By virtue of the San Diego Padres loss to the Washington Nationals tonight, the Reds now own the best record in the entire National League.

A nice thought to go to bed with. Goodnight!

Joey Votto’s stiff neck is robbing me of the content that made it so easy to write these Vote Votto posts, so tonight I’m relying on the smile in street clothes to do the talking for me.

I’m beginning to get creative with the email addresses that I’m using for the All Star Voting. Back when I was the president of the Indiana chapter of a professional society, I set up Gmail accounts for all the officers.

The chapter has since dissolved, but the email addresses remain, and I don’t think anyone’s going to much mind if I use them.

Speaking for myself, I’ve now voted 25 times per day, 5 days in a row. If I can do this 30 more days in a row, that’ll be 875 votes all together. That’s not bad, but obviously I can’t get him there by myself. You need to vote too!

You can vote online 25 times per email address.

Ryan Freel, the craziest damn sumbitch you ever loved to watch hurl himself into the stands or steal home, officially retired this month.

The 34-year old was dealing with hip flexor issues, but that was only the latest in a long line of self-imposed injuries and certainly not the reason. Legends are not cut down by hip flexor issues.

It was just his time to walk off into the sunset. Well, dash blindly backward into a wall en route to the sunset, anyway.

Baseball will miss his antics on the field (remember four stolen bases in one game?) and off (remember the disorderly conduct outside the pool hall/sushi bar?) but I’m confident he’ll continue to live it up in his non baseball life. Someday I just expect to see a story in my local paper, picked up off the wire for the sheer weirdness of it, about a Florida man and the wacky way he and his little friend Farney mow the lawn.