The White Sox earned the AL Central pennant last night, winning a 1-0 nailbiter over the Twins in a 163rd-game tiebreaker.  It was like overtime for the regular season.

The heroes were a pair of 38-year-olds: Jim Thome’s mammoth 7th inning blast was the only run of the game, and Ken Griffey Jr’s outfield assist kept the Twins off the board.  John Danks got the win, Bobby Jenks got the save, and somewhere, Brianna Banks got the money shot.  High five?  High five.

A quick round-up of MLB trade deadline action.

MANNY RAMIREZ TO THE DODGERS — L.A. and Boston each send two prospects to the Pirates, while the Red Sox get Jason Bay.  Bay is a minuscule downgrade at the plate, a remarkable improvement in the field, and his salary is less than one-third what Manny makes.  Minus the loss of the prospects, nice work by Theo Epstein.  He gets his choice of Boston skanks tonight. [Update: Written before I realized Sox were paying the remaining $7M for Manny. Still, if you're coming here for analysis, you're in the wrong place, my friend.]

KEN GRIFFEY JR TO THE WHITE SOX — News of the proposed trade broke this morning, but Junior approved the deal, so it's official.  Chicago, which has an outfield of Jermaine Dye/Nick Swisher/Carlos Quentin and a 1B/DH combo of Paul Konerko and Jim Thome, successfully filled a hole it didn't really have.

ARTHUR RHODES TO THE MARLINS –  So, okay: not nearly as big of a name as Manny or Griffey, but I felt like I really needed a third story to go with this.  Rhodes couldn't have been moved farther away from the Mariners, both geographically and — what with the Marlins not sucking — metaphorically.

The news of Ken Griffey Jr.'s 600th home run was already covered here and elsewhere today, but I never really got to have my moment of earnest sincerity about the moment.

Because I grew up a Mariners fan who lived nowhere near the Northwest (and we didn't have cable and the Internet didn't exist), I got my sports information from three places: box scores, baseball cards, and Sports Illustrated.  Of course, I lived on the East Coast, so all the M's box scores were two-day-old "late" games, and until Ken Griffey came along, there wasn't really such a thing as Mariners news in SI or a cherished M's baseball card (Mark Langston?  Alvin Davis?  Oy.).  This SI cover was a watershed for a young Seattle fan like myself: someone on the Mariners actually mattered.

You know the rest of the story: back-to-back home runs with his dad, the 1995 playoff run that saved baseball in Seattle, a return home to Cincy, and about 70-odd injuries along the way.  Most people forget or don't realize that he didn't win the Rookie of the Year his first season because a broken hand limited him to 16 HR, 16 SB, 64 runs, and 64 RBI.  Yes, I have those numbers memorized.

Anyway, congratulations, Ken.  It's good to see a class act still do things the right way.  Now if you'll excuse me, I have crude humor to attend to.  This smut won't peddle itself, you know.

MLB – After sitting on 599 homers since May 31, Ken Griffey Jr. launched no. 600 in the 1st inning of last night's game in front of a dozen or so people at Dolphin Stadium to join Hank Aaron, Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, Babe Ruth and Willie Mays in the exclusive 600 Club, which is a lot less scary and religious than the 700 Club. How's it feel to be the only Vanilla Face in the club you started, Great Bambino? What? You'll tell me after you put a cigar out on my crotch? Hokay. Awful Announcing comes through with video of the historic blast. 

In other non-historic home run related news, the White Sox won their 7th in a row by completing a 4-game sweep over the Twinkies, galvinized by Ozzie Guillen saying some stupid shit the other week. Way to enable him, fellas…Benches cleared in Pittsburgh during the Bucs 5-3 win over the D-Backs when Randy Johnson took a few imposing steps toward Doug Mientkiewicz after the Pirate stepped out of the box a few too many times. "He's intense, I'm intense, and it probably didn't help that it was 1,000 degrees out there," Mientkiewicz said, the flesh dripping from his body…Evan Longoria, Willy Aybar and Dioner Navarro hit the first back-to-back-to-back homers in Rays' history in Tampa's 13-4 win over the Angels. Wait, those are marginally historic homers! My transition, ruined!

NBA – Gilbert Arenas opted out of the final year of his contract with the Wizards to the surprise of all his online Halo buddies. Gilbert apparently wants more money to get injured and miss 50 or 60 games a year.

EURO 2008 – Dutch trip up the flopping Italian assholes 3-0. A quick lesson when insulting Italians: Vaffanculo means literally "Go fuck yourself in the ass." Don't tell them to do something they'll enjoy. Find other insults.

Holy mackerelcowshit.  Place all Philadelphia emergency workers on call IMMEDIATELY.  From today's Philly Inquirer:

Quarterback Donovan McNabb will be at Citizens Bank Park tonight because he wants to meet Cincinnati Reds star Ken Griffey Jr.

Drop Griffey from your fantasy team immediately.  If you're an Eagles fan, trade in your #5 jersey.  Something bad's gonna happen.  A piece of stadium overhang will fall on them as soon as they shake hands. Or McNabb will break his ankle on home plate, causing him to reach out and pull Griffey's arm off.  The cacophonous snap of tendons will sound like Independence Day fireworks as far away as New York.  Leave the kids at home, Philly fans.  It's gonna look like a Tarantino flick down there.

Reds outfielder Ken Griffey Jr owed teammate Josh Fogg $1500 — I'm guessing Fogg sold him a tendon — so Junior paid him back in pennies.  Whew, $1500!  That's almost .004 once you convert it to Barkleys.  (Note: .004 is also the Mariners' team batting average.)

There were 60 boxes of pennies, $25 worth to a box, stacked in his locker — top to bottom like cereal boxes in Kroger’s…

“I’m a man of my word,” said Griffey. “And when you owe a man $1,500, you pay him… Just think, each box weighs 16 pounds, so the man has 60 bowling balls in his locker.”

Fogg was mystified and mesmerized and finally said, “I’m going to take them out to the bullpen and count them. I have a lot of time on my hands out there."

You know what else is fun?  Paying a hooker in pennies.  If she complains, you just tip her with an extra roll of pennies.  To the back of her head.

[Deadspin]