Thursday Halolinks: Run Support Mania Strikes Angel Hitters, Meaningless Quotes Are All The Rage

Sometimes the stars align and greatness is thrust upon us. And thus, today's thrusting Halolinks:

• Hey, did you hear? Ervin Santana was suffering from lack of support. Imagine that, a lineup that features a 3-time MVP (and ROY), another ROY runner-up, a couple of guys who once hit 25+ home runs, Captain Awesome, Destructobeam, and Vernon Wells, couldn't scrape together one frickin' run? Gripes. Angels' Santana finally gets run support -- and a win - Yahoo! Sports. "Before Santana took the mound against the Minnesota Twins on Wednesday night, the Angels had not scored a single run in his previous five starts." Another interesting tid-bit, "In the bottom of the third inning, he pitched with a lead for the first time since his last start of 2011."
• Within another article about the Halos' lack of run support for Santana, there was a quote from Pujols about the upcoming series against Texas: Angels' offense finally gives Santana some support - The Orange County Register. "I know you guys are going to write a hundred articles between now and Friday," Pujols said of the looming test in Texas. "They have a good ballclub. We're not going to get caught up in that. We're just going to get ready to play." You would think a guy sucking as much as he is would have a little humility. You know what, maybe if you did "get caught up in that" you'd pull your head out of your butt like you're trying to pull everything else. And I would hope you'd get ready to play...WTF Albert, what have you been doing up to this point? I'm glad to see Bill Plunkett and I aren't the only ones getting tired of Scioscia's interesting quotes, "Angels manager Mike Scioscia was ready with his standard answer when asked about his team's readiness to face the 20-10 Rangers. "Our challenge is in-house," Scioscia said. "We have to become the team we can become. We have to keep moving forward, keep getting better."
• I wonder what the answer would be if you asked the other 29 major league managers, "Who would you rather have in your lineup today; Vernon Wells or Peter Bourjos?" Peter Bourjos rides the bench again for Angels - latimes.com. "It will all work out one way or another," said Bourjos, who is batting .192 with a .259 on-base percentage. "I think I'm too good of a player for it not to." He's exactly right, he IS too good for it not to. Some good news from Dan Haren regarding his back, "I had back issues last year, and this is not as bad as it was then," said Haren, who had trouble "finishing" his pitches in a 32/3-inning, five-run, eight-hit outing. "But it took two weeks for it to go away completely."
• Easy there big fella. Kernels' Cowart thriving under pressure - MiLB.com. "Cowart has homered three times in five days, giving him five longballs, 12 RBIs and nine runs scored in 10 games since the end of April. No Minor Leaguer has more homers during that span and only five have driven in more runs."
• The more I hear C.J. Wilson talk, the more I like him: Los Angeles Angels at Texas Rangers - May 11, 2012 - MLB.com. "I think the biggest thing will just be that we'll be playing in front of a huge crowd in a stadium that's relatively hostile to our team -- and I'm sure will be fairly hostile to me," he said. "I think a lot of people will boo me and stuff."
  
• The Jump-Step and Other Unrepeatable Deliveries - FanGraphs Baseball. "Jordan Walden has a jump step in his delivery. Jordan Walden has control problems. Does one cause the other?"
• Some people are blessed with more than one gift: Country singer Charley Pride's life comes full circle - National Post. "Pride had big plans back when he was a kid growing up in Sledge, Mississippi. And being a black country music singer in a white man’s singing world wasn’t it. In the 1940s, with the sun beating down on the baked Delta earth, picking cotton next to his sharecropper father, Mack, Pride was dreaming of another place. A baseball diamond."
• This is the greatest photograph of all time. It sums up life's greatest battle between man's desire to express himself and woman's desire to have man STFU. America: What Was This Man Trying To Say To Jonathan Papelbon? - SportsGrid. "While it's certainly conceivable that this gentleman was only trying to tell Papelbon Good job/solid effort/we'll get 'em next time, given that Papelbon had just given up three run home run to the Mets, it was probably something more along the lines of You're dead to me."
  
  
• NY antitrust lawsuit accuses MLB of video monopoly - FOX Sports. "The plaintiffs, several fans, said in the lawsuit that they are blocked from obtaining Internet-delivered videos of local games without paying a costly subscription fee." There's no way MLB will lose this lawsuit, but I would love if they were forced to allow the embedding of highlight videos without the mandatory 24-hour cooling-off period.
  
• The Greatest Thing You’ll See Today - theScore.com. Okay, maybe that's a stretch, but you will enjoy it.
  
• Inquiring minds want to know: Is Lenny Dykstra Entertaining The Fellas In Jail By Showing Off His Wiener? - SportsGrid.
• Well I guess that's one way to put it:
  
• Sort of flow-chart-ish picture: Pop Chart Lab — A Meticulous Metric of Baseball Team Names