RealityChuck

Excellent film with a no-name cast (though David Straitharn and Gordon Clapp carved out careers). Sayles was always one of the best writers of the writer/directors and even in his first film, he keeps things interesting, with some fine characters. BTW, the Schenectady magnet school for the arts is named for Sayles, since he grew up here.

Edgy DC wrote: What a disappointing decade.I disagree. There were plenty of great movies on that list and it was still a time when adults drove Hollywood (thought that was fading). Things are far worse now, as Hollywood has decided only to pander to teenage boys. The music, OTOH. . .

A mix of obvious choices (Pulp Fiction, Fargo, Being John Malkovich, Reservoir Dogs, Glengarry Glenn Ross), some very astute ones (Out of Sight, Short Cuts, Metropolitan) and some overrated critical/popular darlings (Red, The Matrix), and the inexplicable (Starship Troopers). In other words, typical of a list like this.

Workmanlike superhero film; Downey was fine, the rest adequate. I would have expected something better from Joss Whedon, though -- his usual touch was completely missing (other than the introduction to the Black Widow).

Steve Trachsel, though he took forever to do it.

I can't see the slightest sense in trading Davis. There is a weird mindset that once you develop a major league talent, the smart thing is to trade him away for prospects (who might never make it) on the odd chance that one of them might be better. This is Steve Philips-type thinking -- any trade is better than nothing. But it can't possibly improve the team if you keep trading away your best players and have to wait a few years before the trade sees results, if at all. And then, once you do develop one of those players, you trade him away for more prospects and the circle of baseball mediocrity goes on.

They unretired 41?

The actual movie wasn't all that bad. It was sunk by several factors: Poor marketing. The early ads didn't show anything to get people excited. Poor title. It's meaningless to most people. Those who knew who John Carter was are far too few. Familiarity. The tropes of the film have been far too familiar. They should have indicated how this was the book that influenced Star Wars and other films, not an imitation of them. Issues with the special effects for the ads. John Carter leaping just looks fake. Stick with the space battles, or the fight with the white ape. The costuming, especially Dejah Thoris. If she had worn what she wore in the books, the movie would have been a hit. (See below)

I tend to like these more realistic spy stories (if you've never seen Sandbaggers, you owe it to yourself to rent it), and I didn't find this particularly hard to follow (though I had seen the Alec Guinness version years ago, but remembered very little of it). Oldman was too young to play Smiley, though.

I'm always surprised that Vertigo is so well regarded: Hitchcock made far better films. It's good, but not like Psycho, North by Northwest, Strangers on a Train or Rear Window. The same with The Searchers; Ford was far better with She Wore a Yellow Ribon, Fort Apache, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. And 2001 is hardly Kubrick's best, either. It suffers because Kubrick painted himself into a corner, then gave up, using a flashy psychedelic light show instead of resolving their problem. It was the triumph of bright, shiny objects over plot and characterizations and is ultimately responsible for all the empty films that are special effects and nothing else.

I thought the series started slowly but by the end of the first season it had become a first-class SF dystopia. (Most of the good parts of the early episodes were the hints at the things to come, rather than the plot-of-the-week). The second season was also at a very high level. At the same time, "Epitaph 2" was completely redundant. I would have preferred the series ended without it (or without the scene tacked on the final episode). As it was, it was a great ending, but the addition only trivialized it.

G-Fafif wrote: Acquired for a player to be named later. Even better would be acquired for a player to be named Thole. But this is nice, too.Cute statement, but a pretty dumb baseball move. Unless you're a big fan of Mike Nickeas. Thole has his weaknesses, but who does the team have that's any better?

Probably the most entertaining and enjoyable movie in year. It's rare to see an entertainment these days.

Let's do a gedankenexperiment. Let's assume you're a GM. Let's assume you're in the pennant chase and want a right handed bat off the bench like Hairston. Who would you give up? To make it simpler, use the Mets minor leaguers. Who would you trade away to get him to come off the bench for two months?

This mania to make a move -- any move -- just so that we don't sit around doing nothing it pure idiocy. If offers were made for Hairston (and, it's only speculation that other teams made them), there's no guarantee that the "prospects" we'd get for him would ever appear in a single MLB game. Teams aren't stupid. They don't give away good prospects for bench players unless they are forced to. So how does it help the team to trade Hairston for a couple of cup-of-coffee players? If an offer was made, then how do you know that the offer was anyone who would ever help the team? The assumption here is that it's always good to get prospects, but, really, if the prospects are going to be duds, then there's no reason to trade anyone. An obvious parallel was Frankie Rodriguez last year. What happened to the prospects we got for him? Or the various prospects Omar picked up in the winter of 2006. Prospects, prospects, prospects -- bit deal.

The Second Spitter wrote: Stevie P would have made this deal in heartbeat.He would make any deal anyone offered him.

Tossup between Fregosi (people forget how good he was -- everyone at the time thought the Angels were crazy to give him up for a terrible pitcher and minor leaguers) and McMillan (considered a great defender, but not up to Fregosi at the bat).

Benjamin Grimm wrote: Ike Davis, with two hits today, is now at .188. That would be Interstate 88, which runs from Schenectady to Binghamton. The least traveled highway on the entire interstate system. Even mapping programs don't know it exists. They can shut down the entire half of the highway for miles and shunt all traffic onto the other half without traffic slowing down in the slightest. They named it after State Senator Warren Anderson in the hope that Anderson would use it and double the traffic. Despite this, they use more salt on that road than any other highway in upstate NY.

But my issue was that the reliever, as opposed to the team, was once credited with a no-hitter.

batmagadanleadoff wrote: batmagadanleadoff wrote: that goes into the 'combined' no-hitter category now. I love that one as a caricature of Babe Ruth. makes me laugh every time. Obviously. But my issue was that the reliever, as opposed to the team, was once credited with a no-hitter. well, he got all 27 outs right? *looks up the reliever* Ernie Shore. Actually, that was the first combined no-hitter. But he didn't pitch a complete game.Neither did the six pitchers who pitched a no-hitter last week. The game is now officially credited as a combined no-hitter. Actually, it was always credited as a no-hitter because that's what it was -- a game with no hits. Until Steve Barber and Stu Miller did the same thing (and lost the game), it was sui generis, and there was no consistent way to credit Shore. By the 60s, lists of no-hitters had supplementary lists for multi-pitcher no hitters, no hitters of less than nine innings, and games which were no-hit for nine innings, but with a hit in extra innings. The last was a much more fair way to designate them; why should Harvey Haddix be denied a no-hitter just because of the hobgoblins of small minds?

Video of the final pitch: http://tinyurl.com/6n7yttf

Chad Ochoseis wrote: That guy who has the No No-Hitters blog is going to have to come up with a new name.The front page of the blog is down right now. Really.

The end of the 50-year drought!

All Right!!!

batmagadanleadoff wrote: I didn't ask for any evidence. I already know that there is no evidence to support the existence of the clutch hitter.Most people who study sabermetrics -- including Bill James -- say there it. And evidence aside, the existence of a clutch hitter, from a logical standpoint, from an intuitive standpoint, doesn't hold water. Because if a batter had the ability to elevate his hitting in order to bring home the runner on third base, then he'd know enough about the importance of being that runner on third base in the first place. And so therefore, he'd try just as hard in those at bats when no one was on base to get to third base on his own.Piss poor logic. You can't hit triples to order. But you can hit a single or a sacrifice fly to bring a runner in. If a batter had the ability to bat better at key moments, why wouldn't he use those "magic clutch powers" to hit safely at all times, instead of limiting his use of the clutch to RISP's. Wouldn't he wanna bat 1.000 for the season? Wouldn't he wanna hit a homer every time up?Sure he would, but that's irrelevant, since those aren't going to happen. But batters are human beings. Some get nervous in clutch situations. Some love being in them. If a batter gets flustered by the situation, then he's going to be worse when they come up. And if he seeks out the situation, he's going to be better. Choking in sports is a known psychological issue. Just ask Rick Ankiel why he's not on the mound these days. It has to do with thinking about things you should be doing automatically. Ankiel forgot how to throw a baseball -- a talent he'd been doing for years -- and started to think about the aspects of it instead of just throwing the ball. He is an extreme case, but clearly there are players who overthink matters when faced with pressure. On the other hand, there should be players who are more comfortable when the pressure is on, and are thus able to hit better in those situations. There are no numbers, not because it doesn't exist, but because no one has yet devised a way to quantify a clutch situation. RISP is not necessarily clutch (if you team is ahead by ten runs, it doesn't matter if you drive in anyone else).