The White Sox signed veteran Omar Vizquel to a 1-year $1.38 million deal on Monday. And now all you White Sox fans are in deep, deep trouble.

Vizquel will be 43 years old at the start of next season. That’s just three years younger than Sox manager Ozzie Guillen. That’s old for a player from whom the team is hoping to get some time at shortstop.

Dude, they didn’t sign him to do wind sprints all day, dude. Yes, I know that, devil’s advocate voice. There’s no need to call me dude twice.

Clearly, Old Man River is there to teach the youngsters to keep their heads down, knees bent, to watch the ball into the glove, step into the throw and release. Vizquel’s got 14 Gold Gloves. He’ll do a fine job. At any rate, he can’t do a much worse job. The South Siders’ 4-5-6 guys made up 62 of the team’s 113 errors last season.

But the Vizquel signing signifies two things. 1) That Alexei Ramirez, Gordon Beckham and a platoon of guys that I’ll confuse with one another until the day I die are the future of the Sox and 2) Vizquel just got paid $1.375 million to be a glorified fielding coach.

Going with Beckham is a no-brainer. Even sticking with the Cuban Missile is understandable for another year. But the terrifying part about this Vizquel deal, if you’re a Sox fan, is that platoon of dudes waiting to take over in April. There’s really no reason to believe you’re going to get more than 80 games from Little O in the field (he hasn’t fielded in more than 84 games in either of the last two seasons and he’s only getting older).  So the primary responsibility will fall to guys like Brent Lillibridge, Mark Teahen and Jayson Nix. The “plan” (quotation marks implies sarcastic tone) is for Teahen (whom they traded for Chris Getz, their best 4-5-6 fielder) to take over at third, while Beckham takes over at 2B.

But Teahen had a .956 fielding percentage at third last season in 107 appearances, that’s just four points better than young Beckham and about 35 points off where the White Sox want their thirdbaseman to be.

Is Vizquel going to fix all those guys? Not unless he has magic in ‘im.

The Sox were on the right track by shuffling off Chris Getz, but for Teahen? That’s not even a stopgap. Couldn’t they have packaged a couple of those messy infielders and sent them off to the Mets or Pirates? Those teams are dumb, surely they would have traded two dimes for a quarter, right?

If there’s a silver lining here it’s Vizquel himself. He made 18 errors his first season in the league (1989!) and had a droopy fielding percentage. And although I’m not into story morals, if there’s one here, it’s that players can go from quite bad to quite good.

In the case of the Sox, they’d better or it’s going to be a long season.

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Photo courtesy of Flickr

Here’s a recap of the weirdest or most overlooked sports stories on the Interweb this week. Plus, as you’ve come to expect, little girls concussing little boys like it was nothin’.

Monday The New York Mets just got served. See ya next year, gang. Baseball
Tuesday Sports-related corn mazes are kinda becoming common, huh? Basketball
Wednesday Bears ballboy: “Oh was I running fast? I didn’t even notice.” Football
Thursday I could be wrong, but I don’t think London has ever seen basketball played before. Basketball
Friday First the Newark mayor bans Conan from the city, now the Minneapolis mayor hopes Randy Moss never comes back. Football
Saturday Remember when I warned you that the NBA’s stat-keeping was going to become a problem? … it’s likely beginning. Basketball
Sunday Baseball beat writers are irrelevant old dinosaurs … well, you are what you cover. Baseball
Eighth Day If there’s anything more satisfying then watching grown men clobber one another, it’s watching tiny girls in big helmets do it. YouTube

Photo courtesy of Yahoo! Sports via Getty Images

New York Met Pat Misch made his MLB debut in 2006, but hasn’t been able to prove effective enough to throw 125 innings yet in his career. Having compiled an ERA over 5.00 in his 2+ seasons with the Giants, Misch was sent to New York, where between the Knicks and Mets, there simply isn’t any athlete the Big Apple won’t sign. The Statue of Liberty certainly is in the right place, as here is where the tired, hungry and poor huddled masses yearn to break free … of the Mets. Over half of New York’s starting lineup and pitching rotation are on the DL, the salaries of whom equate to more than 17 major league teams will pay to their entire roster this year.

But for Misch, the eerie injuries that plagued his higher profile teammates avoided him. In 19 middle relief starts, he had proven serviceable, if not sturdy. He even threw four innings of one-hit ball in a long relief effort against Philly. Then on Friday, Misch was given a chance to start, something he hadn’t yet done with the Mets, but had done unsuccessfully for the Giants 11 times before.

It looked promising. If there’s an NL team more disappointing than the Mets this season, it’s the Cubs, the punchless team he was set to face. Misch did everything he was asked. He hung in there for seven innings retiring the first batter in each, gave up only one run, lowered his season ERA from 4.09 to 3.41 and left the game with a 2-1 lead.

This is the Mets, so clearly the lead didn’t stick. New York lost 5-2 and Misch was left with an unfortunate Major League record.

In each of Misch’s 12 career starts, his team ended up losing the game. Every single time, no matter what the game looked like when poor Misch left it, this cursed hurler’s team was doomed to failure.

No one can accuse Misch of being an all-star, but he certainly flashed some mustard on last Friday, he even managed to retire each of the first four inning’s leadoff batters with just one pitch, and yet to no avail.

Perhaps on Thursday against the Rockies, he’ll break a curse that has literally followed him (and his teams) his entire career.

If not, maybe there’s solace in being noted for something, even if it’s for something dubious.

UPDATE: Misch paced around the Mets’ dugout during the ninth inning on Thursday, waiting for his team’s inevitable flop after pitching seven solid innings against Colorado. The flop would never come however and New York won 8-3. The curse is broken, proving once and for all that David Wright’s helmet can do magic.

Here’s a recap of the weirdest or most overlooked sports stories on the Interweb this week. Plus, as you’ve come to expect, a technologically advanced excuse to get drunk in October.

Monday The Ultimate Warrior is not only still alive, but he’s blogging sarcastically about Michael Jackson. Personally, I would have gone with the “he’s a vegetable” reference from Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’. Wrestling
Tuesday Motor bikers get into a slap-boxing match, look stupid. Why don’t helmeted athletes kick more? Motorbike Racing
Wednesday Drunk chick hits a golf ball in her back yard. It will either kill her or make her a god. Golf
Thursday My grandpa can beat up your grandpa … wait, your grandpa boxed for the British Army and beat up a robber last week? Nevermind then. Boxing
Friday Mets bats defy the laws of physics … at least they did a few years ago. Baseball
Saturday A Cubs fan vows to eat only 500 calories a day until the Cubs win five games in a row. This won’t do much to dissuade the stereotype that Cubs fans are idiots. Baseball
Sunday Nothing quite as awesome as t-shirts that conscientiously object to calling stadiums by their corporate names. I still call it Comiskey too. Baseball
Eighth Day The only thing that could make this app more painful is if it played John Mayer at the top of every hour.

Now that the bombshell mildly notable item that Sammy Sosa juiced has soaked into the core of your being, it’s time to start hunting for witches.

If you believe clean players ever existed, where were they in all of this? I’m aware of the brotherhood teams and organizations have, but think of the hundreds of players to go in and out of the league, isn’t it strange that no one but Jose Canseco – the poster child of steroid abuse – had anything to say about it?

Even more strange are the reactions of baseball personalities around the league after a revelation like Sosa’s has been made.

“That’s not that surprising at all,” Houston first baseman Lance Berkman said. “There are just certain guys that you pretty much know without coming out and making an…accusation, but it does not surprise me, not even a little bit.”

“You think the sun’s going to rise in the east tomorrow,” former Cubs announcer Steve Stone replied when asked if he suspected Sosa of steroid abuse. “Nobody really questioned who was doing what and it wasn’t my job as a broadcaster to ever question who did what.”

I’m not suggesting Berkman or Stone or anyone else ought to have talked to the press and made accusations that they couldn’t back up with proof. But these guys were basing their (ultimately correct) hunches on something. And it is that something that Major League Baseball has not sought after.

Also, is Stone’s position acceptable? He’s right that calling out his suspicions of steroid abuse isn’t what he’s paid to do. But if an international affairs news editor sees that the local news editor is printing false information, does he hold his tongue and risk a severe weakening of the overall product (the newspaper) because, hey, local news ain’t my division, man.

Sometimes to do your job right, you have to do more than is expected. Ironically, a bastardized version of this philosophy probably compelled a handful of the steroid users to start using steroids in the first place. This massive wave of silence by everyone makes it appear as if everyone thinks it’s not a very big deal. And if steroid usage in MLB isn’t a very big deal, isn’t that something MLB should concern itself with?

There were 135 players implicated, named in the Mitchell Report, suspended or confessed to having used steroids. The team pictured above – the 2001 Texas Rangers – watched 23 of those PEDestrians waltz on through the Arlington clubhouse. At what point does our suspicious glare stop resting on just the players and start inquiring as to who else on the 1998 Rangers or the 2001 Rangers or the 2003 Rangers knew about their star players? Every major league ball club had at least nine players on that list of 135 in their clubhouse at some point in their career, but why did, say the Houston Astros, the closest neighbors of the Rangers, manage only nine players? (Admittedly four of Houston’s players Ken Caminiti, Miguel Tejada, Andy Pettitte and Roger Clemens are big-time names in this scandal, but still…)

The Yankees had 27 of the 135 names in the clubhouse. The Mets? It had 23 of the named players, same as the Rangers. San Diego and Anaheim? They had 21.

So what?

So why haven’t we heard about the organization’s management? It’s more than plausible that the same organization that brought Rafael Palmeiro, Sosa and Tejada together in 2004 and 2005 were aware of something others weren’t. Sure, it could have been a coincidence. The fact that Canseco and Mark McGwire were on the A’s shooting steroids into each other’s butts 15 years before Tejada and Jason Giambi did it for the same team was probably a coincidence. But some of these things are not coincidences.

There are a lot of innocent people keeping their mouths shut. They’ve been keeping their mouths shut for a long time. Make sure you blame them too, right along with Barry Bonds, Bud Selig and Florida pharmacists. It’s easy to plead blind and dumb because it’s hard to disprove.

But take a look at the above picture from 2001. Four of those five guys are on the list of 135. And in 2000, there were two others on that Texas team (Dave Martinez and David Segui) and the year before that? Two others (Juan Gonzalez and Greg Zaun). And what about the year after this picture? Yup. Two more (Ismael Valdez and Todd Greene). That’s a locker room epidemic. And there ain’t no way everyone else in that locker room and in the owner’s box walked blindly through a lineup full of cheaters.