Hairyducked Idiot

You are right. There is *way* more pressure in the minor leagues. The difference between performing in the playoffs and not is the way a few fans and writers think of you for a few years until you are retired and they all forget. The difference between performing in Ranch Cucamonga and not changes the path of your entire life.

Go ask some athletes their opinion. Should you ever actually meet one, you'll learn why your stance is ridiculous. Derrek Lee was born in Sacramento, California. I don't know his background, but presumably he grew up playing baseball and other sports. He was pretty good at baseball, and as time wore on the accolades starting piling up. Scouts came around. Now there's a chance that he could actually play professional baseball for a living, but he has to perform well in front of them. If he doesn't, he goes to college on some mediocre athletic scholarship and goes off to be a high-school gym teacher for $50k/year for the rest of his life? That pressure he handles just fine. He gets his signing bonus, which is nice but probably runs out pretty fast. After a decent but not spectacular rookie ball season, he's 19 and in Ranch Cucamonga of the Cal League. If he doesn't perform well this season, he's on his way to bust status really fast. If he does, he's still on the major-league tract and might make millions of dollar some day, revolutionizing life for his children and family for generations. That pressure he handles just fine. In 1997 and 1998 with the Padres and Marlins, he's got to prove he can hit big-league pitching, all while learning to live the big-league lifestyle, which is incredibly stressful. If he doesn't hit, he's going to get labeled a AAAA player and spend the rest of his life bouncing around the minors and watching people around him live the dream he's not quite good enough to reach. He handles that pressure just fine. In 2003, he's an established big-league player. But now he's in the playoffs. He's got national TV, the chance to move on in the postseason and live every player's dream. He knows reputations are made in the playoffs that are hard to push away. He handles that pressure just fine. Later in 2003, he's in the World Series now. He's playing in Yankee Freaking Stadium for Game 1 of the World Series in New York City, the Media Capital of the World. He handles that pressure just fine and goes 1-for-4 in game 1. Now it's 2007, and he recently signed a deal with the Cubs. His team rallied from a dismal season to win a cheap division title, and now they face another division winner with five more wins. He's got a World Series ring and has played in three postseason series to this point. But get this, the fans he performs in front of really, really want his team to win, unlike all the other times he's played in front of fans. And the media has asked a few questions that imply they might not win. Oh noes, the pressure is too much now! He can't handle it!

Yes. Have anything that proves otherwise?

Ha, that's not what I said at all, but okay. Of course every team deals with that stuff, just not on the level of the Cubs. And I never said anything about the booing costing them anything. It was just an example of the panic mentality that surrounds this team when the playoffs start. You know exactly what I meant, you just are being obnoxious. So let me get this straight. You don't think the Cubs have extra pressure on them in the postseason, and you don't think they choked at all in the past 2 seasons. Are those 2 statements correct? If either of them are, you're not at all worth talking to. They are human beings. I'm sorry that not everything can be computed and figured out on paper. The first statement is absolutely correct. The Cubs players have absolutely no more pressure on them to win than any other teams. The only way you could assume they have more is if you believe that being asked a few questions by the media constitutes "pressure" or that players care, even a tiny little bit, what fans think and feel. This is pure fan-induced myopia here. You are a Cubs fan, so you are seeing things from the perspective of a Cubs fan and assuming that station has much more importance than it does. The second statement, I guess, depends on your definitions of 'choke.' I don't believe pressure was in any way the reason they lost.

Oh no, the players might get booed and asked a few questions? That *never* happens outside of Chicago. Of course, the booing theory doesn't explain why they lost on the road. I again maintain that you have never, in your life, met an athlete. That's the only possible explanation for why you so severely misunderstand what motivates them.

Pressure induced by Cubs-fan-specific desire tow in? Absolutely not. Not even a little. You vastly overestimate: 1) How much players care about fans. 2) How different Cubs fans are from other fans.

I'm telling you that you are absolutely, positively, 100% delusional on this subject if you think that athletes give one whit of care how much the fans want the team to win.

Are you really going to pretend that Cubs fans are anywhere close to the most pressure-inducing fans in baseball? I suspect anyone who would argue that fans put more pressure on the athletes than their own self-interests has never, in their entire life, actually met an athlete.

So your theory is: Play in high school and know scouts are in the stands? No problem. Play in minor leagues knowing your future as a ballplayer is on the line each and every season? No problem. Break into the big leagues, knowing that rookies need to perform immediately or get labeled "AAAA," No problem. Play for a team whose fans really want to win? Oh no, too much pressure!

grand slam or he's losing it.

One of the great/awful things about human cognitive biases is that they give us a blind spot for our cognitive biases.

I don't think we really know who the PTBNL was, for one.

Well it also wouldn't hurt or cost anything for you to write Jessica Alba and ask her to go out with you. So why not go for it? You could meet her at a dance and be like all "Wanna dance?" as a joke and then she'd be like "Sure."

I'd like to know that, too. I can understand 4 and 3, but not 2 and 4. It's absolutely impossible to make an MLB schedule that makes any real sense. The math just doesn't add up.

Unfortunately, the "two wrongs made a right" defense is rarely known to sway judges.

FYP

The nice thing about being jaded is that it no longer bothers you when your favorite athletes turn out to do jerky things. Data point no. 385,252 in the "Athletes are not generally good people" file. Moving on...

This is an obvious setup for a larger move down the road!

If the Blue Jays aren't idiots, they will simply let the White Sox (assuming that's who claimed him) have him. Now that they've made a waiver claim, they are stuck with him and his awful contract if the Blue Jays say "ok."

The Peavy deal was awful and will hurt them long-term.

Orton didn't have Rex's arm strength. If you have certain natural talents, everybody assumes it's some moral failing if you are bad. Sort of like how people assume that a pitcher who throws hard but has no control must be mentally weak, as if control wasn't a natural ability too.

There's no way I don't pitch Rich Harden game 1 if he keeps pitching like he has his last 5 starts. If Harden is healthy and rested he's the best pitcher we have, and one of the best in baseball. The strikeouts have been there, but he's still giving up too many HRs and his BABIP looks a little lucky in that stretch. I'm still iffy on him being "back."

I'm still saying Wood's "Slurve" was a slider.

If I had to make that decision today, I guess I do drop Dempster (assuming Lilly was healthy). but danged if I'm not very, very iffy on what Harden and Wells will do in the next month and a half.

Especially at the Oval, where this Ashes rivalry started in 1882. This is still one of the coolest stories in sports. Even people who can't get into the game have to appreciate this. In 1882, when international test cricket was still fairly young, Australia were playing England at The Oval (in England) and won a spectacular match that no one thought they could win. Sports journalism and English sports fans being what they are, this caused much crying and wailing, culminating in this appearing in a publication called The Sporting News, in the style of an obituary from the time: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/DeathofEnglishCricket.jpg When England were due to tour Australia the next summer, the English captain promised to go down there and "recover those ashes." The idea grew from there, and now whichever teams wins the biannual series is said to "hold the Ashes."