Balta1701

Jenks is not considered a rookie because of service time only, but pitched fewer than the innings requirement. Bobby's #1.

QUOTE(soxhawks @ Jan 24, 2006 -> 04:09 PM) just watching fox sports net, they said the steelers offensive coordinator probably will get the raiders job but believe it or not Jon Shoop will get an interview. God I hope he winds up there...just so Jauron can't hire him in Buffalo.

SI seems to be hearing something the others aren't...

QUOTE(nitetrain8601 @ Jan 24, 2006 -> 03:27 PM) This is why when I was going to post this news, I decided against it and just put my thoughts in the NBA thread. He didn't necessarily stop this trade technically. He was telling people he wasn't going to be happy going to Sac, but he would still report. Sacramento then decided just not to do it afterwards. Want to know when this stops? When Artest gets traded to NY. Only way you don't hear from him. Jim Gray is still using the phrase "Artest turned it down", which suggests to me it was something stronger on Artest's part than him saying "I don't want to play there" and the Kings backing out.

Can someone change the title of this thread?

QUOTE(WilliamTell @ Jan 24, 2006 -> 03:22 PM) hmmmm I wonder what happened? Late growth spurt?????? I just can't figure out why those are so common in Hollywood. Some sort of contaminant in the water coming through the Santa Monica Mountains?

ESPN.com right now:

QUOTE(Dick Allen @ Jan 24, 2006 -> 02:37 PM) He sometimes has his problems, but I really like Riske. Anyone know Foulke's status for 2006? If he came back healthy, at least Boston would have a good bullpen to go with Ortiz and Manny. I don't Schilling will be able to get back to where he was, but Beckett will be great when he isn't sitting out with blisters. I think the Red Sox will be better than a lot of people think. According to SI, Foulke has lost weight and got himself back into shape after surgery on both knees, he'll probably be ready to start ST.

QUOTE(Jordan4life_2006 @ Jan 24, 2006 -> 02:29 PM) Thanks. I think Dumars would be foolish to give up on Darko so quickly. The question is...will Darko have any real playing time before he hits the restricted FA market? If he does, or only plays for 1 season...will Detroit be in a position to outbid other teams that might make a run at him for speculation? And would he even consider resigning there if he became an unrestricted FA, considering that they're not playing him anyway.

QUOTE(Jordan4life_2006 @ Jan 24, 2006 -> 01:39 PM) I can see what you're saying. I mean, there's no exact way to know how players of the past would respond to some of the stuff you have today. Maybe being bigger would actually hurt their games? I have no idea. But nobody can deny that players of today have many advantages that players of 40 years ago simply didn't have. This goes for all sports. Lebron didn't come out the womb lookin like he does now. It's my opinion that a majority of players from the past would benefit with today's training methods, ect. Yes, I'm not saying they wouldn't benefit...but the key thing I'm trying to get across is that it's impossible to say that they would benefit to the point that say a Lebron or a Kobe Bryant has. You can take a very good player and even with proper training discover that he just can't be better than very good, or you can take an average player and with proper training turn him great, just because of the different ways their bodies will react.

QUOTE(YASNY @ Jan 24, 2006 -> 01:24 PM) I'll agree with you on the deficit. That's the one area that most conversaatives have issues with Bush. Not due to too much taxation, but due to too much spending. But this: The Democrats, IF they have ideas should be taking them to the voters. IF they have something substantial to say, say it to the people. All I hear is Bush did this or Bush said that. Those aren't ideas. That's just b****ing and whining. Could it possibly be that the Democrats have presented a fair number of decent policy proposals (to go along with some obvious bad ones), but because of the fact that the media likes to filter things as "he said versus he said" and hates policy points, you just don't hear them?

QUOTE(redandwhite @ Jan 24, 2006 -> 01:26 PM) so if not the red sox, yankees or jays who wins the al east? i also love how the red sox rotation is suspect. usually you say that when five mediocre players are apart of it. curt schilling and josh beckett are far from mediocre, wells and wake were both above average last year, and clement, arroyo, papelbon are more options. again though, answer my original question. Wells also doesn't want to be there. Schilling and Beckett are far from mediocre when healthy. I see no reason right now to believe that they will be more healthy than Mark Prior and Kerry wood next year. Both have significant and recent histories with injuries that just won't go away. Clement has been inconsistent at best. They need a lot more from him before they can count on him at crunch time, which is why they took the chance on Beckett. That rotation is suspect. So is the Yankees. One of them is probably going to get lucky and have it perform and have enough people stay healthy. I don't know wh ich one it will be.

QUOTE(Jordan4life_2006 @ Jan 24, 2006 -> 07:20 AM) As for players being bigger and stronger than they were back then? NO DUH! If those players had the same type of training, nutrition and technology we have now back in 1965, they would be just as big and just as strong. It doesn't mean we have to diminish what they accomplished. You know what? I'm going to disagree with this. The reality I think is much more that different bodies respond differently to different amounts of training. When you take a person who was good at one time, and give them modern weight lifting routines, you will not necessarily improve that person as much as you will other players. This is my Barry Bonds theory - a lot of people took steroids in baseball, but only 1 of them turned into Barry Bonds. A lot of them got better, but a lot also fell apart. It's hard to predict how each and every body is going to react to the stresses of workouts, weight training, etc. Some bodies react differently to the training than others do.

Given how often Peja's name has been mentionned with the Bulls, anyone care to guess whether or not the Pacers will be interested in holding onto him, or is this just an attempt to get an expiring contract to try to look for the future for IND?

QUOTE(YASNY @ Jan 24, 2006 -> 01:03 PM) This s*** ... playing politics with this particular aspect of our government ... is going to bite the Dems in the ass. I'm sorry, but do you really expect that a couple of days of delay is really going to come back as the worst thing in history?

QUOTE(YASNY @ Jan 24, 2006 -> 01:05 PM) You're giving me a blog post as a response? ummmm okay Read the citations if you don't beleive what they're saying. Come on man. Just because something's on a blog doesn't mean it's not right. If you think it's not right...then go check out the documents he's presenting, exactly as I hoped people would do when I said " it's well enough sourced that I have trouble disbelieving it"

QUOTE(YASNY @ Jan 24, 2006 -> 12:58 PM) Doesn't it stand to follow that if the administration thought it was unnecessary due to the Patriot Act, that they belived the Patriot Act gave them the legal right? I understand what you're saying, but I think that the 2 parts of the DOJ response cited in that blog post argue against that idea. First...they actually argue that it's unnecessary because they didn't have any problems getting the FISA warrants that they needed as far as the guy writing that response knew. The only reason why you would logically need to get warrants without going to FISA courts is if they weren't willing to give the warrants. And secondly...the DOJ itself seems to have had problems with the constitutionality of the idea, yet it still was already happening. That just seems to contradict the idea that they thought it was either necessary or ok.

Ok...now this seems very odd, but it's well enough sourced that I have trouble disbelieving it...in 2002, a Republican Senator from Ohio introduced legislation which would have reduced the FISA standard for the acquisition of a warrant from probable cause to reasonable suspicion. The Bush Administration's justice department opposed the bill as unnecessary with the Patriot act (and at least 1 person writing the DOJ response had some questions about its constitutionality). Congress rejected the bill, probably in part due to DOJ opposition. This was many months after the administration had already started doing exactly that.

QUOTE(Frank the Tank 35 @ Jan 23, 2006 -> 05:12 PM) Damn do you guys like throwing down. Now for some actual numbers... 2005 final payroll ~ $75 million 2004 attendance- 1,930,537 2005 attendance (excluding playoffs)- 2,342,834 2004 avg ticket price- $22.71 FCI (cost for a family of 4 to go to the game done by Team Marketing)- $171.35 2005 avg ticket price- $25.89 (up 14%) FCI- $188.07 (up 9.8%) 2004 att/ 4 (family)= 482,634.25 x 2004 FCI= 82,699,378.7375 2005 att/ 4= 585,708.5 x 2005 FCI= 110,154,197.595 therefore $75 mill/ 82,699... should approximately equal x/ 110,154... where x= 2006 salary solve for x, x= $99,898,753.12 Again, this does not include the postseason and the ridiculous hike in merchandise sales. Gentlemen, some of you may hate to admit this but Andy the Clown could have been damn right on when he said the actual budget cap was $106 mil. Now that I've gotten that out, I'd like to reiterate the fact that I think trading a package including JC for Abreu(+?) at this time is unwise. We DO need some people in the bullpen after all. So unless we can add an impact arm without giving up the pieces for Abreu, then it just wouldn't work out. Could we trade BA for a BP arm? I don't think KW would do it. I'm just making the point that I don't think the budget is the most contraining issue here. The 2005 figures equate to an average attendance of 28,923 per game, or about 5,000 less per game than this board's "expected" average next season. There's one more key item you're missing in your analysis. When you take the "Average cost of a family of 4 going to the game" there's 1 problem...because it's an average, there's a bias in that number. If people are spending hundreds of dollars on scout seats, VIP parking, and new jerseys at the store...they're going to more than bias the average cost per family. Now, my question would be this...if we were to increase from 35,000 fans a game to 100% sellouts...are the increased seat purchases going to come from people paying $500 a game, or are they going to come from those paying $50 a game and taking the open slots in the upper deck? I would say it's vastly more likely to be those sitting in the Upper Deck...the people who buy the expensive seats and have money to burn are going to buy the best seats up early. Those seats just don't float around. They get sold in Season Ticket Packages, Ozzie plans, etc. This is another case of diminishing returns...yes, every fan in the seats helps...but at some level...adding more fans in decreases the average amount of money spent per fan, because the extra fans we're putting in are those who are paying less money per game.

QUOTE(redandwhite @ Jan 23, 2006 -> 07:19 PM) i liked the red sox taking a flyer on him last year, and he actually lived down the street from my dad. i've always liked wade miller, i wish him all the best. I liked the BoSox taking a chance on him last year too...But like at least 1 other person said...it's insane that the Cubs only signed him for 1 year and didn't get club options for the next 2 years or so, just in case somehow he does come back. Especially if it looks like he won't be ready to open the season...they may spend $1 million on him so that he can rehab in AAA until September.

QUOTE(KevHead0881 @ Jan 23, 2006 -> 09:45 PM) I would say that if Borchard makes the team, he could fill the whipping boy role quite nicely. At least if he hits .220 in 200 at bats or so...there's going to be a few more than 1 ball landing very very far from homeplate.

General Hayden, Deputy Director of Intelligence and former director of the NSA. Good to know that the guys at the top of the NSA actually have no idea what the Constitution actually says. General Hayden actually did make some interesting points...specifically he basically said that this NSA program isn't some sort of large-scale data mining program, where they're searching everything...it's actually targeted at specific people, but they felt like they had to use a lower standard of evidence than the "Probable cause" cited by FISA as the requirement for a wiretap involving a U.S. citizen. Of course, when Mr. Bush goes around and says that these people are being called by Al Qaeda then, he is clearly and unambiguously misleading in his statements, because by no standard imaginable would a call from even a suspected ally of Al Qaeda not be probable cause for a warrant when the U.S. has declared war on that organization. Therefore, this has to be something else, and they still don't want to give us anything honest. Therefore, if this General isn't lying...we still should be very confused, but at least we know why we're confused. We know that it's not some sort of massive program intercepting the entire internet that wouldn't be practical under FISA...but we still have no idea why they think they couldn't go to Congress and have the law updated, nor do we know who they're targeting or why, but we can rule out people who are actually in direct contact with Al Qaeda in any way, because those would be easily tappable under FISA. A couple of people say these same things Here and Here.

QUOTE(EvilMonkey @ Jan 23, 2006 -> 07:58 PM) That is way too much for 'admin'. But the whole thing is a useless argument until a better way to fund schools can be made. As long as property taxes are the basis, there will always be disparity among schools. Also, can Media Matters be considered an unbiased source themselves? Their own homepage has links for things such as 'Why is CNN hiring conservative misinformer Bill Bennett?' and 'Support our fight against conservative misinformation'. Nah, they wouldn't make up stuff, or cherry pick either, would they? I'll more than admit MMFA is biased and you won't find things disproving stuff that say Mr. Kerry says on some random day at their page. But I really don't think Stossel is that unbiased of a source either, and given how heavily they cite everything they write, they at least provide a very useful counterpoint to a guy like Stossel who doesn't provide many of his sources. If you disagree with something they say...follow the link and check their sources. They give you basically everything there. That's why I like them for certain purposes. $8000 also is not all necessarily for "Admin"...there may well be maintenance, construction, supplies, transportation, sports equipment all included in those numbers as well.

QUOTE(Texsox @ Jan 23, 2006 -> 07:58 PM) Government? No Employer? No No one is suppose to fund it. And that may be the root of the problem. That I'll agree with. Then, I think, that leads to 1 more question...and it's one the President is going to launch a debate on here in about a week or so...who is the best person to pay for it? Someone is going to have to, so before everything breaks down, we better figure out an answer to that question.