More rumblings on the Chone Figgins trade front

The Chone Figgins trade rumor which popped up late last night continues to churn this afternoon:

Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle reports that Chone Figgins has been not been asked to waive his limited no-trade clause, which includes Oakland;
Buster Olney chipped in that Toronto could also be involved in trade discussions.

To that latter point, USS Mariner’s David Cameron notes that Kevin Kouzmanoff makes way more sense for the Blue Jays than he does for the Mariners. If there is a three-way deal, it would make sense, David says, for the Jays to send a back-end starter type to Seattle in exchange for Kouzmanoff.

All of that — the A’s upgrading with Figgins, the Mariners unloading salary and the Jays picking up a third baseman — makes so much sense that it’s bound to crumble at any moment.

This summer’s series between the Yankees and Red Sox in London is, technically, a home series for the Red Sox, with the Yankees serving as the visitors. Pete Abraham reports that Major League Baseball is dispensing with the usual sartorial formalities, however, and will have both teams wearing their home livery: the Red Sox will wear white and the Yankees will wear pinstripes.

It’s marketing more than anything, as you can’t really put your league’s marquee franchise on an international stage and not have it wearing its iconic duds, right?

It’s also pretty harmless if you ask me. Baseball is not like football or basketball in which you have to have contrasting uniforms in order to keep one side from accidentally throwing the ball to the opposition or what have you. And with so many teams wearing solid color alternates now — sometimes both the home and road team are in blue or red jerseys in the same game — it’s not like there hasn’t already been a breakdown in home white/road gray orthodoxy. I prefer the classics, but I lost that battle a long time ago.

So: I say let a thousand colors fly. Heck, let the Yankees wear their pinstripes on the road all the time. Who’ll stop ’em?

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