Balta1701

H. Christ. Man, I defended KW on the Garcia trade. I liked the concept of getting Gio back, getting Floyd, etc. I like the concept of getting younger in the rotation. I was ready to even deal with Haeger in the 5th starter slot. I even understand the concept of this deal. 2 pitchers for the price of one, not a terrible concept. That said...Congrats to Texas, I think they just won the AL West. I hate this deal. Even if Danks comes out solid, I despise this deal.

Thanks to the magic of the internet, a backup defensemen for the Vancouver Canucks, Rory Fitzpatrick, has managed to wind up pushed all the way up to #2 in the NHL all star voting at his position, and is about 20,000 votes away from taking the lead (he's only a write-in, btw.) Link. The campaign website And some fun...

Former Royals Manager Tony Muser will manage a rookie league team for the Padres. Rod Barajas is finalizing a $2.5 million deal with the Phillies after backing out of a deal with Toronto and switching agents. Jeff Suppan has received a 4 year offer from the Brewers. Sammy Sosa has begun a trainign program in the hopes of returning to the big leagues. Cuban Infielder Juan Miranda signed a 4 year, $2 million deal with the Yankees.

QUOTE(aboz56 @ Dec 22, 2006 -> 02:34 PM) Sadly for the Reds they still owe him 25 mil over the next 2 years and a ton of deferred salary at 4% interest down the road. Yikes. They had their chance to move him and probably pick up a dynamite young starting pitcher back in late 2005 and turned it down. You shouldn't feel sad for the Reds at all.

Hernandez signed a minor league deal with the Red Sox. He will make $655,000 if added to Boston's 40 man roster, with up to $1.5 million available in performance bonuses should he make the big league team.

I would take a flyer on Huff on a 1 year deal at about $4-5 million a year as a backup, but no more than that. Not when we have Fields, Sweeney, Podsednik, Owens, Anderson, and for this year JD who all should be able to put up equal or better numbers than him for less money (owens is a close call, but the speed could be useful).

The non-partisan Government accountability office has released an interesting study looking at the spending habits of the pharmaceutical industry and how it has changed over the last few years. Here is the executive summary, hosted at Henry Waxman's page. In other words, a "hands-off" approach with regards to pharmaceutical research simply isn't working. 68% of the new products created by that industry are simply knock-offs of someone else's drugs, and are thus providing profit to companies at no huge benefit to the health of Americans. And while more money is going into research, because so much money is being spent on developing these knock-off type drugs, less and less is actually being spent on developing genuinely new products. This situation is a boon to the pharmaceutical industry, as it allows them ways to profit without actually having to invest the time and money into actually helping a lot of people. You have a product that's about to go generic? Simply spend money on developing a slightly different version of the drug, make it a different color (Purple), then launch a large advertising campaign to convince people the non-generic version is somehow better when it's just more costly.

QUOTE(WilliamTell @ Dec 22, 2006 -> 12:50 PM) this isn't even funny anymore. Once he left Seattle all of this happens, could've been possibly the greatest ever if it weren't for his injuries. Well to some extent though the things that made him so great probably played a big part in his recent injury history. Banging into those walls and flying around on the turf in the Kingdome had to do a number on Griffey's legs, and then he was moved to a place with no DH after years of that pounding.

QUOTE(Heads22 @ Dec 22, 2006 -> 11:53 AM) There's something to be said for rooting for one of the good guys. Oh I've got nothing against him and would love to see him succeed, but I wish he could have found a way to make it work out for the Sox.

QUOTE(Heads22 @ Dec 22, 2006 -> 11:25 AM) A few of us were high on him after meeting him personally or after getting the chance to talk with him... Unfortunately, y'all couldn't make his fastball less straight.

QUOTE(AbeFroman @ Dec 22, 2006 -> 11:36 AM) I hope Nifong is investigated thoroughly. I sorta feel that its inevitable that DA's, like Nifon, will abuse their power if given the opportunity and means. I'm glad it became clear that this guy wasn't going to be able to get away with it. I know there's a lot of complaints about our criminal justice system (too much protection of civil liberties), but I feel like we need those protections. Otherwise, we'd have State's Attorneys like Mike Nifong all over the country. Nifong clearly abused his authority. Our system sucks because he got away with it for so long. But the good thing is that these kids weren't convicted, jailed, imprisoned for this bulls***. I know its a weird way to look at it right now, but the system does do a decent (albeit imperfect) job of protecting the truly innocent from being falsely convicted. Well, I'm not going to put a ton of merit in those charges, but it's probably too early to say that the kids won't be jailed. They are still facing some pretty serious charges on the kidnapping/sexual assault part, and the DNA evidence that seems to exonerate the kids from the rape charges might not be nearly as useful in exonerating the kids from a potential kidnapping charge.

QUOTE(sox4lifeinPA @ Dec 22, 2006 -> 10:57 AM) but the earth is only 10,000 years old Bishop Usher actually concluded that the earth is just over 6000 years old. You Heathen!

QUOTE(FlaSoxxJim @ Dec 22, 2006 -> 10:39 AM) You can't be considered an"expert" on any particuular organism until you've done in a couple thousand of them, Bro. Happily, everything I work on has been dead for at the very least a few million years, more often a few tens to hundreds of millions of years.

Let's see, here we go...Dept. of the Interior produces a study showing that sending billions of dollars in subsidies to oil companies to drill in the Caribbean doesn't produce much oil, the oil it does produce costs more than the going rate on the market right now ($80 a barrel), and that the oil companies make out like gangbusters in the deal. And of course, in response to this study which showed beyond any shadow of a doubt that the U.S. was making a mistake in funneling tens of billions of dollars to those oil companies...the Bush Administration, in a totally unexpected move which I'm sure was done with the good of the American people in mind...covered up the report for more than a year. Just another day.

QUOTE(vandy125 @ Dec 22, 2006 -> 10:06 AM) I'm curious if that is just the average salary for the players on the team, or if it takes into account whether or not another team is paying part of the salary? I'm curious how they could possibly have Houston and its $92 million total team salary and have it above the Red Sox and their $120 million total team salary. Even taking into account the time Clemens missed doesn't make up that big of a difference.

QUOTE(sox4lifeinPA @ Dec 22, 2006 -> 09:28 AM) what is her profession? Banks are always hiring Mainly she's just worked in customer service type jobs, but no bank will hire her because she's never had any experience working at a bank (or at least that's what they say)

QUOTE(sox4lifeinPA @ Dec 22, 2006 -> 09:51 AM) it's says they still face other charges... If I recall correctly, they were still facing charges from another event a few months beforehand in Washington (not a rape, something a lot smaller). Might be what those involve.

Can someone just find my Fiancee a job? Please? A non-bankrupt X-mas?

QUOTE(Leonard Zelig @ Dec 21, 2006 -> 10:56 PM) I guess this deal is not done yet, there are some questions about his physical. Link QUOTE(Whitewashed in @ Dec 5, 2006 -> 07:39 PM) What? You think thats a problem?

Not sure exactly what you're asking here. One type of similar research would fall under the category of Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer, which is quite close to the research being done on stem cells. The idea is to take an unfertilized egg, replace its nucleus with material from a known type of cell, like a liver or heart or something, then wait until that egg starts to divide (since it now has a full set of chromosomes due to the replacement it should be able to), and then harvest those cells after they have begun dividing, either for medical or research use. The idea behind the research currently is that this work may help us better understand how to convince undifferentiated embryonic stem cells to turn into differentiated, useful cells, which is one of the key steps that is still being worked on. Beyond that, i'm not totally sure how else embryonic stem cell research fits into the category of research on a cell nucleus. Clearly, manipulation of the nucleus in some fashion is going to be important in figuring out how to make an embryonic stem cell turn into something useful.

QUOTE(Melissa1334 @ Dec 21, 2006 -> 04:08 PM) where is soriano going to play if its going to be a platoon in lf with murton and floyd? i dont think soriano or jones should be playing cf and if one does, well then good luck to the cubs It sounded when they signed Soriano like he was going to take over their CF duties next year, maybe for 2 years, and then they'd either let Jones go or trade him and slide Soriano over when they decide Pie is ready. And yes, Good luck to them with that.

QUOTE(elrockinMT @ Dec 21, 2006 -> 03:34 PM) You aren't goint to be subbing very much, if at all, for Jim Thome. If he sits for a game or two I would think someone other than Konerko would be the DH, but it's possible that Thome and Konerko might change roles on occassion. Jim Thome will probably actually sit more days next year than last year, especially early in the season, to try to avoid some of the nagging little things that started hitting him around August. I believe Ozzie has indicated he'll try to rest Thome more.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Dec 21, 2006 -> 02:23 PM) WTF are you talking about? I just said "please run", as in, I want him to run. ??? I make no allegations of any kind. I'm 100% convinced he's already running, and so therefore I just see this as a means to drum up media attention before the official "announcement" season starts next week with Edwards. In other words, I don't even see any reason to ask him to run because as far as I'm concerned he already is.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Dec 21, 2006 -> 02:10 PM) Combined updates on Brownback and Richardson (sort of a funny combo). Dear Sam: There is room at that end of the spectrum because no one can win from there. Except George W. Bush. So let's see, high-ranking aide to the Senate Majority leader launches a "draft" campaign a few weeks before the guy was certain to declare he was in, and you read that as something other than an attempt to get in on some of the positive press that guys like Obama, Clark have gotten from "Draft" campaigns in the past?

QUOTE(Chisoxfn @ Dec 21, 2006 -> 12:58 PM) I agree, but I see way too many people continuosly saying he's pretty much got a job on our bench and personally I don't think that is true (plus I don't want it to be true, lol). I'm pretty sure I don't want it to be true either, but I just can't see a better option available other than Owens.