metirish

Gary Matthews deal surely is the worst so far...

] BOSTON -- The Boston Red Sox cannot reduce their $51.1 million bid for Daisuke Matsuzaka in order to sign him, even if his Japanese team agrees to take less, baseball officials said Tuesday. "There are no side deals in the situation," said Jimmie Lee Solomon, executive vice president of baseball operations in the commissioner's office. "Everybody's been assured that's not allowed, and everybody's been made aware of the rules." Red Sox president Larry Lucchino, in Tokyo to handle the negotiations, said the team has made a formal offer to Matsuzaka and agent Scott Boras that Lucchino called "fair" and "comprehensive." According to the Hartford Courant, it was believed to be in the $7-million to $8-million a year range, with Boras reportedly seeking $15 million.

Sure lets go for a five-subject thread..IIRC McCain talked big on reforming boxing....talked big is all..same in baseball......

The whole thing before Congress was bullshit though....a few people like McCain and Shea talked big for a few days and it seems like they could care less since.....as a fan I cast every player in doubt on steroids...I have accepted that players took the stuff..look at I-Rod...he went from beefed up to slimed down...but in the minds of many he's the best catcher all time...will the same writers that won't vote for McGwire look at "Pudge" the same way.....?

501 is the game that's played in the World Title games...11 dart finish is something else to see...

Double 16 was my shot..but who the hell couldn't hit that....3 and 19.....was the killer for me...

Johnny, Rick Peterson could fix the arm action..send you to Alabama for some Bio-Tech stuff and next thing you know you'll be over in England playing for the title .

Phil "the power" Taylor is a legend in the game...has won 12 straight world titles.....back to topic.....um, I got nothing...

Darts if huge in ireland,we would play all the time down the pub, at the time I worked for this English fella and he was shit hot at darts,he used to practice in the dark at times,of course I would try that in my bedroom, you should see to wall around the board....down the pub the lads would call me " the javelin" I threw the dart so hard....

] Yankees win rights to Kei Igawa BY JIM BAUMBACH Newsday Staff Writer November 28, 2006, 6:11 PM EST The Yankees are expected to be named the winner of the bidding process for Japanese pitcher Kei Igawa in an announcement by Major League Baseball later this evening, according to a person familiar with the situation. The Yankees placed a bid "in the ballpark" of $25 million for the 27-year-old lefthander and team officials were confident in their chances as the 8 p.m. announcement neared. The posting process ended at 5 p.m. Monday and the Hanshin Tigers announced Tuesday morning they have accepted the bid without identifying the winning team. The Associated Press reported that the Mets placed a bid for about $15 million. The Yankees now have a 30-day window to negotiate a contract with Igawa's agent, Arn Tellem, who has a history of making deals with the Yankees. He is the agent for Mike Mussina, Jason Giambi and Hideki Matsui. Igawa went 14-9 last season with a 2.97 ERA and has a career record of 86-60 with a 3.15 ERA.

I like how CF's and Vics contrasting opinions all sound reasonable....I'm torn....

Frayed Knot wrote: Isn't that where Kennedy started? He, along with brief 20G-winner Kent Bottenfield, were the main bait for Jim Edmonds. from espn ] Kennedy was St. Louis' first-round pick and the 20th choice overall in the June 1997 draft. The Cardinals traded him to the Angels with pitcher Kent Bottenfield in 2000 in a deal for outfielder Jim Edmonds.

Stark on McGwire...... ] Mac Debate sparks a sad startposted: Monday, November 27, 2006 | Print Entry I used to look forward to the day the Hall of Fame ballot arrived every November. Not this year. It isn't just because the already-ugly Mark McGwire Debate is going to crash what is supposed to be Tony Gwynn and Cal Ripken's party, either. It's because this is only the beginning. Looking over those Hall of Fame candidates used to be a time to reflect on the greatness of players -- even the greatness of men we couldn't convince ourselves to vote for. Now all that becomes a subplot to the national sports-talk Main Event. Now, we have to decide if we're ready to become the morality police. With every new name that appears on these ballots now, we're not just going to have to ask ourselves, "Was this guy a Hall of Famer?" We're going to have to ask ourselves, "What are the chances that this guy used steroids?" For some of these players, we might think we know the answer to that question. But what about the players we've just heard an idle rumor about? What about the players whose names have never, ever appeared in the steroid conversations? What do we do about them? And even those guys we think we know about -- how much do we know? Not enough. Never enough. We have no testing results to go by. So how are we going to figure this out? By who got bigger and later got smaller? By whose stats exploded and whose didn't? By which guys made miraculous comebacks from the dead? By which guys showed up in the wrong book or on the wrong subpoena list or on the wrong floor of Congress on the wrong day? This, friends, is a mess. But you already knew that. Except now it takes on a whole new dimension of mess-hood. This is the point when we have to decide where The Big Mess fits in the context of baseball history. Do we let some of these guys in? All of them? None of them? And if we let any of them in, how do we decide which ones? Peruse the index of "Game of Shadows"? Ask Jose Canseco? Paste all the names on a dart board? I think I know where I stand on that question. But I've got a month to kick it around one last time... And then I can keep on kicking it around for the rest of my life. Because this is only the beginning. How many years will this debate hover over what used to be the only Hall of Fame debate? Ten years? Fifteen? Twenty? Thirty? The disgusting answer is: It's going to hover until every last star player from that generation has shown up on the ballot and been voted on or off Cooperstown Island. When you consider that players can't appear on the ballot until five years after they've retired, and then they can hang around that ballot for another 15 years, you realize exactly how long we're all going to be trekking around in this muck. So yeah, it stinks that Tony Gwynn and Cal Ripken are going to see their moment get lost in a giant steroid fog bank. But what really stinks is that it isn't only them. They're merely the first of many. Because, sadly, this is only the beginning. And the end is so far off right now, you can't see it with the Hubble Telescope.

Free agent second baseman Adam Kennedy has reached agreement on a three-year, $10 million deal with the St. Louis Cardinals. The team is expected to announce the contract Tuesday afternoon.

I'm with you CF,that's the best argument for McGwire I have read yet...wish I had written it....

Willets Point wrote: The main reason I don't see Japanese league players being inducted is because the official name is the National Baseball Hall of Fame which implies that it is the Hall of Fame for this nation alone. Thus only players who are from the US or play in the US are going to be inducted. such an insular country....change the bloody name.....

Zaun back with the Jays for two years after the Rod Barajas deal fell asunder.

Yeah,cool idea...make up a table.....

Plus the small matter of Glavine wanting to reach 300 wins...Pedro in the pen I can see.....

What sucks about the McGwire thing(and he sucks the most) is that a lot of the writers that are now killing him and won't vote for him turned a blind eye toward the steroid question in 1998,his performence before congress was disgraceful,but why weren't more of his peers called in,Piazza,Bonds,A-Rod and I-Rod......how many of those guys would have hemmed and hawed under oath?

Boston have made an offer that they call 'fair and comprehensive',what's interesting is this bit from the ESPN article..... ] If the Red Sox don't sign Matsuzaka, his rights returns to the Lions. To avoid that, Seibu could reduce the bid to help the sides reach a deal.

The real reason why Wally is a journalist.... ] Me vote for Big Mac? Hall, no! Now writers have power: Delete him November 28, 2006 At this stage of my life, the arrival of the mailman generally means bad news, but starting Friday, I will be waiting by the mailbox like a kid on his birthday. Any day after that, my Hall of Fame ballot will arrive in the mail, and this year, I wouldn't miss filling it out for the world. Or should I say not filling it out? Cal Ripken Jr. will get a vote, and so, I believe, will Tony Gwynn. I'll vote for Jim Rice, as I always do, and maybe Jack Morris. I might even break down and vote for Don Mattingly, even though he falls just a tad short of the generally accepted standards because of his chronically cranky back. But the real reason I am looking forward to this year's ballot is more for the name I will not be writing down than for those I will. Under no circumstances will the name "Mark McGwire" appear on my Hall of Fame ballot, and I'm hoping that at least 96 percent of my comrades in the Baseball Writers Association of America think the same way. That would mean that not only would McGwire not get to take his 583 tainted home runs to Cooperstown next year, but that his name would come off the ballot, never to reappear until some future Veterans Committee, probably made up of some of the guys he shared a chemist with, try to backdoor him into the Hall. At that point, it's out of my hands. But for now, and until Newsday follows the lead of The New York Times and some other papers in prohibiting its writers from voting for the Hall of Fame, it is my obligation to do the right thing for a sport that refuses to do right by itself or its history. A general rule of thumb in voting for a Hall of Fame is the sniff test. If it doesn't smell immediately like a Cooperstown-quality career, it probably isn't. McGwire's career smells like a lot of things, none of them good. It doesn't matter to me that he never failed a drug test, because in baseball's wink-wink drug policy, there was no test to fail. Nor does it matter that at the time McGwire "admitted" to using androstenedione, the substance was not on baseball's banned list. All I know is, the guy was Dave Kingman until 1998, King Kong afterward. Anything he did from 1998 on, I have to suspect, was aided, if not caused, by performance-enhancing drugs. That doesn't smell right to me. In fact, it stinks. At the time, a lot of us suspected McGwire, but shamefully, few wrote about it, out of naivete or worse, getting caught up in baseball's manufactured feel-good Summer of '98. Some guys even wrote books about it without once mentioning the word "steroids." Those of us who did were branded party-poopers, witch-hunters, mudslingers. It is not satisfaction enough to know we were right. Now is the time to slam that pitch too many of us fouled off or looked at eight years ago. In a way, it's easy to leave McGwire off this year's ballot; it boasts so many more deserving candidates. Next year will be more of a test, when the only real new blood in the race will be David Justice, Tim Raines and Shawon Dunston, a Hall of Fame good guy. But that doesn't matter, either. I wouldn't vote for McGwire if the only other candidates on the ballot were the Seven Dwarfs. To honor McGwire is to dishonor Roger Maris and Frank Robinson and Harmon Killebrew and Ken Griffey Jr. and Mike Schmidt and Mickey Mantle and everyone else who hit their home runs using pine tar and real, not manufactured, muscle. In five or six years, it will be the same story with Barry Bonds, who already has been allowed to spit on Willie Mays and Babe Ruth and by then may even have besmirched Hank Aaron. But at least in Bonds' case, his pre-steroid era numbers are good enough to warrant serious consideration. If only I could cast half a vote for Natural Bonds and deduct half for Bionic Barry. But that's a quandary for another day. Next week, the problem will be McGwire, and for me it is no problem at all. I went into journalism with the idealistic belief that somehow I could change things, that I could expose the bad guys and elevate the good guys. Over the years, I have learned it often is just beating your fists against a steel door. However, we must continue to try. Leaving McGwire off a Hall of Fame ballot is my try. If enough guys feel the same way, that steel door will finally come down.

Well that sucks.....

WOW..ok....

Nymr83 wrote: I like Eaton but that looks like alot of money and worries me about Zito's price. It's gone crazy this year,hey will Pat Gillick get hammered in the press for signing Eaton to that deal like the Mets did when they signed Benson...