IT’S NOT EVEN TRIVIA
When I saw that the Rays had signed Cuban defector Leslie Anderson, I was all set to tell you about how he would be one of the few Leslies ever to play ball, not counting slugging first baseman/pinch-hitter Sam Leslie of the Dodgers and Giants (.332/.409/.456 playing every day in 1934). It turns out I was Leslie-naive; there have been a ton of them, headed up by Yankees hurler Bullet Joe Bush, whose real name was Leslie Ambrose Bush. Bush was a Yankee for just three years, and he wasn’t exactly beloved by management given some of his postseason pitching, but he had solid, A.J. Burnett-style seasons that helped the Yankees to two pennants.  

GOODBYE, BRIAN GILES
Possibly not a great human being, but a hitter whose true worth will never be fully appreciated due to park effects. From 2004-2008 he hit .285/.386/.446 overall, but .298/.397/.478 on the road. His adjusted OPS of 136 ranks 98th all time. He’s not a Hall of Famer, but he might have been in borderline territory had (A) the Indians not kept him in the Minor Leagues about three years too long, and (B) he had played in parks that added to his skills instead of suppressed them. The Indians traded him to the Pirates for Ricardo Rincon, one of the worst deals in franchise history.

‘TIL WE MEET AGAIN, JOSE REYES
As one who gets his thyroid hormone out of a bottle, I have great sympathy for whatever Jose Reyes is going through with his malfunctioning gland. Until I lost the thing, I never knew just how useful it was to have the right dose of juice delivered to your heart each day. If you get the level too low, you’re sluggish, everything you eat is the equivalent of a cheese and lard pizza, and you just might keel over. If the dosage is too generous, your heart skips around like a politician before an ethics committee, playing drum solos that would make Neil Peart faint with fear -- and you just might keel over. Best wishes, Jose, in getting this resolved in such a way that the word “synthroid” does not become part of your daily vocabulary. Sympathy also to Mets fans, who are once again in line to see more of Alex Cora than they really want to.

SOCIAL NETWORKIN’ FOOL, CONT’D
Now that I’m on Twitter, I am getting tweets from Nick Swisher. Am looking forward to in-season dispatches explaining the whole batting-.200-with RISP thing. In fairness, I may have to tweet about typos.