Magnetic Curses

colorado threatens and ends up getting 5 runs, we get 1. not our night.

i remember in 04 when ramirez homered in the 9th off of chacon to send the game to extras. i think he may have hit another one to win it.

pronounced "wuerzt".

Greater than a Pie inside the park homerun where Braun trips over a black cat in the outfield and breaks his legs? I would much rather have someone like Ward or Zambrano hit the inside the parker. I'd want woody to do it, it'd be my dream come true... Strange dream. yeah, no doubt. have fun with that one.

i'm glad. gabe gross is good.

If you go out to the bleachers, you will, without a doubt see people just boozing and hanging out. But that is true of every bleacher area. It's just so far away from the action, and baseball games can be so slow at times. Especially relatively unimportant games. The bleachers at Yankee Stadium are more or less a cage match. Between "show your t**s" chants and mini brawls there isn't a lot of attention being paid. But it's still a minority group within the entire crowd. I was just in Philly, and there you have hundreds of people wandering around the ballpark, doing lots of things that don't come close to paying attention to the game. You have bars, restaurants and other distractions that take people away from every field. But when the situation gets tight, the rest of the crowd gets into it, and those not paying attention are quickly able to grasp what's going on. Personally I've spent more than 1 inning not knowing exactly what the situation was on the field in my life. I pay money for the opportunity to enjoy myself. Sometimes part of enjoying the day is doing something other than staring closely at the field and keeping score pitch by pitch. I don't see the problem with that. i've spent many a drunken weekend afternoon at the rockpile in denver.

Careful getting down from that cross. It doesn't sound like you're an unbiased source here. I can't dispute what you said, because it's all a person's opinion. You wouldn't expect Cubs fans to have an accurate opinion of White Sox fans would you? And, I'll usually be the last person to back up some of the tools at Cubs games.(See my rant titled the 4 people you meet at Cubs games.) The throwing all the balls on the field was stupid. Throwing trash on the field in the past was stupid. But this type of obnoxious tool behavior DOES happen everywhere. And at a pretty similar ratio. As CubinNY alluded to, you can't claim that us who rely on stats so heavily in baseball should be able to realize the ratio is greater, and then use your anecdotal evidence to prove it. It's flat out an opinion, and there's no way to prove it. Brennamen's biased, he's a Reds announcer and a senile old coot. We're biased, we're Cubs fans. You're biased, you're a Sox fan(I think) Oh well. First of all, is it that far fetched to think that I might be banned after my first post? I appreciate not getting banned (thanks) but it doesn't seem to take much to get the "troll" label and threatened with banning. you, for all intents and purposes, call cubs fans drunken idiots and you expect to be called a troll? i'd say that you are anticipating well. what my data says is that things are the same, lenny dykstra was getting beer dumped on him 20 years ago and he'd get doused tomorrow. in philly, mike schmidt was getting booed 25 years ago and he'd get booed tomorrow. in new york, alex rodriguez always gets booed. in addition to things being the same at wrigley, things remain the same at every other park. from battery night to disco demolition to the attack on tom gamboa, virtually every fan base has it's share of drunken idiots---and if they don't, the team leaves town due to lack of interest. anecdotal evidence, yes, but just as convincing.

i don't think it's productive to tell someone to hit the ball in a certain place. just hit it hard.

this goofball throws 2 changeups with the bases loaded and behind in the count. i wonder why he isn't a starter anymore.

tony's writing a bestseller against milwaukee today.

just hit the ball hard somewhere.

We should call him Joey Joe-Joe Junior Shabadoo. that's the stupidest name i've ever heard.

yeah, he's been real good since becoming a cub.

herzog used to pull crap like that, too.

when i became a vegetarian, i gained weight. i think it's because nothing fills me up, so i eat all the time.

fielder should have had that one. it was a crappy play all around.

arrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! but seriously, lou does double switch.

fielder's not a good first baseman.

the cardinals always have guys with funny names. remember tripp cromer? Stubby Clapp. haha, him too.

i just wanted to clear up my position is all. dusty and hendry are definitely to blame for the ballclubs that they either assembled or managed while dusty was here. Yep, and I wonder had Hendry seen more of Fukudome if he would have pursued him. i think hendry has learned a bit from his past struggles. i'll give that much to him. he'll never assemble a team of guys with low k rates again and expect them to score a ton of runs, which seemed to be his philosophy in 2005 and 2006. somewhere, he realized that his job was in danger and he better stop farting around.

the cardinals always have guys with funny names. remember tripp cromer?

i just wanted to clear up my position is all. dusty and hendry are definitely to blame for the ballclubs that they either assembled or managed while dusty was here.

No kidding. Me too. I told Hendry today that he'll have the Baseball Prospectus writers on his speed dial pretty soon. This is culture shock. Does Jim even know walks are a good thing? after being so vehemently against hendry's lack of love for the base on balls, i've grown to believe that he is at least partially right in a sense: walks are generally a symptom of being a good hitter. you can't really teach a hitter to be patient if he isn't already. when someone's isod goes up with age, it generally means that more and more pitchers are growing to respect his bat. you can teach a young hitter some tricks regarding pitch recognition, but if his core processor isn't fast enough, there's no way that having him attempt to shrink his strike zone will net positive results. it will probably just end up ruining a perfectly serviceable baseball player. great hitters walk a lot because they get pitched around. Yeah that is true, I think the big thing that was working against Jim in many of our minds was the manager he hired hated walks. very true. And Jim shared that hatred. While he may be right that you can't teach overly aggressive hitters how to be patient, the fact remains he targetted overly aggressive hitters repeatedly and didn't give a rat's butt about their patience, pitch recognition, approach at the plate or anything else. before you posted it, i was thinking of this exactly. hendry is at fault for targeting impatient hitters. so, i agree with you as well.

While I don't disagree with this post I think there is more to it than just getting walks. One thing that I really like about Fukudome isn't just the walks, but that he takes strikes early in the count if they are not his pitch. And that is the real difference I've seen witht he Cubs this year is that they wait for their pitch, and don't just swing at the first thing that is near the plate, i.e. what Dusty preached. This approach leads to more walks and more hits. in my defense, you have heard only a fraction of my ideas on the matter. i was always one of the big critics of dusty's "just get the ball in play" strategy. good hitters look for their pitch and drive the ball. they do not angle the ball to the left or the right or try to hit behind runners. if the pitch is on the outer third and they can drive it to the opposite firled, they do.

yeah, there's no way that he gets out of this.