MrRain422

i miss baseball

I was under the impression that with the shuffle, you couldn't really select what song you wanted to hear. I think your only options are to play everything in order, or to play everything on shuffle.

I'm a big fan of John Frusciante. I haven't heard all of them, but here's how I rank the ones I have: To Record Only Water for Ten Days Niandra LaDes and Usually Just a T-Shirt Shadows Collide With People Curtains Smile from the Streets That You Hold (sort of crappy) He's one of my favorite guitar players out there, but the guitar skills often don't get a big work out in the solo work. His songwriting is usually pretty solid though, and at times he's very willing to experiment. His singing has improved a lot over the last few years too, IMO.

I agree with the sentiment of the joke, but yeah, stuff like that doesn't have a place in anonymous AP stories. If it's got a by-line, fine.

I didn't post that because of the Hall of Fame discussion here, just because it seemed like pretty big news for this point in the off-season where not much else is really happening. Everyone already knows that he did steroids anyway -- he admitted it in his grand jury testimony (although including the laughable claim that he didn't know that he was using steroids). It's sort of fun that this failed drug test was last season though, long after the steroid stuff had already blown up. And unlike the steroid use, this is after baseball had rules in place banning amphetimines. No, it doesn't r

The Veterans Committee often looks at guys that they played with who they thought deserve more recognition than they've received. Often it's a reward for playing on a good team, even if they weren't great players themselves. By the way, for those who are interested, Bill James's book What Happened to the Hall of Fame is a pretty excellent look at all of the different arguments that are often made for certain players, how standards for the Hall of Fame have changed over the years, etc.

Alan Branch is officially leaving so my boys probably won't really be quite so high as #3. I'm curious to see just how good they turn out. They really only played one bad game this year (unfortunately it was the Rose Bowl, and it was really bad). But they're losing so many important guys on a defense that was pretty awesome for most of the year. Almost everyone important is coming back on offense though. #3 is a little bit too high with Branch leaving, but they'll probably still be at like #5 or #6 at season's start.

I can't see any reason other than his personality for Belle to be that far off the voter's radar. At his peak, he was better than Jim Rice ever was. Not to say that Belle should have been a slam dunk for the Hall, but he's certainly close enough that I would have expected him to at least get enough votes to not get dropped from the ballot. There's maybe a bit of a steroid taint to him as well (not as much circumstancial evidence as McGwire, but he played at the right time, was a total beast with the bat, and his behavior may suggest 'roid rage to some). Looking purely at how well he played

That's crazy.

But Ripken was a shortstop while Rice was an outfielder/occasional DH.

He said that pre-Jeter I think.

Or he might say, "Hey Dante, I voted for you." Don't get me wrong, I think most of the writers who get to vote are idiots. I just don't think that that's why they're voting for such obviously marginal players.

I think that a lot of reporters put votes in for players that were nice to them, just because they were nice to them. Not because they think that they deserve it, but just as a thank you for not being a dick. I think they probably wouldn't do it if they thought that there were enough people doing it to actually elect the guy. Just a token vote.

Yeah, All-Star appearances reflect popularity a whole lot more than how good he was. That being said, Ripken is certainly deserving. As for those that didn't vote for him and Gwynn, I read an article yesterday from a writer who said he was not voting for them because he felt that if Ruth, Mays, etc. didn't get 100% of the vote, then those two don't deserve it. Pretty stupid reasoning, if you ask me. Basically, he decided not to vote for Ripken and Gwynn because some other dudes decided not to vote for Ruth or Mays several decades ago. Makes no sense. I don't think any of those guys rea

Alright, here's how the 8-team playoff system should work: The first round can be part of the regular season. This year they expanded the schedule anyway. So instead of a patsy non-conference game, make that extra game the first round of the playoffs. Round two would be the regular BCS bowls. Two games as play-ins to the championship game, and two as consolation games (with a rotation between them for which games are play-ins and which are consolation games). Not only would the bowls not become meaningless in this scenerio, but they could in fact became even more valuable to the sponse

Tubby is his given name? Wow. I could see why he goes by the middle name. I hope that he wasn't overweight as a kid or I would imagine he would probably have been completely terrorized.

I like how he moved to Detroit to try to be like Eminem. It's not as though Detroit has a really bustling scene that is on the cutting edge of rap. They had one guy break out (with some help from some big name West Coast rappers--why not move out there and try to track down Dre if he's trying to emulate Eminem?). Why does this guy think that moving to Detroit is going to help him? Anyway, thanks for posting this. Hilarious.

Wow, I had no idea Owen had become that common. He was born in 2003, so I guess he's sort of part of a mini-trend.

There are some people in my family with some older names that aren't as common anymore (my parents are Barry and Rhonda, grandparents on my dad's side are Julius and Celia, and my mother's parents were Estelle and Max), but nothing really strange, other than my little cousin named Karsyn, which wouldn't be such a strange name if not for the creative spelling. Her brother is named Owen, which I guess probably isn't very common anymore either, but I've never really thought of it as being strange or anything.

Barbara too

Is Ellen an unusual name?

whoa

That was a pretty horrible game. I watched until half way through the third quarter but then I couldn't take it anymore. I didn't even really care who won, but that was just bad football.