Monday, January 18, 2010

Dear (Tommy) John Letters

"No brain, no problem" seems to be the mantra for a lot of baseball players, so when one encounters a smart, funny player who also happens to be a blogger, well, it's internet gold. Dear (Tommy) John Letters is the cleverly named blog of Brian Akin, a pitcher in the Dodgers' farm system who underwent TJ surgery in 2008 and rehabbed in time to pitch for the Inland Empire 66ers (Class A Advanced) last year. (At least that's what I was able to piece together from his Wikipedia and Baseball-Reference pages.)

With his insider's perspective, Akin tells highly amusing stories about Dodger figures such as Clayton Kershaw, Chin-lung Hu and Kim Ng. And how many pitchers can you think of who know what a gerund is — and who are also over the tired convention of gerunds in movie titles? And when I read lines like, "He's one of the funniest price theorists that I know," I think, This guy may be running the Dodgers one day.

We've added D(T)JL to our sidebar — there's plenty of archives to dig through. Happy reading!

5 comments:

Eric Stephen said...

That blog really is great. Akin is hilarious, and seems like he'd be fun to have a beer with.

Kyle Baker said...

Totally, Eric. So, what time is happy hour then? Let's give Akin a call. It's a nice rainy day...nothing else to do.

Mr. LA Sports Czar said...

How would you say his name? AY-kin? ah-KIN? AH-kin? ay-KIN

Orel said...

"Bouton"?

Kyle Baker said...

In honor of today:

[MLB official] Robinson inspired MLK, others who followed

http://tinyurl.com/yde99vy

[Huffington Post] On the Shoulders of Giants -- The Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Jackie Robinson

http://tinyurl.com/y93jz3p