I have been quite negligent with Sombrero Watch, missing out on Carlos Beltran’s efforts on Saturday (I’m letting you off the hook on this one, buddy), and Ryan Howard last week. Though a day late, invitations were extended to Milton Bradley and Ted Lilly to join the club. Our buddy Milton turned the trick on Monday night in the Rangers’ 2-1 win over the Yankees. He’s lucky Scotty Feldman and company pitched well enough to keep the Yanks bats at bay otherwise his five runners left on base would have looked a lot worse. Anyway, perhaps harder to do than injuring your knee while arguing with an umpire, Milton K’d three times against Mike Mussina. The other was against Jose Veras. Nicely done, Milton. We welcome you with open arms.

The other inductee from Monday night would be Ted Lilly. I had to wrestle with this one greatly before giving my blessing. Early on I made the call to keep all pitchers because they don’t really count, but Ted Lilly is the exception. I am proud to announce that Ted Lilly is the first member of the club to achieve the Platinum Sombrero. Not only is it remarkably difficult to achieve the Golden Sombrero, imagine how tough it is to go Platinum. Especially when you consider that Lilly’s a pitcher; how many pitchers even get five at-bats in a game without getting pinch hit for? For those two reasons, Lilly was inducted.

Honorable mentions from Monday go out to Jason Repko, Marcus Thames, and Jason Michaels who all punched out four times in five at-bats. Better that you all didn’t turn the trick — I’m not so sure we would’ve had room for you anyway.

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Times are tough, and to make matters worse, Dykstra’s athlete/magazine business plan fell apart. Perhaps it’s no surprise then that Lenny Dykstra has decided to sell his house. If you remember, Nails moved into Wayne Gretzky’s pad in Lake Sherwood which is like by Westlake in Ventura County, CA. The estate is pretty chic, with 8 bedrooms and 7 bathrooms spread out over seven acres. And how does 12,713 square feet of property sound to you? It’s not really my style, but I can’t turn down a castle this nice:

Dykstra says the problem is that the place is too large — it’s like a compound where he can go days without seeing his family. I’m not surprised given how big it is. Plus, with his son Cutter getting drafted, five extra empty bedrooms is just way too much. Maybe one day when LBS blows up to huge levels, we’ll make a bid at Sotheby’s. Check out more pics of the pad after the jump

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Come Tuesday, Gilbert Arenas will either be locked up by the Wizards for six years at max money or near max money, or he’ll be on his way to China for an Adidas promotional tour sans contract. The issue for the Wizards, as I see it, is that they’re more or less handcuffed by Arenas. If there are 30 teams in the NBA, I’m guessing there’s at least one other team out there willing to give Arenas max money, but to me, the Wizards are almost obligated to give him that money. Gil’s a superstar in that town — the most popular athlete in DC. It’s not even a question of whether or not they think Gil can lead them to a title and be the star on a championship team. It’s about keeping him in D.C. and keeping the fans happy.

Sure, having a winning team also keeps the fans happy, and they’ll get that from the Wizards. The team is good enough to reach the playoffs consistently, even in a year when Arenas and Caron Butler were both hurt. But are they a title team? Probably not, as long as they don’t have a legitimate big man, which they haven’t had since the bringing the Arenas/Jamison/Butler trio together. So the big issue handcuffing the Wizards is Arenas’ knee. He missed almost all of this past season since shredding it up two seasons ago and he didn’t look anywhere near how he was at his peak. Gil compounded matters by trying to return from the initial surgery too quickly and was forced to have a second surgery. He might never be the same if those few games he played down the stretch were any indication. He doesn’t have the same quickness or agility — the traits that made him stand out against opposing players. It’s a gamble for the Wizards, but it’s one they pretty much have to take. (And one Gilbert can certainly repay them for).

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Seeing as that Shaq promptly had his honorary deputy badges yanked following his foul-mouthed rap on Kobe, I think you can say the response to the video has not been great. And even if he tries to justify it saying that it’s just freestyle rap, he’s wrong. You Been Blinded shows us why:

Yeah, real nice, Shaq. Way to set a positive example for the kids. And what kind of parent sets their kids up to do that and then posts it on YouTube to boot? There are some real geniuses out there, I’ll tell you.

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I doubted Billy Beane back in January after he traded Haren and Swisher saying the A’s had conceded the season. I learned my lesson. So when I read that Beane has become an avid soccer fan, which apparently has been ongoing for a few years, I became pretty concerned that he might lose his focus. And now SportsbyBrooks floats the idea that Beane could one day leave the A’s to run the San Jose Earthquakes or something. The idea makes sense since Lew Wolff owns both teams and wants to see the Quakes succeed. And as you could imagine, Beane is already bringing his Moneyball philosophies to MLS.

So is it possible that Beane directs his concentration fully on the Quakes? Is it possible that he’s already been spending a lot of time doing soccer anyway and we just don’t know it? One piece of evidence is from Tracy Ringolsby who takes assistant GM David Forst turning down interviews as a sign. I’m not so sure that’s much of an indication given what Beane taught his previous assistants — only take a job when you’re ready to succeed at it. Plus, Forst may have seen what happened with DePodesta and realized he has a good thing going. And like I speculated, we don’t know how Beane spends his time anyway. But there was a day when Beane was going to take the Red Sox job, so you know new projects entice him. I’ll just hope for the Angels’ sake that he’s shifting his focuses.

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We’ve all heard about players getting pretty crazy in the bullpen. They’re just sitting out there for inning on end, in need of entertainment just like the rest of us. Sometimes they’ll look at naked pictures of girls, other times they’ll create new technological devices to keep busy. And in rare occasions, you might actually catch them flipping off their bullpen mates. And if you’re really lucky, you’ll catch it on national television:

Thanks to Awful Announcing for spotting that one. Man, what a sharp eye. Hopefully this will discourage FOX from doing their constant cut-aways. Man, does that get annoying.

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