Careless

I never would have known this if not for this site. thanks

wow, that's FANTASTIC. Finally an umpire didn't give in to that crap. Great news

I'm saddened that there's only 28 votes. C'mon people, let's get the vote out here! I do wonder (and have wondered for a while) how many posters here are actually into the minor league stuff. I'm not about to vote because, well, I'm ignorant. I don't suppose I'm the only one here who can barely pay enough attention to the cubs as it is. Actually, maybe that's worthy of a poll in itself... except I seem to recall that there was a poll along those lines last year?

... zambrano could take a line drive to the head so hard that the ball got stuck in his skull and he'd still tell dusty he didn't want to come out. Zambrano's right arm could literally fall off and he'd try to pitch with his left. The question is never "what does zambrano want?" but "what is best for the team" Please, whattya gonna do now? Make him avoid stairs because he might fall down and land on his arm? He's a PITCHER. Those risks come along with pitching, and there's nothing you can do about them, except hope they don't happen. Taking Zambrano out in that case would probably do more harm to him and the team than leaving him in. I know freak accidents have happened to our pitchers, but they're "freak" accidents, you don't take the ball from a pitcher's hand when he can and wants to finish the 8th inning. What does that say about your confidence in the pitcher? What does that do to team morale? Ok, have him throw every inning of every game for the entire season. go nuts.

Once drank 1.5 gallons of milk in under an hour. Managed not to throw up. but if, say, walking 50 feet afterwards had been part of the bet...

does that really mean anything other than "when the opposing pitcher is wild, we walk more and tend to win"?

I'd certainly retire it. Now what do you think would happen if he actually got a steroid bust?

... zambrano could take a line drive to the head so hard that the ball got stuck in his skull and he'd still tell dusty he didn't want to come out. Zambrano's right arm could literally fall off and he'd try to pitch with his left. The question is never "what does zambrano want?" but "what is best for the team"

Is this a "he's actually dusty's kid" joke?

Felipe Alou would like to disagree with you on that one. Yeah, they both agree that the pirates manager is the worst. I mean wow, is he bad. I may bash dusty, but at least he's supposed to be good at something

Cubs are still o-fer when I'm at a game. The last one was the rain game on july 26th. I thought I'd actually see a cubs win live for once Well, maybe I'll see the cubs win before I hit 30 games

Say that again once prior gets a second arm injury.

You'd think that they could stop showing this on television already. And sometimes they don't even have the grace to warn you before showing it :(

Cherokee? You aren't Cherokee are you? Because if you are that is bad news for you. Being part Choctaw I would have to fight you to the death, you being a nautral enemy of the Choctaws and all. Sucks for you :-) Nope, no Cherokee in me. Too bad too, they get a lot of benefits. *grumble* you know, in situations like this it's perfectly ok to start a race war that results in a fight to the death and winds up setting the entire board on fire

Just as I suspected, I found a site that says that the term Redskin does come from the scalping of Native Americans. Not saying your quote isn't accurate, but just that I'm sure on this issue there are two sides. I would hope the person who told me way back in college wasn't making it up. Who knows. If I were more computer literate I'd have listed the site, but it's one of the first ones I found when using the search engine for the term "Redskin". It's still interesting how the term "Redskin" came to being. Let's do a little Occam's Razor action here... These same people called people of the epicanthic fold "yellow". Now if they thought the chinese were big cowards, I might buy the explaination for "red"... They didn't. they used a slight tendency in skin color to label them. Given this and the fact that I'm quite sure there was a name they had for the aboriginal americans well before this explaination for "redskin" would be applicable, I'd bet heavily on the skin color being the answer.

Really, that's not much better than being taught that they were violent savages. War was an important part of aboriginal american culture just like it was in every other agrarian society, and many of them eagerly participated in war for fun, honor, and profit. They were (and are) human, members of a species that is frequently violent

Not trying to start the argument back up but has anyone ever heard an Indian refer to himself as a Native American? OleMiss it seems like you've spent alot of time around Indians have you heard an Indian refer to themselves as Native American? the ones that I know refer to themselves by their tribe. "I'm Choctaw" etc. I know when I visited Montana, the Sioux there called themselves "Lakota", the Indian name for Sioux. I imagine it's kind of the same thing with blacks. I come from the only state in the union that has more blacks than whites so I have a good many black friends and I went to a high school with a majority of blacks, and I know very few that call themselves "African-American" Well, that works if you're talking about an individual of known extraction, but what about if you're referring to a group of american aboriginals from different tribes? I'd bet on a hefty portion going with "native american"

Nomar said they haven't bought a home in the Chicago area this is true, I guess Actually, he's having a house built. It's in Winnetka. I have no idea why he's having a house built that won't be completed before the end of the season

](*,) The Cubs are not below average in RS. Until they started their most recent nosedive they were well above average. I don't know if you realize this, but while getting on base is important for scoring, with the right amount of power and hits, a walk deficiency can be overcome. IT IS NOT COMPLETELY NECESSARY TO HAVE A HIGH OBP. Adding more power and BA can be just as good as adding more OBP, although at least until recently, it was usually more expensive. Also, the team is NOT strike out prone. In fact, even after this disgusting slide in fourth place, they still have the fourth least strike outs in the MLB. That said, I agree that the team would benefit from being more patient and taking more walks, but they don't have the players for it. Besides, what team wouldn't benefit from being more patient? That's like saying the team would benefit from hitting more home runs (which it would.) On defense, you are right that the team does not have great fielders up the middle, but while that would help, I don't think it will ever sink a potential contender unless the defense is really terrible and the team has a low strikeout, high groundball staff. As for injuries, teams that are sufficiently good and balanced (without one or two specific star players that must take the team on their shoulders) can get past limited injuries, but you can't expect the bench to be as good as the starters. I don't think the injuries the Cubs sustained hurt them much more than they would have hurt any team. You can't expect the two best starters and one of the best batters to go down long term and have the depth for it to not be a problem. Finally, on Baker. Well, he is a very convienent scape goat. We see him make idiotic managing mistakes in game and get ticked off. The blame for that rests on him. As does the blame for playing Hollandsworth over Murton (though some seem to see him as the second coming of Jesus Christ, like they saw Dubois and Cedeno before him). But I think it is a big leap to blame the team's sloppy play and terrible situational hitting on him as well. Some of the blame does rest with him as the manager, but some rest with luck, and some with the players. And we definitely can't blame most of the strokes of bad luck on him. He didn't make Nomar tear his groin, and he didn't make Hawp nail Prior. And though he is not the best manager, and it would be good if he left soon, I don't see why some people need to villainize him. The Chicago cubs are 19th in runs scored. That is most certainly below average. they're 8th out of 16 in the NL which is barely above average.

What on earth is Veronica Mars?

How do you know that all the times Hawkins came into the game it wasn't also directed at Dusty Baker? Did you poll the Wrigley fans booing to get an accurate assessment on this? I'm guessing no. I booed Hawkins, but my venom also lied with Baker for bringing in a guy who was likely to lose us the game. This brings up a problem I don't often see addressed here: how do you boo a manager? usually if you try it will look/sound like you're booing the players involved in his decisions. The only way to effectively boo a manager I can think of is doing it while holding signs, and you'd need a significant % of the fans in the park to be holding anti-dusty signs for that to work. Not going to happen. although, for the record, everyone I heard actually talking about the game on weds was bashing dusty. He'srapidly running out of time here

I thought of it more as a BOOO HAWKINS, WE KNOW YOU'RE INSECURE AND WILL PITCH TERRIBLY IF YOU FEEL THE PRESSURE (AND WE'RE RIGHT, TOO) We gave him hell and it worked. It wasn't until dusty started making inexplicable substitutions (gerut instead of holly) that the fans shut up and the rally fell on its face. Again, I don't have any problem with hawkins as a person or a player, but if he's pitching against the cubs and there's some way I can perform mental sabotage on him (without crossing the line), you can be sure I'll do it.

the fans were particularly annoyed because they stopped selling beer half an hour before the game started. a beer drinking crowd at midight is a lot more mellow than one that's half-hungover

Wouldn't either of these being merely average make him vastly more effective? As it is now, if he's not locating his curveball you can just wait on his fastball and it's not the hardest pitch around to crush. Throwing anything that looks even slightly fastball-ish should make him a far better pitcher

While I wouldn't give hawkins any crap away from the game, he's a fair target while he's on the field. We have a right to try to mess with his head as long as we don't cross the line. Actually, the only giant I saw definitely react to the crowd today was Pujols, the 1b coach. He started yelling at the fans after a loud "you suck" was directed at him. He gave the impression that as a 1b coach he doesn't get that a lot