SYSTEMATIC! HYDROMATIC! KLOSTERMANIC!  So what's the deal with Bill Simmons' new sports-and-culture website?  Dan Shanoff explains "it is what The Awl could be -- if one of the world's largest media companies opened up its resources and said 'Do anything you think you should.'... It presents ideal conditions to launch what Bill is trying. It will be successful -- mostly, because I honestly can't imagine the future of media, sports or otherwise, if it CAN'T be."

HALLWATCH:  Three baseball outfielders:

Player A: .284/.376/.527 (132 OPS+) in 7,980 PAs. 393 HR, 4 ASGs, 8 GGs in centerfield. .274/.361/.513 in 64 playoff games, including 13 HR, and one WS title. 

Player B: .292/.393/.514 (140 OPS+) in 10,947 PAs. 509 HR, 9 ASGs. .248/.401/.398 in 44 playoff games, including 6 HR, and one WS title .

Player C: .318/.360/.477 (124 OPS+) in 7,431 PAs. 207 HR, 10 ASGs, 1 MVP, 6 GGs in centerfield. .309/.361/.536 in 24 playoff games, including 5 HR, and two WS titles.

The savvier among us know that A is Jim Edmonds and B is Gary Sheffield, both of whom announced their retirements from Major League Baseball this week.  Neither is a first-ballot Hall of Famer as the voters seem to insist on the distinction, but both merit serious consideration.  Edmonds earned that consideration by reputation, especially defensively, and seemed to get that all-around-good-guy veteran glow as the years passed.  Which leads me to Player C, who already is a HOFer -- Kirby Puckett -- and other than the ASGs it's a bit hard to justify a Hall that has Puckett but doesn't eventually induct Edmonds.

As for Sheffield, hoo boy. He may join Dick Allen as the only baseball players otherwise qualified for the Hall but denied entry on account of dickishness, playing for eight different franchises and burning his bridges with nearly each of them. Oh, and he was in the Mitchell Report.  This may be the hitting equivalent of his one-time teammate Kevin Brown's HOF evaluation -- so disliked by the media that he can't stay on the ballot long enough to be considered properly.  That would be a shame -- he was a feared hitter, with one of the more imitable stances of all -- and his performance merits a fair hearing.

DEEP (DISH) TROUBLE: Our Chicagoland readers will be despondent at the news that Giordano's has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, though it's remaining in operation for now.

ALOTT5MA FRIDAY GRAMMAR RODEO:  To split infinitives or to never split infinitives; that is the question. The Chicago Manual of Style answers:

CMOS has not, since the thirteenth edition (1983), frowned on the split infinitive. The sixteenth edition suggests, to take one example, allowing split infinitives when an intervening adverb is used for emphasis (see paragraphs 5.106 and 5.168). In this day and age, it seems, an injunction against splitting infinitives is one of those shibboleths whose only reason for survival is to give increased meaning to the lives of those who can both identify by name a discrete grammatical, syntactic, or orthographic entity and notice when that entity has been somehow besmirched. Many such shibboleths—the en dash, for example—are worthy of being held onto. But why tamper with such sentences as the following?

Its five-year mission is to explore new worlds, seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.

His first thought, when something went wrong, was to immediately hit the escape key—even when he was nowhere near a computer.

It seems to me that, at least given these two examples, euphony or emphasis or clarity or all three can be improved by splitting the infinitive in certain situations. It’s one of the advantages of a language with two-word infinitives. One might observe, for that matter, that English infinitives are always split—by a space.

Oxford more or less agrees, asserting as follows: "The ‘rule’ against splitting infinitives isn’t followed as strictly today as it used to be. Nevertheless, some people do object very strongly to them. As a result, it’s safest to avoid split infinitives in formal writing, unless the alternative wording seems very clumsy or would alter the meaning of your sentence," and The Guardian and Observer style guide notes:

Raymond Chandler wrote to his publisher: "Would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois which is something like the way a Swiss waiter talks, and that when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split." And after an editor tinkered with his infinitives, George Bernard Shaw said: "I don't care if he is made to go quickly, or to quickly go – but go he must!"

Wikipedia, of course, has much to say on the controversy, but is it one? I guess the question is this -- is this something about which you care at all, or are you going to willy-nilly split your infinitives when writing?

added: Poll results! Split infinitives -- "whenever you feel like it" (53%) wins over "sparingly" (40%) and "never" (5%).

NOW EXPLAIN IT TO ME LIKE I'M A FOUR-YEAR OLD: From Han Solo to How Do You Know, Splitsider reviews twenty-five film roles for which Bill Murray was considered or which he declined. Boone? Buzz Lightyear? Charlie Babbit? Sulley? It's an interesting list, for sure.

FOUR ROOMS: Frequent ALOTT5MA Piñata Richard Rushfield talks to Alexis Grace, Jackie Tohn, Bucky Covington and (shockers) Carly Smithson about what Hollywood week is really like.  Good read.  Meanwhile, Dan Fienberg's faster than I am, so here are his thoughts on tonight's Idol episode.

Thus far, I have to say, this has been a darn entertaining season and the new judges are not getting in its way.

WHO AM I TO BREAK UP THE ROUNDUP GANG?  There will be two new Pixar shorts featuring the Toy Story characters in 2011 -- "Hawaiian Vacation" accompanying Cars 2 in the summer, and another to be released with The Muppets at Thanksgiving. Also, full speed ahead on Phineas and Ferb going to the big screen, in a live/animated hybrid.  (Is Bob Hoskins free?)