mul21

Good lord, I'm amazed his liver is still functioning and not the size of a basketball.

Awesome. Maybe he'll listen to what everyone has been trying to tell him after getting pimp slapped by a mod. If he even realizes the green print means he's a mod.

It really concerns me how much he referees (he did the ND game yesterday) considering he's the superintendent of the school district my wife works in. Seems like he should be spending more time doing, you know, his job (that my tax dollars fund by the way).

Looking at those numbers, I'm curious to know if Kinsler had some ridiculously low BABIP last year.

And I've found my new sig, if it's OK with you.

You don't think the manner in which leadership conducts themselves has anything to do with the way the rest of a "business" conducts itself? I don't think anybody is saying Tony held a gun to their heads and said "Drink or you're cut from the team", but I certainly don't think he has exactly provided an environment where drinking and driving, PEDs, and recreational drug use are strongly discouraged. For all the stuff that went on with LaRussa before the initial incident with Hancock happened, you would think somebody would have taken the bull by the horns and said something to the guy about scaling back the partying a little. I definitely don't think it should...that's my point. If some idiot mimics his manager or thinks because "he does it, I can do it", that's hardly the manager's fault. These aren't middle schoolers, they can make their own decisions. He's responsible for his own drug problems, not his players. LaRussa probably should have talked to guys who had obvious PED or alcohol problems (and he might have, I don't know) but he shouldn't have to police them. I think being able to see these things and intervene before they become a problem is a trait any good manager (baseball, business, whatever) should have. And any company worth it's salt has a program that all managers are required to go through to help them identify substance abuse issues and showthem how to properly intervene. The other thing you have to remember is that a lot of baseball players, because of the nature of the minor leagues system, don't have anything more than a high school education (and some less than that in the case of a lot of the Latin players I would guess) and never really participated in society in a normal way because they've been isolated and pampered because they're good at baseball, and because of this they never really had a chance to "grow up" emotionally.

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/sports/15917802.html so it doesn't actually say it's done... So does this mean they have actually settled on the other position players (Cedeno, Murton, etc.) to be rumored in this deal? It means there's no deal at all. I don't know why people keep pushing this thing further than it really is. It's laughable to think that the Orioles get to "decide which pitchers they want" in any deal, as if the other team has no say. This isn't the produce section at the local supermarket. Christ, these articles are just stupid sometimes. See, I took that to mean they were given a list of guys to choose from and they would be deciding from that, kind of like what happens with a PTBNL. But I do think you're right that there's no deal at all right now.

You don't think the manner in which leadership conducts themselves has anything to do with the way the rest of a "business" conducts itself? I don't think anybody is saying Tony held a gun to their heads and said "Drink or you're cut from the team", but I certainly don't think he has exactly provided an environment where drinking and driving, PEDs, and recreational drug use are strongly discouraged. For all the stuff that went on with LaRussa before the initial incident with Hancock happened, you would think somebody would have taken the bull by the horns and said something to the guy about scaling back the partying a little.

http://www.wthr.com/global/video/popup/pop_player.asp?vt1=l&d1=0&ClipId1=http%3A//streamdata.dispatchbroadcast.com/WTHRLive.asx&LiveURI=http%3A//streamdata.dispatchbroadcast.com/WTHRLive.asx&h1=IU Link to IU press conference if you want to watch. Not sure when it's supposed to start.

Former Cub Robert?

I'm pretty sure he's a switch hitter. He'd be a good guy have as a 4th OF assuming Murton isn't around and he can be had for very little in trade. Outside of that, meh. And to the post above the one I quoted, isn't Stewart LH also?

I had 9 of my friends, and me. So 10 of us did it. Some of us had a lot of baseball skills and sliding skills while some have never slid before and I had to teach them how to slide. Each one of us ran to first through the bag 5 times, slid into first feet first 5 times, and slid head first 5 times. Some of us did it in a different order, like some slid head first first, some ran through first, and some slid feet first first. I had them start at home plate and just sprint towards first. I timed them as soon as they started moving and stopped it as soon as they hit the bag. Almost every trial (except for maybe 2 scores) showed that sliding feet first was fastest, followed by head first, then running through. One of my friends timed me as well and I had it in that same order. I averaged all the scores and it was about .5 seconds faster to slide feet than it was to run through. And about .3 seconds faster to slide feet than slide head. I think this showed me a lot, especially since I used many different skill leveled people. I'm going to try it again this year with my HS team. While your hypothesis and experiment may be true, I think your time figures are way off. If you figure a world class sprinter covers 100m in 10 seconds, .5 seconds equates to about 4-5 meters (12.5-15.5 ft). There's no way that's possible. Now, if you were saying it was .03 and .05 seconds difference, I could buy that. That would equate out to about 1-1.5 ft, which is significant, but not completely unbelievable like the other scenario. Edit: And he realized he was wrong, rendering my post pointless. But I still find .1 and .225 seconds to be highly unlikely unless the participants are running on one leg or the timing mechanism had a huge error in it. That still gets you somewhere in the neighborhood of 3-7 feet difference in getting to the bag.

get the digits? I'm sure. Oh yeah. I think I definitely stood a chance... Erin Andrews would probably only fall in the 85-90 percentile range of hot girls in Bloomington. erin andrews doesn't really do it for me. Quick, somebody get this guy's head examined!!!!!!! You're telling me you don't really get anything out of this.... http://cdn.faniq.com/images/blog/Picture%2011(3).png

I'm not trying to be a jerk here, but isn't that the same concept as trying to get your hand/body in the vicinity of the base faster?

Just sent him a very cordial PM trying to explain this to him.

And possibly derail the "greatest thread ever"? Blasphemer!!!!!

Mostly because they like their skin to stay on their bodies. Honestly, of all the garbage he has spewed out, this is probably the most likely thing to have some relevance/truth to it.

Would people here have preferred Swisher over Fukudome? Probably not given the cost in prospects, especially considering the Cubs ability to come up with cash seems to be far greater than their ability to come up with prospects.

Self needs a FF to shut people up. It's that simple. (But then it will be NC choker talk.) It may not be fair, but that's the way it is, and he isn't the first coach to go through it. Dean, Lute, Donavan, and Roy were all labeled as chokers. It's just the way it works. Those guys, however, had the ability to coach their way out of a wet paper bag. Self, not so much. One of the worst in game coaches I've ever seen. And I'm an Illini fan who thought that when he was here. I harbor no ill will toward Kansas for taking him because, while in the short run Illinois may struggle, the players that do come here will get the most out of their talent as opposed to floundering in the hi-low under Self. And Illinois will be good again and in the tourney next year anyway.

As I'm sure somebody else has already said, this makes the most financial sense for IU considering the clause in Sampson's contract about violations. If they do it now they'll get hit with the wrongful termination suit, but if they just suspend him now and wait until the June hearing/conviction to axe him they're fine.

Either that or too many lefties in the rotation. :grin:

oooh, me me me!! Edit: Damn, also.

Holy arbitrary, Batman!!!

Look at Greene's splits away from PetCo park. A case can be made that, for a SS, he's actually quite a bit better than average to below average at the plate when he's not playing at the best pitchers park in baseball. He's a fly-ball hitter and that park just is not kind to his numbers. Or he was better on the road because he likes when people are yelling at him and hassling him. Or he doesnt feel pressure on the road like he does at home. No one knows. I agree that PetCo is a harder park to hit HR's in, but no one is for certain that he would put up his road numbers all the time if he was on the Cubs. Oh my god you seriously could not try harder and be any more wrong. It can be very easily shown statistically that Greene is an extreme fly ball hitter. Petco is huge and is terrible for flyball hitters because it GREATLY reduces their offensive productivity. In fact, I think somebody did a graph of Greene's deep flyball outs at Petco vs. playing at Wrigley and he would have had something like 10-12 more HRs JUST IN HOME GAMES. It has everything to do with park factors and nothing to do with your ridiculous viewpoints on how "watching the game" makes your opinion right. It's just not.