Dan Gould

I don't get it - instant label-specific-collection box sets? The price seems right on a per-disc basis but who is the target audience? Hard to see someone being that much of a fan but not already having some portion of the set already.

You and me both, buddy. Right now the most exciting thing about the season is watching Jed Lowrie treat major league pitching like its slow-pitch softball. He did very well last year when he was finally over his mono and he's picked up right where he left off. I wonder if in the future they'll get him ABs as a backup outfielder. His bat is so solid but I am not sure he is a starter anywhere. I was so excited by his 2008 season, its nice to see him healthy and making good on the promise he showed then (which he did entirely with the broken wrist that led to his missing 2010 entirely). There are a lot of bats that have to pick up for them to get out of the hole they dug - Crawford (and Salty) being the most obvious but A-Gon, Ellsbury and Youk have also struggled most of the time, with Ellsbury and Youk showing glimpses that the struggles may end.

How many home wins is that? I don't know the record for home wins at the start of a season but I suspect its more than 9 or 10 games. Meanwhile, some may say the Red Sox are on the way out of their depths but I retain my doubts, even as I was amazed that Matsuzaka could pitch as well or efficiently as he did on Monday. OTOH, Pete Abraham points out that they are 4.5 games out with 147 to play so they only need to pick up one game every 37 games they should be OK. I'm not sure they can do it frankly but this West Coast road trip is pretty important. Stay hot and they might wipe out a lot of bad mojo. Bats slump in Oakland - look out below.

Has the Eddie Costa Memorial Concert been out on disc before? Not new to me, just wondering ...

D'Oh!

An exceptionally questionable assertion. But not nearly as ludicrous as this one when we simply remember that bebop was a music of alto sax and trumpet, and from the start, the horns soloed first almost always. On the other hand, maybe Bird and Diz thought their pianists couldn't match their "expressive level" and told them to fuck off, you don't get to ruin the song by soloing before we do. I'm not even a fan of the style but I thought it was understood that early free jazz played without pianists simply to open up the music and give the soloists more freedom instead of trying to interact with a pianist comping behind him and keeping the structure of the song out front. Single most ludicrous statement yet. edit to elaborate: Seriously, you think people listen to horn solos and think "this is pretty good music" and then get to a boring, technically unimpressive and emotionally neutered piano solo and say "this music sucks - I was wrong, I hate jazz!" I stand corrected. Please name some "top jazz" pianists from the previous decades who "no longer play that way". Because I can name dozens who are both top jazz pianists and who also play in that same technically limited, emotionally unexpressive style.

Perhaps because of the additional comment from the original post by Mr. Ayers: And I further note that he hasn't returned to his thread crap to in anyway defend his attack on bebop piano solos. The hallmark of a troll, or at least trollish behavior, I believe.

"Simple single note doodles" is enough of a (ridiculous) value statement for me.

I'm terribly sorry Joe I read an extra "before" before the before in "Before the Devil Knows Your Dead". Don't know I'd call it the work of a 22 year old, I thought it was the work of a guy at the top of his game. After the movie I didn't really think it was that depressing so much as "how the hell did two decent parents end up with such rotten sons?"

Are those the hallmarks of a 22-year old filmmaker? And what was the film anyway? Very recently I got the Before the Devil Knows You're Dead DVD, super cheap at Big Lots. Like $4, and part of a two-DVD package with some really awful B-movie included. A tremendous final effort for a tremendously talented filmmaker.

I think there was another, similar-aged release on Everest, with the same group or nearly the same (after deducing what the names actually are). Not bad sound for a boot. Pretty sure I posted about it, I sold one or both to David Weiss if I recall correctly, in my great unloading a couple of years ago.

It's a little surprising, although maybe not, that Goodspeak misunderstands this. Pretty basic. Not being privy to the court documents, all I have to go by is the media sources I checked. All of which used the term "acquit". You have some court documents with difinitive wording to the contrary then let's have it. Otherwise, this just a word game. From NPR: "They did not convict Bonds of lying in sworn testimony about his drug use." I dunno. That sure sounds like a finding of lack of evidence for guilt, Boyz. Hence, by definition, they acquitted him. source: NPR.org You show us a single media source that used the term "acquit". Just one. You cannot. And you are an embarrassing excuse for a citizen if you do not know that a hung jury means that they could not agree on those counts and that NO VERDICT is entered in them. This isn't even about the difference between "innocent" and "not proven guilty" as Aggie says. This is about the basic meanings of simple legal terms we are all subject to. "Convicted" - "Acquitted" - "Hung Jury". You don't understand any of them, and that's just sad.

I admire their use of current events but indeed, what the hell is he proposing? Looks like someone bought one of those scam letter templates but messed up on the cut & paste.

THERE WAS NO FINDING OF NOT GUILTY!!!!!!!!!!!! HE WAS NOT ACQUITTED!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No correction needed: My statement (misquoted by you) was "pretty much everyone." And "pretty much everyone" includes all but one of 12 jurors, who initially did, then didn't agree on one of the perjury counts. So if we're talking about the jury, "pretty much everyone" is perfectly accurate, thanks. Not exacly. You are using the only number Dan provided. "The final votes were 8-4 to acquit Bonds of lying about steroids and 9-3 to acquit him on lying about HGH use." Source: ESPN.com That, my friend, was "pretty much everyone" in the jury. Non-Case closed. Only Danny would have so much hatred for one human being as to wish a 10 year sentence on a side charge having absoltely nothing at all to do with the real reason the trial began in the first place: Knowingly using steroids. He was AQUITTED of knowingly using steroids/HGHs, Danny. [Read: Not found quilty] You are frighteningly dense to use "aquitted" (sic) in regards to the charges that he wasn't found guilty of. To say that this means "not found guilty" and is some victory is just beyond asinine. Who does better in a re-trial, the prosecution or the defense? The prosecution always does better, because it knows what worked and what didn't. They know now not to call the doctor who hurt their case. They know to prepare Hoskins better. If they do re-try him here's a side benefit: More time in jail for the weasel who shirks his responsibility as a citizen, Greg Anderson.

Only Goodie could say that when his boy is looking at a ten year sentence and stands as a convicted felon. And I absolutely love that he points out that the other two charges had final juror votes that favored acquital - barely but an 11-1 vote in favor of conviction doesn't mean anything.\ and Timmy, he's not found guilty or not guilty. The charges can and ought to be retried and like I said, they'll have to be lucky again to avoid conviction on the "no one but doctors and trainers ever injected me" charge.

Wait a sec - you've been critical of the prosecution and the end result, but you want to see him serve time? So it turns out that the vote on the "no one other than my doctor and Giants trainers have ever injected me with anything" perjury count was 11-1, and the holdout's excuse was that there was no other witness than Kathy Hoskins. WTF? In other words, because the other person who witnessed the injection, Greg Anderson, shirked his duty as a citizen and refused to testify, Bonds avoided a perjury conviction. I'd say his future payment to Anderson will be well worth it, unless the government retries him and they find 12 people, instead of 11, to convict on that charge.

Guilty of obstruction, which I believe is actually considered a more serious crime than perjury, but hung jury on the other charges. To poo-poo this is par for Goodie's course but the reality is that now Bonds is a convicted felon, despite the fact that the "Feds have no case". Care to revise your statement, Timmy? Obviously the Feds did have a case. And I will bet that the other charges were split with a heavy majority toward conviction on at least some of them - what will you say Tim if it turns out one or two people kept Bonds from a clean-sweep loss?

I saw some commentary to the effect that its a complex case and you can't make conclusions from long deliberations but really, is it that complex? The prosecution put up a couple of steroid experts and otherwise it was a few ballplayers and his long-term friends who testified against him. The defense tried to discredit and drew some blood to some extent, but really, either you wiped out their testimony or you didn't. If you wiped it out, he's already had his acquital party. Its either a deeply split jury or there are hold-outs against conviction on some counts.

Just as I fucking predicted, except both teams scored one more run. This however is wrong. THEIR HOLE IS MORE THAN DEEP ENOUGH ALREADY. From 2002 to 2010, there have been 39 teams that have won three or fewer of their first ten games. One of those teams managed to win 90 games or more. Two others made the playoffs with fewer than 90 games - in the parity stricken National League. http://www.actasports.com/stats_detail/?StatId=286 Is there any possible reason to imagine that if this study were extended to the entire wild-card era the results would be any different? Is there any possible way to imagine that 90 wins would make the playoffs in the American League in 2011? STICK A FORK IN THEM THEY ARE DONE.

We've gone over this before - prior to 1999 Bonds had hit 30 homers, iirc, once. His home run rate was good but far from anything historic - something like every 22 ABs. From 1999 to the end of his career, Bonds achieved a rate of something like 1 every 13 ABs. Unheard of for someone in his mid-30s, and completely out of character for his established career pattern. To Tim, it is nothing but coincidence that this happened at the same time that Bonds physique took on cartoon-like characteristics, or that his elbow ligaments exploded from the strain of holding so much more muscle together. So not only does that give us an indication of the effect of steroids on homer production, it actually gives us a way to approximate the difference that steroids made: Take his pre-1999 home run rate and apply it to the remainder of his career. To be really rigorous, don't assume he'd maintain a 1/22 ABs rate into his 40s, but rather, slowly degrade the rate to 1/27 or 1/30. Now you'd have the difference between what he would reasonably be expected to hit in his career - probably about 500-550 - and what he ended up with. I'll wager a million dollars that everyone reading this thread aside from Goodie understands the concept and agrees, in broad outline, with the results and conclusions. Goodie, on the other hand, will say something nonsensical.

It seems so reasonable, so self-evident - stronger hitters hit the ball further, what could be more obviously true? And yet, and yet .... Tim can't grasp it or admit it. I think the problem lies in the steroid usage and the massive expansion of Bonds' physique in the years he became a power hitter. it can't be related because then the question becomes what did he do to get so much bigger and stronger. So tim is left to deny, deny, DENY that strength increases power.

Too bad the jury obviously doesn't think the same thing about the evidence, or they'd be out already, wouldn't they?