the road for the Country that Always Sleeps. Thanks for the tips yesterday. I will take them and use them in the brief time I have in Toronto. I have to call Verizon and see if it's going to cost me 69 (tee-hee!) cents a minute to live tweet from Saturday's game. I love you all, but you're not worth $.69/min.

I've crossed a fair number of ballparks off my list in my quest to see all 30 MLB stadiums. Eleven, I guess. But I always sort of figured the Rogers Centre would be a bitch to make an excuse to go see. Well, I'm going this weekend. Saturday, to be exact. R.A. Dickey is supposed to pitch for the Blue Jays against Hisashi Iwakuma and the Seattle Mariners. I'm ready to pretend I'm a Jays fan and yell things like, "More like HERashi!"

This guy absolutely rules.One of the problems with falling behind on the Roundup is coming back to ALL THESE LINKS. I have a few for you today. Hopefully, they'll last you through the next several days. Because a lovely weekend should be spent obsessively clicking old links from around the internet. Your tips are as appreciated as ... Read More

Yes, I've been MIA for the past couple of weeks. I had some stuff with work, some stuff happened in Boston and Texas, and some stuff with flooding conspire to keep from from much of the internet. It did not, however, keep me from seeing that one of my absolute favorite targets of mockery, Jose Canseco, did an AMA on Reddit.

We have approximately three listeners to our Hangout/podcast, and we invited one of them to join us about ten seconds before we went live. So, he doesn't have a microphone. Meaning there's some ambient noise. But deal with it, because the content is actually halfway decent this week. We give him college advice and talk about high school baseball. That's the level of baseball the Cubs are currently playing. Also, this opens the door wide open for guests. So, call me, Keeley Hazell.

I think anyone--particularly anyone who grew up in Chicago--who has taken a pen to paper or a finger to keyboard with the hope that his writing will in some way entertain another soul adored Roger Ebert. For me, Siskel and Ebert and The Movies was as much a part of growing up as the T.G.I.F. lineup or Thursday nights on NBC. Whether or not you agreed with the content, Ebert's writing was brilliant, hilarious, insightful, poignant, and always entertaining. On a personal note, Ebert looked, spoke, and loved life like my late uncle, who would have celebrated his 66th birthday yesterday. The two packed more into a shortened life than most men would with twice the time. We should all be so lucky to have lived as they did. So get out there and do it.

Boy howdy, do I hate linking to Deadspin. Unfortunately, I can't find this ridiculous White Sox intro video anywhere else. (HT: Pre) It's not just that the song is terrible. It's not just that the lip-syncing matches the audio as well as a Bruce Lee movie. It's not just that they're trying to be "hip" with backwards hats and a positively Fred Durst-esque sound. It's not just that it's the White Sox. It's a perfect storm of all of those things.

Like the good old days, Dolan and I are flying duo in this week's Hangout. The look of joy on Dolan's face in the YouTube freeze frame is because he missed having me all to himself. We actually talk a lot of baseball for the first time in, like, ever. Mostly because there's baseball to be talked about. We also talk a lot about MLB '13: The Show and BioShock Infinite. Because both of those games are fucking awesome.

I made up some ludicrous statistics during yesterday's LiveBlog of the Cubs' 3-1 Opening Day victory. One ludicrous statistic that I did not make up is this one. In 2012, the Cubs were not only never in first place, but they were never over .500. In 2011, the Cubs were never in first place, and were not over .500 after April 20, 2011. In 2010, the Cubs were never in first place.

I guess I might as well liveblog/livetweet Opening Day for you saps still working for the man. I do your dirty work so you can do other people's dirty work. First pitch is in about 10 minutes. If the games were played on the PS3, that means we would be underway around 5:00 tonight. Follow the liveblog here or @hirejimessian.