Dan Gould

Man the Gryce and the Brian Lynch are looking mighty appealing right now. If they'd only show up the end of August, I could wait to get them as birthday or anniversary presents. Its going to be a challenge to keep my wallet in my pocket for the next six weeks.

Would be very sad if true, one of the last connections to the Count.

Did I actually miss this one on the site-that-shall-not-be-named?

I really want to get this one soon, hearing good things about it and enjoying Brian's work for years. We'll see if I can wait for my birthday/anniversary in September or will break down and get it for myself sooner.

No. Your initial instincts were closer.

Interesting comments from Jeff and Thom, I thank them and look forward to their reactions when I do the reveal on Sunday the 31st. Perhaps Joe will come along and in one fell swoop name everything that others have missed.

Me? I jinxed? By mentioning the unlikeliness of Lackey beating Felix? All I can say is that by putting off the inevitable win we've only made it more likely that M's win at least one, and maybe two in NY. So on to NY indeed! And speaking of NY, I watched the end of that game yesterday and thought to myself 'the only way this MF is going to avoid losing this lead is if someone hits one really hard but right at someone' and an instant later came the lineout/DP for the ballgame. Talk about a jinx - that's a fucking jinx!

:party:

Maybe that was why I instinctively filed it under James Clay right at the start - I anticipated wanting to hear this at sometime in the future but never think to look under Marable's name. I've not had filing-related heart attacks but I have gone nuts trying to remember certain unrelated two-fers some trade partners hit me with in the past. That's a real hard filing question and inevitably you either want to hear the second set and can't find it, or end up looking to buy it because you don't even remember that you had it in the first place. And of course I never considered the obvious solution: If the sets are so different, make separate burns yourself.

Well Yankee fans may enjoy the whooping they are giving the A's but don't you have to be worried about Hughes, who was given 14 runs and couldn't last long enough to earn the win? I'm sure you figured him to be improving on his third start since his return but this made his ERA take another leap upward. Ugly. And baseball is a helluva game when Lackey actually does outpitch King Felix, a nail-biter until the seventh when the bats came alive as Hernandez tired, then the bullpen blew it up further.

Imagine how Yankee and/or Red Sox fans will feel if somehow Farnsworth is the closer on the AL Champions.

I'd rather be batboy. You're in even closer to the action, and you get to slap hands with the players when they score or hit a homer. And you don't get on Youtube or SportsCenter because you couldn't hold down the tarp in a typhoon. Clubhouse attendant would have its advantages and disadvantages. You're hanging around the clubhouse but also picking up disgusting jocks, etc. And I'm sure you get the pleasure of catering to the whims of those players who are world-class a-holes to the hired help. If you like being a gopher you're helping out your favorite players but overall I would think the coin is pretty good. In the visitor's clubhouse each player is supposed to tip the attendant(s) so you're getting that nice bonus about 25 times a season and I would think that if you work on the home clubhouse you get a real nice tip at the end of the year from a lot of people.

I'd rather talk about the wonders of baseball - like Sabathia getting beat by the Rays when I was certain the Sox lead would be cut to one game last night. Now could unlikely outcomes continue and we'll see Lackey beat King Felix tonight? That's got to be less likely than James Shields outdueling Sabathia, but hope springs eternal. Until it doesn't.

An interesting notion. Any grounds for that, or just a hunch? Mostly a supposition based on the fact that perceptions of OBP changed so drastically so recently, so extrapolating backwards, how common was the batting approach to hack at the first good pitch? Obviously the best hitters had high OBPs both because they were selective and because they were pitched-around. But your average major leaguer - did he work a pitcher to get into the soft-underbelly of the bullpen? I don't think so ... Then again, the phrase "a walk is as good as a hit" has existed since time immemorial, so who really knows, right?

Not only were pitch counts not so important, but I would hazard a guess that working counts and getting on-base weren't as important either. Which implies that while "old time" pitchers pitched deeper into games and more often (because of the four-man rotation), its also probably true that they got away with throwing fewer pitches per batter. Makes the innings pitched just slightly less impressive. but only slightly.

:party:

That may be but you lose ten in a row I am just waiting for them to bounce back and take two of three at Fenway. I know you don't see it happening but I figure any team playing that bad has to turn it around and the longer it goes, the more likely it will happen. (and you have my sympathies for having this streak of futility coincide with the longest winning streak of the year by the division leader. How many times does it happen in a decade that a team goes from 2.5 out to 12.5 in the space of ten games?)

Sox go 4 of 6 in Tampa and Baltimore and perhaps with some luck David Price will help them go 2.5 games on the Yankees tonight. That would be nice since they face King Felix on Friday at Fenway. If there's anyone who could make a run or two stand up its him.

Man was I glad when the silly dome helped the Rays steal one from the Yankees. Made the pain and embarrassment of pissing away a game to the Orioles much easier to take.

I must not get out much cause I'd never heard a punchline like it.

You're the only one talking about "disrespect" and no one has a frigging clue where you get it. Its a frigging joke, set up in advance with RRK to riff on his blindness. No one is talkinga bout actual "disrespect". And if you really don't believe the story, you might ask yourself, why or how, 30+ years later, would Jay Leno summon up the name of RRK as the centerpiece of the joke if he hadn't known him and worked with him?

I think in a grossly inflated offensive era that the old "milestone accomplishments" don't mean nearly as much. And in an era of PED use, who is to really say who used and who didn't? Not being named in some report or not being stupid enough to get caught in the 'survey testing' in 2003 doesn't mean you were clean for a decade before.

And let's not forget the prosecution is supposed to be dedicated to revealing the truth of the matter and seeing that justice is done (for example, the defense isn't obligated to turn over incriminating evidence but the prosecution has to turn over exculpatory evidence) and presenting the evidence of internet searching/website visits in the way that they did is an extreme contradiction of their obligation.

I am sure that is true, Ray, but I'm sure Shawn is smart enough to tailor his Voir Dire answers to get himself dismissed. There may be clues given by one attorney or the other regarding what kind of mind-set they want, or you can always fall back on the "I don't trust cops to tell the truth" or "I naturally assume cops tell the truth" testimony to get yourself challenged by one side or the other. Or, there's always the "I don't think I should judge other people" comment.

In the mid-90s when I was living in Tallahassee, Books-A-Million became the first big-box book retailer in that two-college capital city. Then all of a sudden a Borders and a Barnes & Noble opened up, practically side-by-side and less than an eighth of a mile down the road from the Books-A-Million place. I'm almost afraid to look to find out if the Books-A-Million location is still open and the Borders and B&N are now gone.