Transaction Wire

Blazers trade Sheed and Wesley Person for Shareef Abdur-Rahim, Theo Ratliff, and Dan Dickau. Portland continues to make changes - they're for the better personality-wise at least. Abdur-Rahim is decent from what I hear (I haven't followed the NBA much in the past few years). Dan Dickau (oh, so that's where he went!) will make his floppy-haired return to the west coast.
Yankees trade for Mike Lamb. The Rangers used to have two young generic infielders named Mike: Lamb and Mike Young. One was considered good, and the other terrible, even though their stats are virtually identical. Fortunately, I think the Yanks got the sucky one. As for the Rangers, with so much talent at 3rd in Hank Blalock and Mark Teixeira (and don't forget Herb Perry).
Mets sign Scott Erickson to a minor league deal. Erickson didn't play last year, assumedly due to injury. If he stays healthy, he'll eat some innings for the Mets. If not, at least he'll be there to mentor young'ns like Mike Bacsik and Aaron Heilman.
Red Sox sign Ellis Burks. The Red Sox will add to a deep bench (many players could start somewhere). Burks brings veteran leadership and a great clubhouse presence. He will unselfishly play anywhere in the batting order, and if his knees hold up he can handle the small left field.
MLB.com names Jose Reyes 10th best fantasy second baseman to have for the coming year.

Check out the AL West Preview tomorrow, and if you see any free baseball stat services, please let me know. One rambling to take you home: my sister Becky is an alternate for my HS's Academic Challenge team (or, as we called it when I was a member, our "Academically Challenged team"). It was a radio taping, and they were playing one of the local public high schools. When it came time for the players to talk about themselves, everyone was rattling of extra cirriculars like tennis and yearbook and computer club whatnot, until they got to a football player from the public HS. His little spiel ended this way: "My hobbies include playing Madden with my friends." You can't make this up.