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Over the weekend, Joe Posnanski was inspired by this, and wrote this, where he mentions that he will be putting together his list for top 100 sports books.

1. The Soul of Baseball (baseball)
2. The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty (baseball)
3. Moneyball (baseball)
4. Sixty-One* (baseball)
5. The Boys of Summer (baseball)
6. Love Me, Hate Me (baseball)
7. The Machine (baseball)
8. Where’s Harry? (baseball)
9. Game of Shadows (general sports)
10. Three Nights in August (baseball)

About half the season is over, and although we very recently revisited our predictions, we have not given much thought to who's better and who's best, regardless of which division they're in.

The Andy Pratt Bunch
30. Cleveland Indians
29. Houston Astros
28. Kansas City Royals
27. Arizona Diamondbacks
26. Pittsburgh Pirates
25. Baltimore Orioles

Before we get to the usual seamhead talk, can we take a minute to discuss the World Cup? I love this event. The first World Cup I remember was the summer after the Bears won the Super Bowl: 1996. When I was a kid, the best teams were Germany, Italy, Spain, Brasil, and definitely not Team USA. USA hasn't really been very good since 1930 - that as the last time they won their group, before this year.

What I've noticed this year, and mentioned this Monday on Twitter is that South American teams are dominating the group stage of the World Cup. As of this writing, South American teams - Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay have 10 wins, 0 losses, and 2 draws. I think this statement is a superlative endorsement that South Americans know how to play better than most. Other than Brasil and Argentina, the other teams don't get the respect they deserve. It feels like one of those years when the Big Ten wins all their first round games in the NCAA tournament multiplied by a hundred, even if that has never specifically happened during March Madness. We may be entering uncharted waters, and I hope Spain puts the dominance to rest when they take on Chile. And yet, we must digress back to baseball...

Major League Baseball and other media outlets that choose to award "Player of the Week" honors usually do so on a Sunday or Monday. In order to further differentiate BAseball Reality Tour from the rest, we're dawning a new day with the Midweek Players of the Week. These are the best players over the past 7 days, from Wednesday to Tuesday.

NL Hitter: Matt Holliday, Cardinals
Holliday hasn't taken a base on balls all week, but when you have a player as hot and powerful as Holliday, you want him swinging. His unbelievable numbers include a .524 Batting Average and a 1.333 Slugging Percentage. (That's a 1.857 OPS!)

NL Pitcher: Jamie Moyer, Phillies
Congratulations to one of our favorite players, Jamie Moyer. In a monumental week, Moyer threw 16 Innings, going 2-0, with a 1.68 ERA, 10 strikeouts, 2 walks, and only 5 hits allowed. The most memorable part of this week, however is that Jamie tied Hall of Famer Robin Roberts for the All-Time record of Homeruns allowed: 505. Extra bonus points go Jamie Moyer's way for being on the Cubs in 1986.

AL Hitter: Josh Hamilton, Rangers
Our second favorite patron of Maloney's*, Hamilton has also not earned a walk this week, but he's hitting .571, while slugging .929. Throw in a stolen base, and Ranger fans are pretty happy with their reborn slugger.

*Our favorite is our buddy Crockett.

AL Pitcher: Jason Vargas, Mariners
How surprising that this honor would go to a little-known player from one of the worst teams in the league. Vargas went 2-0 with a 0.61 ERA, 11 strikeouts, and a 0.68 WHIP.

What has this post proven? Nothing. I'm thinking it should be written on Thursdays, to take 3 days after Sunday, instead of just two. Come to think of it, most teams have Monday off, so this exercise hasn't been so effective.

What's worse as a writer? Is it bad to think the exercise you spent time on is futile? This is rarely a philosophical blog, but at this time, I'll choose futility over apathy.

We use our Preseason Predictions as the standard to review at the end of the year. Still, we like to take another look at what our crystal ball would forecast from different times during this season.

Let's take the pulse of Major League Baseball today, Father's Day, Sunday, June 20.

Yesterday, friends of the blog Weino, Osh, and Colonel Mustard sat in our Cubs seats for an interleague match against the Angels. (photo of Colonel Mustard courtesy of Osh.)

Some of us could see this weekend's series at Wrigley Field as the rematch of the World Series in "Taking Care of Business".

Not to get all Sports Guy on us, but a quick background for the younger readers: "Taking Care of Business" was a 1990 movie starring Jim Belushi & Charles Grodin, with baseball cameos from Mark Grace, Bert Blyleven, and Joe Torre.

When we were in High School, a couple of my buddies and I would call local (Chicago) and National sports talk radio programs and assume the personalities of many, many characters. We were sort of like the "sports jerky boys" before "The Jerky Boys" became thousandaires.*

*is it possible that The Jerkey Boys became millionaires when our sports calls were even funnier but resulted in less than a hundred dollars in revenue?

Among our characters, we had: Highland Park Bob, Reggie from Gurnee**, Christian from St. Louis, Tutti Giovani from the Bronx***, Jorge from Los Angeles (pronounced 'horhay from los anheles'), and there were a few White Sox fans named Milk, Roheet, & Balfro.

**I thought describing our sports talk radio experiences would take its own series of posts, but we're actually going to do it here and now. (Please, whatever you do, do not get me started on "The Adventures of Dickie and Lionel: Along the Way".)

I went to the Yankees game on Memorial Day, which was the first time this season I got an All-Star ballot. As usual, I rode the fence between the players with the best performances and my favorite players. Let's take a look at which chads I punched out on the Subway back to Manhattan.National League
C: Brian McCann, Braves
1b: Todd Helton, Rockies
2b: Chase Utley, Phillies
SS: Hanley Ramirez, Marlins
3b: Ryan Zimmerman, Nationals
OF: Jason Heyward, Braves
OF: Colby Rasmus, Cardinals
OF: Matt Kemp, Dodgers

Just a quick note this evening... Doesn't Carlos Santana "look" like a good hitter? I'm not talking about the gaudy minor league stats, his minor league MVP awards (plural), nor his successful start in his first three Major League games.

When I was about 15 or 16 years old, I went to South Bend, Indiana to attend a week-long baseball camp at the University of Notre Dame. This was when Pat Murphy was coaching the Irish. Murphy would leave Notre Dame the following year to the 3rd head coach ever at Arizona State University. What stood out the most about South Bend was the great number of fast food restaurants near campus. In my mind, there was every kind of fast food chain available to midwesterners: McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, Kentucky Fried Chicken (before KFC), Popeye's, Brown's Chicken, Long John Silver's, Arby's, Dairy Queen, White Castle, Hardee's, and Taco Bell were each within a two block radius from campus.