Hairyducked Idiot

This is asinine. The fact that he thought Todd Hundley was a jerk does not disprove anything.

It's not racism how he dislikes players who are bad. It's racism how he inevitably falls on racial stereotypes to describe them.

The "hey, he didn't like some white people too" defense.

Clearly, Kaplan has no use for hispanics as the photo below illustrates. http://www.csnchicago.com/common/medialib/158/402378.jpg The "some of his best friends are Hispanic" defense.

I don't believe I ever called Cubs fans in general racist. I said many of them were hypocritical for loving players like Ron Santo while hating players like Carlos Zambrano.

There's a difference between calling someone a racist and saying that racism colors their opinions. I don't think that David Kaplan thinks to himself "Man, I sure do hate Hispanic people. They are inferior to us white people in every way." He, and others, just let subtle stereotypes infect the way they view players. It's why only white players are scrappy, too.

Some of the media's best friends were non-white.

Press conference coming shortly, reports that Paterno is fired. As he should be.

(when i said "support to the local special olympics programs" i wasn't actually talking about money - they've been instrumental in giving s.o. athletes access to penn state athletes in various sports... usually the s.o. athletes will have at least one practice a year with soccer, tennis, basketball and other psu programs, and athletes who they look up to. every year there is a fund-raiser involving the football team and special olympics, and there's another s.o. fund-raising race that uses beaver stadium as the finish, and gets great attendance because people enjoy running down the tunnel and onto the field. so it's much more a matter of giving their time and access to players/coaches/facilities than anything financial) but in all honesty, everyone, i am sorry that i wrote that, which caused something to break in kyle's brain and only read one can see how someone with this level of reading comprehension and rational thought ends up reporting for the williston daily herald. anyway, just wanted to clarify my position and express my deepest apologies to nsbb. back to your regularly scheduled thread. Yeah, I gotta admit, you said it mockingly, but in the context of this discussion those two statements still look pretty functionally equivalent. I do kinda miss the Herald, maybe I should see if Da Bum is quitting anytime soon. For someone sending passive-aggressive messages about how I'm on his foe list because he doesn't care what I have to say, he seems awfully interested in what I have to say.

Completely fair. The primary use of WAR is to be able to compare the general value of players across different roles and positions. Regarding WAR with a pitcher, you have to wonder how useful offensive WAR is. Last year Dontrelle Willis had a combined WAR that was equivalent of Zambrano, and I sure the hell wouldn't want him in the rotation. Personally I would much rather prefer a pitcher that was good at pitching. I'd take Willis over many of the pitchers who started games for the 2011 Cubs.

Even when that one dimension and 1st base are our two biggest organizational holes? Seems a bit narrow-minded.

I'm sorry. Why don't I float some money to the Special Olympics. Then we can be friends again.

How much money have they donated to Special Olympics?

Even if you give McQueary a pass for what he did that day, he spent the next 9 years knowing what Sandusky was and that he was still surrounding himself with children, and McQueary decided that it wasn't his problem to do anything more about it.

Okay, I'm sold on Maddux. At least until the next candidate has some cool quotes.

Villfying terrible behavior is how we, as a society, change it.

Completely fair. The primary use of WAR is to be able to compare the general value of players across different roles and positions. I'm not going to put you on ignore just because I disagree with you.

Yes, because the alternatives are worse. We're okay with childish antics if they help us win, remember? He helps us win. 1971 Ron Santo was a 2.7 WAR player. 2011 Carlos Zambrano was on pace for right about that when he was booted off the team. Against the lazy, racist Chicago media and hypocritical fans? You betcha.

Even if he pitches exactly as he did in 2011, his worst season, he's still the third-best starting pitcher we have under contract, at worst.

And when things started to turn bad, they were all run out of town and labeled lazy, selfish, and clubhouse cancers. A fate that Ron "Sprewell" Santo, Ryne "Quitter" Sandberg and Mark "Drunky McDrunk" Grace all mysteriously avoided. It's a testament to exactly how big of a jerk Todd Hundley was that he was made honorarily Hispanic.

Todd Hundley was the last white scapegoat in a long line of scapegoats. That's exactly my point. Nobody's saying race is the only factor. I'm simply saying it's a contributing factor. White players get the "scrappy, good clubhouse guy" label a little more quickly, black players get to be "natural athletes" unless they are too crazy like Milton Bradley, and Hispanic players pretty much default to "lazy and selfish" if anything goes wrong with their game.

Then we're in agreement: We can put up with Zambrano, because he can certainly help the Cubs win in 2012.

It's whether the media dislikes you enough to report it, and whether your organization needs someone to blame for their own failures.

I know you're saying it sarcastically, but it's true. Teams (and fans) have a much higher threshold for transgressions when the player is really good. That's why it's not fair to compare Z at this stage of his career to athletes like Jordan. A better comparison would be Terrell Owens. I understand that's why people are giving a pass to their favorite athletes and trying to run Zambrano out of town. I'm simply saying that's a terrible, hypocritical reason.

1971, Cubs are on a little bit of a surge at 70-60 but still six games out and don't look like they have much of a chance. The players and managers are going to have a "clear the air" meeting. Durocher and Santo never got along. Durocher was a jerk and Santo was basically Zambrano: Emotional, prone to outbursts, etc. Santo had "Ron Santo Day" coming up, and Durocher was getting on him about it, saying it wasn't something the team needed right now when they should be focusing on baseball or something stupid like that. They got into an argument, it escalated, Santo attacked Durocher, choked him and had to be pulled off him.