cryptique

Thanks. I thought it was 24 months, but evidently not. By the time the test takes place, I'll be about two weeks short of 18 months. Hmmm.

I'm technically still in the contestant pool until summer, but at this point I'm guessing I won't be getting that phone call. I wonder if I can take the test this time, or if I have to wait until the next round to be eligible again?

More cheap toys ... I remember having a series of these: I think at one point I had one that had a plastic propeller on the front that was hooked to a rubber band. You wound the propeller backwards to twist up the rubber band, then let it go.

I forgot about those -- we had those too!

That's the brand of caps I remember. We didn't have a gun that took the roll caps, so we'd take the rolls and beat on them with hammers and stuff.

Don't aim so low. And to hell with those people.

All of these could have been on my list too -- though Maggot Brain was my next Funkadelic acquisition after first being hooked by Standing On The Verge Of Getting It On.

The first album to change my life: Led Zeppelin - Houses of the Holy The next: R.E.M. - Murmur (or possibly Chronic Town) Then: The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Electric Ladyland Followed by: Camper Van Beethoven - Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart Then: Miles Davis - Kind of Blue And finally... Uncle Tupelo - No Depression That takes me up through 1990. I'm not sure anything since then qualifies as life-changing.

I think my main reason for being unthrilled is that this move may prevent them from making other, better moves to shore up the starting staff. I don't think Colon can be relied on to fill a spot in the rotation effectively for a whole season ... or even half a season.

link

Colon returns to the White Sox. Not sure I like this.

Ugh. From The 50 Most Loathsome People in America, 2008:

I'd never seen this nickname before and had to Google to see if this particular sickness is widespread -- it is.

Yeah, these can't be the true Darwins. Too many survivors.

Don't forget The Blisters.

No, they're just catching up. Moore's been in since 2000 (the first year for the sidemen category).

KHAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNN! link

Thanks for the link.

I give you ... the "Slanket" edit: D. Banda beat me to it.

Rice may have been the catalyst for the argument, but I posed the hypothetical fielding example to talk about these statistics, not about Rice.

That's kinda been my point all along. Better than...? Personally, I just don't see the point. This kind of stuff is fine for people in the front office, I suppose, but now that the fans have grabbed hold of it, it's taken on a life of its own, and it's used as a club in threads like this one to beat down anyone who dares to question the sabermetric orthodoxy. Which is why I've likened it to a cult.

Wow. Somebody needs to get a life. But seriously, this all sounds very fancy, but it's an example of where the subjective human factor is introduced into these statistics. Sorry, but I don't care how carefully they construct their methodology -- this is still going to be a statistic based on subjective human judgment and not on objective reality, and they still can't account for every variable. "20 feet to the right of the normal shortstop position"? What about the speed of the batted ball? What about whether the fielder also had to think about covering second base? What about the light l

That's beside the point. All I'm doing is arguing that these vaunted statistics aren't the complete and final story. I'm not comparing them to simple "errors" or "fielding percentage" stats. Also: MattZ, you said pretty much what I was going to about the double play thing, thanks.

I did that for a group I started in high school. We were an a cappella group called The Acetones.