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"I don't think it's necessarily a coin flip, but the better team doesn't generally win every time, which is as it should be. Some teams are better, but just aren't suited to winning in the post season or just flat out run into a hot team or just don't have a couple of bounces go their way." Others who get paid to, have written exhaustively about this topic (Bill James, among others) and much of what they say makes perfect sense when you stop thinking about baseball like the other sports and take it for the unique game that it is. Some issues to consider: in football, the best team usually w

The issue is which league is better, not the predictive value of the world series winner upon determining which league is better. Any team can win a 7 game series against any other team. Who wins the WS is basically a coin flip and is largely determined by luck.

I guess nobody ever explained the difference between a large and small sample size to you. You think that the fate of two teams from each league in a 7 game series is indicative of which league is better? That's pretty staggeringly ignorant.

It's not about who wins world series -- any team can win a 7 game series over any other team -- but the AL has cleaned the NL's clock in interleague for several years now. The great success that broken-down A.L. pitchers have when they switch leagues is also ample evidence of the pretty wide gap in talent that exists right now between the two leagues.

This year? The National League has been a lot weaker than the A.L. for a number of years now.

"Am I the only one who thinks "Merkin Ball" was their creative peak?" Agreed about the era. I have had most of their albums, at some point, but Vitalogy, No Code and Yield (and MB) were the ones I kept. Vitalogy is my favorite, despite it having two of their worst tracks.

I'm into it quite a bit. My top 10 prog/proggish albums would be: 1. King Crimson – Red 2. Frank Zappa – Hot Rats 3. Genesis – Selling England By the Pound 4. Mahavishnu Orchestra – Inner Mounting Flame 5. Soft Machine -- Third 6. Yes – Close To The Edge 7. Can -- Ege Bamyasi 8. National Health -- Of Cues & Cures 9. King Crimson -- Larks Tongues in Aspic 10. Magma -- Hai/Live

Exactly what I was going to say. There can be great song lyrics that don't look great on paper, because without the context of the music, they lose too much. There can be great poetry that would be terrible as song lyrics. The two things are different. In general, however, musicians tend to be musicians, not writers. It is the rare song indeed that is really well-written, poetry or not poetry.

Here is what I think is a good and fair review of the album. From the Ground and Sky website: "Anybody who was thrilled by the news in late 2004 that experimental guitarist Nels Cline was joining Wilco will inevitably be let down — at least initially — by 2007's Sky Blue Sky, the first Wilco studio album on which Cline has appeared. Spare and direct, minimally produced and often low-key, Sky Blue Sky throws some water on the notion that the band's two previous albums (2002's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and 2004's A Ghost Is Born) plus the subsequent recruitment of Cline portended an imminent st

Today's Ipod shuffle so far: Wu Tang: 7th Chamber, Pt. 2 -- Wu-Tang Clan (Enter The Wu-Tang) Something To Sing -- Lee Konitz (Peacemeal) Soul Letter -- Jon Spencer Blues Explosion (Extra Width) Piano Concerto No. 2: Allegro Molto -- Bartok Smilin' -- Poets Of Rhythm (Discern/Define) Suffocated Love -- Tricky (Maxinquaye) (A Dancing Master Such As) Mr. Confess -- The Mekons (Original Sin) Open Eyes -- Apples In Stereo (New Magnetic Wonder) Christmas Vacation -- Descendants (I Don't Want To Grow Up) Temptation Of Egg -- Giant Sand (Chore of Enchantment) Fight The Power -- Public Enemy (Fear Of

Here's my top 25; self imposed restrictions of no comps, no live albums, and limiting generally to the rock genre and its offshoots (no straight jazz or classical, in other words). 1. Neil Young – Everybody Knows This is Nowhere 2. King Crimson – Red 3. Frank Zappa – Hot Rats 4. Rolling Stones – Exile on Main Street 5. Brian Eno – Another Green World 6. Sonic Youth – Daydream Nation 7. Pavement – Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain 8. Bob Dylan – Highway 61 Revisited 9. Genesis – Selling England By the Pound 10. Frank Zappa – Absolutely Free 11. Mahavishnu Orchestra – Inner Mounting Flame 1

"And if you think Nels is getting "bigger" than Jeff, try going to see him play in any of his non-Wilco projects. Last summer I saw the Singers play to a crowd of 32, including venue employees. This isn't unusual. You're kidding yourself if you think Nels is going to go off and become ridiculously famous after Wilco." I was not suggesting this at all -- NC doesn't play commericially viable music on his own. What I was suggesting is that in the context of Wilco music -- which was JT's long before it was ever NC's -- NC is clearly thrilling audiences and putting very significant creative stam

I apologize if this issue has been raised a bunch of times previously. I did try to search the board previous to making the post, but searching "Nels Cline" yielded results too broad to wade through. "Raving asshat?"

I would have to think that the scripted nature of the performances is JT's call, since Cline was involved with improvisational music for the majority of his pre-Wilco career. Though I admit thinking that at the time that he was an odd choice for the band, considering Cline's musical background, they've definitely made it work. As a live unit, this version of the band is my favorite, even though my favorite Wilco albums are with JB.

Thanks. As for an answer to your first question, there's usually a compelling reason why someone might register and post and, after reading this board for a few weeks without any urge to post anything, I thought of this and wondered what the board consensus was on the matter. As much as I love the band, registering simply to say how awesome the latest show was isn't something I'd probably do (though it was pretty awesome).