Quincy

I don't think it's clear sailing for Boston, at least at the moment. That could change over the winter of course. But right now? VMart is a terrible defensive catcher, Ortiz & Drew are hitting the age of decline, though maybe there's enough in them yet. What's up with the OF? Beltre is a FA, and despite his terrific history his past performance suggests even if they re-sign him it's not guaranteed he'll have a similar season. It's practically 50/50 that between Beckett & Lackey one will underperform relative to the contract. Buchholz's great leap forward may not be repeated based on the more esoteric Ginsu stats. Dice K? Ugh. And then there's that closer problem. And while ownership is confident about their big soccer acquisition, if I was a worrywart I'd be concerned about that being a distraction. Nope, Baltimore all the way. They just have to fire Buck so the next guy can take the team to the title. That's worked 3 out 3 times, though there was a delay in Texas.

It's going to be interesting to see if they'll put Vlad in RF as he did play a few games there this year. If they don't they have one hell of PH in the late innings. If they do play him in the OF (or at least try it) he'll probably get in 3-4 plate appearances before pulling him for defense. As both Lee & CJ are lefties it favors playing him in RF, although some of the Giants are good at hitting it the other way. On the other hand Lee is so dominant I'd be tempted to go with a better glove in right.

The Astro-White Sox matchup was a bit like this in that it had been a very long time vs. never. And if we're just considering cities here, then never times two. Actually it's 17 including a dead franchise. But without a doubt baseball has had a wider variety in the World Series in the past 10 years.

On the other hand at least you get a chance to play for the title with less than the best record. The 2000 Yankees had the 5th record yet made the playoffs and won the title over the Mets. In the pre-wild card days there have been clubs that played .600 ball and never got a chance as there was one team that was better. Though I'm not sure which side I fall on. In a short series anything can happen. However it's also damn hard to win the season year after year with no "back door" to the World Series.

The Yankee wealth has almost always been dominant factor in baseball. "Home Run" Baker (back when hitting a dozen earned you the nickname) sat out the 1915 season over a pay dispute. The Yanks came in and paid the A's $25k for the rights to the big shot power hitter, then paid him the staggering amount $24k for 3 years. In other words, they've done the ARod thing before. The Red Sox couldn't afford Babe Ruth's salary demands (he wanted 20k, double what he had been earning) and the Yankees offered 125K, some interest bearing notes and a 300k loan for him. No other club offered anything in that ballpark. While player movement wasn't the same back then, the resources of the Yankees made it possible for them to sign young talent and buy talent from poorer teams 80 years ago much like they do today. After all, the Broadway play isn't called Damn Those Recently Rich & Powerful Yankees. Btw, as noted before, I am not a Yankee hater (sorry Matthew & Dan). I have far more admiration for an organization that tries to field a winner than whatever they've been doing in Pittsburgh, KC and so on. Also, so the M's spent around $860k per loss.

As it was w/ Ruth, Gehrig...

Wooooooooooo hoooooooo, congrats Ranger fans! What an amazing past 10 years for fresh franchises in the World Series. Only 2 teams that haven't been there are the Nats & Mariners. Maybe next year we can take care of both and get them in.

Better to have young Elvis than Fat Elvis (Bergman) at this point. I'm listening to Ranger radio - they're just a wee bit excited.

Happy birthday in (((((STEREO))))) !

Google honors Dizzy. You can go to the Google search page on Thursday Oct 21 to see it. Otherwise use the link above to see what it looked like.

Not all players go for the most money though. Mauer, Tony Gwynn, Puckett are (or were) a few examples where each could have gotten even more money elsewhere. Back to "going for the money", I wonder if now that's harder to earn a high return on investments if the no income tax states will start attracting/retaining more talent at the expense of New York teams. With the amount of money being discussed for Lee he ends w/ with roughly another 2 million in his pocket per year if the contract is equal and the paycheck is from Texas instead of NY. Actually more than that, as that's just the state income tax difference. The more financially astute players realize it's not another 2 million this year, but another 15 (or more) million in 30 years that that amount amounts to.

Afternoon baseball. Well, if you're on the left coast at least. It's looking like SF should get to work on making a Cody Ross statue.

Yup, I didn't figure that out until after I posted. As the trading copy of the 24th did have a cut or 2 I thought perhaps it was missing a Dew. I'm all for altering reality if it means you get a "Morning Dew." Florida did alright w/ good ole Grateful Dead. Although they were skipped in '72 you have this show, Dick's Pick 1 from '73, the Jai Alai shows from '74 (a nice section from 6/23 on the So Many Roads box), plus the May '77 shows that were DP'd. Not bad at all for a place that doesn't have Fillmore or Spectrum in the name!

I have the 24th and everything around "The Eleven" is everything you want out of '69 Dead. And an "Alligator" played in Florida? Oh yes. I've had my copy for about 10 years and it doesn't have the "Dew". Not sure if later circulating copies added that or not, but that's a pretty major omission! I've never heard the 23rd (disc 1 of this set) but a "Dark Star" w/ all the goods...yup, good stuff. I think I just heard jazzbo & the Orchid Dr. click "place order."

Don't listen to this man. He knows nothing. Given the way they lost it sure looked like the series could be over though. However it reminds me of another Texas team in the playoffs a few years ago. After Pujols hit that monster off of Lidge (has the ball come down yet?) there was a lot of talk about how the Cards would surely win the series as it was such a crushing defeat. Nope, Houston won the next day.

Regarding "no terrific album" in 40 years the same could be said of Sonny Rollins. But both the Stones & Rollins did so much in their prime that it's tough for me to call either overrated. But we all have different ways of using the word, so I can understand how one would say that. For the record I love side 2 of Tattoo You, and there's some late Rollins I like too lest a certain Texan is reading this thread, as he was helpful in picking latter Sonny. Also unless you're really old school w/ the Stones, I think there's a bit of rounding up on the 40 number (w/ respect to the album mentioned in the thread.) Although some do consider Exile loaded w/ filler that's some of my favorite stuff. Funny, I haven't had the urge to play the bonus disc since the week I bought it. Oh well.

His middle name is Warren. It was good to hear his better known middle name again though. I was listening to the Ranger audio (Game 1) and they were starting to count the outs. We had some video entertainment on tap and right after Gardner slid into 1st I was asked to guess when we'd get to that. I swear I could just sense the danger and so I said "The Rangers are up by 5 in the 8th but the Yanks just got a runner on that they probably shouldn't have. The way the Yankee lineup is that might get them going, so it's whether they just tie this inning or go ahead." But then I threw in that such a comeback seemed cartoonish. But soon enough I relayed the scoring to the back of the house. Man, you just can't give that lineup an extra strike even. Once the bottom of the 9th rolled around I was asked again for an ETA, and all I said was "Mariano." I did add "He's older now, but..." She knew we'd be watching our DVD in no more than 7 minutes.

Sorry, I wasn't clear. There's been some sports radio talk that they should pitch in Game 3 vs. Lee since everyone is convinced the game might as well not even be played since Lee always wins. I'm not becoming a soccer fan.

Yes, Chuck is living in a 200 room mansion with butlers and maids attending to his every whim solely based on the millions of dollars he rakes in by releasing atonal avant-garde experimental jazz.. Oh come on, I don't think an emoticon was necessary to see that was a joke. At least I laughed. It's funny how with Ellington there's never any of the concern of rebuying music even if 80% of the content is already owned due to compilation overlap. (Maybe we're too busy with the joy of figuring the mess out to complain.) And god help you if you're interested in some rock reissue as that's always "nostalgia" which Chuck likes to remind people in such threads when he does a drop by. The Bitches Brew re-re-re-re-re-release wasn't even on my radar as I assumed Columbia was milking the turkey again with a straight release plus another "Little Blue Frog" until people started mentioning how great the DVD is. I have a lot of new interests (though not many are jazz) so I'm not sure when or if I'll get around to buying BB for a 3rd time (which puts it on a short list of multiple purchase titles), but it's something that I still play occasionally & is important to me, and damn it, it's likely because of the dreaded n-word (nostalgia).

anyone else share my enthusiasm? Oh I do! It's just not easy to describe why without getting into trouble.

I like the goofy logic of throwing A.J. vs. Lee for game 3. After all, Cliff Lee is going to win anyway so you might as well lose 12-0. Of course the problem is that then you'd have to throw Hughes or Pettite a day early.

And another good job by the Stones at keeping Wyman out of the picture. For 'merkins Best Buy is selling the blu-ray for a penny under $10. I'll be replacing my mono bootleg fairly soon.

Actually I have been, though majority has been rock. I also said "might." The DVD included is newer than the upcoming Ellington Mosaic will be for me.

While the sample size for the most part is small, most of the Yanks have had better success vs. Cliff Lee than C.J. Wilson for what it's worth. Jeets is 15 for 36 vs. Lee, Teix 10 for 30, and ARod slugs close to .600 in 22 AB. Bernie hit him great too, though that was some time ago. Few of the Rangers have done well vs. the 4 Yankee starters. However, these are small numbers over time at that. Big Al hasn't dropped by, but lest we forget there's now a Teix vs. Texas thing happening.

I might cave as well. I can get credit for my old copy, and "Feio" never did a thing for me so I'd be better off without that track in my life. I do have vinyl to hear the original mix though sadly it has loads of surface noise.