Balta1701

QUOTE(AssHatSoxFan @ Oct 19, 2005 -> 11:25 AM) at this point why would we add BMAC? There have been several unconfirmed reports over the last few days that El Duque's shoulder was bothering him again.

QUOTE(SoxFan101 @ Oct 19, 2005 -> 02:12 PM) and they did win the division 3 times in a row so... And never got as far as we have.

QUOTE(knightni @ Oct 19, 2005 -> 01:31 PM) Doug Eddings? You have made an enemy today

QUOTE(The Critic @ Oct 19, 2005 -> 12:35 PM) There's a thread on here somewhere about her. Over in ATH.

This morning's Press Briefing with dancing Scotty...

NY Daily News. By the way...it was as recently as 2004 that Mr. Bush pledged in front of the entire country that he would fire anyone involved in the leak. And also...if this article is correct, he went public with a statement that was directly contrary to information he had, and which could have impeded the work of a federal investigation...something bordering on Obstruction. Edit: Oh and by the way...just so you understand...again if this article is true, it wasn't the leak itself or the associated lying that got the President angry...it was the fact that they were caught.

QUOTE(The Critic @ Oct 19, 2005 -> 09:23 AM) Which leads to the next question: WHOSE minor-league assignment will Kelly end up accepting? If he can stay healthy he'll be back in the big leagues in no time. But that's a big if.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Oct 18, 2005 -> 05:01 PM) I heard this on the train today. This ought to be really interesting. Either someone got the tip of the century, or a libel suit from hell. Either way it would be interesting to see both our first black, and our first woman in the White House, despite what some people think of her. Technically she wouldn't be in the White House any more than she is now...she'd be in the VP Mansion, but she'd be the first one there as well. And it's not going to be a libel suit, because people are just reporting that they've heard rumors and no one is on the record.

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Oct 18, 2005 -> 03:29 PM) So how was Yellowstone? That's one place I really want to go at some point soon. Quite an enjoyable trip. Lots of interesting geology...not sure how I'd have evaluated it had I just been a tourist and not been looking at the rocks, but probably just as cute. There's like 4 major geysers in the Upper geyser basin...Old Faithful, Beehive, Castle, and Grand. Old faithful goes off over a dozen times per day, the rest go off less than 1 time per day. Somehow, in about 1 hour, I managed to catch all 4 of them going off.

Go here, click on the player's name you want, and browse through the tabs. Batter versus pitcher can be sorted by team. Splits can be extended to show their performance against particular teams over the past few seasons.

QUOTE(ChWRoCk2 @ Oct 18, 2005 -> 02:47 PM) why is this in green its true what you just said, and rest doesnt mean anything He's sort of suggesting that rest can actually be quite useful...because once LAA won that first game, they sort of lost 4 more.

QUOTE(witesoxfan @ Oct 18, 2005 -> 12:37 PM) how do you have about 90 PAs and have 0 walks?) I think Reyes in NY (NL) went like 125 at bats this season before he took a walk.

"Go have a glass of Merlot and celebrate your power round." -"I'm having one right now" Farmer called Hawk to offer him some time on the radio, Hawk turned it down because he didn't want to upstage the radio guys.

QUOTE(CWSGuy406 @ Oct 18, 2005 -> 02:31 PM) I am too, but Owens OBP is pretty much AVG heavy. He's not going to hit .330 in the majors, so he better start to walk more or hit more doubles and homers. I'm even happy with only a moderately good OBP or BA from my leadoff hitter, on the condition that the leadoff hitter is fast enough that when he gets on base he causes problems. In my opinion, there are 2 types of #1 hitters who really work well...guys with very high OBP numbers, whos entire job is to get on base ahead of the bigger boppers behind them. They can do whatever else they want in terms of power, but the key number for this kind of leadoff hitter is the OBP...because that translates directly to runs when your #2-3-4 hitters hit the ball off of or over the wall. The other kind of #1 hitter gets on base some, but when he's on base with a walk or a single...the pitcher throws over there 3 times, comes close to throwing the ball away once, and then looks up and realizes he has a 2-0 count on the #2 hitter because he's not paying attention to him. The guy then steals 2nd. This is the other kind that works...he doesn't get on base as much, but when he does get on base, he finds a way to turn himself into a run, whether it's through a stolen base, enducing an error on the pitcher, or even just robbign the pitcher of his concentration. Both of them work, both make the hitters behind them better. I would take a good version of either one. If healthy, we have a good version of the latter right now.

Congrats to the new Wizard of Ozzie!

In other words, the ball is in the Big Stein's court.

Canada's wierd in the sense that the country has so much open space, if the people release a few more pollutants, they just are diluted due to the sheer amount of space out there. But yea, in a lot of cases, they are more lax than us, and I think it's a terribly bad thing. If you drive through the Rockies, when youre' in the U.S., you drive through some beautiful, scenic forests that are protected in the U.S. You see wildlife. Trees. Shade. When you cross into Canada, suddenly all those trees disappear, covered by logging roads, oil and gas pipelines, pipeline roads, and heavy machinery. They have opened up all those areas to industry, exactly as the Bush Administration wants to do in the western U.S., and the natural ecosystem has been basically destroyed. You don't see wildlife up there any more.

He's quite correct that we don't have the money or time (right now at least) to protect against every single possible form of disaster. But that doesn't mean there isn't significant progress that can be made on each of those issues. For example...let's take the New Madrid fault line system. Yes, it exists. Yes, it has been active within recent memory. But the problem is...no one for sure knows how active it's going to be in the future. I haven't seen any real good estimates of a recurrence interval on those faults. Now, without that data, is it a good idea to spend a few hundred billion to seismically retrofit all of the buildings in the Ohio and Tennessee valleys? Probably not. Why? Because while the potential risk is great, the odds are also minimal at present, barring the availabliltiy of future data, such as a recurrence interval on earthquakes in New Madrid. However, if data were to come out showing that the fault line there had produced at least 1 magnitude 7+ earthquake every 100 years for the entire Holocene, then it would be possible to say that there is a very high probability of another major earthquake there in our lifetimes. In that case, would it be worth a few hundred billion? Probably. Why? Because if we didn't spend that money, then the entire area could be leveled. This is a classic problem when you're dealing with the interactions between the Earth and people. Californians like living on hillsides, especially the wealthy ones. But when those hillsides give way, should the government spend millions of dollars rebuilding those areas, or should they declare the hillside itself unstable and close the homes off? Once again, it comes down to individual cases, and it is all best done by cost-benefit analysis. We're absolutely certain that sometime in the next hundred years or so, tehre will be another major earthquake on the San Andreas in each section of it...near San Fran, near L.A., etc. In those areas, the high probability of the occurrence suggests that its a very good idea to spend funds preparing for them and to mitigate their results. Similarly, in 2003, people in New Orleans were writing articles saying that the area would be hit by a hurricane at some point, and if that happened the levees would fail. People knew beyond a shadow of a doubt it was going to happen. I was in Yellowstone when it hit...and when I heard on my little transistor radio that I use to check Sox scores when I'm in the middle of no where that the hurricane was headed for NOLA, every single person said that the city was dead. The prof on the trip with me visited New Orleans earlier this year because he figured he might not get the chance in the future. Those things, which we know with absolute certainty will happen, should get high priorities in dollars. But then there are the smaller certainty events, the ones with much higher elements of risk but much lower likelihoods of them happening. By this, I mean things like an asteroid impact or an Atlantic Ocean tsunami. Is it worht $100 billion to prepare for these events? Probably not. But is it worth say $1 million a year to put 1 tsunami buoy in the Atlantic just in case one of the Islands in the Azores collapses, sending out a tsunami that would bury Washington, Boston, and NY? Given the huge potential costs, yeah that is worth some sort of small investment. You have to handle it on a case by case basis. When you do that, then you can carry out a decent evaluation afterwards of what should have happened. New Orleans is a prime example. In hindsight...everyone and their grandmother should have known what hte result would be. And we just hoped it wouldn't happen. This is a case which by all estimation has been handled horrifically by the people making budgetary decisions. With an asteroid impact...we've spent a fair amount, in small doses, trying to find the th ings so that we could have a warning. This is the right approach...time is most likely on our side, so if we use that time to prepare, in small doses, we're in good shape.

QUOTE(Heads22 @ Oct 18, 2005 -> 10:52 AM) That. Ball. Was. CRUSHED. I was sitting there during the Edmonds at bat thinking "Lidge, if you want to win this game, you cannot let Pujols come up unless Edmonds beats you with the bat." He let Pujols come up. The walk killed him. Just sitting there watching it...I think that ball actually vaporized for a brief period. One of my more enjoyable calls off the bat is just to say "Boom" right when it's hit. I did it a couple times for Konerko, Thomas and Crede this year. That one got one hell of a boom. Didn't even need to see the rest of the footage. Could have changed the channel right there.

QUOTE(Rex Kickass @ Oct 17, 2005 -> 10:42 PM) How many pieces of the airplane did you find in World Trade? None. Actually they found quite a few. A simple Google search turned up this page.

AJ bats 5th against any right handed pitchers. Rowand bats 5th against Lefties. Crede starts hitting cleanup after his 9th home run of the series.

QUOTE(DonkeyKongerko @ Oct 18, 2005 -> 11:29 AM) Pretty good Jayson Stark article on the significance of homeruns like this. Pujols is a class-act and only admired his shot as a natural reaction. If Manny Ramirez had hit that homerun, he might still be standing at home plate. Manny being Manny...he'd be standing there and the winning run would never score.

QUOTE(DBAH0 @ Oct 17, 2005 -> 11:56 PM) Atlanta's gotta do what they can to keep him there. Am I right in saying he's more important than Bobby Cox in the whole scheme of things? At least one of the ESPN.com guys says this is probably just something done by the Braves in order to keep Mazzone happy...that way he can have a guess about his public value if he were to become a "free agent" and he can use that to get similar value from the Braves. If they wouldn't let him talk to people now to get an idea of what he could earn, that might encourage him to wait until his contract is totally up, then talk to people, and actually be basically a free agent. If he's talking to the Yankees now, then the Braves can just offer him whatever the Yankees offered hiim while he's still under contract.

QUOTE(smalls2598 @ Oct 18, 2005 -> 09:10 AM) and then, after Berkman hit the homer, Ensberg hit the left field wall, and when heading for second, the same guy said something along the line of "Berkman tagged out at second". You heard right on the 2nd one. On that single/out, Ensberg was called Berkman at least 2-3 times. I believe it was our good friend Thom Brennaman who made that particular mistake.

The MLB.com gameday audio programs have broadcast Rooney and Farmer all season, regardless of who's doing the TV. It's been useful for games blacked out on saturdays because of Fox.