It’s raining today in midtown Manhattan. Forgive me if you’ve already heard any of my umbrella-inspired fury on other rainy days via Twitter. Here’s this edition:
From the Wikipedia: Umbrella
Umbrellas have existed for protecting the human head from both sun and rain since at least the 5th century BCE. Some form of umbrella existed in ancient [...]

The Mets are reportedly close to a one-year deal with Alex Cora worth about $2 million.
I’ve said my piece on Cora, and I’m not out to repeat myself any more than I already do.
Instead, I’ll turn it over to “Hit the Weights Zeile,” a commenter on MetsBlog who put it pretty clearly:
Not worth 2 million. [...]

D.J. Short absolutely nails it for NBC Sports: The Mets would be silly to shell out a multi-year deal for Bengie Molina when Kelly Shoppach could be non-tendered by the Indians.
Check it out: Even in Shoppach’s down year in 2009, he posted a 98 OPS+ to Molina’s 86.
Shoppach played nearly a full-time role for the [...]

Tim Dierkes at MLBTradeRumors.com has this year’s Elias rankings for Type A free agents.
It’s probably time someone updates the formula.
This is not an adequate ranking of these players by value.
For a thorough explanation of why the players are ranked this way, check out Tim’s post from 2007.

Interesting piece on Drew Brees in the Times today from Judy Battista. Battista details Brees’ history of being told he was too short to play quarterback and examines some of the perceived limitations for short quarterbacks in the NFL.
The money quote comes from a former Cowboys executive who developed a computer program that concluded NFL [...]

Tom Singer at MLB.com hits on a point I’ve touched on before about how and why the league’s free-agent market is changing.
Mark Sanchez played a big game of red-light, green-light with Rex Ryan yesterday, and it appeared to work out.
The legend of Ike Davis is growing. Both Darryl Strawberry and Ike’s dad contribute.
Lawrence Frank was [...]

According to the New York Times, as of midafternoon Friday the Mets Clubhouse Store on 42nd St. hadn’t sold any of the team’s new home jerseys, released just in time for the biggest shopping day of the year.
Not good.
Ad sales in the offseason make up a big part of the Mets’ annual revenue, and so [...]

According to an article in today’s Daily News, a Brooklyn judge tossed out a lawsuit against the city by property owners in Willets Point, the “neighborhood” across from Citi Field.
The suit alleged that the city was purposefully neglecting the area to drive down property costs to make the planned redevelopment there less expensive.
Eminent domain is [...]

Over at the Perpetual Post yesterday, I threw in my two cents in a multi-part discussion over the relative benefits of cake and pie.
To me, cake is clearly better than pie. As I wrote:
Cake, at its best, is spongy and moist. It features, almost by design, a rich blend of amazing flavors: the cake part [...]

This is only tangentially related to sports, but it’s far too important to ignore.
South African baboons can now open car doors and have taken to raiding unlocked cars for food. Experts fear it will get worse when the World Cup hits Cape Town in 2010.
The most baffling quote in the article:
“The perception is that the [...]