I know too much about the Seattle Mariners. One of the things in-depth knowledge does, though, is teach you that you shouldn’t really trust anything you read. Because when you read something like this in an ESPN.com article on overpaid players:

2. Bret Boone (2B, Twins, $9,000,000)
We would have had more sympathy for Boone when he was released by the Mariners if he weren’t blowing his nose with piles of C-notes. Boone, the highest-paid second baseman in baseball — by $1.5 million — was hitting .234 with seven homers and 34 RBI when Seattle let him go. When the Twins picked him up (Seattle is still picking up his paycheck), Minnesota GM Terry Ryan said, “This is a high-reward, low-risk situation. I don’t think there’s any downside.” Ah, but there is: Just playing Boone is a downside. He’s hitting and slugging below the Mendoza line for the Twins.

Boone was traded, not released. The Twins traded for him (and the M’s are paying for much of his remaining salary) offering the ever-popular PTBNL. It’s not that important to the point, but for a writer to make repeated references to something that didn’t happen…

It’s a transaction. It’s soooo easy to look up. And if ESPN and whoever edited this can’t get a fact — a fact in the first line of the paragraph — right, how seriously should I take their football coverage (for instance), where I wouldn’t catch those kind of errors?