Dan Gould

I think that's much ado about nothing - the fact is that a single positive amphetamine test carries no penalty except more rigorous future testing. What I think is interesting on the Bonds front is the fact that the Giants appear to be sticking to their guns in putting language in the contract that would eliminate the infamous Bonds entourage from the clubhouse/field, and also putting in language that will give them greater protection should Bonds miss games due to "court appearances". That's why the contract still isn't signed. The Giants may not stand up to him on salary, but they're hanging tough on all the other stuff! One last thought about the voters for HoF. I'd really like to be able to correlate those who voted for people like Hershiser and whether they voted for people like Blyleven at the same time. If you voted for Hershiser but not Blyleven, that is devastating proof that you are unworthy of the ballot, if you can't tell the difference between a decent pitcher and a Hall of Famer.

My brother and I were talking about the upcoming Veteran's Committee vote - he thinks that as long as that sanctimonious ass Joe Morgan is involved, there'll never be a Veteran elected, unless its a teammate. I guess that's good for Davey Concepcion, not so good for everyone else. Totally agree that changes have to be made to who gets a writer's ballot as well as how the Veteran's committee operates (unless it gets its act straight this year by electing Ron Santo).

Parkertown, do you enjoy Armstrong? Because if you enjoyed Ella in a small group setting, and you like Armstrong, you will love Ella and Louis together. I think they did about three CDs worth of material, with my favorites being Ella and Louis and Ella and Louis Again.

No doubt. Like the ass who writes for some suburban Chicago rag who submitted the blank ballot, and then wrote an explanation about how he can't, at this time, make judgements about the steroid era (how does this stop you for voting for Rice or Gossage or Blyleven, no one knows) and then says that if Ruth wasn't unanimous, who can say that Ripken or Gwynn possibly should be. He'll fade back into well-deserved anonymity until next year when he'll do some other attention grabbing holier-than-thou stunt.

Not even Babe Ruth or Hank Aaron was 100%. Based on that, there are writers with some fucked up sense of self-righteousness who will leave Ripken (or for that matter, Clemens or Maddux) off the ballot to ensure that no one is unanimous.

Wellll, actually...she's right! The CDDB does just that. I've made CD-R versions of LPs without embedding any info and after the disc is loaded up, it shows what CD it is because there's already been an official CD release of it in it's database complete with song lengths in that particular order. It can sometimes be real cRaZy if you only have a single long track. The database usually shows up with multiple choices - usually of someone's techno remix project. --- Now playing: Derek Bailey - No East I can't believe that, but it is true that I've made CDRs of LPs that have popped up with such info. I always figured that since I manually edit LPs that the differences in track length would screw it up, yet when its happened, I've never gotten anything to pop up but the correct recording. That's it, now I'm going back to just transferring Side A and Side B. Actually, when you think of it, this is the way to enforce copyrights. All Microsoft has to do is add the capacity to recognize that its a CDR and have a little bot that will send email notification to the law firm of Dewey Cheatham and Howe. They could even make the email look like a confession.

I've noticed this phenomena on just a few, but hardly all, CDRs that I've burned or received, when I pop them into the PC to spot-check, Windows Media Player will display the album cover and songs. Freaked me out, too, the first time. I figured that there is a little tiny info file at the start - my wife actually guessed that WMP searches for matching song lengths to figure out what record it is. Yeah, right - with the thousands and thousands of new releases every month, it can do that and never be wrong.

And it's in PHILLY! And more importantly, the girl is hot!

As far as Belle goes, Matthew, he came and went. He was on the ballot this year, got 19 votes (3.5%) and is now gone forever since he didn't break 5%. Its interesting because he was definitely a world class asshole, had his career cut short by injury, and put up similar numbers to Rice. I guess it proves that he was a bigger asshole than Rice by several orders of magnitude to not even get 5% the first time around. I was thinking about the issue of Rice being a jerk and not only do I think its not a reason to deny a man his rightful spot but is only being spiteful, but also I am kinda doubting how many voters that even applies to. Rice has been out of the game for 13 years. Any member of the Baseball Writer's Association with ten years service gets a ballot. That means that a declining number of writers actually dealt with Rice and got the surly treatment while younger writers never saw him or got the brush-off. Maybe its these younger writers who can't wrap themselves around the idea that those numbers were, as you say, big-time before the steroid era. In fact, some of the numbers are big time regardless of era (the homer titles, the 100 RBI seasons, the 35 homer-200 hit seasons).

No, he had a 12 year run of total dominance. 1975-1986: Batted .300, hit 350 home runs (every player who has accomplished those feats in a 12 year period is in the Hall other than Jim Ed) 8 seasons with 100 RBIs 3 Home Run titles 4 200 hit seasons 6 top-5 finishes in MVP ballots (1 award) Over those 12 seasons, he LED all American Leaguers in games, at-bats, runs, hits, home runs, RBIs, slugging percentage, total bases and outfield assists. ONLY PLAYER IN HISTORY to have three straight 35 homer, 200 hit seasons Overall, Rice is among only 10 retired players with 382 or more homers and a .298 or higher lifetime BA. They are Hank Aaron, Jimmie Foxx, Lou Gehrig, Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Stan Musial, Mel Ott, Babe Ruth and Ted Williams — all Hall of Famers, except Rice. The only place Rice comes up short is in the sudden, precipitous decline, but just because his knees and elbow turned him into a singles hitter doesn't do anything to the 12 years of domination that came before. Its totally unfair to be penalized for not padding his statistics. No, he didn't reach 400 homers or 1500 RBIs. But anyone can see that for a period of a dozen years, he was the premier hitter in his league. If that doesn't merit inclusion, I don't know what does.

Two. Next year are a bunch of nobodies coming on for the first time, so all of the attention will be on Gossage, Rice, Dawson and hopefully Blyleven. All of them belong and its outrageous that they are still on the outside looking in. Year after Rickey Henderson is on the ballot, unless someone will save us from the most self-centered speech in history and put him on the roster for a day or two. For being an absolute egotistical asshole and 1 1/2 dimensional player, I'd like to see Rickey wait a year. I really thought Rice, on the ballot with McGuire, would stand out and get up around 70% but it didn't happen. Would be interesting if he goes to his 15th and final chance because then virtually 100% of the attention/debate will be on him. Would be a crying shame if he joins Hodges as the second to reach 64% but not make it the rest of the way.

There it is. Some asshole wasted a vote on O'Neill and refused to vote for Rice. He deserves a Nolan Ryan fastball drilled up his ass.

Ripken and Gwynn alone, with Ripken closest to unanimous ever. Gossage made a big jump but still fell short. He's guaranteed next year. What is outrageous is that Rice and Dawson fell back a little bit. On a ballot with known juicers, they fell back? WTFH? (that's F*cking Hell) McGuire at 23%. He's toast, in all likelihood. Still trying to find out where Paul O'Neill landed.

Completely agree. TV and radio announcers probably spend more time watching the candidates than a lot of the print journalists do. I think Goose has a groundswell behind him and may sneak in this time. Hawk was probably too far behind to make the jump but will see a big jump nonetheless. We'll know in a minute or two. As far as O'Neill goes, one more thing: I said that hard core Yankee fans almost certainly don't believe he belongs, but those same folks watched and respected Rice and believe he should be there, just as I watched and respected Goose.

Its not a question of being a fan or not. I flat-out hated Goose Gossage when he was shutting down the Sox and helping the Yanks win World Series. But I respected his ability and longevity and have felt that he has belonged in the Hall for a long time. Its the Hall of Fame not the Hall of the Very Good, as some have said. By any measure, Paul O'Neill was at best, pretty good to good, and a vote for him is an atrocious abuse of power and renders the voter unworthy of any future involvement in Hall of Fame voting. O'Neill had four seasons of 100 RBIs. One top five MVP ballot (at number five). .288 lifetime BA. Mediocre power numbers. And I don't remember a single game-saving catch or particular defensive skill. Even hard core Yankee fans can't possibly believe he belongs.

Here's a good sample of both intelligent and outrageously foolish HoF ballots. From the MLB site, here is how their writers voted: The idiot who says that you have to be a "great player for a great number of years" should be taken out and shot. He votes for McGuire on that basis, when he hit probably 70% of his homers in about six 'roid filled years (and homers are his only claim to the Hall) but doesn't vote for Jim Rice, who over the course of 12 years batted .300 and hit 350 home runs (every other player to accomplish that feat is in the Hall). He also led ALL major leaguers in 10 offensive categories in those 12 years, and was in the top 5 in two others. That is being "great over a great number of years." Then there's the fool who voted for O'Neill and not Rice.

Happy b-day to a man who is missed.

Since when have record companies gazed beyond the end of their nose?

It's funny how some phrases will jump out of the text at you. I thought for a second this thread had taken a terrible turn. Only if someone directed her to the **** in a Box thread.

I've been wondering about that for years. Sorry but the fact of the matter is that the pushing of CDs far pre-dated the prevalence of CD burners. Whether the companies should have imagined that within 5-10 years people would be able to make digital copies of this new format (as opposed to the demonstrably worse sounding cassette copies) is something else altogether. But at the time they were pushing CDs, no one had standalone CD burners, PCs had not yet invaded every single home, and those that had used floppy discs, not CD drives/burners.

This Seminole has entered a Total Media Blackout

Never has the plot summary of a TV show sounded so ridiculous. Can you imagine the pitch meeting for this show? "So what's this pilot about?" "It's about a man who has a talking car and the two fight crime." "A talking car?" "A Pontiac Trans-Am." "A PONTIAC?!" "Trans-Am." "And we've got the guy who played John Adams lined up to provide the voice!"

Let me suggest that you use

I do agree that 'Round Midnight is terribly overplayed, and while in my younger days I would consider its inclusion on an album a sign that said album might be up my alley, I now tend to shy away from RM covers. But this one, for me, is really special, recorded as it was less than a week after Monk's death. If that means this is Rouse, I'll be very surprised. Not the Rouse sound I enjoy.

I'll be a little briefer on this one as so few of these songs held any appeal. I will say that number 10 is Johnny Hartman, whose voice I love on the famous Impulse album but have rarely found him that appealing in any other context. This unfortunately is another one of those contexts. One word for numbers 6 and 15: WHY? Then there is number five. You know, when Ray declared that there would be one track I was sure to identify, I figured that it would have to be a Gene Harris tune, and I would have to participate in Ray's BFT as a result. Then I found the Gene Harris track. Ray, if I have ever done or said anything to offend you, I sincerely apologize for my transgression. But whatever it was, I would hope that we are even now. What a steaming pile of poo that was. Gene sounds fine, and then that other keyboard/synthesizer kicks in and I wanted to throw my stereo out the window. But where does this rendition of "Something" come from???? You may imagine that the former GHF has every Gene Harris title recorded, but that's not actually the case. I did not retain any of the BN titles after he completely dropped the "Three Sounds" from the covers. Yet AMG doesn't show any such title on those mid-70s dreck-filled discs. Then I thought that perhaps it was on one of the albums he did between his BN and Concord tenures, for the JAM label. Nope. So I can't even identify this "gimme" that makes me want to