Jehrico

They're pretty tight about not becoming a common exporter of counterfeit stuff. Internally though, every once in awhile they'll crack down on internal sales too, but it's more for show. They'll round a few people up then forget about it until it's time for the next annual roundup.

That definitely qualifies. You mean getting rid of a mop up guy, a guy who will never make the Cubs aside from September call ups, and a PTBNL type of pitcher for a guy whose looked great in ST and a solid back up infielder who can play multiple positions? The base of the deal would be Gaudin for Baker, which doesnt sound bad at all to me. Exactly. Colorado would laugh then hang up. Gotcha, for them, not us. Still Colorodo is a pitching starved team who might welcome a swingman like Gaudin who has had some major league success, and theyve been openly shopping Baker for pitching. There not going to get a front end pitcher for the guy, probably not even a number 4 starter, so I could see them considering Gaudin. If I'm another team, I view Gaudin as a great by-low candidate on a guy whose had major league success and still has his peak years in front of him. He's in a funk, he'll bounce back.

Shut up NCCubFan. I'll be snide if I want to. (I got the last big Peavy thread locked too...)

You probably won't find any websites for SK businesses offering knockoffs internationally, because unlike China, the SK government actually cares about and enforces international law. They just don't enforce much on local vendors selling inside of their country. If you're ever in Seoul, just ask a cabbie to take you to Itaewon. You'll find jerseys for just about any popular player you want around there. Their knockoffs can be pretty hard to tell from the real ones.

http://whois.domaintools.com/lightinthebox.com Registrant: Light In The Box Limited 2506 Tower A, Ocean International Center 56 Dong Si Huan Zhong Rd,Chaoyang Distrit Beijing, Beijing 100025 CN Domain Name: LIGHTINTHEBOX.COM Administrative Contact, Technical Contact: Light In The Box Limited 2506 Tower A, Ocean International Center 56 Dong Si Huan Zhong Rd,Chaoyang Distrit Beijing, Beijing 100025 CN +86-0-10-5908-0008 Record expires on 02-Oct-2011. Record created on 23-Oct-2007. Database last updated on 26-Mar-2009 12:41:42 EDT. They've been around for over a year and they have their own dedicated server, so I wouldn't be too afraid of getting ripped off (i.e. paying and getting nothing in return). I wouldn't expect the product quality to be anything than total crap, but the price is cheap enough it might be worth a flier.

gathright will be to micah hoffpauir this year what ronny cedeno was to daryl ward last year. A guy who plays a different position and has little connection to him? No. The little guy who sits by the big guy on the bench and gets his coffee when ordered.

Yet the posts including the personal attacks are left on the forum? Makes sense to me. Let's make public a threat to a guy who told someone to shut up. But, a post calling someone a "stupid expletive expletive" we will deal with in secret. That's inconsistent. Is that an attack to say that? Most situations are unique when it comes to moderation. If you're upset with how a situation is handled, your best bet would be to privately ask a mod about it. Implying they are hypocrites and/or not doing a good enough job volunteering to help keep NSBB as good as it can be might be an avenue to avoid. There's also a big difference between telling someone to "shut up" and saying "maybe you should just stop talking." That's no less of an attack than much of the the snarky stuff that defines this board and goes on all of the time. I think that's the inconsistancy Hosak was speaking of.

You're right. The end of the world could come tonight.Ricketts could die in a car crash tomorrow. Far more likely than the sun not coming up. Well...the suns up here. It's eighty-five degrees outside right now. Ricketts could die in a car crash by the end of 2012, but is the sun more likely to stop coming up by then? The latter might be true... I normally wait until I have a point to make before I post.

You're right. The end of the world could come tonight.Ricketts could die in a car crash tomorrow. Far more likely than the sun not coming up.

Another link on him retiring. http://www.cbssports.com/mlb/story/11533460 Too bad. Koskie was a good guy and would have been a good bat off of the bench.

Because he will not DEFINITELY be the owner; he will PROBABLY be the owner. Until a deal is finalized and approved by MLB owners there's always the chance it could fall apart. It's not his team yet.Also, what happens if they get Peavy, pick up his option year, then his arm falls off before the deal is done? The franchise would materially be worth less as a result, and Ricketts could back out. If the Ricketts deal falls apart, then even if he signed some sort of side deal approving it, it would have an adverse impact on the franchises value to a different owner in that event.

Bad. One less crappy pirate for our boys to rain home runs on. Yeah, that's true. They'll just throw another unknown from the minors at us that we have no scouting report on. That's exactly the kind of guy that'll throw 8 innings of 2-hit shutout ball against us too.

Bad. One less crappy pirate for our boys to rain home runs on.

If I were the Nats, I'd want more than Gorz for Willingham.

That was before the Cards went out and stole Khalil from SD.

You're reading that waaaaaaaaaay to literally. I'm sure that he knows how he TENDS to perform when he isn't feeling 100% after being in the league so long. I never suggested any player could draw absolute correlations or predictions. That said, I'm not comfortable with players picking when they play and don't play based upon how they feel (as long as we're not talking about pitchers and arm injuries or something like that...). I only meant to imply that it's possible that in some cases, it could end up leading to better overall results for the team, regardless of whether I think it's likely or not.

I don't know on this one...I chalk this up to one of those things where you take the good with the bad. What if you could get Z to not start if he's feeling like he doesn't have his "A" game...effectively just removing his bad starts for whatever Heilman or whoever could give that day? Only Bradley knows his body, and how his body tends to affect his performance when it feels certain ways. If he's got something going on that normally ends up with him putting up an 0-for or a 1-5 at best, then I have no problem with him letting someone else take a whack if it helps get him back to where he can hit like we know he can hit when he's well. The problem is we don't know if there really is a predictive correllation between how he feels and how he performs. Only he does. We have to be prepared to put the replacement guy out there on pretty much any given day with Milton.

I think his conditioning is certainly an issue, but it can't be the only thing. He has to have some sort of mechanical flaw going on in his swing, whether it's hands, feet, arms, hitches, too much crouching, etc. I find it pretty crazy that since it's clear that he has lost something/needs fixing he is unwilling to try and change something in his swing. I mean he put up a .158/.256/.249 in 209 ab's and had 76 K's and only 3 HR. Assuming there are no injuries those are numbers that warrant some type of change in swing or approach, what's he scared of changing? It's not like if he changed something in his swing and batted .100 it would be a drastic fall off from last season. There are fat guys who can hit. But Jones got fat, then stopped hitting. It probably indicates he really just doesn't care anymore. Just because some fat guys can hit doesn't mean any ballplayer can get fat and still hit. I really think this is a big part of Jones problem.

I guess reports that he would sign by midweek were wrong?

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/2009/02/23/2009-02-23_mlb_players_union_head_don_fehr_says_ste.html Fehr basically calling the steriod problem "fixed." He says the testing is doing what it's supposed to do, which is "fix" the steroid problem. If this is the union's official stance about testing and steroids, then it's hard to imagine them making any noise about the issue during the next CBA. Considering money is and always has been the main motivator of the union, they'll probably focus on money issues and not testing, which doesn't cost them anything. I don't see them wasting collateral during negotiations on modifying the testing program, especially when you consider the PR hit they would take.

You're probably right about Odalis, but any pitcher who has to get a cortisone shot to get through a season has to be an injury concern the next year.

Apparently he regretted the deal he signed, and never reported to spring training. Washington just released him. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/nationalsjournal/2009/02/nationals_release_holdout_pere.html Considering the injury risk of Z and Harden, would anyone be willing to sign him if he cost a mil or less and was willing to work out of the pen? He's underperformed his whole career, but he did manage to put up league average numbers last year. If he works out of the pen, then he provides another left arm if Marshal gets the 5 spot, and could provide some additional depth for the rotation. I'm not crazy about Cotts being the only potential lefty in the pen, but the pickings out there are slim.

There's an amazing lack of historical context going on here. Anabolic steriods were really first developed in the 30s, and refined in the 40s. They (specifically Dianabol) were approved by the FDA for use in '58. It wasn't until the 60s when they realized the negative side effects of abusing steriods, namely enlarged prostates and shrunken testes, among others. The International Olympic Committee didn't ban steriods until the 76 games. The government's first attempt to regulate steriods came in '79, but that didn't control much, much less ban anything. The first act that actually banned steriods for non-medical purposes was anti-drug abuse act of 1988. The whole era where athlete's "had" to use steriods to be competitive didn't arise until the mid 70s. Considering they weren't legal, and they weren't even addressed by the IOC until 1975, I don't think it's fair to single out the NFL for what was going on in the 70s. Those Steeler's teams overlapped the time when we first started to realize how bad steriods were. That's not to say they get a free pass in the least, quite the contrary. Those guys were still using them after the international governing bodies addressed it. But, considering what we knew then and what was going on, I think the NFL acted much more prudently with regards to the problem than the other sports. Could they have done more, and could they have done more sooner? Yeah. They don't get a free pass. But let's not start crucifying people for doing something that was perfectly legal, within the rules, and accepted at the time. Let's learn from it and do the right thing now instead.

That's true, but who is it that would be treating him worse? Not the league. It'd be the press. If we're arguing about hypocrisy in the media, then I agree 100%. They never attacked guys like Merriman the way they're going after ARod. However, if we're talking about the leagues (i.e. NFL commish vs MLB commish), like in the post earlier suggesting the NFL needs to be investigated, then I don't think it's a fair criticism. The NFL wised up along time ago and started testing and punishing on their own. It took a congressional panel to be assembled to investigate MLB before the commissioners office attempted to address the issue. The only thing I'd say about the NFL is they need to stiffen up those first penalties, or at least stiffen them up for steriods. Merriman got the same punishment for doing roids that some guy who one time accidentally picked up the wrong supplement from GNC gets. I don't think the NFL needs to be investigated for "looking the other way" on PEDs as it was suggested earlier.

By public, do you mean the media? The same group of media that has pretty much tied steroids to professional wrestling and Major League Baseball, and virtually, no one other than them does it. I'm still trying to figure out how the NFL hasn't been "probed" yet for their use of PEDs, or is that just widely-acceptable in football? By public, we mean the media, the fans, the sponsors, the whole nine yards. The NFL smarted up and took care of this issue a long time ago. They've been testing for steroids and what not for a very long time. I don't know why you think it's widely accepted in football. Remember way back when when Jim Miller got suspended for an over-the-counter supplement? That was 10 years ago. PEDs are certainly more frowned upon in the NFL and have been for quite awhile. Shawne Merriman disagrees with you Not sure what your point is. He was suspended for a quarter of a season, you're acting like nothing ever happened to him. I'd like to see the NFL apply stiffer penalties on the first positive like that, especially with steriods instead of simple otc supplements...but that doesn't mean they haven't had an aggressive testing policy for considerably longer than MLB now.