Dan Gould

Thanks for sharing that, Michael.

Obviously I don't have a fucking clue what the meaning of "horrific" is. Papelbon is a fucking piece of shit, and now its the Yankees building a lead in the division. And Matzu-SUCKA goes tonight to avert a sweep. Sweep ensured. Now its time to give back about half of what they accomplished. By the ASB, they'll be about 6 games back, behind Tampa, and about 8 games over .500.

I can't believe it myself and its been kind of flukish anyway. Two out double by folk hero Daniel Nava scored the first two runs, then Nava knocked in Beltre with another double, followed by a Darnell McDonald homer, a Lackey double and a Scutaro single that chased Jiminez. Its certainly taking the sting out of the College World Series, where my Seminoles turned a 7-3 lead in the eighth into an 11-7 deficit. Horrific. At least they eliminated the Gators but this will be 21 appearances without a win, adding to a record no one wants.

Why is it any sort of "ad" at all? Its a totally unique, once-in-several-lifetimes event that could only happen at Wimbledon anyway because of the way grass favors big serves. I agree that it did have a train wreck element in that you couldn't believe what you were looking at or that these men were still upright after playing for so long - and you also couldn't take your eyes off of it. And the look of exhaustion (particularly on the American's face) made me want to crawl into bed for a nap. I wonder if anyone will calculate the odds of 128 consecutive games without a break of serve - I suspect it was beyond astronomical. As for the timing of the resumption, wherever they play I am glad it is set for 10:30 AM (ET) and not the first match of the day. I wouldn't be up that early to see it, but I will definitely have it on when they get started again.

Don't they have to put the conclusion of this match on Centre Court tomorrow? Would certainly be a proper reward to a 23rd seed and a qualifier who left it all on the court for 7+ hours today.

Well that was completely mind-blowing as it ends with play suspended again, tied at 59. Ten hours total for the match, about 6.5 for today's festivities. And it comes after the American reached match point in the last game only to have the French guy turn it away with another ace then hold serve. Both of them looked punch-drunk, the American a bit more but they still couldn't break anyone's serve, even when the Yank was going half-speed.

This is just insane. 46-46, over 8 hours total overall (they played the first four sets yesterday, this set has all been today), almost 5 hours today alone, every record you can think of has been set, these guys look like death walking on the changeovers but then they toe the baseline to serve and its one ace or winner after another. I don't think anyone has sniffed a break point for 50 games.

The 23rd seed on the men's side has been taken to 29-29 in the fifth? That is ridiculous. And there is another match going on at 15-14 in the fifth. Pikers.

Apply the terms to something such as antiques and you will see that anyone who spends a substantial amount of money collecting objects that interest them and give them pleasure is a collector. And the less said about the psychoses rampant at the Hoffman forum, the better. A collector must be a completist? You aren't a completist - then how do you refer to the music you own? Is it not a collection?

Because its far more CDs than someone who listens but isn't remotely serious about music. They've got their Supertramp CDs and whatever else they grew up with, and that's it. They aren't music lovers who spend seven or ten or whatever hours a week listening, as people here do. That number might very well be a lot lower, say 50 CDs. 50 CDs covers whatever genres interest you, ya got KoB, ya got a couple of Classical CDs plus the music of your youth. But if you shop for music once a year, you ain't a collector. If you shop like we do, yeah, you're a collector. And one other thing: You don't have to be a completist to be a collector.

I'm not a collector I think anyone who has more than 100 CDs is a collector. But if you insist you are not a collector, if I foot the bill to come visit, can I take any CD or LP I want? Yeah, I thought so.

I know I need to accept the occasional aggravating defeat but this one was pretty damn annoying, especially with the best pitcher in baseball going tonight, and who knows what happens with Dice-K tomorrow? They could very easily be relying on him to avoid a sweep, which would be an ignominious end to the 8-0-3 series run they've been on. But to be held to a single run, and that in the ninth inning by a guy with an ERA of 4 who walked 5 batters that just sucks. Add in the fact that the second run scored on a fluke bad hop of a double play ball in the eighth and its even more annoying. By all rights it should have been a bullpen game, and the Rockies don't win too many of those. OTOH, Jimenez did leave the park early yesterday with some illness, so maybe we'll catch a break and he'll be skipped tonight. Germs, go to work! Looking ahead, the Sox get a lot of games against the Rays before the break, and the Yanks get a lot of games against Seattle. Hopefully they catch Cliff Lee the maximum number of games but that's still not exactly helpful for the teams that are chasing. OTOH again, I do see that the Red Sox have two series against Seattle in September. Is it too much to hope that Lee will be long gone by then? Would definitely be an advantage ... so long as he doesn't end up in the Bronx.

:party:

Some excellent blues releases in the past week or so: Big Mama Thornton at the 1969 Newport Folk Festival (with Pinetop Perkins) And just out today, they've delved into the 1972 Newport in NY tapes: Lou Rawls Sounds very good, and possibly Eric Gale is on guitar according to the notes (he played with Roberta Flack in the previous set). But best of all Lou is still deep into the blues that he recorded in the previous decade, with "Everyday I Have The Blues," one of his proto-rap tunes into "World of Trouble" (pretty sure one of his Capitol records had the same transition), "God Bless The Child" and "Stormy Monday".

Phil Hughes’ first six starts of the season: 39 IP & an ERA of 1.38 Phil Hughes’ last seven starts this season: 43.1 IP & an ERA of 4.78 He also has the highest run support in the majors, which is why he has the same number of wins coming out of those two chunks of his season. He's not going to be skipped again before the All-Star break, and then they will probably use the time off to reshuffle the starters so that he is the fourth or fifth starter out of the chute for the second half. That will be a smart way of reducing his starts without actually having Gaudin or someone from Scranton take his place, and at least they are being smart and not planning on giving him 3-4 inning starts in August. But I really think that he needs to return to the form he showed in his first six starts, or else we aren't going to be talking about the emergence of an ace anymore. He'll just be another guy with an ERA between 4 and 4.5. Here's another interesting stat I saw from the same Yankee blog as the one that provided the one about Hughes: Basically, even if Teixeira hits as well as he did last season from this point on (when he finished tied for the lead in homers), he ends up with a decidedly mediocre stat line - especially for a guy with such a huge contract. Teixeira has been bad enough that improving to last year's level doesn't begin to save his season. And the other stat that I think Yankee fans have to worry about is A-Rod's lack of power. Only 8 homers, and only 2 since his groin/hip acted up. And since he is still not 100%, that means still more time where he doesn't have that base that's needed to drive the ball. I think its possible that A-Rod also has a poor (by his standards) season. And let's not forget Jeter. Early in the year he was going great but that's really ended. Since 2002 when they started calculating these things, Fangraphs has never had Jeter with a lower line drive rate or a higher groundball rate. For May and June, his OPS+ is under 100. In June he's authored a .216/.310/.392 line. He turns 36 on Saturday. I wasn't sure what would be worse - a big season for Jeter making him demand A-Rod money and years or a bad season for Jeter where his ego demands A-Rod money and years anyway and Cashman has to ponder the possibility that he's already declining.

Same here. Hitting the wine a little early?

I turned the game on in the bottom of the first with two out and nobody on and thought "I hope this doesn't mean good AJ showed up" and then it went homer, base hit, base hit, homer, homer, double and I laughed, and I laughed. AJ really personifies the "million-dollar arm, ten-cent head" cliche. I don't think he has a freaking clue what he's doing and when things go bad he doesn't have a clue how to change it. And when his fastball slows down, whatcha gonna do? Beckett can get stubborn and stupid and try to throw his fastball through a brick wall, but it seems like Burnett just gets sloppier and sloppier, his delivery falls apart and baseballs go all over the place. If they aren't outside of the strike zone, they end up hammered. As for Rodrigo Lopez, he pitched a pretty good game against Boston last week. He's got some good pitches, like the backdoor cutter he throws to lefties. He might not be good enough to pitch in the A.L. (career ERA at Baltimore 4.75) but I think he's good enough to be a very decent NL pitcher.

Since they discovered the new broken rib the presumption has been at the all-star break at the earliest. And yes, last I heard the Red Sox lead in runs scored (but they've played two more games so the margin is very small). They are also tops (or second) in a bunch of offensive categories, and are on a pace to score 25 runs more than last year. Otoh, they've allowed about 50 runs more than the Yankees have, and 60 more than the Rays have. They really need Beckett to pitch like an ace when he gets back.

Huh? That has nothing to do with this. If it were a consensual act she wouldn't put it inside her before they have sex. Nothing inside her, nothing bad happens to his johnson. Whatever she might do or say afterward, there wouldn't be any evidence of rape because the thing is embedded in his dick. On the other hand, I do have to wonder if some sort of sicko might put these inside her in order to wreak revenge against any male she can find.

Exactly. Unless this thing means debilitating pain for the rapist, I'd assume that the guy would end up beating the hell out of the woman, if not beat her to death. Then again, men have been known to become a little preoccupied if their Willies are bleedin'.

Well there's lots of ways to look at it. For AJ, an NL team ought to be just the ticket. OTOH, the D-Backs have had a long stretch of road futility, they are probably not quite as bad as they've been so maybe they're due for some wins. I think the Yanks win at least two of three. Then again, apparently A-Rod and Posada are "day-to-day" for the week, so the offense might be a bit short if they only play four games a piece at Arizona and LA.

I don't know - he lost early in the grass-court tune up so maybe his game is a bit off? If there's anyone who can put his game together on grass its Federer so this might be the kick in the pants he needs to sail into next week. But he definitely seemed off and the other guy was dictating play and Roger didn't have any answers. It looked like a match against a clay court specialist - the other guy was running around and getting everything back and then smacking winners.

Obviously I've eliminated the ones I wouldn't sweat. Not sure if I've noticed you state what it is about Grant but I'd certainly reconsider having First Session for Wynton Kelly, and there's nothing wrong, imho, with the session with Big John. But if Grant really gets on your nerves (is it that repeated note thing?) then I guess you can safely let them disappear. Are you not a Three Sounds fan or was it the incorporation of organ on some tracks that made you get rid of it? I don't care that much for the organ tracks either but the rest of it is pretty hot and tasty, and nice too is the fact that there are so many unissued tracks added. On the Lonnie, you got Lee Morgan. You gotta keep your Lee Morgan recordings. Same with the Bud. And on the Horace, I recently transferred this to CDR and enjoyed it a great deal.

He's recovered from a 2-0 deficit only six times in his entire career, including this one, so I'd say there's an element of the miraculous to it.

Yeah I get what you're saying but its not quite the same anyway since its a 128 man field. So the Wimbledon equivalent of losing to a 16th ranked team would be a second round loss. Roger won the third and just broke Falla when he tried to serve for the match. Can he save a break point? YES! Do you believe in miracles? NOT YET!