Pujols is nearly done with the hitting session in the St. Louis cage, during which he will have hit 85 balls off a tee or thrown to him by Silvestri. (After one swing, in a baseball reenactment of The Princess and the Pea, he tells Silvestri something isn’t right with the ball he just hit. Silvestri fetches it and finds that it’s the one ball in the bucket that’s not regulation MLB issue.)

– Tom Verducci, Sports Illustrated.

If you’re near a newsstand and like to read about how awesome Albert Pujols is at hitting, you should probably pick up this week’s SI. That particular detail probably belongs on the list of true things about Albert Pujols that sound like Chuck Norris Facts.

That’s the thing about regulating conduct; there is always some conduct that doesn’t get policed. When baseball effectively prohibited its players from defending their good names with physical threats and small weapons, this in essence required the players to put up with verbal abuse from fat, pimply guys whom they could have very easily beaten the grits out of. People say things in public all the time now for which, if you had said them 40 years ago, somebody would have kicked your ass. We’ve regulated the ass-kicking, so the rudeness is out of control, and we wind up with Keith Olbermann and Rush Limbaugh doing political commentary that falls in the same general class as drunken, shirtless bellowing.

– Bill James, Grantland.com.

Good reading from the truest of SABR about the connection between sports fans and prison inmates. James obviously gets a ton of credit for his contributions to baseball analysis, but not enough for the strength and clarity of his prose.

The Minor Leaguers Tweeting About Chipotle tumblr slowed down a little while I was in Port St. Lucie and didn’t have as much time to track Minor Leaguer Chipotle Tweets, but I’ve been a bit more vigilant with it of late.

Over at the Daily Dot, Chase Hoffberger wrote an article about the Minor Leaguers Tweeting About Chipotle tumblr, which is very flattering and dizzyingly postmodern (or something). Check it out.