A Couple Things

1) Let's all give a warm, TYI welcome to our newest contributor, Eddie Basden. (And no, he's not the real one.) Though he says his posts will be few and far between, his first one should be a doozy. Since the rest of the TYI staffers are going to be engaged in a contest of athletic and moral supremacy on one of the softball diamonds of Humboldt Park next Thursday evening (meaning we'll miss the beginning of the draft, as well as Blog-A-Bull's kick-ass draft-night throwdown), Mr. Basden has offered to live blog it for us. But because TYI always insists on riding with a touch of class, Basden won't be blogging in a bathrobe from an efficiency apartment. No, he'll be doing it live from MSG, while rooting for his hometown boy, Julian Wright. So if you want to learn just which draftee is wearing the most hideous suit, you gotta tune to TYI Thursday night.

2) There's no link for it, but everyone should check out Bill Simmons' new podcast interview with Ric Bucher. I'm not Simmons' biggest fan (nor have I ever had much of an opinion on Bucher), but the whole thing is fascinating, from Bucher's thoughts on Kobe, to the way the lust for profits is making owners timid and tight-fisted, to players' relationship to the media (and vice versa), to the debasement of local beat writers, to Bucher's revelation that it was Reinsdorf (not Paxson) who pushed for the Big Ben signing. In regards to that last point, it makes my conversation with BAB's Matt the other day (and his response to it) a little more intriguing.

UPDATE: As always, I should've checked Blog-A-Bull before posting. Matt put up a link to the podcast (here) and they've got a thread on it here.