Elster88

Miller Park is a nice place.

Nymr83 wrote: ="Edgy DC"]No, it's not! to anyone who believes that he is not the best 2B in the organization and that he is unfairly being slotted ahead of better players an injury to him is good news. How'd that work out with Cairo last year, genius? Is Anderson Hernandez still a lock? Or have you moved on to Keppinger now? The grass isn't always greener, son.

Nymr83 wrote: ="Edgy DC"]Matsui --- strained the MCL, and is listed as day-to-day. MRI to come tomorrow. The guys in the booth sound pessimistic. good news! Now now. Let's not be an asshole.

It would be helpful under the gay head to head scoring system, but by no means required.

Jacked.

Random Assclown (no one in particular) wrote: We can afford to trade Seo and Benson because we have Soler as a backup starter.

No.

You could probably write a paper on the effect of notoriety, etc. on a celebrity's hit count. You definitely have the raw data.

metirish wrote: Great, can you please post some hot pics of the women wrestlers? There are no such pictures available.

That's a scary animal. It would make a good mascot.

PiazzaFan is back with his updates that could easily be pulled off of ESPN.com!! Great to see ya buddy.

]It's also entirely possible that you and I are residents of an alien culture, and are each disingeniously posting here to throw suspicion off our plans for conquest of planet Earth, before we beam our multi-headed forces down to Earth next Wednesday and begin devouring Earthling scum, beginning with Elster88. And wash it down with Guinness. I go better with a single malt scotch.

A Basak double and Martinez home run do nothing for me. Only 19 days.

You nicely summed up in six sentences the article that Klosterman needed a few thousand words to explain. Well done.

Can I politely back out of my committment?

Setting up 2006. Is Womack still on that team? His eyebrows scare me.

I saw an SNY commerical on Cablevision yesterday. We should really thank the Yanx for being first to start their own network and thus causing their fans to miss an entire season of games. *snicker*

Good thinking. Doesn't LF usually set those up?

Everything you just said is true. To crucify over one quote is stupid. I'm glad you figured it out.

I edited before you posted. We also don't know what Willie's telling the players. My guess is that he tells them different things than the reporters hear, and that he's constantly playing out scenarios in his mind. This quote that has Bret's panties in a twist is also from a few weeks ago now. Things can change in life.

Bret Sabermetric wrote: ="RealityChuck"]it doesn't seem like anyone else on the team other than Keppinger is particularly bothered. So it's unreasonable to interpret what Willie says to reporters because his job is to tell lies and deceive everyone including his own players. He said there was an open competition. He didn't say, "If Keppinger has a higher batting average then he gets the job." He didn't say "If Matsui hits under .200 then he loses the job." For all we know, "open competition" means the guy who looks better in practice gets the job. ST games don't mean shit, as Tim Spehr will tell you. ___________________________ To nitpick over one quote (probably manipulated by the reporters), and talk about lying and deceit on the basis of that one quote, is not only stupid but a royal pain in the ass. Edit: Removed some curses and changed possible interpretation of "open competition"

I don't like Klosterman, but I liked this article. http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=klosterman/060314 Be Like Bode By Chuck Klosterman Page 2 Several weeks have now passed since the Winter Olympics, and it appears most of the country has finally recovered from not watching them. However, I'm not sure America has recovered from the embarrassment that (apparently) came with them; i.e., the sudden realization that most athletes on our Olympic team didn't particularly care whether they won or lost. These people include a female snowboarder who gave up a victory in order to impress Primus fans, a redheaded halfpiper who implied that his main motivation for winning a gold medal was making conversation with Sasha Cohen, and (of course) skier Bode Miller, arguably the most apathetic major athlete of the modern era. Miller has almost an adversarial relationship with winning, which makes a lot of people upset; I did not watch the Olympics, but I did watch countless TV personalities eviscerate Bode for slacking his way to financial independence. People love to hate this guy, and it seems that hating Bode Miller has become the normative position to hold (at least if you're a sportswriter, of even just a semi-serious sports fan). And now that the Games are long over, I find myself wondering why that is (and what that means). Usually, Americans don't hold pro athletes to particularly high social standards. Fans are very unforgiving of performative failures, but there are virtually no behavioral requirements for being beloved: For example, there are a handful of active superstars who many people still suspect might be murderers or rapists. The only thing we truly demand of pro athletes is that (a) they never associate with known gamblers, and ( they always, always try to win. Randy Moss put a kid in the hospital and purposefully hit a cop with his Lexus, but the biggest mistake he ever made was relaxing on Vikings running plays; his critics will never forgive him for being openly lackadaisical. Ron Artest punched private citizens who paid to watch him work, but I'd still want him on my team if we were up two points with 15 seconds remaining on the clock; he'd surrender his body to protect the baseline. The greatest compliment you can give any athlete is that he would rather die than lose. And this is curious, since that particular behavior would be classified as idiotic in every other aspect of life. There is a famous story about Michael Jordan visiting the home of North Carolina teammate Buzz Peterson; while playing a casual game of cards with Peterson's mother, Jordan attempted to cheat while the old woman was using the bathroom. This is often used as an example of what made Jordan so awesome; he would do absolutely anything to win, regardless of the circumstance. And because the character in this anecdote is MJ, the story is charming. However, I doubt Buzz Peterson would tell this yarn if it had involved his mother and some random dude he met in Anthropology 251 (and if he did, the story would now be about that one time he brought a lunatic home for Thanksgiving break). Jordan's diabolical competitiveness makes him more admirable, but this isn't the case for most humans. Have you ever played golf with someone who sliced a drive and threw his club into a tree? If so, I suspect you did not find yourself thinking, "Man, I really respect Andy. He really wants this." Have you ever been on a softball team with a dude who muttered to himself whenever he made an error and screamed at teammates if they happened to miss a cut-off man? Did you find this inspiring? Do you miss having beers with that guy? In fact, think about the most competitive, cutthroat, go-for-the-jugular person who currently works in your office. In all likelihood, this is someone you either (a) kind of hate, or ( find embarrassing. A noncompetitive person can't reasonably succeed, but a hypercompetitive person looks like a buffoon to everyone who's reasonable. If you are an adult and you still cheat at card games that don't involve money, I have some bad news for you -- everyone you know thinks you're weird (and not in a good way). The question, of course, is why that logic is never applied to any pro athlete. I am no different than anyone else: Almost all of my favorite sports personalities display an unquenchable desire to win, and I'm sure that unquenchable quality is central to my appreciation of those particular people. And the reason I feel that way is probably because they possess a personality I cannot relate to. There are those who argue that sports are important because they symbolize the middle-class laymen who spend their paychecks on season tickets, but that is not always true; sometimes they are important because they embody feelings we can't experience. Most of the time, we don't love players who are like us; most of the time, we love players who aren't like us at all. You are not like Cal Ripken Jr. You aren't that dedicated, you aren't that intense, and you care about your job a whole lot less. Ripken might be your favorite player of the past 25 years, but the two of you have almost nothing in common. In fact, I bet there are many days when you wish you could just take a suitcase of money to Australia, drop out of society, grow out you hair and smoke cannabis all afternoon while having sex with whoever you felt like. In fact, if you had the chance, you'd probably do it tomorrow. But you know what? I bet you also think Ricky Williams is despicable. I can't read Bode Miller's mind, but I bet the interior monologue bouncing around his cerebral cortex sounds something like this: "My job is OK, and I'm good at it. I suppose I could even be better if that was the only thing I cared about, but I'm not sure what the benefit of that would be, beyond appeasing a bunch of people I'll never actually meet. And if I can get paid this much money for being myself, why would I want to force myself to become somebody else's caricature? I'm already content with who I am." Now, it is possible that such sentiments would make you hate Bode Miller even more. It's also possible you hate him because you feel exactly the same way.

They love giving Pedro extra rest. They will use the fifth starter for the fifth game of the season. Mark it down.

Bret Sabermetric wrote: ="Edgy DC"](2) It would be nice if this fuels a little motivation fire in the usually cool furnace that is Glavine's belly. When do the Mets face the Braves next? Are you suggesting that he's lacked motivation against the Braves for the past three years? I think he was mostly fucked because he couldn't get the ball six inched off the corner called a strike anymore. It just showed up more against the Braves because people were looking for it and they're a good team. I'm hoping he's gotten over crying over Questec and that the second half of last year carries over into 2006.

Bret Sabermetric wrote: Did you happen to catch the articles saying that Matsui has the edge on the job, based on his performance in the open competition for the job this spring? If bad batting, lousy fielding, and a rotten recent MLB track record wins you jobs around Tradition Field, I'd say Boonie had a lock on the position. Then you'd be wrong. The idea that Boone was guaranteed a position on the Opening Day roster is ridiculous. I'd even say stupid.