Three pre-Super Bowl thoughts:

• John Tudor appeared at a local card show today, so I got him to sign the Pawsox All-Time Team cards I have (up to 13 players now!). Tudor was a very good left-handed pitcher that came up through the Red Sox system and pitched five years for Boston. He was then traded to the Pirates for Mike Easler because, y'know, the Red Sox thought they needed more DH-types and fewer lefty starters back in the '80s. Tudor had his greatest success with the Cardinals, pitching in two World Series with them. His best year was 1985 when he went 21-8 with a 1.93 ERA in 275 innings and finished second in the Cy Young Award voting to a pre-drug problem Dwight Gooden. He was a friendly guy and there weren't a lot of people there so I had the opportunity to chat with him for a few minutes. We talked about the Pawsox and how the ballpark had changed since he had played there. Very cool to meet him.
  

• My beloved iPod Touch was having a problem. The iPod is designed so that the music stops playing when the headphone jack is pulled out. The problem was that it was doing this when the jack was just jostled. Needless to say, this became annoying pretty quickly. My iPod was still under warranty, so I made an appointment to see a Genius at my local Apple Store. J. and I went over there yesterday and the service couldn't have been better. He looked into the jack with one of those gadgets the doctor uses to look into your ears and saw that one of the contacts was bent. To resolve my issue, he gave me a new iPod! Actually, I'm pretty sure it's a refurbished one, but it works fine. This is the kind of service that keeps me an Apple customer.

• Last but not least, my Super Bowl pick. I'm pulling for the Cardinals, but I don't really think they're good enough to score many points on the Pittsburgh defense. My score: Pittsburgh 24, Arizona 13. See how I did later!