The Critic

For what it's worth, I enjoy every visit to USCF. It's a beautiful park ( moreso every year, thanks to the cellphone company ). The team is usually competitive, if not championship calibre. They will be competitive next year, too, on a game-to-game basis. This team will NOT be the Milwaukee Brewers, I am sure of it. There are many talented major-league players on the Sox roster, despite the grousings on the board ( my own included ) about how they stack up against the elite teams in MLB. Back to the "Sox experience": The food is great, the atmosphere is great, 90% of the fans are great - a MUCH higher percentage than can be said for Chewing Gum Park. I loved taking my daughter there for the first time on a fireworks night - she had a BLAST, and so did my wife and I. We will do that again, for sure. I'm also going to sign her up for the Silver and Black Pack, now that she's old enough to enjoy it. I'm at the point now where I don't invest as much angst and venom in professional sports anymore - maybe it's been beaten out of me by the owners of this city's franchises, but when I go to sporting events now, I go for entertainment, and I always find it in one form or another. I'm not saying my way is right, I'm just saying that it works for me.

Hey, Steff................if you use the dollar sign, don't use "clams" or "bucks" or "dollars" or "tall Vegas cabbage". If you use the word or phrase of your choosing ( I choose "tall Vegas cabbage" ), then don't use the $. It's redundantly repetitive....

It's really easy to speculate on what someone else would do, but I have a feeling that most of us would be with our families at a time like this. I'd like to think that, anyway. I understand the loyalty to the team that Favre is showing, and I think it's admirable, but if I was a teammate and cared at all about him, I'd tell him that his family needs him and he should be there for them. I don't know if I could do my job if something that sudden and tragic happened to my family.

Last play of the game, Saints down by 7, hope of any playoffs on the line: Saints complete a long pass, lateral the ball about 7 times and get in for the TD! John Carney - MISSES THE EXTRA POINT!!!! Game over. Season OVER. How lonely is Carney going to feel in that locker room???? WOW.

Yeah, I just counted Frank on the books because I think he's unlikely to leave anymore. Unless he has a ridiculous monster season ( and I can't see him doing more than he did last year as far as HR and RBI ), nobody's going after him.

That's exactly what they want fans to think - but the fact is, if all those players were back, they'd still be mediocre at best. Sutter does a good job of getting the guys to play hard, but the harsh reality is that the talent just is not there. They are not worthy of my support, and they will not get it. I'm still amazed at how quickly they soured me - I had season tickets at the Stadium ( 2nd balcony, the ONLY place to be ), then I dropped them because I didn't like the view from the upper stretches of the UC, but I still went to 10-15 games per season. It's been two years now and counting since the last time I wasted money on this team, and I'd rather go to a Wolves game any day of the week. At least the Wolves' minor-leaguers are SUPPOSED to be minor-leaguers!

I agree, make him an offer. He is a solid lower-rotation guy.

How many players are on the books for 2005? I think only 4 or 5, right? Konerko, Thomas, Lee, Buerhle....anyone else? Could JR and KW be conceding this season to try to make a push in 2005? That's the LAST thing I want them to do - no, I take that back - the LAST thing I want them to do is what they probably WILL do - go with "The Kids" again in 2005, when they expect all these young'uns to be ready ( Borchard, Reed, etc etc etc ). If the Sox ever decide to become a major-market team, the next offseason COULD be very interesting.... On a related note, what would you think of setting Maggs out there as a rent-a-player? trade him in July with a "wink-wink" agreement to come back in FA. ( I personally wouldn't expect ANY player to do anything with the Sox organization unless it was written, signed and notarized, but hey....the off-season is the time for crazy thoughts... )

I see your point, cw, but if all this stuff is unnecessary, then an "off-topic" board and "sports bar" board should not be here and any non-White Sox related threads should be disallowed. ...do that, and watch the tumbleweeds roll around this board... to my point of view, unless something has ZERO point at all, such as the needless post-total thread, then it should be left alone. Even the annoying stuff. Off-season = off-topic The Pale Hose Talk is more active during the season and the off-topic stuff is busier during the off-season, especially an offseason like THIS one, when we've had NOTHING to discuss except pointless, fruitless rumors. NO acquisitions worth mentioning. Players leave, leave and leave. Not the stuff of happy discussion.

My guess is that this is posturing by KW now that no deals took place at or since the winter meetings. I still believe something will get done, but the longer it takes, the less likely I think the Sox are to get equal value. Teams will look at that half-empty depth chart on the Sox website and try to take them for a ride.

I hope it's dead - it's outlived its own usefulness. I got so sick of hearing about it, I was hoping it would die just so Gammons would shut the f*** up.

IIRC, I think the lyrics for Money For Nothing came from the grumblings of a worker at an appliance shop that Knopfler visited. There was a video on the television, or a musical performance anyway, and the old man was grousing about "how easy those musicians got it". So "the opinions expressed in those lyrics are not necessarily those of Mark Knopfler or Dire Straits". Why do I remember that s***, and yet I can't remember how to repair half the equipment I work on at my job??? And I can definitely see where Dire Straits could blow in concert. Even in the video-enhanced concert footage in their music videos, they looked dull.

nice vest....

Hey, say what you want about the Wings and Blues, but both teams' ownership wants to win WAY THE f*** MORE than the Worst Family does! The Wings have had EVERY BIT as many injuries to their players as the SlackHawks have, but the Wings keep winning while the Slacks win ONE out of their last 19 games! WHY???? Because the Red Wings have more than 3 or 4 decent players, that's why! ( and saying 3 or 4 is being a little generous, btw ) And saying "Dead Things" and "Detroit Sucks" until you're blue in the face will NOT change the fact that theirs is a better organ-I-zation than the Slacks, from the owner all the way down to their 4th line checking left winger. Their fans don't have to ask their Dads what it's like to win a Stanley Cup. If the Slacks weren't an Original Six team, they'd probably be sold off and playing in Portland right now...but WHAT A NICE UNIFORM!!!!! so f***ing what?

You know, I can see both sides of this argument. On the one hand, you have JR's basic argument of not spending money unless people show up. On the other hand, don't you have to give the customers something they want to see? To give a movie analogy, should people have to go to the theatre and pay $8 to see a movie starring nobody with poor lighting and shot on Super 8 film, under the premise that "if you show up to THIS movie, I'll have the money to show you a GOOD one later"? It's a tough question - I guess the Scrubs are proof of the "crappy movie now, good movie later" concept, though. The Tribune has made so much money from them that they've finally allowed Hendry to pay some people.

What a putrid ass-crack of a hockey team THAT is!!! Outscored 9 to 2 by Ottawa and Detroit before a meaningless "so what" goal with 10 seconds left. Yeah, Detroit really sucks, huh? Pathetic, lifeless crapload. Thank GOD they don't show home games on TV - what the hell would we see? More lackluster s***ty "efforts" in front of 6,000 people? No thank you. What a f***ing mess.

2 years, 15 mil is what I just heard. Is this more of the money the Sox don't have, or do they have to trade 4 or 5 high-priced guys now???

It's a good signing if it's true - Brooth doesn't know any more than anyone else ( except maybe Gammons ). Makes Lee easier to trade if the team getting him knows he'll be there for a couple years...

..while my VISA card gently weeeeeeps....

Just saw this blurb on SportsCenter.....any thoughts? Didn't see this posted yet, sorry if it's been mentioned before.

Sorry, but I think I'd cry when I was handing my money over to the cashier. This is not my type of movie at all, and the clips I've seen do nothing to sway me.

Wasn't Huey Newton a Black Panther??? I think you meant Huey LEWIS. And as far as genre, I'd throw Dire Straits in the same pond as the Pretenders, Tom Petty, and that ilk...."adult alternative", maybe??? Lady Writer was another good Dire Straits song - I forgot about that one.

I dunno, that's hard for me to say, because I'm not a HUGE fan of his music. I like his style and his tone, but not too many of his songs. "Sultans Of Swing" was one I really liked, and one other one - I think it was called "Making Movies"(?), but stuff like "Walk Of Life" and "Money For Nothing" made me want to rip my own ears off. I think he's a great guitarist, though.

And I do agree, Mark Knopfler has a nice guitar tone. Not all tweedleedeedlee like the Eddie Van Halen School Of RAWK.

The thing is, MTV has ALWAYS sucked, from Day 1 til today. When they played videos, 90% of the videos were s***. When they did Headbanger's Ball, 90% of the videos were s***. When they did cartoons, 90% of the cartoons were s***. Now that they do reality TV almost exclusively, 99.9999999999% of the reality shows are s*** ( I enjoyed "The Real Ring" - also known as Tough Enough ).