metsmarathon

every now and again, when i foolishly tune my radio to sports-yelling, i hear someone describe football as "the best run league in sports". and i just can't help but wonder what kind of outcry there would be if baseball were run the same way as football. even setting aside the strict salary cap, imagine for a second a baseball world where rule changes happen every off-season. where the commissioner can kick any team and any player square in teh figurative groin over nearly any infraction, real or imagined. where every call is purely subjective, and more and more replay comes into play. where the site of the championship rotates between only a mere handful of locations. where the all-star game is damned near relegated to obscurity, and isn't even played in a league stadium. where the preseason is shortened and diminished to near meaninglessness because of hte poor ratings draw. where the owners weild all the power and the players are barely piles of meat waiting to be chewed up and spit out by the league, with the rare exception of a few good throwers. where ped use is almost never discovered, and is shrugged off on the rare occasions when it is. where rules are added to shape the manner of play. where major elements of the game are apt to be discarded or highly modified. football is the best run league in sports only because baseball is held to a much higher standard.

that'd be a reasonable and entirely unfortunate position i could stand by, though if that's the case, perhaps he should withhold a vote from bonds or clemens instead. or, y'know, just say so.

Mets � Willets Point wrote: I assume at some point Superman has to shave that hipster beard, which begs the question what blade is going to work on the man of steel? prolly made from the same stuff he used to sew his superspandex.

ohhh, ok. the bad guy he was chasing was using DU rounds. got it now. i missed that hte first time through, i think. i was of hte impression you meant that eve was firing DU rounds, which wouldn't make too much sense. but the bad guy uses custom DU rounds. alright, fine, got it. those bullets are probably gonna go extra slow, relative to a generic 9mm round. so they likely wouldn't be as lethal. the reason DU rounds work in military applications is that, well, they get shot at really high velocities by really big guns, typically. the gatling gun dangling off hte mouth of a warthog is a massive fuckin' thing, and it can shoot those DU round off at just over 1000 m/s. the DU penetrators that shoot holes in tanks get shot at at least 1500 m/s. out of a glock, a relatively light 7.5 g 9mm bullet comes out at 400 m/s. a heavy bullet, at 9.5 g, comes out at 300 m/s. a DU bullet, at 67% heavier than lead, would weigh somewhere around 12.5 to 15.5 g. that's going to come out super-slow. maybe 200m/s or less even less. not a whole lot of penetration power, and not a whole lot of stopping power. kindof a blunt instrument. and its not a point blank shot, either, so it will be slowed further. i imagine the killer likes his bullets to be DU because they are a signature - a way to know it was he doing hte job. good chance they're hollow point, which explains the fragments. also explains the relative safety afforded by an "up-armored" excavator. not sure hte amount of damage that a shoulder would would do given a hollow point DU round, other than collapsing a lung, mashing bone, and chopping up some vital bloodwork. could be survivable. certainly would restrict bond's ability to fight back, and ultimately to recover. i guess the long story short, i don't think a DU round is necessarily all that good for killing a man when it fails to hit anything good. i don;t think it entirely all that spectacular, that a poorly aimed such bullet would not kill a man who could survive the rifle shot to the, uh... abdomen?

so... davidoff won't be voting for mariano, then, ever, right? because even eckersley's WAR & JAWS scores pale in comparison to nearly every other pitcher in the hall. and they're better than ol' 'lectric pool. also, davidoff would suggest that yogi berra drags down the quality of the hall? his WAR and JAWS scores are lower than piazza's. i applaud hte statistical approach, really i do. but it leaves out the context of the performance. using bbref's stats, piazza was hte 5th best catcher in history. comparing his JAWS score to the average catcher in the hall, he's 18% better. comparing his WAR total to the average catcher, he's 13% better. kenny lofton is a below average hall of fame centerfielder (if only just). mike piazza is an above average hall of fame catcher. position matters.

there's something really weird going on with mr. met's right arm. it's disturbing and distracting. also, mr. met has really bony elbows, three toes, and one giant toenail.

i'm pretty sure that was not a depleted uranium round. i mean, i'm no expert and i certainly don't recall them mentioning hte type of bullet in the movie, but i don't think they really make small caliber DU rounds. i think the bigger issue is that if you fall offf a train on a high bridge over a narrow river, your momentum is most likely to carry you into the rocky cliff on the near side as you'll maintain most of the same forward velocity as the train when you fell off it, despite whatever kick you received from the impacting projectile.

i wish i knew why ceetar didn't respect keith law's opinions. because then maybe i could not respect keith law's opinions as well.

if you felt his opinion is bunk, would you not wish to persuade me to see his opinion as the same? would not my seeing his opinion as bunk aid in furthering the quality of metly discussion both here and in the real world? ceetar says so doesn't quite do it, but a good persuasive argument might. i'd hate to keep on being led astray by keith law if i don't have to be.

pfft. we already conceded the next 6 years when we didnt bring back reyes. wait. then we recommitted when we kept wright for 8 years. and now i guess the first 3 of those are off again? i'm so confused.

Mets � Willets Point wrote: This could go down in history like the Dan Norman trade. i'm hoping for a version of the heatcliff slocumb trade, with better results on both sides.

if the mets are truly in as dire a financial strait as they appear frequently to be, then leveraging expensive aging talent for inexpensive prospective talent is hte only way to build a winning franchise, until the expenses work themselves out. keeping expensive aging talent for meaningless immediate marginal gains does not make for a marketable team. or a particularly winful team, either. since the financials appear to be shit, this is the way it must be. the mets must follow the example of the tampa rays. and in this trade, they have done so. if it works, perhaps sooner rather than later, the coffers will refill themselves and the mets can be players with money again. the solace to be found is that our current area of greatest need, the outfield, is probably hte area wherein it is easiest to find some spare part to fill in adequately for a time. i mean, hell, we went to the world series with an outfield of benny agbayani, jay payton, and derek bell.

i guess the takeaway is that we can finally find out whether or not you can rebuild in new york city. i like to htink that you can.

pelf seemed like a guy uncomfortable with the advantages his size afforded him. almost that he thought it was unfair that he should be blessed with such an effective fastball due to his sheer physicality, and that he wanted to be a "real pitcher" who dazzled with offspeeds and location more than a hurler blowing the ball by batters. i think if he played basketball, he'd rather be a 2-guard than dominate the low post.

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: Well, because he was "ours," yeah, I guess. There remain a host of cost-effective options. i'm a sucker for sentimentality. i'd hopes we could bring him back on teh cheap and he would rebound and recover and reclaim the prominence we once had high hopes for.

in light of the dickey trade, that one hurts...

at this point, since i don't think the mets will be able to bring him back if the deal were to fall through, and i doubt very much that the mets would receive as promising a return, i regerettably vote that i hope the trade goes through. i may need to start making the blue jays my favorite al team...

also a good dude, ra dickey. lets maybe hang onto that one.

that might actually help me differentiate...

i love elf

Vic Sage wrote: Dalton didn't do A VIEW TO A KILL. That was Roger Moore's last Bond movie, and it was one of the worst ever made. Dalton did 2 films, LIVING DAYLIGHTS and LICENSE TO KILL. Maybe you've confused the latter one for it. no, i misspoke. meant roger moore. yes, in hindsight, it was pretty bad. but at the time, i rather enjoyed it. fire trucks jumping over drawbridges and all that.

i saw most of these back when there was such a thing as a local video rental store that was not part of some nationwide abomination, and, well, i was a teenager. so i don't have the sharpest recollection of most of them, and what there is may be shaded by the reputation of hte movies and discolored by my own immaturity. for instance, i actually liked timothy dalton's a view to a kill. there was a sweet fire truck jump over a drawbridge there, right?

Edgy MD wrote: It's also a cool R.E.D. I'd be curious to follow that list down --- see where Charlie Hayes, JIm Leyritz, and Robin Ventura rank. Rodriguez, amazingly, is second all-time in games played at third for the Yankees. Yet somehow, he's still trying to culturally establish himself there. It's like one of those TV shows you watch and it doesn't really make sense, you shrug, and assume it won't last long. Yet year after year, you switch through the dial and it's still there. Alex Rodriguez = The Facts of Life, Alf, and Small Wonder rolled into one. i'm thinking more along hte lines of life according to jim and my wife and kids, that thing with damon wayans that lasted five seasons.

eventually the deferrals have to come home to roost, no? pretty soon, the mets are going to have a $100M payroll just from deferred payments alone.

if only you had, i wouldnt be so lost. connotations, mostly. not hte word. i know what that means. i odn't know what you mean by it. unless you mean the predictable color = spring training/exhibition/softball/not-real-baseball and all real baseball uniforms should be white or gray (as strictly tied to home/away status) and maybe sometimes pinstripes or creaminess are allowable.