Who Darvish?

Wow. Apparently this guy named Yu Darvish, a Persian-Japanese pitcher of age twenty-four, is one of the best pitchers in the world. As in, four consecutive seasons with an ERA under 2. Admittedly that's in the Japanese leagues which are not quite the Major Leagues, but a) I've always thought that it was hitting stats that are inflated in Japan, and b) Sandy Koufax never ran up four consecutive years of sub-2.00 ERA, so one way or another I think this guy's pretty good. And there's some thought that the Mets might be in the conversation to sign him, at least if they aren't going to become a shriveled husk of a team. Boy would that be awesome. Santana/Darvish/Dickey/Mejia/Niese-or-Pelfrey looks pretty good to me for a 2012 rotation. I still think their top priority if they're going to reinvest some of the 70 million coming off the books this year should be resigning Reyes, but I might also be willing to say that their second priority ought to be trying to get Darvish. That would just be amazing.

Japan

1. It sucks.

2. Natural disasters are definitely a big, big part of Japan's self-identity. It looks to me like Japan has gotten off comparatively light given that we're talking about one of the biggest earthquakes on record, though I could be objectively wrong about that, and I also think I've heard that that isn't entirely an accident.

3. If there is any justice in the world this will be a Bobby Jindal moment for the Republicans. Jindal famously proposed cutting volcano monitoring in his 2009 response to Obama's not-really-SotU address, and a day later a certain volcano in Alaska spoke up, saying "Are you sure about that?". Congressional Republicans are proposing to slash, among other things, the budget of the people who monitor tsunamis.

Oh wait, there is very little justice in the world. Shame.