We'll continue the season with our blog-type columns. Whenever the mood strikes, be it stats night on Monday, the middle of a West Coast game on Wednesday night, or maybe even a Friday morning before I leave for work, I'll come here and post entries. Sometimes it will be a paragraph or two, sometimes longer.

I'll make sure I put a date on everything so you can easily tell what's new from what you may have already read. So feel free to come to this page often, or continue checking in once a week as the stats update, to check out and catch up on the latest entries in what I hope to be a season long blog.

If anyone else has anything to contribute, I'll be more than happy to post it here, with all credit given to the author of course. And if we get one of our infamous 20+ reply e-mail threads going, I may also opt to copy that into this space as well so it's saved for all posterity.

July 15th, 2008

Hello everyone and welcome to the All Star Game Skills Competition, Full Monty style! I'm your host John "The Commish" Legere and we're coming to you from (James) Loney Island in New York the site of our first competition, the Bratwurst Eating Contest. This contest features some of the heartiest eaters in the majors going all out to see who has the greatest gastrointestinal fortitude. For this event I'm joined by my colleague Doug Quat, marketing director of Quat's Brots, the provision of choice for this year's challenge.

Commish: So Doug before we meet the contestants, let's get the shameless plug out of the way. Why Quat's Brots?

Doug: Well Commish, it's real simple. Quat's Brots are the finest brots that very little money can buy. Consider us the "Ramen Noodles" of the Bratwurst World. At Quat Brot's we realize the average American family can barely afford to fill their SUV's with gas and pay their cable TV bill. Not to mention the new higher principal on their reset ARM mortgage, the struggle to pick up the 5 children at day care and arrive home at the same time, much less sit down together to eat an affordable meal, so we price our meat well below the competition. Our brots are cheaper than Johnsonville and they're tastier too because they're packed with real genuine imitation Swine-meat for that down home east-of-the-river flavor! Hey, they don't call them "brot worst" for nothing.

Commish: Thanks Doug I wish I would've known all this earlier before I ordered my Bubba Burger from the concession stand. Now let's meet the contestants! First up we have Kobayashi, no it's not the small Japanese guy who lives under the fryer at Nathan's and swallows hot dogs like Jenna Jameson swallows, er, ahem, cough, cough, excuse me! Instead it's Cleveland Indians reliever and de facto closer Masa Kobayashi, who claims he's never eaten a sausage in his life.

Doug: Perhaps not, but he did sit on the bullpen bench next to former Indians reliever Kazahito Tadano, a man who certainly knows a little something about swallowing sausage as he once appeared in a gay porn movie in Japan because, and I quote, "he needed the money". Can I get a Dice Clay "oh!" from the congregation? Thank you Mr. Kelly…

Commish: I guess that means he's ready for this event as I hear a well cooked Quat Brot can really test your gag reflex! Next up it's Milwaukee's Best, no not the cheap beer, we're talking about the newest member of the Brew Crew, C.C. Sabathia!

Doug: C.C.'s really equipped for this event and he's certainly come to win it all. The Round on The Mound as he's affectionately known has great upside and I hear he trained for this event by chasing the Milwaukee Sausage Racers around Miller Park. Rumor has it that Sabathia actually kidnapped Stosh, the Polish Sausage and brought him out to Bernie the Brewer's slide where he was caught "noshing on Stosh" by Prince Fielder. Thankfully Prince is a vegetarian and wanted no part of that beef so he freed Stosh and set C.C. straight with a few Boca veggie burgers.

Commish: Well there's certainly no room here for that vegan stuff! These guys will be stuffing Brots down their throats like Marilyn Chambers, er, ahem, cough, cough! Darn, anyone got any Robitussin? I've got to get this looked at. Our final competitor this season is Neil Eskow, Owner Number One of the Two Jew Crew in the Full Monty Fantasy Baseball League. Neil's a local favorite.

Doug: We're real excited about Neil who will be eating Quat's new Kosher Brots.

Commish: Wow, I didn't know one could make a bratwurst kosher?

Doug: Yes, we had the Swine blessed by a rabbi before Kalach and Robinson herded them into the slaughterhouse…

Commish: I don't know how well Neil's going to do against these other guys but look for him to trade two brots on buns for a gefilte fish on a matzoh before this competition is complete.

Doug: Mazel Tov I say!

Commish: Well there you have it, this year's contestants in the Full Monty Bratwurst Eating Contest. No since no one wants to really sit on their couch and watch guys eating cheap meat and bread for 20 minutes, we're going to skip ahead in time. {video fast forwards all waving and swiggly like and old VHS tape} Wow that was some trip! That tape looked more stretched out than Seka, er, ahem, cough, cough. Freakin' cough again, just tell them who won Doug.

Doug: The winner of the event was none other than Joey Chesnut! Now we know that Joey was not originally entered in the contest he was summoned from down the block where he was working the grill at Nathan's after Neil passed out on this fifth kosher brot. Well there you have it folks, like Luis Tiant used to say, it's great to be a wiener!

Commish: That's all we have time for this week, but stay with us all this week as we present more of the All Star Skills Competition on ESPN 85, The Ocho-Cinco, including the following events:

- The Music Star Dating Competition, early entrants include Roger Clemens and Mindy McCready, A-Rod and Madonna, Mrs A-Rod and Lenny Kravitz and Milwaukee Brewers outfielder Corey Hart and his wife.

- The "Make Jose Reyes Cry" event in which various Mets try to do things to make their shortstop show them up in public. Currently entered in the event are Jerry Manual, Carlos Delgado, Carlos Beltran and Mr. Met who I hear does a mean karaoke rendition of that "Jose, Jose" song with a Mariachi band in tow.

- The "Assault a Team Official" Steel Cage Battle Royal. Currently scheduled to participate in this free-for-all are Manny Ramirez, the Red Sox traveling secretary Jack McCormick, Milton Bradley, Royals TV announcer Ryan Lefebvre, Jose Reyes, Keith Hernandez, morning line favorite Shawn Chacon and Astros general manager Ed Wade.

- "Trading Johan Santana" in which Full Monty owners have five minutes to come up with their best deal for the underachieving, no run supported Mets ace. Jim Kalach, The Brothers Legere and the recently Heimlich'ed Neil Eskow head a group of competitors that promise to bluff enough to make the World Series of Poker look like watching East German television.

- The "Who Has The Coolest Name That Sounds Like An Egyptian God" event in which San Francisco Giant reliever OSIRIS "god of death" Matos defends his title against the likes of Sun god and Washington Nationals pitcher Jack Han-RA-han, god of the desert and Rockies pinch hitter extraordinaire SETH Smith, and former Yankees second baseman HORUS Clarke.

- The Running Of The Swine, in which Full Monty league owners attempt to avoid getting gored, trampled and stampeded as Jim and Mark continue their fast ascent up the league standings from last place and into the money.

- "Who'll Stay Retired Longer?" in which recently retired baseball players compete against their brethren from others sports leagues and the business world to see who'll get taxed on their 401k withdrawals first. Mike Piazza, Barry Bonds and Kenny Lofton square off against Brett Favre, Jake Plummer and Bill Gates in this exciting event.

Stay tuned next for live coverage of The Full Monty Old Timers Softball Game featuring Walt Cherniak and Dennis Milewski headlining teams managed by The Caruso Brothers. Guy and Joe will finish selecting their teams in the kitchen area of the clubhouse right up until game time, and at least five more minutes thereafter…