Full contact mulching, I guess.

Baseball knocked off Clemson yesterday, assuring itself a spot in the ACC tournament.

A couple of MLB mock drafts here and here. Andrew Brackman seems to have earned his share of critics. And I think he kicked this poor man's dog:

Can we get smart about this please? This is truly a theater of the absurd. When I draft a college pitcher, I would like someone who has exhibited a trace of dominance in his career. Brackman has been mediocre AT BEST this season. Can people get past the optimistic scouting reports and the numerous BA fluff pieces and finally realize that he's nothing more than a gimmick. I know a sucker is born every minute, but if Brack goes in the 1st round, some team is really looking to throw away 1 million dollars.

Yeah, this is something to get worked up about, guy. Good lord.

The Mets scored 5 runs in the bottom of the 9th yesterday to edge the Cubs 6-5. That sort of thing always makes for a fun win probability graph. New York's win probability coming into the inning was 2%.

White Sox offense = still excruciating. Please make the hurting stop. It's destroying my will to live.

Baylor's tennis coach doesn't know anything about the Wolfpack except that we have this British guy. Or maybe he was Irish. Hell, I don't know.

SMQ takes us into the mind of Tom O'Brien, sharing a recent TOB diary entry:

You might recall I told the Raleigh News-Observer that I recently attended a concert put on by the popular rock group Dave Matthews Band. Clippings of said article have been filed under "May 13," "Interviews" and "Personal." Well, diary, a young man named Wyatt read that article and invited me via electronic message to ride with him to a music festival where Dave Matthews was playing with his famed accompaniment.

As you well know, I have been a longtime fan of "DMB," as the band is sometimes called, since I saw them play "The Song That Jane Likes" at the very clean and affordable Charlottesville restaurant Eastern Standard in February 1992, which I frequented in my capacity as offensive coordinator at the University of Virginia (see files "Dining," "In Public"). In fact, I have adopted a line from my favorite song off the band's Grammy-winning follow-up LP, 1996's "Crash," as the slogan for my first season with the Wolfpack:

I can't believe that we would lie in our graves, wondering if we had spent our living days well.

I can't believe that we would lie in our graves, dreaming of things that we might have been.

I believe this inspiring lyric embodies the many goals I hope to accomplish in my tenure at North Carolina State University. As a former Marine who was commissioned for deployment to Vietnam, I know what it is like to contemplate one's life from the perspective of the beyond. I tell my new players frequently that they should work every second of every day to avoid lying in their graves, wondering if that extra squat would have gotten that running back on the ground instead of allowing him to run for a first down. They should do the squat, and then an extra one, and then another set of repetitions to be safe. When they reach the end of their lives, I tell them, they do not want to be dreaming of championships. Instead, they will want to be fondling the very high-quality rings I will personally order from the best manufacturer for actually winning a championship.

So there's your 2007 team motto. A bit of a mouthful, sure, and yeah, you roll your eyes every time you read it, but it could be worse.

I'll leave you with a brilliant scene from the movie Hobgoblins. Jousting with garden tools--it's every bit as compelling as you would imagine.