bobbob1313

first taste of the new Hold Steady record!

 

listen to Hurricane J:

 

http://pitchfork.com/news/38234-premiere-hold-steady-hurricane-j/

 

it's pretty kickass

A lot of "Stay Positive" on that, but somehow more subdued.

Bob.....I will be in red DBT shirt...come say hi to me....love to meet you....I will be in line early...how bout you.

 

Hal

I'll keep an eye out for you.

Planning on leaving school at around 6:30, so that means I should be in line at least 15 minutes before doors open. Hope that gives me enough time.

which reminds me, I need to quit procrastinating and finish my work so I can leave at 6:30

Bobbob -- or anyone -- looking forward to seeing the setlists, to begin picking it apart for clues of what to expect for Savannah!

I was originally planning on going up to Savannah, but once Paul McCartney announced his tour date here I had to cancel. Priorities, you know?

I'll make sure to try to do the setlist, though I'm sure knowing my wife, she'll get tired of me going to my phone after every song so maybe not.

I'm really excited, given that it's the first night of the tour. Anything could happen, I expect some real surprises.

Apparently only 100 tickets left for this. They showed the poster on facebook, pretty cool looking, might try to grab one.

I'll be there, got my tickets a while back and just picked up an extra pair from the student radio station here for a couple of friends.

Suites, what time are you expecting to get down there to get a good spot for the pit? I'll be at FIU, so I'm planning on leaving there around 6 or so.

Top Ten Requests for Monday Mar 22, 2010 The Fillmore - Miami Beach, Miami Beach - FL

California Stars

Remember the Mountain Bed

Handshake Drugs

Monday

Everlasting Everything

Cars Can't Escape

Heavy Metal Drummer

Poor Places

Pot Kettle Black

She's A Jar

I'd be fine with all of those, but why are people requesting "Handshake Drugs" or "Heavy Metal Drummer"? Aren't they pretty much guaranteed to play those songs?

I requested "It's Just That Simple", since it was my wife and I's first dance at our wedding and she's seeing Wilco for the first time.

He reminds me of a bigger, more athletic version of Cliff Floyd.

Yeah, that swing set up is a lot like him. He hits everything hard, and he is just gigantic. He was standing next to the Marlins 1B, a guy who is pretty big himself, and he just dwarfed him.

I'm loving how much spring training baseball MLB Network has been showing.

My illicit love affair with Jason Heyward has really blossomed thanks to MLBN.

Well, when you've got the chance to pay Todd Helton 25.5 million dollars for his age 36-40 seasons (not to mention another 10 million for 10 years after that), you've got to do it.

My question was more to do with how does MLB split the revenue from those types of TV deals?

If the Yankees pocket every dollar from YES, then that's an obvious place to look for revenue sharing changes. The Yankees don't make a dime if they don't play anyone, so there's an argument to be made that the money the Yankees receive from YES should be split up. Yankees keep 50 cents of every dollar, the rest goes into a pool for the rest of baseball. I'm pretty sure that's how ticket sales are handled and merchandise, so I don't think it's that radical.

I think any potential changes should avoid changing the actual game on the field too dramatically. Personally, I don't think the competitive balance problems are that big, I think they are natural and expected. Any changes to "fix" competitive balance should not be focused on the field, but off.

If I were to suggest some on field solutions, they'd be along the lines of shortening the amount of time between pitches, changing the amount of times a coach or manager can go to the mound, limiting pitching substitutions that slow the game down. Those types of things have more to do with the play on the field, but they are smaller and you would almost not notice them.

I would also be down with Bill James' suggestion to increase the size of bat handles. This would, theoretically solve two issues, by lowering strikeouts (larger bat handle is going to naturally promote bat control) and limiting broken bats, which have been a problem recently.

Any moves to increase the size of the strike zone or change the mound are, in my opinion, using a hatchet to fix something that only needs a scalpel.

And what do you do when the fans completely abandon that team and they have no resources to rebuild?

MLB has neither. There is the luxury tax, though, that goes to the league. The NYY basically fund the entire thing.

I think a floor is needed if there's to be a cap, though. I've heard it referred to as a payroll zone, rather than a cap, where teams have to spend within the zone. It'd pull the bottomfeeders /teams who don't spend/fans don't care about them up a bit and put a clamp on the teams that aren't afraid to spend and who's fans support them.

I have a couple of thoughts on the salary cap/salary floor:

1. As much as I dislike the ability of the Red Sox and Yankees and them to outspend everyone, I don't favor a salary cap. I hear people complain all of the time about small market teams just pocketing money, and now we're going to force big market teams to pocket revenues. It isn't the Yankees' and Red Sox's faults that they can afford big payrolls, they shouldn't be penalized for being well run and popular enough to afford what they can spend.

2. A salary floor is just going to force teams to never be able to rebuild fully. If the Pirates are rebuilding right now, isn't that their perogative? Why should they have to throw bad money at mediocre players that are going to stand in the way of rebuilding? That's all a salary floor is going to do. It's not going to make the Pirates start being able to spend with the Yankees, it's just going to limit their payroll flexibility.

Or, what if you are a team like the Marlins and you outspent yourself for 3 years to try to satiate a fan base and city following a World Series title, and you've got to cut salary for a few years to get back into the positive and be able to save up the capital to afford your part of a stadium deal? As a Marlins fan, it's frustrating that they've had holes that could have been easily filled for $8 mil, but I have to look at it big picture. This is setting the franchise up long term better. If MLB was forcing them to spend, they'd be in much worse shape overall.

I don't think what we have is perfect, but mandating spending is not the answer. I'm always amazed when fans of small market teams advocate for salary floors and caps. I don't think people realize that it probably won't get a very long way towards changing things unless we start having soft contracts like the NFL, where players can be cut for a fraction of what they are owed. Baseball has a lot of checks and balances in place right now that people don't necessarily understand.

I'd like to know how revenue from the big YES and MESN type of networks works. If anything, I would think that is a place to look into making some changes. The Yankees aren't able to spend 200 mil a year because of ticket sales. It's not just fan support that makes those payrolls possible. But the Yankees don't make any money if they don't play anyone so their value is not derived solely from them. Do they pocket every dollar made from a TV deal? If so, that's an obvious place to look for change.

I've read the original book, it's one of my favorite books (gets right into my nerdy sports wheelhouse).

Michael Oher did not really know how to play football when he got to the school. He had played before, but he had actually played basketball more. He wanted to be Michael Jordan. I'm not sure how the film portrays it, but he was not a blocking machine when she found him. He was a really raw player who dominated high school players because of his sheer size and natural quickness and strength.

He was only a 4 star recruit coming out of high school because he was so raw at LT. He played more defensive tackle as a junior, I believe.

So am I to take this as the final triumph of art over commercialism, or is everyone on my facebook list overreacting?

About A Boy.

How dare he

Yours.

Life and Times of Tim is hysterical.

I think I'm going to be going to the Marlins-Sox spring training game sometime in March. Any messages you guys want relayed?

Gotta appreciate a band that puts out an album in 04, 05, 06 and 08 and doesn't release a clunker among them. Just a good old fashioned rock and roll band without any bullshit. Fantastic.

So, I believe the only way the Cavs don't win the title this year (especially now with Jamison) is if they shoot themselves in the foot. Granted, I think I said this last year, and look where I got.

the lakers are still stacked.

And, of course, the peanut gallery in the comments sections of all the online sources have already labeled this the first terrorist act associated with Tea Partiers.

a tea party person I know blamed it on "the communists".

Rolling Stone's political coverage is fucking awful.

Everyone as in: everyone in the front office, or does this include fans, too?

 

Man, Antonetti turned down the Cardinals GM gig last time it was up! You know the fix is on when a job like that is refused.

Front office. They have all of their baseball people locked up until 2015.

The Indians announced that after this season they will promote GM Mark Shapiro to president and they will promote assisant GM Chris Antonetti to GM.

the marlins did this so they could keep everyone happy.