Hate to do another one of these, but I’m totally out of gas. Just a few things to mention, so let’s get to them.

• Not to belabor the point, but I have yet to speak with anyone who isn’t completely baffled by Kerry Robinson’s presence on the Padres roster. Can’t we talk Marvell Wynne out of retirement?
• Daily Dish (BA, via Howard Lynch). A little behind on this one, but check the June 22 entry on Justin Germano. Quotable: "I’ve learned not to give in as easily to hitters anymore. I think part of it was I was afraid of walking guys, but in certain situations, you have to give up a walk to have more team success."
• Stauffer to Portland (Mobile BayBears). I’m going to have to start giving Mr. Lynch a cut of the action here. Just remember, any number multiplied by zero is still zero. Anyway, former first-round picks Tim Stauffer (2003) and Jake Gautreau (2001) have been promoted to Triple-A. This is actually Gautreau’s second trip to Portland (he had seven at-bats there in 2001). Speedster Marcus Nettles and right-hander Gabe Ribas move up a notch to Mobile.
• Stauffer also will play in the 2004 Futures Game, representing the U.S. Catcher Humberto Quintero was selected to the World team, but his status is in doubt now that he’s with the big club.
• Speaking of Quintero, he had a heckuva 2004 debut. Two hits, two ribbies, terrific play at the plate tagging out Steve Finley (on a fine throw from Jay Payton). For as bad as Arizona has been this year, did you honestly think that the Pads would be able to beat them with Randy Johnson on the hill, and with Brian Giles, Ryan Klesko, and Mark Loretta riding pine?
• I still can’t believe that ball Long hit stayed fair. He and Phil Nevin need to start talking to the other guys, letting ‘em know exactly where to hit the ball at Petco.
• I also can’t believe Bob Brenly had a lefty up in the ‘pen but didn’t bring him in to face Long. I guess the idea was to let Elmer Dessens get Long, then have the southpaw go after whichever of Giles or Klesko came in to bat for Aki Otsuka.
• For the second straight game, Otsuka blew a late-inning lead. We’ve gotten spoiled with his early success, but it happens. Wednesday night’s was more flukish than Tuesday’s. Luis Gonzalez led off the ninth with a clean single. No problem, he does that. But after that, Otsuka twice induced ground balls when he needed a double play. Only problem was, both of them found holes. More bad luck than anything else.
• Johnson Not Long Enough; Long Goes Deep (Petco Padres). Brian talks about the game and offers his thoughts on Matt Bush. We’ll talk more about Bush in the future, but for now I’ll just mention that his father is saying all the right things and the local media is overreacting to the stupid actions of a kid. He made a mistake, it could’ve been a lot worse, get off your moral high horse already. And let’s hope that dad is right and the Pads scare some sense into the kid. Again, not to make light of a serious situation, but there relly are more interesting things to talk about in this world than an 18-year-old getting into a bar fight.
• What is Lileks? I don’t know, but it seems interesting. Nothing to do with baseball, but interesting.
• America Is… More non-baseball stuff.

Finally, some of you have asked about the e-mail form thang. I had to take it down because it seems there are miscreants out on the Web who are bent on finding holes in programs and exploiting them to evil purposes. Not exactly man bites dog, but long story short, someone was using our wonderful form to do NASTY THINGS. After I did a little research, it became clear that removing the form would be a heckuva lot easier than fixing it. Of course, that leaves us with the little problem of your not being able to contact me.

I’m looking into some alternatives. One possibility would be to open up the severely underutilized Ducksnorts Yahoo Group and make it a two-way avenue for communication. Others include, um, smoke signals and semaphores? Anyway, for now, just e-mail me at ducksnorts@NOSPAMgeoffreynyoung.com (remove NOSPAM) and we’ll make do with what we’ve got. Apologies for the inconvenience, thanks for the understanding, and hopefully we’ll get this all straightened out before too long.

Meantime, it’s three in Seattle followed by three in Phoenix. With luck, the momentum from the end of the homestand will carry over and translate into some road wins…