Wednesday Morning Links

Whelp, SBN now requires its writers to go through enhanced verification prior to login.  Which means that Shilpa, the 9 year old Bombay girl to whom I subcontracted my morning links through Amazon Mechanical Turk, will go without the $0.53 per Wednesday and Thursday she was using to feed her family.  Thanks, SBN.

It also means that if I try to relieve the unrelenting sameness of doing the morning links by tucking each link into increasingly filthy jokes I can't even hide behind a Weineresque figleaf  "I was hacked" excuse.  So rest assured, if a future Wendesday or Thursday links post is a picturesque cascade of phalluses, it was me no matter what I say.  Or, possibly, Shilpa, if I can figure out how to FedEx her my phone.

Carlos Gomez says, of his resigning with the Rangers, that he'd found something in Texas that he'd always been looking for: an unpleasant climate during baseball season that will only be mitigated by an indoor stadium that won't be built until his career is long dead.  Amen, Carlos, amen.

Now that, thanks to Rougned Odor's brother Rougned, we all know what constitutes hazing in baseball we can all agree that whatever the new collective bargaining says about hazing is probably a positive change.  Unless it simply says "more sexual assault," in which case I take that back.

The Rangers would prefer that Martin Perez not pitch in the Venezuelan Winter League.  I have nothing to add except that the accompanying picture looks like Uncle Rico's glamour shot pose from Napoleon Dynamite.

The Rangers went and hung out with some kids.

They also had a toy drive.

Um.  Hm.  Well... Yeah, uh.  Probably not.

Joey Gallo is looking forward to getting a shot to win a roster spot this spring.

Chi Chi Gonzalez, on the CBA hazing ban: "We'll find other ways to do it, away from the cameras."  Congratulations, Chi Chi, you've just signed up for 24 "random" drug tests next year!