Jake

Our only contact with American Indians are in sports iconography - that's why it doesn't seem outrageous. And the point is that these things, especially a word like Redskin, don't have to be created or distributed with malice to be wrong. It's just like I was saying in the thread about Hawk and skirts. It's okay to say something and not know it was offensive or otherwise problematic for society if you're willing to listen to criticism and realize that your intent doesn't make the overall impact of your words any better.

I don't see how the team normalizing an insensitive word in the common brain makes it okay - that makes it worse. Unfortunately, the people who are affected aren't always easily identified by looking at them, they don't all think or organize together, and they were so successfully annihilated that there just aren't very many of them around. Divide and conquer is the strategy being pursued again, ironically.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Aug 19, 2014 -> 11:58 AM) I don't disagree that Manziel maybe overrated, but preseason scores? Really? I didn't mean for that to have anything to do with my previous comment, though it certainly doesn't bode well

Some notes on PFF's preseason QB scores: 1. Matt Cassel 2. Jay Cutler 3. Joe Webb 4. Blake Bortles 5. Matt Ryan ... T76. RG3 78. Johnny Manziel ... 82. Eli Manning 83. Kirk Cousins 89 qualified QBs

I'm sick of Manziel because I think he is vastly overrated

I wouldn't have said this in the recent past, but I think of ADA, Tank, Sierra, and Danks, Viciedo is least likely to be here next year. I have a suspicion that ADA and Sierra will both be here next year. Perhaps both will be in reserve roles

Honest question - if a policeman is in need of defending his or herself, but doesn't necessarily feel that fatal force will be used against them, are they instructed to shoot to injure rather than to kill? I understand from shooting pistols that this is no easy feat, but neither is shooting someone straight in the chest/head.

The fact that we got the best player in the draft at 3 tells you all you need to know about the entire process. Higher pick isn't always better. We didn't need to lose more than HOU or FLA to get Rodon. The Angels didn't need to miss the playoffs to get Mike Trout. Do your best on the field and do your best with your pick.

That article had very little substance. He never explained why Reinsdorf opposed Manfred. We've heard previously that Reinsdorf was opposed to the way Manfred was being chosen, which was by Selig choosing his successor by backchanneling and torpedoing other candidates. That's why he had raised a stink before. Being opposed to Rob Manfred does not necessarily mean Reinsdorf is greedy - though he probably is. As a matter of fact, I'm sure all 30 of those guys are greedy. There's nothing revolutionary here.

What people are complaining about as "PC" is not some arbitrary set of rules - it's the fact that people will call you out when you do or say things that are harmful to society, in their opinion. If you want women to have the option to be something besides skirt-wearing pansies, you have to watch what you say. Men and women both are encouraged to buy into these expectations when they are so clearly embedded into the way we speak and act. It doesn't matter that women are more averse to collisions in general - part of the reason for that is simply because everyone believes it. Talking about something like this as an example of a situation where people need to be wearing skirts just reinforces the notion that women ought to stay away from this sort of thing. And it isn't that Hawk is some evil guy. We live in a society where we say and hear things like that, that are not overtly hateful or said with malice, and we don't think about how it affects other people or our society on the whole. This isn't like Hawk went on some sort of crazy, Duck Commander-y rant about this or that thing where you couldn't possibly say that without being an awful person. No, equating skirts with girliness and girliness with wimpiness is a subtler thing. Everyone in here who is saying that Hawk shouldn't have said that, has said that. We just aren't afraid to admit that we also say things that are wrong and try to be more mindful after the fact. This is how we learn. It saddens me that so many people interpret these kinds of things to be a kind of black-and-white personal attack where they have to defend it absolutely just to make the point that empathetic people are ruining the world. Hawk said a kinda bad thing, he could have said a worse thing, but he didn't. Hawk's not a bad guy and he doesn't deserve to be suspended. Still, he and the rest of us should all think twice about making those sort of comments in the future.

The point here isn't about how good women are at baseball, it's just whether we should equate all that is wimpy with women. That's the problem with the comment. It's unfair to attribute these things on women. What Hawk said isn't uncommon and I do agree that we're hearing about it because people like to rip on him. With that said, everyone would benefit from thinking twice before making comments like these

I'm not 100% sure if "casual misogyny" is the right way to describe the comment. The "skirt" business has more to do with the way sexism has changed the way we speak and communicate than it does with Hawk actively being a "casual misogynist." The way to think about this has to do with whether you think Hawk was thinking about the sport becoming actually woman-like or just what one thinks when they hear "girly." We need to be careful about what we say - I would regret making the comment if I had made it - but it's worth thinking about the extent to which we turn this into a Hawk thing rather than something that you'll hear from a variety of figures, many of whom aren't evil sexists.

The other thing about accelerating even when knowing it would cause the car to fishtail - was this a lesser of evils deal? It's hard to say whether Stewart's maneuver made him almost miss Ward instead of definitely hitting him (that is, did the move improve his chances of avoiding the accident even though it still occurred?) because we can't see Stewart's line. If Ward was basically smack dab in front of the car, maybe accelerating and swerving was the best he could do - maybe not.

One of the main things will be what other footage is available and, like others said, telemetry data. I think evidence of Stewart accelerating would be a problem, though there are defenses for it. If his line goes toward Ward and he accelerated, he'll be in trouble. We don't know either thing for sure. I wonder if something like contributory negligence, like there is in traffic cases, could come into play here

Yeah, it seems like he was definitely trying to f*** with the kid. I think, even if Stewart is the worst human being ever, he'd know better than to intentionally strike the kid with his car in full public view like that. Doesn't excuse doing what he did, though, as trying to intimidate someone with your car is idiotic for that very reason...it's extremely dangerous.

Danish has excellent stuff. His motion is the biggest thing holding him back in the eyes of scouting services, followed by his size. Scouting services hate short pitchers, even when their present stuff is plenty good - look at Marcus Stroman. He has well-regarded, but obviously fell too far in that draft

Hitting that 96mph heater at the top of the top of the zone is pretty impressive

McClendon has a legit beef - down 8 runs in the 9th, we have nothing to lose hitting their guys. Of course, that's the same reason they had nothing to lose hitting our guy

I think with Cleto, there is always a reasonable doubt whether or not he meant to hit somebody

QUOTE (fathom @ Aug 7, 2014 -> 10:29 PM) Early in his career, he would overthink everything. No idea what's going on with him now. I actually saw a chat a few weeks ago where a scout said he wasn't high on Beckham coming into the draft because they thought his batting approach would really be hurt having to use wood bats (more than most college players) His Cape Cod performance seemed to put everyone at ease re: wood bats. Could be a deal where the people who doubted his wood bat prowess were correct, it just took a while for sample sizes to bear that out

But I'd prefer none of the above

This is not to mention that the disappointing version of Semien this year still outperformed what we've gotten from Gordon this year.

Wade in the two seasons before Big 3: 28.4 PPG, 7.0 AST, 4.9 TRB, 2.0 STL, 1.2 BLK .484 FG%/.568 TS% Kryie past two seasons: 21.6 PPG, 6.0 AST, 3.7 TRB, 1.5 STL, 0.3 BLK, .440 FG%/.543 TS% Bosh in the two seasons before Big 3: 23.3 PPG, 2.4 AST, 10.4 TRB, 0.7 STL, 1.0 BLK, .502 FG%/.580 TS% Kevin Love in the past two seasons*: 24.6 PPG, 4.0 AST, 12.8 TRB, 0.8 STL, 0.5 BLK, .439 FG%/.568 TS% *Only played 18 games in 2012-13

Johnson pitching well, someone schedule a drug test

What irritates me about this CLE talk is the stupid assumption that all of the best players on CLE will put up equivalent numbers to their previous seasons. If we learned nothing else from the Miami experiment, it's that somebody's going to take a big hit to their counting stats