Welcome to the championship round of the Jason Romano Commemorative NLC’s hottest baller contest. 15 of the best-looking players on NLC (plus one guy in limbo (again)) faced off in a single-elimination tournament that culminates with tonight’s match up.

This is it. The final round. Your votes this week will decide who is the NLC’s hottest honey and who is just a modestly famous athlete with a bunch of online fans.

Bubba Crosby has been the cult hero of the competition, and certainly wasn’t a favorite at the beginning, considering that he hasn’t truly been a member of an NLC team the whole time. Now, it’s looking like he’ll sit a year out while he rehabs his shoulder, which at least would give him more time to enjoy his inappropriately named reign as NLC’s Hottest Baller, should he win. And right now I’d give him the odds; no other player has been able to rally the groundswell of support.

Brandon Phillips has been a front-runner from the beginning of the competition. Most recently, he nudged out perennial hottie Jason LaRue with 51% of the vote. As the Reds’ second baseman for years to come, Phillips certainly seems to be a more natural choice for the competition, but it’s going to take an inspired populous of Phillips fans to overcome the Crosby mafia.

Bubba Crosby
ht: 5-11 wt: 195 dob: 8/11/1976

Brandon Phillips
ht: 6-0 wt: 195 dob: 6/28/1981

[poll=28]

I read a stat last week that said the average adult laughs 17 times a day. “Huh,” I said, thankful that I now have my own office where others cannot mock and laugh when I converse with myself. “I don’t believe I do that.”

Last year, the Reds’ season was painful. I’d entered it with hopes of them doing something. I was wrong, so very wrong, and I found it difficult to laugh at all the stupid things. Not this year! This year I’m ready.

Where to begin? How about right here.

Cincinnati has 34 healthy players, plus two that are injured, remaining on its Spring Training roster. With two days left in camp, nine more have to go to reach the 25-man limit.

Wow. Really? I can’t remember a team ever having that many players so late in camp. I mean, the Cubs, of all teams, are busy cutting down to their final 25. The Cubs! And the Reds have 34? Surely the GM realizes the ludicrousness of this.

“We will have 25 when Opening Day starts,” Reds general manager Wayne Krivsky said.

What refreshing candor. So nice to hear that you’ll be waiting until the last minute to do your job!

“It speaks to how good the competition has been in Spring Training. We’ve got some very close competition among non-roster players and in the bullpen and in the rotation.”

Really? Jerry Hairston and Jolbert Cabrera continue to have a legitimate shot at this club? You mean to say that you consider the pitching you’ve seen from Mike Lincoln and Jim Brower to be good? Well, that would explain The Trade and the Mike Stanton signing

But wait, as they say, there’s more. Let’s turn to that font of baseball wisdom, that intellectual of intellectuals, the man who is always ready with a toothpick to lend MacGyver a hand, Dusty Baker:

“If [David Ross]’s ready, there’s a possibility [of carrying three catchers].”

I should have seen it coming, but I didn’t. I can’t imagine what kind of disease it is that infects these Reds managers with this 3 catchers notion (*cough*waynekrivsky*cough*). All one has to do is look around at teams that have won any worthwhile games in the last decade and counted how many catchers they had. I’ll even give them one free hint: It wasn’t three.

As I grow older, I grow less tolerant of repeated acts of stupidity and willful ignorance. The Reds, posing as the oldest professional ball club, do not. For that, I salute them. I look forward to them helping me achieve my quota of laughs throughout the coming season.