Took yesterday off. Went to the Wild Animal Park with some friends, then played Gauntlet till the wee hours of the morning with the wife and brother-in-law. More than you wanted to know but there it is.

A few random odds-and-ends. First, Brian Lawrence is starting for the Padres at Anaheim this evening in place of Sterling Hitchcock, who has a nasty infection on his toe. Lawrence has been throwing very well again tonight. Darrin Erstad just blooped a two-out single to center in front of Mark Kotsay to score the first run of the night in the sixth. Lawrence will be returned to Portland after the game to make room for Brian Tollberg.

Comical letters to the sports editor this morning in the Union-Tribune. One guy suggests that trading John Moores, Larry Lucchino, and Kevin Towers is the answer to what ails the Padres. Another recommends that the Padres refrain from making future deals with the New York Yankees. Personally, I’d rather have D’Angelo Jimenez than every player Kevin Towers ever traded to the Yanks (Homer Bush, Hideki Irabu, Jay Witasick, and a bunch of guys who never made it). A third compares the Padres to a Triple-A club. More accurately, it defends someone else’s description of the Pads as such. The central argument is that the Padres have very high player turnover, just like a minor-league team. Evidently, this gentleman hasn’t been paying attention to big-league baseball the past 15-20 years, because his point applies to nearly every single organization in Major League Baseball. Yes, high player turnover is a part of the Triple-A game, but nowadays, it’s very much a part of the big-league game, too.

Anyway, my theory is that the U-T hires people to write these asinine, inane letters to irritate knowledgeable baseball fans such as myself. And for the most part it does. But I’m going to let it go now. Deep breath. Count to 10…