Clem Fandango

The thing I learned as an adult is that if you buy packs of cards form stores like Walgreens or Wal-Mart or whatever, your odds of getting anything valuable are dick. That's why they were cheaper there. They are retail boxes. An insert card from there for the easiest pull might be 1:16 packs. If you bought it from a hobby store, pulled form a hobby box, those odds jump to 1:4. Basically, since they have to manufacture in bulk for retail giants, the odds of pulling valuable cards suck. If you purchase hobby boxes, you're guaranteed at least one big pull from a box nearly all the time, usually an autograph. I would purchase whole boxes because I wanted that big pull. The hobby isn't huge anymore, but it definitely still exists. Less hobby stores now. It doesn't help that Upper Deck and Topps are pretty much monopolizing the industry. Topps and Upper Deck are the only licensed MLB retailers for trading cards. So companies like Donruss had to shift focus to other sports. It's then that you realize how many subsets that you didn't realize were Topps or Upper Deck, actually were owned by them. I remember in 08 I think Donruss got around the MLB thing by selling a st called Donruss Elite which focused on college athletes from all sports. I pulled a ([expletive] that's another one) David Price Autographed RC. And a couple of Josh Vitters autos, too! And yeah the good ones were always expensive. I had a issue with Topps Triple Threads. It was like $300 a box, and you only get 3 packs of card, and each pack had 3 cards... but you get that one big pull in each box (the Ty Cobb card I reference earlier). It was basically like playing a slot machine. It was addicting, and because it involved my favorite thing in the world (baseball) it made it even worse.

Yup. It's not a kids hobby anymore, everything is [expletive] expensive as [expletive]. I had a problem with it, like a serious addiction. It was like gambling. It's embarrassing what kind of cards I acquired and then promptly traded or sold away. Cards you should hang on to. Like an Albert Pujols RC, or a card with 6 pieces of Ty Cobb's bat on it. Or a card with a signature of Carl Hubbel cut from an old letter he signed. A magenta printing plate of a Matt Kemp and a Hiroki Kuroda card that was used to print the actual card and they were the only ones in existence. EDIT: Oh God, a Miguel Cabrera RC, too. [expletive] I was stupid. I lament the amount of money I spent on cards back then, especially since it was all bought with credit. I fucked myself up big time because of it. Still have some nice cards though. http://imgur.com/a/80b93/all But you can see where my intentions lied in 2007 with my collecting. It's a funny way to look back and see who you thought was gonna be the next big thing and who turned out to be complete [expletive]. I was not too good with that. Although my crowning jewel at the end there is still pretty [expletive] awesome.

When the calendar hits September, they stop losing and everyone they need to lose starts losing. That's because their team was built the right way and everyone else does it wrong, obviously. Probably also helps that you get your best positional player and one of your best pitchers back at the same time

Man, I might need to start collecting baseball cards again. Or at least just spend a stupid amount of money on the pricey RC's of these guys. When I was collecting a while back (07-08) I wasn't big into prospects, but I collected Bowman because it was the cheapest and filled with a lot of potentially valuable cards people would clamor for because of recently drafted guys. I had a $120 Nick Noonan autographed blue refractor card that I sold for a premium because he was their first round pick that year. He's practically worthless now. But our guys would be worth investing for, methinks.

Didn't he say if his right arm ever crapped out on him he could learn to pitch lefty and could throw it near 90 mph as a lefty already?

I'm solely interested in him so he can be used in a possible Stanton package to alleviate the amount of 2nd tier prospects we'd need to include to get him, or maybe he can be used to acquire a pitcher as well. Outside of that I'm not all that interested in seeing him in a Cubs uniform.

Mike Olt and Junior Lake need a change of scenery

Maybe he'll immediately get a job on MLB Network and then have to talk about how much of a mess things are with the FO in Arizona like Josh Byrnes has had to do with the Padres and it will be super awkward and hilarious

What's the lowest season ending leader ever? According to Wikipedia it was Tony Gwynn with a .313 AVG in 1988 for the National League and Carl Yastrzemski with a .301 AVG in 1968 in the American League

The Brewers being salty about Olt playing is just.....delicious. http://i.imgur.com/281k6YI.gif

It's like the Battered Bastards of Baseball all over again

I was half expecting it to be Ryan Kalish because of the whole packing up thing recently, for some reason

I'm sure there's a good chance he'll be there next season.

use a proxy Tried, couldn't figure it out quick enough to care about the game I was trying to watch (plus someone linked me to another stream). Signed up for a proxy server, I'll have to look into it in the future

http://m.mlb.com/video/v3262729/lightning-disrupts-the-cubsastros-game-in-the-eighth/?query=lightning+cubs+astros

He's got fine numbers, but he's a 23 year old outfielder in A+ ball so nothing to get too worked up over, IMO.

Ahh, makes sense to try and make you get the EI package. For me MLB.tv would be perfect if not for the insane blackout regions and rules. I hate getting blacked out of a game in Mobile, Alabama because Miami, which is 12 hours away and we don't get any of their channels, is playing in Chicago.

I think if anyone is signed up to a complete sports package on their cable/satellite deal they get all the regional sports channels, do they not? I vaguely recall having all the regional channels on my DirecTV when I had it, but I could be fuzzy on that.

That must've been a little bit ago, because I just signed up at was given ~69,000

Ian Kinsler put that bad juju on them.

The Gods are cruel.

I don't think I want to see any lineup that has Almora and McKinney in it if we had an opportunity to replace one of them with Stanton. I like our guys as much as the next person, but you don't pass on Stanton because of a guy like Almora or McKinney. Ever. The general perception is we have roughly $50 mil to spend, right? That's enough room for a Stanton extension and one top FA pitcher as soon as this offseason, is it not? And theoretically, wouldn't the rise in attendance and new advertising additions to the park help increase the payroll little by little over the next couple of seasons? I don't see why we couldn't afford Stanton when all our uber studs are making league minimum

Didn't the Double A coaches vote him the best defensive third basemen in the league? I'm not saying that as a defense, I'm just curious why they would say something that even the most optimistic Bryant-for-3B supporters would chuckle at?

It basically comes down to which hypothetical lineup would you rather have? C Schwarber 1B Rizzo 2B Baez/Castro/Russell 3B Bryant SS Baez/Castro/Russell LF Soler CF Alcantara RF Stanton (assuming one of Baez/Russell/Castro is used as centepriece for Stanton deal) or C Schwarber 1B Rizzo 2B Baez 3B Castro SS Russell LF Bryant CF Alcantara RF Soler (assuming the projected positional changes occur) If you're going off promise and future projection, the difference might end up being negligible down the line, but for the immediate future the team is way better with Stanton than without him, even with the missing uber prospect that was dealt to get him. Baez and Russell may wind up being 5+ or 6+ win beasts in the future, but Stanton is that right now. If you can acquire that for pieces that have yet to play a full season in the majors, maybe you should.

What game is it from? It says the video is not available in my country. It's Steve Stone's butchered HR call from the Sox game last night. I'm guessing it's one of, if not both, of these? http://m.mlb.com/video/topic/0/v35903177/cwsmin-flowers-second-tworun-blast-increases-lead (butchered) http://m.mlb.com/video/topic/0/v35901817/cwsmin-viciedo-delivers-a-goahead-solo-homer (just dull and bad)