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yesterday333

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4 minutes ago, The Sir said:

Nope. My station on Active Duty was an armored division, but a Stryker brigade (basically, armored personnel carriers). So the Army mans those with a mix of both armored and infantry guys. Did all my training at Benning and did the rest of my time at Bliss. Never even been to Knox. How is it?

I really don't remember it much. I was born there when my father was a DI in the early days of Vietnam. We moved when his draft time was up. 

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37 minutes ago, The Sir said:

I sincerely appreciate that, man. It was my honor, honestly. My adventures in the service have been some of the greatest and funnest of my life. Wouldn’t trade it for any other job in the world.

I have never had a meaningful career in my life, but that career is one of the ones I would think any American would proudly do. Thank you for serving.

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3 minutes ago, beckham15 said:

Good luck with that! Unfortunately for me, as deployments have been some of the best days for me in the service, mine are all behind me now being a career recruiter.

It might be strange, but I agree with your about deployments. We used to sit outside our tents at night and smoke cigars and shoot the shit. Kandahar is a pre-industrial wasteland, so it doesn't give off any light, and you can see a bajillion stars. So that was pretty cool. Of course, waking up some mornings and thinking, "man, I got seven months left of this shit" kinda sucked. It's a mixed bag, but I definitely have some fond memories.

I wasn't directly involved in this, but my battalion had, within its area of responsibility, a native police chief who was rivals with another "police group" in another part of the district. One day, he got super drunk and went to the rival station, set up his machine gun, and opened fire (this is all out in the country, so every building is basically a windowless mudhut, so this gunfire is doing nothing). Of course, the cops inside took up positions and fired back. We had to send guys out to deal with this silliness, and while we were happy there were no casualties, it was disconcerting that we spent so much time training people who couldn't hit a damn thing at a range of a few yards.

A darker incident was when some Afghan police intercepted some IED emplacers in the middle of the night. Similar to Vietnamization towards the end of that war, we were trying to have the Afghans take charge of their own battle. So these guys went out, apprehended the terrorists, machine gunned them on the side of the road, and ran over the corpses with their trucks as they left the area. I don't really feel bad for these douchebags who probably would have ended up killing some kids, but I'm not sure this was the standard we were trying to set.

In short, Afghanistan is a fucked up place. It will be a fucked up place for a long time to come.

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Will agree with this sentiment.  Never did military service, but was in AmeriCorps for two years...it's not defined as a job, because you get a stipend and roughly (this was back in 97 and 1998) $5000 for university expenses per year.

We boarded up drug/crack houses, did Habitat for Humanity projects, worked in a soup kitchen on a weekly basis, helped a food pantry take deliveries, I drove a 16 passenger van to take women from the domestic violence shelter and drug rehab to their doctor/dentist/job interviews (a pain in the ass to back up or turn around), coached lots of different sports, taught ESL students (mostly from Mexico) English, participated in lots of projects with high school and university students for things like MLK Day, etc.  Never a boring day....you really got to see how fortunate you were growing up.

Even though our salary was set at the official poverty amount (between $7000-8000 back then), it was the most rewarding two years of my life in many ways...because it was all about doing things for others.  I was based in Kansas City, Kansas and then was an AmeriCorps Promise Fellow (Colin Powell initiative) working with high school and middle school students in developing service projects, bringing kids from all different backgrounds together and of course seeking out funds through grant-writing and local corporations (Hallmark, H&R Block, Kauffman Foundation, etc).

In actuality, the scholarship money for those who do actual military service is set at a higher rate, and I never had a problem with that at all, although sometimes when it was getting to be early evening in KCK you felt like you were taking your life in your hands, haha.  Still not the same as battlefield conditions by any stretch of the imagination.

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12 minutes ago, ptatc said:

I really don't remember it much. I was born there when my father was a DI in the early days of Vietnam. We moved when his draft time was up. 

Thanks to your father for his service!

3 minutes ago, The Beast said:

I have never had a meaningful career in my life, but that career is one of the ones I would think any American would proudly do. Thank you for serving.

I would hope you are correct about that. Thank you for your kind thoughts. And don't beat yourself up so much. I'm sure what you've done thus far has more meaning than you know!

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1 minute ago, caulfield12 said:

Will agree with this sentiment.  Never did military service, but was in AmeriCorps for two years...it's not defined as a job, because you get a stipend and roughly (this was back in 97 and 1998) $5000 for university expenses.

Even though our salary was set at the official poverty amount (between $7000-8000 back then), it was the most rewarding two years of my life in many ways...because it was all about doing things for others.  I was based in Kansas City, Kansas and then was an AmeriCorps Promise Fellow (Colin Powell initiative) working with high school and middle school students in developing service projects, bringing kids from all different backgrounds together and of course seeking out funds through grant-writing and local corporations (Hallmark, H&R Block, Kauffman Foundation, etc).

In actuality, the scholarship money for those who do actual military service is set at a higher rate, and I never had a problem with that at all, although sometimes when it was getting to be early evening in KCK you felt like you were taking your life in your hands, haha.  Still not the same as battlefield conditions by any stretch of the imagination.

Hey, thank you for serving in your own way. It's all got a greater purpose. And as for that last part, I did Kandahar but there are areas of US cities that I'm content to stay the hell out of. 35 dudes with heavy weaponry and body armor would probably be out of place in South Dallas, even if that's what it takes.

I should probably feel sad about that. Ugh.

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Speaking of Bruce Levine, It’s amazing these baseball writers continue to be employed in Chicago. 

 

Paul Sullivan: 

“Aramis Ramirez — Hall of Fame Bound?
Only five third basemen had more career RBIs than Ramirez’s 1,417, believe it or not. One of the more underrated hitters of the 2000s, the former Cub will be eligible for the Hall of Fame on the 2021 ballot. While Sammy Sosa languishes on the ballot, Ramirez could be the next Cub headed to Cooperstown.”

 

okay paul.

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3 minutes ago, Fuagman said:

Speaking of Bruce Levine, It’s amazing these baseball writers continue to be employed in Chicago. 

 

Paul Sullivan: 

“Aramis Ramirez — Hall of Fame Bound?
Only five third basemen had more career RBIs than Ramirez’s 1,417, believe it or not. One of the more underrated hitters of the 2000s, the former Cub will be eligible for the Hall of Fame on the 2021 ballot. While Sammy Sosa languishes on the ballot, Ramirez could be the next Cub headed to Cooperstown.”

 

okay paul.

If Aramis Ramirez is a Hall of Famer, so is Paul Konerko.

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3 minutes ago, Whitesox27 said:

If Aramis Ramirez is a Hall of Famer, so is Paul Konerko.

That was my first thought, too. Hall of Very Good. Not Fame.

1 minute ago, bschmaranz said:

Are you saying Paulie isn't!? ?

I'll say it. Not every Hall of Famer is equal, but look at someone like Ken Griffey or Frank Thomas and compare them to Paul Konerko. The first two dominated the game for years. And while we talk about Frank's "decline", there are several of his "down years" that would rank among Paulie's best (to put that in a firm comparison, Frank's OPS in his relatively lousy one-off, age 39 season, 2007, would best every PK season except for six). As much as we all love the guy, I don't think it's fair that PK be enshrined in the same place as the Hurt.

Perhaps an unpopular opinion. Eh.

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25 minutes ago, The Sir said:

Thanks to your father for his service!

I would hope you are correct about that. Thank you for your kind thoughts. And don't beat yourself up so much. I'm sure what you've done thus far has more meaning than you know!

Nice of you to say that, but some days I’m not so sure. Maybe one day.

There are a lot of good side conversations being had in this thread, maybe we need “The Bar” thread for these organic discussions in SLaM.

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Just now, Steve9347 said:

The Hall of Fame is a sham until Pete Rose, Barry Bonds, Mark McGuire, and Sammy Sosa are admitted. 

Pete Rose, yes. The other three, no.

Sadly, Bonds would have made it easily until he decided 'roids were a necessary supplement to a career that had produced 445 homeruns, 460 SBs, and a .968 OPS over 14 years.

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1 minute ago, The Beast said:

Nice of you to say that, but some days I’m not so sure. Maybe one day.

There are a lot of good side conversations being had in this thread, maybe we need “The Bar” thread for these organic discussions in SLaM.

Well, we are all harder on ourselves than we need be. Think of it as an It's A Wonderful Life sort of thing. We don't see our impacts, but others do. You deserve to be reminded of that.

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3 minutes ago, Jose Abreu said:

It would also be great if they could somehow get rid of the early 20th century Klansmen who are in there

Disagree. The Hall should be about great baseball. Not sure who the explicit Klansmen were, but while guys like Anson, Cobb and others had terrible beliefs and, in many cases, were terrible citizens in myriad ways, they were great baseball players.

The group I want to exclude from the Hall is the one who injected themselves with all sorts of junk to produce the ridiculously fraudulent stat lines of the late 90s, early 00s. Clemens, Bonds, McGwire, Sosa, ARod, Ortiz, the earlier Manny, Sheffield, so on.

It might be again unpopular, but so far I've gotten my way on this one.

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2 minutes ago, The Sir said:

Disagree. The Hall should be about great baseball. Not sure who the explicit Klansmen were, but while guys like Anson, Cobb and others had terrible beliefs and, in many cases, were terrible citizens in myriad ways, they were great baseball players.

The group I want to exclude from the Hall is the one who injected themselves with all sorts of junk to produce the ridiculously fraudulent stat lines of the late 90s, early 00s. Clemens, Bonds, McGwire, Sosa, ARod, Ortiz, the earlier Manny, Sheffield, so on.

It might be again unpopular, but so far I've gotten my way on this one.

Guys that cheated shouldn’t be in the Hall of Fame.  It’s really that simple.

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1 minute ago, The Sir said:

Disagree. The Hall should be about great baseball. Not sure who the explicit Klansmen were, but while guys like Anson, Cobb and others had terrible beliefs and, in many cases, were terrible citizens in myriad ways, they were great baseball players.

The group I want to exclude from the Hall is the one who injected themselves with all sorts of junk to produce the ridiculously fraudulent stat lines of the late 90s, early 00s. Clemens, Bonds, McGwire, Sosa, ARod, Ortiz, the earlier Manny, Sheffield, so on.

It might be again unpopular, but so far I've gotten my way on this one.

I'd almost be willing to put Bonds, Sosa, ARod, Clemens, etc. in the Hall if baseball acknowledged the Steroid Era for what it was. If they dedicated a wing or whatever and stuck all these guys in there I think that would be acceptable. One giant asterisk. One way to look at it is - yes, they cheated - but they were the best in an era of baseball were a vast majority of the league was also cheating. I don't think they have any business being next to guys like Ruth, Mantle, Gehrig, etc., but maybe acknowledge that that was one hell of an entertaining era (as much as I dislike those guys for cheating). 

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