The Much Awaited Stuff Post
Posted: January 7th, 2010 | Filed under: Baseball, Media, Pop Culture | 70 Comments »
I have downloaded this cool iPhone app — anyway, I think it’s pretty cool — called MailMe Text. It is a simple premise: You press the button, type in a message, and then hit send and it send the message to your email. You may say: Big deal, you could just mail it to yourself. Well … yeah, you could, you’re right. But this saves you a few seconds every time, and because of the way it does it you can easily organize where the emails go in your inbox. I think it’s pretty cool anyway.
So, I’ve been sending myself a few messages: Here are some of the things I’ve been sending myself:
– Just went into a bookstore here in Newport Beach and could not help but notice that just about all of the books in “Current Events” were, in fact, paperbacks.
– The last two years the Baseball Writers have voted in Jim Rice and Andre Dawson who are, unquestionably, two of the more of the controversial of the 109 Baseball Writers choices.* Why? Is it because standards are lessening? Doubtful. Is it because we need to justify the greatness of that 1970s early 1980s era in baseball? Hmm. (This led to the column I ended up writing at SI).
*Here would be my best guess at some of the more controversial Hall of Fame selections by the Baseball Writers:
– Andre Dawson, 2010
– Jim Rice, 2009
– Bruce Sutter, 2006
– Tony Perez, 2000.
– Catfish Hunter, 1987
– Don Drysdale, 1984
– Ralph Kiner, 1975
– Lou Boudreau, 1970
– Herb Pennock, 1948
I guess, in the end, the Baseball Writers controversies have generally been built around who they DID NOT vote in — Jim Bunning, Pee Wee Reese, Arky Vaughn, Hal Newhouser and others who had to go in via Veteran’s Committee — than who they did vote in. That’s the strange thing. The Baseball Writers have been, if anything, too staunch. And then, suddenly, they are happy to overlook the various and obvious Hall of Fame case flaws of Dawson and Rice. I’m not saying this is a bad thing — the Baseball Writers want a big Hall of Fame I’m all for a big Hall of Fame. But when you start voting in Dawson and Rice but inexplicably showing little or no support for Raines, Minoso, Evans, Parker, Murphy, Lynn, Reggie Smith, Tony Oliva, Frank Howard, and so on, well, that’s when it gets tricky.
– Can anyone explain why at fast food mall Chinese restaurants they will generously dump more and more food on your plate, but they will only give you one little napkin (and hide the rest behind the counter where you can’t reach the)? Could it be that the food is cheaper to make than napkins?
– I think I want a SodaStream. No, check that: I know I want a SodaStream. I have rarely wanted anything more than I want a SodaStream. But I’m really worried about the disappointment. This thing, supposedly, will allow you to make seltzer and all sorts of various pops at home, which is something I have for 20 years. Well, I want it for the pops — I don’t like seltzer. I want to make my own Diet Cola. But what if it tastes terrible? What if it’s a huge disappointment? What if I get it and then I end up feeling like I have to go to the story to get my Diet Coke anyway? I don’t know if I could handle the disappointment.
Interlude: My quick thoughts on the hall of Fame ballot. You know the eight I voted for and why I voted so these are just dispassionate thoughts about the voting and the players.
Andre Dawson, 77.9% — Not surprised or unhappy, his election was inevitable for three or four years (which makes you wonder why it didn’t happen three or four years ago). Class ballplayer, class man, he certainly adds dignity to the Hall of Fame.
Bert Blyleven, 74.2% — One last elbow to the ribs from the BBWAA as he falls five votes short. He will get in next year.
Roberto Alomar, 73.7% — I don’t like or agree with the extra credit some writers connect to a player’s first year on the ballot. But it’s a reality. Alomar’s spitting incident cost him a first-ballot entry. He will get in next year.
Jack Morris, 52.3% — I think he will get elected in 2011. I really do.
Barry Larkin, 51.6% — A good showing for first ballot, I feel sure he will get in at some point in the next three or four years. But it is also true that he will be racing the clock a little bit because the ballot will really load up with stars in a couple of years. Luis Tiant got 31% his first year on the ballot and seemed like a good Hall of Fame bet … but then the 300-game winners poured in and Tiant’s hopes disappeared.
Lee Smith, 47.3% — He’s just kind of running in place. The voters, it seems to me, have never quite known what to do with relievers. As Mariano and Hoffman push the save record out into the stratosphere, I suspect Lee Smith’s momentum might never build up.
Edgar Martinez, 36.2% — A pretty good showing on the first ballot, I think, considering Martinez was a DH who did not play his first full season until he was 27. The vast majority of players who start this high in the voting get in. I think he still has a fight ahead.
Tim Raines, 30.4% — Improvement from 22.6% a year earlier, I think some momentum is building for him. Will be interesting to see if his old teammate Andre Dawson speaks out for him.
Mark McGwire, 23.7% — His Hall of Fame case is dead in the water. I don’t know if McGwire cares about this at all, but fair or unfair, how he handles his return to baseball could play a role in whether or not he has any Hall of Fame shot with the writers. By the way, the whole “I might use him as a pinch-hitter” thing is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard. McGwire hit .187 his last year — and that was NINE YEARS AGO. Pure nonsense. I think and hope that La Russa was just having fun with reporters and trying to deflect that McGwire STILL has not talked to the media.
Alan Trammell, 22.4% — A small boost — you do wonder if Larkin’s presence of the ballot will remind people that Trammell was pretty darned good himself.
Fred McGriff, 21.5% — A lower first ballot percentage than I expected. Turns out 493 homers doesn’t get you what it once did.
Don Mattingly, 16.1% — He got a promising 28% his first year on the ballot but now seems destined to be on the ballot the required 15 years before quietly falling off. One good thinab out it is that every year, around this time, we can remember that Donnie Baseball was one heck of a baseball player.
Dave Parker, 15.2% — One more year on the ballot for the Cobra. His case is awfully similar to Dawson’s, but Parker’s mid-career drug-infected descent will keep him out.
Dale Murphy, 11.7% — I understand why he gets so little support. But I do believe that at his best — and he was at his best for six to eight years — he was an unmistakably better player than Dawson or Rice at their best.
Harold Baines, 6.1% — The professional hitter stays on the ballot for one more year. I’m still up for starting the Hall of Baines for Professional Hitters. Can’t wait to hear Al Oliver’s speech.
Andres Galarraga, 4.1% — Twenty-two votes for the Big Cat.
Robin Ventura (7 votes) — I’m a bit surprised he didn’t get a little more support than this. He was, before the big injury, a brilliant defensive third baseman with power.
Ellis Burks and Eric Karros (2 votes) — Karros will have to be satisfied to be remembered as the best player in the All-Star Game era never to get picked for one.
Kevin Appier, Pat Hentgen and David Segui (1 vote) — I would LOVE to know who voted for David Segui. I would just love to hear the reasoning for that one.
Mike Jackson, Ray Lankford, Shane Reynolds, Todd Zeile (0 votes) — It’s just an honor to be on the ballot.
– OK, so my thought on the Verizon Maps commercials: They are brilliant. I was going to write an entire post on this, but since I’m already writing about 20,000 words a week I have not had the time to do it. So I’ll sum it up with that one word. Brilliant*.
*OK, fine, I’ll write a few more words — one of my best friends and I often play this little business game. He’s a successful business guy, I’m a goofball sportswriter, so we feel qualified over various dinners to come up with all sorts of ideas how we would handle hugely intense business challenges like how we would save the newspaper business or how we would save the music business or how we would save health care or whatever.
One of the big ones we came up with: How can anyone beat the iPhone? The iPhone is an absolute marvel, there’s just no way around it. It’s a phone that allows you to play games, watch movies, listen to music and do about 12 million other things. It’s small and cool looking and lightweight. I mean, seriously, how are you going to beat it? Are you going to come up with a BETTER phone? Maybe, but even if you could, well, how much better? The Droid is going for the “better phone” concept. But I’m not giving up my iPhone for a phone that might be two percent better. The iPhone is just an overpowering thing.
And then, Verizon comes up with these Map commercials — where they show how much better 3G coverage they have than AT&T (the only company that supports that iPhone). And — BLAM! To be honest, it doesn’t even matter what the map actually shows because what you see is “Damn, that Verizon map looks to be a lot better covered than the AT&T map.” You aren’t thinking: “Wow, I guess that means as an AT&T customer I might not get 3G service in Neverbeenthere, Idaho or Askfordirections, Mississippi.” No, you are thinking: Man, is Verizon service THAT MUCH BETTER?
And then, you start to notice that, yes, you lose some calls on your iPhone. In fact, you lose quite a few calls. And while you are calling back, you wonder: “Would that have happened on Verizon? I mean, they have that really full map.”
And then friends say: “Man, I hate your iPhone. You are constantly losing calls.”
And so on.
Here’s how I know that the Verizon commercials hit bone: AT&T has come back with preposterously shrill and weak comeback commercials where they brought in the second-most famous Wilson brother to yelp that, AT&T does TOO have good coverage and it’s Verizon that sucks and … la la la la … just … shut up already.
A haymaker commercial, like that George Foreman uppercut against Gerry Cooney, really is a thing of beauty. I don’t even LIKE the Verizon commercials. I mean, they’re not really funny or entertaining. But it seems to me they are brutally effective. Contrast that with the Sprint Now Network commercials which are like complicated foreign films with about nine different subplots and mazes … the Pittsburgh Steelers lady jumps out of the bubble, the girl in the skirt is punching her grandmother, the guy on the bowling team drops his bowling ball, I’m entirely lost. I have no idea what Sprint is trying to say.
I’m not proud of it, but let’s face it: I don’t watch TV for complexity. Commercials really need a simple message. This detergent cleans better. This drug will help you have sex if you are old. This phone will not cut off as often as your phone does.
– I love the Tool Band-It; you know that metallic arm band you wear so you can attach nuts, bolts, nails, hammers to your arm. I really think this is the future. Like you have heard that Apple will be coming out with this tablet — well, how are people going to carry those around? You betcha: The Tablet Bandit. People will have all sorts of devices and money clips and keys on their arms. It’s coming. Believe it.
– Went into a Bose store the other day and got stuck watching the 15-minute sales movie that tells you why it is absolutely essential that you get a Bose system for your home. The best part of the movie — SPOILER ALERT: and if you plan on seeing this movie, you might want to skip ahead — is that at some point a salesperson comes into the room and stands in front for a few minutes while the movie is going on. And then, suddenly, he pulls the giant speakers off the walls to reveal (voila) TINY BOSE SPEAKERS! Impossible! The sound was coming out of those little speakers ALL THE TIME!
The salesman I dealt with was really enthusiastic about this, which I appreciated. He revealed the speakers with gusto and gave this great model-on-The-Price-Is-Right look of surprise as he did. It was as if he was saying: “I know. It’s unbelievable. Little speakers.” I always think I should get the name of people like this so I can write their bosses and tell them how impressed I am with their employee’s enthusiasm. But I never do.
I’m going to start. That’s my New Year’s resolution.
– I am indeed live blogging the BCS Championship game Thursday night — will add a link later. And I will be tweeting from JPosnanski. Why? Because: I’m here.
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Joe you’re killin’ me… No mention of Ron Santo!? I don’t think there’s any question he’s the most deserving of position players who hasn’t been voted in yet– especially when you consider the dearth of third basemen in the hall.
We’ve got a SodaStream. It’s pretty good. It probably depends on how you feel about Splenda though. Even their non-diet drinks are a mix of sugar (not HFCS) and Splenda. Personally I like it better than NutraSweet anyway.
Their diet cola tastes more like Diet Rite than the Big Two. (So does their regular cola, for that matter. It’s probably our least favorite of the ones we’ve tried.) Their root beer tastes more like the fancy bottled kind than Mug/A&W/Barq’s. Their faux Mt. Dew is a pretty good match, as is their fake Dr. Pepper. The lemon-lime is closer to Sprite than Sierra Mist.
The only other downside we’ve found is that it’s a little TOO easy. We definitely drink more carbonated beverages than we used to. But since they cut the calories way down by combining sugar & artificial sweetener, we don’t feel like it’s a huge deal.
Joe, I was wondering if you had any thoughts on the writer (Bill Conlin I believe) who wrote that he will stop voting for a member if he doesn’t get enough votes from other writers. So if he voted for Tim Raines this year, he might not vote for him next year because it’s clear he doesn’t have enough support to get in. But then, if the player gets close to admission, he’ll vote for him again.
I don’t even want to say what I think of that philosophy.
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The rambling nature of this entry kind of reminded me of those seemingly stream of consciousness Larry King articles in USA Today years ago.
I mean, besides the fact that his articles stunk and yours was interesting Joe.
I believe the nickname you were looking for is “Donnie Baseball”. (I wonder how much of the undeserved Hall of Fame talk he gets is due to that nickname. Keith Hernandez was a better hitter and a better fielder, plus led his teams to two World Series, but “Mex” isn’t as catchy as “Donnie Baseball” so he gets no love.)
I hardly notice what Luke Wilson is saying during those AT&T comeback commercials because I’m too busy obsessing over the idea of paying LUKE WILSON to be your pitch man. How did that boardroom conversation go? How far down the Hollywood list did they go before they got to Luke Wilson? Did AT&T think they were hiring the guy from “Wedding Crashers” instead of the guy from “My Super Ex-Girlfriend,” or is someone high up at AT&T a huge fan of “Old School”? Should AT&T’s taste in movies and movie stars be an issue in my choice of cellphone company?
Most of all, I think the AT&T commercials have created the need for the concept of replacement-level celebrity spokesman — the guy with no more authority and influence and buzz than anyone you could get within an hour through a quick call to a casting agency. Unfortunately for AT&T, I suspect Luke Wilson falls on the Willy Taveras/Yuni Betancourt side of the replacement-level line.
Sorry Joe, Bagwell’s getting in next year & a lot of other votes will go to Walker & Gonzalez…enough to weigh Morris out of the equation. Morris will get in on the 2012 ballot…that’s such a weak looking class that I can just imagine the majority will look at it & say “aahhh, Morris is the best on here” and feel they NEED to push somebody in or risk appearing irrelevant as the IBWAA continues to outsmart them
I want some!
I like my SodaStream, as well. Of course, I’m also a big fan of carbonated water as a drink. I think one of the major benefits is not having to lug cans or bottles of pop after every grocery trip. The tastes have been surprisingly good, and their “Pete’s Choice” tastes a lot like Dr. Pepper. Don’t have as much experience with the diets.
Some of #6, I meant.
@10 Devon – If Alomar doesn’t get in on the first ballot, Bagwell doesn’t.
I wonder if the controversial BBWAA picks have to do with the perceived dearth of candidates.
Sodastream is perceived as new? My family had one in the UK in the early 80s.
Joe, if I didn’t know you were a sportswriter, the fact that you’ve spotted a trend in the service at food court Chinese restaurants pretty much seals it.
May as well forget the link … this championship game is over.
I thought that Tim Salmon had the official title of best player never to be in an All Star Game.
1) You’re officially a major Internet player, Joe. You’re getting comment-spammed!
2) There’s been a lot of hilarity-ensues on Baltimore-based message boards and blogs about David Segui, and all I can say is that if I had a Hall of Fame vote and a spot on the ballot I absolutely would have voted for him as a homer pick. I wouldn’t do that for everyone, but any Oriole that made the ballot and was going to drop off anyway I would throw a vote.
I don’t think that’s near the sins of submitting a blank ballot, or specifically avoiding using all available information to make a decision, or anything else that we see writers do with their Hall of Fame votes.
If you like shoveling food in your mouth, it’s hard to beat a fork..oh sorry.. went Larry King there for second.
Point the second — Joe, Bose speakers suck.. I hope you didn’t buy any. I mean, if you just want to look at them, fine, but if you want something that actually, you know, sounds good get some B&Ws or something.
Would Matt Stairs, Professional Hitter make the Professional Hitter Hall of Fame?
Re: Eric Karros credentials. Wasn’t he the MVP of the MTV’s Jock and Rock softball game? That’s something that even Jim Rice can’t claim, right?
What #19 said.
Plus having a fish name, would no doubt break any perceived ties.
Happy Birthday, Joe! I guess you are in California, so I am a couple of hours early, but so be it!
Another East-Coaster wishing you a Happy Birthday, Joe!
I don’t know about Jack Morris getting in anytime soon. Sure, he jumped 8% and is now over 50%, but Andre Dawson got above 50% in 2005, and it still took him another five elections to get in. And there does seem to be a sect of voters who are passionately against Morris’s election. The question is…do they make up 25% of the voting body? With Blyleven on the ballot for 2011, I predict Morris will inch up to the mid-50s and maybe into the 60s by 2012, but having him jump 20 percentage point between 2011 and 2012 seems unlikely, especially if for some horrendous reason Bert Blyleven ends up losing support in 2011 and remains on the ballot.
However, I could see Morris getting in in 2013, with voters voting for the “clean” Morris as a response to the “dirty” Clemens. But would 75% spring for Morris when they could vote for Curt Schilling instead? (Probably not if you’re CHB)
Hmm…
Oh, and happy birthday. You’re still younger than Greg Maddux.
Uhh, Joe, love your stuff, but…Tim Salmon would like to have a word with you regarding the best player never to make an All Star game.
Ahh, I see #19 beat me to it. I’ll still throw this in there just to emphasize. Virtually the same number of plate appearances, neither played premium defense, both won ROYs, both got a few scattered MVP votes, but Salmon had a 128 OPS+ to Karros’s 107, Salmon was very good in his one postseason appearance, and Salmon walked 400 times more than Karros over their careers. I figured that would make you happy.
Carry on.
The Verizon commercials are great. And, speaking as an Android user, I can tell you that the iPhone gets more attention than it totally deserves.
But here’s what’s interesting to me: this article that suggests that AT&T’s network is FINE, it’s the iPhone that sucks.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/13/business/13digi.html
Colin @ 16
We had a Soda Stream in New Zealand in the early 1980s. Quite a few people had them. OK for the kids but you’d get a sideways look if you offered one to an adult. And rightly so.
Pain in the arse to operate as I recall; fizzy stuff spraying everywhere and the bombs always needed replacing, my wife’s just told me. But I guess there’ve been some design improvements over the past thirty years. There would need to be.
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Burks and Galarraga deserved better. Sure they put up lots of big numbers in Colorado. But the Big Cat hit 44 homers as a Brave in ‘98 (157 OPS+), and Burks was a monster with the Giants (146 and 163 OPS+ in two seasons) — so they were hardly just thin air mirages. Both had over 2000 hits, and both were considered good defenders.
I am not saying either are close to Hall worthy. But both done after one ballot? A shame.
@Bryan Adams,
That would make sense except no other country has real issues with the iPhone to the extent that AT&T does in New York and San Francisco.
AT&T has not spent as much as they should have on network infrastructure and people should beat them over the head repeatedly. To be honest, if the new iPhone comes out on other networks (i’m still rocking an old 2G so I’m ready for an upgrade soon) I will probably consider switching even though I’ve been an AT&T customer since before it was AT&T (with Cingular).
Luke Wilson was actually a brilliant choice for those ATT commercials. While watching and wondering why in the hell they chose him to do these commercials, you’re being distracted from the ludicrous point they are trying to make, i.e. that ATT has 3G service is huge metropolitan areas like “New York, New York” and “Dallas, Texas.”
Where are you drawing the line? The earlier NYG inductees were….questionable.
Though it’s not currently in stock, I think I’d spring for one of these before I paid for a Sodastream that apparently costs more per serving than a 2-liter of soda…
http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/science/c908/
Posnanski, Podsednik. Podsednik, Posnanski.
Happy Eeyore!
Clayton @36.
Those weren’t writer choices, those were Frankie Frisch choices, aka The Veterans Committee in the 1960s.
@ Casey #7:
I much prefered Norm McDonald’s lampoon of Larry King’s News & Notes that he used to do sporadically on SNL:
“If you see one movie for the rest of your life, make sure it’s: JUNGLE 2 JUNGLE”
Happy birthday, Joe.
Love your writing. My friends, father, and all my father’s friends love it now, too.
43!
The iPhone is like any other Apple product: good, but severely overhyped, with major bugs until the 3rd generation release. But hey – they have a fart app!
I am neither pro- nor anti-Apple; I’m just being realistic about what they are—the best-marketed company around.
And as a Kansas Citian, I just shake my head at the monumental missteps that have led Sprint to not even be worth targeting in a commercial.
The annoying AT&T commercials have definitely caused me to stay with Verizon. Maybe AT&T should have just spent money on improving their coverage.
And speaking of coverage, my wife used to always drop tons of calls with Sprint. We live less than 2 miles from the world headquarters here in KC. I would love to support a “local” company, but come on…
McGwire may have the right idea here – if he plays in 2010 his eligibility for the Hall basically suspends for 5 years – he would go back on the ballot five years after his last game, and his eligibility would pick up where it left off.
The thought there might be two-fold. One, the voter pool may have a vastly different view of the era five or six years from now; and Two, someone else with suspicions may have cracked into the Hall by then, thus easing the road a little.
The Process Continued: Scott Podsednik.
Discuss.
I used to have AT&T. During that period, I lived in both Washington, D.C. and San Francisco. You might think “Great, two major metropolitan areas, the coverage must have been solid.” But you would think wrong. In both places, I CONSTANTLY had to deal with dropped calls. Granted, I didn’t have the iPhone (I switched to Verizon before it ever came out), but friends in the Bay Area that have it are constantly bemoaning the dropped calls and crappy signal. I have Verizon now, and LOVE the Droid. Though I haven’t had it quite long enough to discover any of the inevitable bugs.
Fun fact – Verizon gets signal on the D.C. Metro. It’s pretty awesome talking on a cell phone when you’re in a subway…
You’d think AT&T would work well in San Francisco. I mean…the baseball stadium in that city is named after them.
I once had a discussion with a friend about Gold Gloves, and how overrated they were. My argument was all about UZR and range factor, but my friend thought the reason Gold Gloves were bad was because David Segui never won one. He’s the all time leader in 1B fielding percent over 1000 games, apparently. And that’s worth 1 vote, I guess.
I agree about the Verizon ads. When I first saw it, it reminded me of the the time that Miller Lite started sniping at Bud Light, Chevy at Ford. It’s always interesting when a company goes from promoting their product to attacking a competitor’s. Is it because their product is inferior and they SOMETHING to dissuade people from purchasing the other product or is it because they truly believe their product is superior and they can convince people of that fact most effectively by attacking the competition? Whichever it was here, I think Verizon did quite well. I was recently thinking of switching from Sprint to another carrier and I think those commercials were a main reason I never considered AT&T (living in Nebraska where the maps showed minuscule coverage), even though I thought the iPhone was neat.
You need to be enthusiastic to sell the vastly over-hyped and over-priced crap that Bose’s marketing department tries to shove down your throat.
Isn’t 3G your internet coverage? I have an iPhone, and yes, it does drop a ton of calls. But those maps in the commercials aren’t showing phone signals, just where you can surf. Tricky.
I use my SodaStream solely for seltzer. Best thing I ever bought. Their customer service is great and compared to the price of store-bought seltzer, it’s disgustingly cheap. I make one or two liters a day and the cylinders last a couple months. I’m sure I could do better with a homemade system, but there is no way I’d get around to doing it myself. And the bottles work very well to keep the soda carbonated.
Bellwether @ 41
“The more I think about it the more I appreciate the Equator.”
“Is it just me or is anyone else sick of Nelson Mandella?”
“My wish for the new millenium is seeing more John Laroquette.”
Circle me Noel! (I know that was off topic, but I’m excited! Sorry.)
no, 3G is the network that carries all of the data (everything, including calls) that flows in and out of your phone. wikipedia is your friend here…
@48: Exactly. I switched to Verizon (from AT&T and their awful, awful customer service) to get service on the Metro…
Although I don’t know if I consider talking on the phone on a crowded train awesome.
Actually, you can talk and even use the internet in areas without 3G coverage. You’ll have to use the slower EDGE network for internet, but 3G coverage has nothing to do with dropped calls.
Because someone mentioned having not read Mariotti the other day, I wanted to include a 2005 Greatest Hits for said person.
Because someone the other day mentioned not having read Mariotti, here’s a greatest hits collection from 2005.
http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_columnists_ezorn/2005/10/jay_mariottis_y.html
Sorry for hijacking…
Happy Birthday, Joe!
Off Topic, but have to admit I was totally disgusted that “no playoff” was second in the poll! Was totally prepared to launch huge rant, then realized that 81% of the voters wanted some playoff, there was just no consensus on the format. That’s cool. We can work with that. Crisis averted. Rant avoided. Time for breakfast.
Joe – Really enjoying THE MACHINE. Just finished Sokolove’s book about Strawberry & Crenshaw H.S. & thought the bar had been reset, & would be a diff act to follow. Rather surprised how good MACHINE is. Kind of delighted by it. Not pretty, but there is something very real there, like when the gay girl in KISSING JESSICA STEIN describing certain people are UGLY SEXY, your style is UGLY REAL. And I dig that. I see you used both of Tom Adelman’s books in the bibliography. Another A+ dude. I love Sokolove and Adelman’s books, but I think MACHINE is better.
-Karl Cicitto
West Suffield, CT.
I think Eric Chavez could compete with Karros for the distinction of best player never to get voted into an All-star game, especially since he deserved it multiple times and kept being passed over for guys like Tony Batista and THREE-TIME ALL STAR Shea Hillenbrand. Tony Phillips also never made an all star team.
An idea: how about All-Joe teams?
All-Star teams are obviously riddled with mistakes, from the small sample sizes used for selection to the panicky picks to fill the team quotas, plus the homer picks made by the managers.
And who doesn’t love saying that Pablo Sandoval was an All-Joe player?
With three teenagers, I actually think the Sprint commercials are pretty good target marketing. The busyness looks very familiar. Five mobile phones. Big monthly in bill.
Can someone please explain how in the heck Arky Vaughn was not elected to the Hall of Fame? I mean, I follow baseball (and baseball history) to some degree and I had no idea he was not elected by the BBWA. I just assumed so. Vaughn is criminally underrated apparently for no other reason than he played after Honus Wganer, but how does that happen? I mean his numbers are so outrageous adjusted across any era.
Did something happen? Did the media hate him? How was that possible? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?
Joe, by any chance was your Bose visit in Las Vegas? I was just there a couple weeks ago and by chance had the exact same experience, over-enthusiastic sales pitch and all.
It’s ironic that the acronym for Baseball Writers Association of America is pretty much how you would note condescending laughter, as in: “Maybe next year, Bert Blyleven! BBWAA!!!”
I think BBWAA might stand for “Bert Blyleven: Wins Aren’t Adequate.”