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| Member since: | February 01, 2007 |
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| Last visit: | May 27, 2008 |
The Crafty Sousepaw has posted 15 links and 580 comments to SportsFilter and 2 links and 186 comments to the Locker Room and 1 column.
Brand strategy: Fashion guy Marc Ecko put the fate of #756 into the public's hands... and the results are in.
posted by The Crafty Sousepaw to baseball at 02:51 PM on September 26, 2007 - 35 comments
Ballplayer: , poet, musician, pitchman [youtube], quotable broadcaster, Phil Rizzuto passed today. He was the oldest living Hall of Famer whose Induction speech was unforgettable. He was also the baseball voice for generations of Yankees fans, and he will be sorely missed.
posted by The Crafty Sousepaw to baseball at 12:00 PM on August 14, 2007 - 21 comments
He's back.: Some are calling him "The Natural." Some are calling him the next Ruth. While the doubters were eating crow, all eyes were on Rick Ankiel's glorious return last night, and he did not disappoint.
posted by The Crafty Sousepaw to baseball at 10:34 AM on August 10, 2007 - 19 comments
Jon Lester: is a winner.
posted by The Crafty Sousepaw to baseball at 10:15 PM on July 23, 2007 - 21 comments
MLB Predictions: somewhat-post-midterm grades: Remember when? Well, my mother always said that humiliation is next to godliness. I think she said humiliation. Anyway...
posted by The Crafty Sousepaw to fantasy at 08:09 PM on July 23, 2007 - 74 comments
The culture of this site is alienating Yankee fans. The two principal moderators -- one of whom decidedly does not like the Yankees, the other just this week went from enjoying Yankee suffering to pitying it -- either consciously or unconsciously (I prefer to think the latter) enable and facilitate that culture. They aren't deliberately unfair, but they do have biases. The handling of the playoff posts is just one example. The Yankees are a lightening rod for hate and there's little counterbalance here. I have tried to provide some of that counterbalance. Everyone has a limit for how many times they can be told to get over it before they'll walk away from a pointless fight. Take a look around and count the regular contributors who are Yankee fans. I've heard a few longtime members comment that not long ago that there used to be more but they're not as vocal anymore. Just since I've been here I know there are Yankee fans still contributing on this site who no longer seem interested in discussing the Yankees here. I never, not once, asked for or sought sympathy. And I didn't ask for this drama. I didn't put up this thread. I was perfectly happy to say my mind to rcade and walk away quietly. My argument was so badly misrepresented that I felt I had to say something, and I did owe an apology. For my trouble I get a lot of unwanted attention and a fresh set of footprints on the seat of my pants. I'm not leaving because I'm wounded or hurt, I'm leaving because I finally sobered up enough to realize this party just isn't my taste. I will always remember this place as the one where I was called a whiny ass titty baby the most.
posted by The Crafty Sousepaw at 12:02 PM on October 11, 2007
I think I should clarify this before it gets any further along -- like goddam, I had no issue at all with the specific phrase "early exit." I'm not sure where that notion came from. I took issue with the timing, quality and source of the post, the general biases of both the post and the article toward the Yankees' loss as opposed to the Indians' victory, and the fact that no other series had been covered at all, let alone in such abrupt fashion. If you want to continue to debate whether "early exit" was proper don't let me stop you, but for what it's worth my issue wasn't with specific semantics.
posted by The Crafty Sousepaw at 01:40 PM on October 10, 2007
Is that fair? Probably not, but non-Yankees fans might think it's also not fair that the Yankees have won 26 championships. That sentiment gets right to the crux of why I am leaving. That number 26 means nothing to me -- I wasn't alive for 20 of them and the six I did see did nothing to keep me from rooting just as hard (and this year, for personal reasons, probably 100 times harder) for my team to win. Nobody here can contol the distribution of wins and dollars. The distribution of fair handling is controllable. There's a pervasive air here (other places, too, of course, but more disappointingly here) that you can offer less consideration to Yankees fans and dump on their team harder because they've won more. Maybe that's justifiable on some level, but it's not the place I want to hang out.
posted by The Crafty Sousepaw at 12:41 PM on October 10, 2007
I actually told rcade I wasn't going to do this, but I changed my mind for the singular reason that I think that 1) I owe the community an apology for my indefensible use of vulgar language Monday night (though I maintain that I stand by the sentiment); and 2) I should quit properly and publicly. My issues with rcade's first post after the Yankees loss are these: 1) it was a throwaway AP article that was tossed up minutes after the game ended -- it was, in effect, a game recap with some regurgitated conjecture about the future of the Yankees that has been running in the mill since February. 1a) (added on edit) The real story about Joe Torre's future broke Sunday morning when Steinbrenner made the remark. Nothing went up about it then. Nothing in Monday's AP article was new news -- some was 2 days old, some was a year old, some was the same "oh my god, the team's breaking up" that has been the annual ritual since 2001. 2) there was no precedent to such hurrying to get a post up for any of the other series. Additionally, equally big stories on which rcade has posted, like the USC upset, were apparently worthy of waiting until the next day's well-developed copy. 3) This comment made by rcade during last year's ALDS. I am still relatively new to this whole blogging thing, but in a short time I have learned a little bit about how to respect my fellow bloggers. I slip from time to time (like I did Monday night) but I do try to be considerate. For that reason, I try to stay away from posting negative stories about rivals of my team where I might leave the sense that I was revelling in their misery. When I saw that weak post go up Monday night, knowing rcade's feeling about the Yankees, I felt he was gloating. It was the wrong article at the wrong time from the wrong person. I wrote to rcade Tuesday morning with a clearer head and told him that I stood by my comment on Monday night. He then banned me until I apologized. I am going to copy my reply to that notice below: You can't fire me, I already quit. I apologize for the vulgarity but not the sentiment. If you can honestly look inside your soul and write me back and say that you put up that FPP without an ounce of glee, without a bit of revelry in the state of Yankees affairs, or even if you can tell me you actually spent any time looking for the most well-written and insightful observation of the series and the possible scenarios in aftermath, keeping with the high standards clearly stated in the SportsFilter guidelines, I will issue you a full apology. If you can't do that and your best defense is that I overreacted, then I don't think I'm the one who should be apologizing. I believe I and the other Yankee fans were unfairly and unkindly taunted, and beyond that I believe you see that kind of taunting as acceptable. And for that I would like to kindly invite you to have sex with yourself. I can't express my feelings any better than that. I didn't "suggest I might quit." I quit. I will continue to read here selectively, but I'm done opening myself to abuse. I live in Red Sox territory and I don't get near as bad treatment outside as I do in here. Outside they just throw stuff at me. I now invite you to the dozen or so comments about my oversensitivity, which I will read. They will undoubtedly make me feel so much worse about my decision. Again, to rcade and to those who saw it, I apologize for the way I expressed myself Monday night.
posted by The Crafty Sousepaw at 11:19 AM on October 10, 2007
Post. Of. The. Week! :) That was good, but this one is tough to beat. posted by SummersEve at 1:19 PM CDT on October 6 It's that time of year when every week is a must win and every post means something. We can't worry about the past posts, we have to keep focusing on today's post and hope that we can pull off a win this week. Sure, you catch yourself message-board-watching. I know Fraze is putting up some big posts lately. He's got a lot of momentum. Nobody said it was going to be easy, but if we can take advantage of some mistakes this week... like "NUFF-in man"... hopefully we can put ourselves in a position to move on. Perhaps surprisingly, I'd like to look at Chico's suggestion from a baseball perspective. The evolution of baseaball went roughly thusly: before 1903, leagues had a decided pennant winner at the end of the season, and that was pretty much that. There were a few seasons in which pennant winners from rival leagues faced each other, but these were exhibitions (of the sort chico seems to be proposing) and were far from official. In 1903, the AL and NL decided to start a tradition of formal post-season games in the form of a World Series, and minus a hiccup in 1904 when the NL champ Giants refused to play the AL champ Red Sox and 1994 when some miserable rotten bastards ruined everything, the World Series has been used to determine the regular season champion of the two league's pennant winners. The growth of baseball and expansion of the leagues has brought about expansion of the post-season, but the purpose continues to be to determine the regular season champion. To say that there can be a notion of a regular season champion that supercedes any post-season accomplishments sends us right back to the beginning of the 20th Century. I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing, but it does sort of blatantly ignore what the World Series is supposed to be doing in the first place. As an admitted baseball traditionalist, my knee-jerk reaction (really, even before I read the column) is to say that these suggested changes will never work. But I am willing, for the purpose of spitballing, to put aside that narrow view for a moment to explore how your plan, chico, might be put to good use in baseball. I don't like the idea of moving the post-season into the following year for these reasons: 1. I consider the link between the regular season and the post-season to be too strong and it would damage my view of "The Season." 2. The period from Opening Day to the World Series I think should be an endurance test -- not as much as a measure of pure talent, but I would not want to see the element of endurance removed. Part of the allure of any season's "Mr. October" is knowing that this player endured a full 162-game season (or presumably some good chunk of it) and still rose up to a high level of achievement at the end of all that. That means something to me. 3. The age and development of players contributes to the magic of October. I don't want to see players who reached their peak value in their career year mean nothing in the post-season because they lost all their magic in the off-season. Likewise, rookie sensations are more seasoned the following year (and some potentially experiencing their "sophomore slump," and I'd rather their regular season magic and newness remain on stage for the post-season. 4. It would make managing pitchers and rotations even more complicated. The potential plus is that it simply adds more strategy (e.g. do you use your ace or closer in the game to win for this season or save him for last year's post-season game), but the end result is that one or the other gets compromised and the incentive to abuse and injure pitchers becomes greater. That said, I would consider sacrificing some or all of this if by either moving the post-season or independently creating a mid-season "exhibition series" you were able to achieve any of the following: 1. the total removal of any incentive to have post-championship fire sales; 1a. the increased incentive to retain as many players as possible on winning teams, mitigating player movement in the free agency era; 2. somehow making the exhibition series revenue exclusively attendance driven -- either by not adjusting broadcast contracts to include them or by making the exhibitions "camera-free" non-broadcast events. My theory, possibly faulty, being that if a greater percentage of team revenue is made up of gate receipts, it will create a stronger incentive for teams to put a competitive product on the field; 3. bring back the nostalgic notion of barnstorming. For my part, instead of moving the post-season to the following year, I'd be all for eliminating the month of stupid Interleague games and replacing them intermittently through the season with some kind of exhibition/barnstorming format that involves all the teams. If you work them as short series, they might prove to be good ways to measure how a playoff hopeful will stand up in such a format. And I'm sure there are benefits that aren't occurring to me right now. And to finish, though I recognize it's not really the discussion here, relegation would not work in baseball, at least not with minor league teams. AAA teams are not separate clubs, they are farming operations whose players move up and down routinely throughout the season. They are not whole professional teams trying to climb the ranks. Frequently they are dotted with major league players on injury rehab or temporarily sent down for seasoning, which makes them temporarily more powerful, thus throwing off the actual balance of power in the lower leagues. Nuff said. Sorry I was so long. On edit: what bender said re: relegation.
posted by The Crafty Sousepaw at 01:25 PM on October 08, 2007
1. If you don't see making the claim that "managing the Red Sox is the hardest job in all of sports" as stunningly cartoonish hyperbole, then no, we are just not going to agree on this. The hardest job in all of sports? I don't think it's the hardest job on his own team. 2. His point has absolutely nothing to do with what people on vacation in Boston have on their itinerary. To say that no team draws crowds like the Red Sox is not only wrong, it is physically impossible. Even if you want to argue that he's speaking in generalities, and really what he means is that no team draws attention like the Red Sox, he'd still be wrong. I'm not denying the Red Sox draw, but I don't think you can separate them as standing alone in the way the writer does. Semantics. These are pretty small and peripheral points in the article that I just found surprising. I'm not really sure why I'm bothering to argue this -- maybe I'm just grouchy today.
posted by The Crafty Sousepaw at 12:30 PM on October 05, 2007
So what you're saying is that the super-fragile chandelier-istic spikey clump's atrocious?
posted by The Crafty Sousepaw at 11:54 AM on October 05, 2007
This is a necessity because Francona has the most difficult job in sports... uh, what? No team draws crowds like the Red Sox... WHAT? Otherwise, nice article. Francona is easy to root for -- great manner, great sense of humor, plenty of character. The story about Manny asking to use the cell phone is pretty classic, too. Boston deserves to be in the spotlight. Yeah, poor Boston and their media deprivation.
posted by The Crafty Sousepaw at 09:36 AM on October 05, 2007
In this thread alone we've had comments talking about all around players, the difficulty of each role, and the fact that being an every day player leads to injury quicker. All basically true, and all having zero to do with the award. You say this as though the award has some concrete definition. It doesn't. There is no collective understanding of what it means. Some voters use it as an "Employee of the Year Award," and to them effort on the field and the rigor of their jobs does actually make a difference. And, again, if you want to hang on the word "value" and use the award as a measure of irreplacability and contribution toward winning games, well, again I say, on any team, failing to replace the DH at all (and forcing the pitcher to hit) gives any team a better chance of winning than failing to replace any position player in the field and using a second DH. And again, I would argue that no individual hitter on the Sox had more to do with their success this year than Beckett or Papelbon or Okajima. In my opinion (which means absolutely nothing -- I don't have a vote), following along the lines of what grum said, I would extend my argument out beyond the DH to say that if you are a player who the manager routinely pinch-hits for, pinch-runs for or feels the need to replace defensively late in games then your other attributes have to be super-spectacular because you are not playing the whole game, and I don't see how you can be "most valuable" if you're often not around to help your team in the ninth inning (and beyond). And I will conclude with the observation that, while these discussions are entertaining and I enjoy them immensely, we're talking about trying to draw individual value in a team sport, which is silly, pointless and pretty close to impossible to do correctly or meaningfully. As a Yankees fan, I don't care one iota if a player on my team gets an individual award -- in fact, I'd almost prefer that they didn't because I could see where that kind of recognition has the ability to damage the team concept.
posted by The Crafty Sousepaw at 09:03 AM on October 05, 2007
Both MVP candidates discussed here already have homers today. Just, you know, to say.
posted by The Crafty Sousepaw at 02:38 PM on October 04, 2007
Thanks for your comment NavyChop. Unfortunately, the only word we're getting back here about Djibouti is that its capital is Djibouti. Keep up the good work.
posted by The Crafty Sousepaw at 02:24 PM on October 04, 2007
I was dreading this thread. Whatever happens from here on, that post, wfrazerjr, will have made it worthwhile.
posted by The Crafty Sousepaw at 11:24 AM on October 04, 2007
Eh. Yao has contractual obligations to the team that he is choosing not to meet at his own expense. I see this story as less "Rockets fine Yao Ming for attending Special Olympics opening ceremony" and more "Yao Ming willing to attend Special Olympics ceremony at personal cost."
posted by The Crafty Sousepaw at 10:33 AM on October 04, 2007
No game tonight. (Also, awesome job, Chico.)
posted by The Crafty Sousepaw at 10:19 AM on October 04, 2007
Editorializing on the Front Page
I can't think of a constructive reason for me to continue with this thread. I have a macrame class in 20 minutes and from then on my life is pretty much booked. My e-mail address is in the profile where it will stay for a couple days. Feel free to contact me if you want to suggest self-help books for all the psychological disorders with which I have been diagnosed here, or if you have suggestions for a new place to keep my opinions.