Dan Gould

Regardless I always pegged Dylan as a dilettante and this just proves it.

According to a certain blog that you first told me about, two tracks made it to Fantasy comps, but which two tunes I don't know.

Gotta say I'd be most curious to hear the Doc Severinson cover.

A-Rod's contract is a de-escalator--by the time he turns 39 in 2014, he'll be earning $21 million a year. So in 2015 he makes 21 million and in 2016 and 2017 he makes 20 million. But you ignore the fact that A-Rod's contract also includes this: He's at 613 homers now. So let's say he reaches the first milestone in two seasons: 2012 salary, $29 million plus $6 million = $35 million. Two more years to reach 714: 2014 salary, a paltry $25 million plus $6 million = $31 million. Couple of more years to break Aaron and Barroid's records (almost certainly in the same season, and 2016 or 2017 look like: $20 million plus $6 million plus $6 million = $32 million dollars. Not a bad way to go out, huh? That "de-escalator" wasn't about reducing his salary, it was making it so that his inevitable "bonus" money wouldn't make his salary even more grotesque.

Wow. This from the man whose state government is a wholly owned subsidiary of the teacher and other public employee unions, who have driven CA into a perpetual state of bankruptcy. Any worries about those working stiffs who are on the hook for your salary and pension?

The very latest: More The question that occurs to me is, if Jeter has such a completely outrageous belief about what he should be paid and for how long, what are the odds he is even remotely prepared for any discussion of what position he plays? Everyone in the known universe except Jeter and his lackeys know that he can't stay at SS, yet here he is demanding 5 years & huge dollars and I'll bet that he will never entertain the notion that he won't be a SS throughout this contract. The Yankees better be making dollars hand over fist from the Stadium built around the little league field. Otherwise they'll never survive the plethora of awful contracts they have or will be signing. A-Rod at 30 million a year when he's 39 and older? Jeter "manning" shortstop at 41. And maybe Cliff Lee in traction while he's "earning" 25 million a year at age 37? Over/Under on the Yankee payroll reaching 250 million? I say three years.

From the Times blog post: What fucking "reward" should he get? He was already paid 18.9 million dollars every year for ten years(and the Yankees only won one world championship and made two other trips to the World Series under this contract, so in fact you could say that by the Yankee definition of success, Jeter was already gross over-paid, or paid for prior performance, too - how long do the Yankees have to pay for prior performance?). And he was already rewarded with further untold millions in endorsement contracts big and small, just for being the best known player in the biggest market in the country. But I'm loving this fight because it shows every ounce of arrogance Jeter possesses. He gives the most vanilla interviews in the world, but deep inside that Yankee soul dwells the ego of Reggie and Bernie Williams and many others who could never deal with reality and showed their truest colors as they aged themselves out of the game.

:party:

Read more

A-Rod was a creditor of the Rangers because they are on the hook for deferred payments due to him. The Yankees, having signed A-Rod as a free agent after the 2007 season, are completely on the hook for his salary up through his age 42 season.

And yet, with money to spend, and having basically said that they are OK giving Saltalamacchia the job, or to use him as part of a platoon with a veteran catcher who would mentor the kid, they didn't offer Varitek arbitration, in the belief that he would accept it and get a raise over his 3 million dollar salary. So they are squeezing pennies when it comes to their captain, who not only accepted the backup role and worked hard to help Victor handle the staff but also hit better than he had in years. Not a lot of respect for the guy who has the "C" on his chest. So I wonder if they actually intend to find some other veteran catcher to mentor Salty.

It figured to happen given that their official offer started at 2 years. The Tigers demonstrated that "respect" = dollars and V-Mart went for it. My guess is that the Red Sox make some sort of big move involving a bat, particularly Gonzales from San Diego, who knows they can't afford him and ought to get more for him now than at the trade deadline. They certainly can't go into next season without someone to approximate V-Mart's production.

Terribly sorry to hear this, Rolf. I can't begin to imagine what you are going through but I hope you and your daughters find peace and comfort.

I don't know whether to admit this or not ... but I had the Sports Illustrated-branded version of Stratomatic and didn't even know of the original until much later. Same exact concept of player cards with outcomes based on season stats. IN the SI version, pitcher cards controlled the outcome most of the time. So there were pitcher numbers 2 - something. Ron Guidry '78 was 2-9 so almost always the result came off of his card. A shitty pitcher might be 2-6 so it was more likely the result came off the batter card. And there was the possibility of something happening off of some card with super rare events. I always assumed that was how strat worked too. My brother and I never bothered with replaying seasons. We always just replayed the 1978 1-game playoff. And Bucky Dent never ever hit a fucking home run in literally hundreds of those games.

Reminds me of Ernie Anastos doing teaser headlines for the 11 PM news on Channel 7 in New York. (Read with smarmy grin and pukey announcer voice) "Harlem fire, five dead, film at 11."

I told my wife two things when we saw this on the news: Thank god that Princess Di improved the gene pool in that family, looks-wise (she was dumb as a bag of rocks and hardly great-looking but relative to what she married ...) That there's real hope for the future with this girl signing on.

I love Golson's compositions but prefer Hank in the tenor chair. The riches of that band over a 15 year period is comparable only to the different Horace Silver bands. Of course the bigger difference is in the songwriting but its hard to go wrong with any Blakey group from when the band started to at least the end of the Hubbard-Shorter et al sextet.

What makes you think anyone would have "tax evasion documents" sitting on a hard drive? The con man is telling tales to save his skin.

Why? Because the guy in jail has started insisting that he just gave them the money? If its true that they were charging his credit card $160,000 a month, what does that tell you? It tells me they were charging him for some ongoing "service" and royally screwing him over.

:party:

That's a guy hung up on things and not music.

Especially after one of those pesky, uber-annoying non-championship seasons.

Well first I think that looking at Wins Above Replacement doesn't make an adequate comparison, and so I think that minimizes the improvement Crawford represents. And secondly, is it really the case that the Yankees will make cost-effectiveness the deciding factor in considering Crawford or Jayson Werth? Pretty sure they are going to kick the tires pretty hard one or the other.

I am not mistaken, and what the blogger fails to acknowledge, is that Swisher and Granderson are creations of Yankee Stadium when it comes to power and I'm pretty sure they both have appalling splits. Then there's Gritty Gutty Goober. The writer criticizes Crawford for never slugging .500 when the guy they got dreams of slugging .400 someday. Regardless of the stats he quotes, its an underwhelming outfield and especially so outside of the friendly confines of the little league field in the Bronx.