Balta1701

I'd love to see T.O.'s reaction when Grossman goes down and Orton has to come in to throw to him.

T.O. later accused Angelo of leaving the meeting early, saying that Angelo was "dry heaving" as the time ticked down towards the arrival of the desert course.

QUOTE(Chisoxrd5 @ Jan 19, 2006 -> 11:07 AM) Naturally...he followed the well-known, "power hitting first basemen style of fan letter writing format." It's a common practice. As long as he hits 40+ home runs and drives in 100+ runs next year, he could have had a bunch of trained monkeys write it for all I care. "It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times"

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Jan 19, 2006 -> 11:03 AM) My wife and I do. We are barely over our incomes added up. I take it that's possible when you're in Mich City (that's where you're at correct?) but somehow I doubt that people living closer to the city, or for another example anywhere in the state of California, are following those guidelines.

LAT

Man, every day Google makes me happier and happier I use them to search. At least they're planning on putting up a fight.

QUOTE(SoxFan101 @ Jan 19, 2006 -> 05:34 AM) No one is making excuses for the secondary we are simply talking about people complaining about not getting enough pressure on the QB. And to be fair 2 TD's were from a guy slipping which led to a wide open Steve Smith. But both times a guy slipped...Smith was wide open, and not single-covered. When you have a receiver that good, there should be at least help in the neighborhood in case someone does slip or wind up out of position. Both times that someone slipped there was no help in the area.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Jan 19, 2006 -> 09:50 AM) If this turns out to be Bin Laden (sounds like the quality isn't the best so they aren't quite positive it is him yet) it is really interesting that it has taken him 13 months to release just a crappy audio broadcast of his message. He hasn't been able to stand on video for almost 2 years now, so I wonder what that means exactly. Is the guy that afraid of getting caught that he can't even rally the troops anymore? Is he that isolated that he doesn't have the ability to get the equiptment and/or the means to safely get a tape to someone important for broadcasting? My guess is that the best explanation is that he's significantly changed his appearance in a way to try to avoid being seen by the U.S. (Shave and a haircut?). A year or two ago I would have believed more that the reason he's not showing up on video is that his health is a concern and he doesn't look as strong as he did in late 01, but it's been about 3 years since we last saw a ton of videos of him, and if his health was a genuine concern, I just can't see him still being alive. Not constantly on the run, unable to visit a trained western doctor, in remote areas of Pakistan.

QUOTE(mreye @ Jan 19, 2006 -> 09:39 AM) I love CNN: Not clear? Not clear? How about linking to the article that says Pakistan is reporting: "Strike may have killed Al Qaeda expert." Not clear = Strike "May" have, and source only being random people within Pakistan. It'd clearly be a good thing if we got the guys we reportedly got, but thus far the only sources I've seen say that they only have unnamed Pakistanis as sources. At some point, you can't say things are certain until you have someone willing to put their name and credibility on the line about the report.

QUOTE(AddisonStSox @ Jan 19, 2006 -> 09:44 AM) They're going for it again in 2006. If Contreras is stellar, why would you want to trade him mid-season unless there is some unforeseen gaping hole at that time? Yes, you want to build a perennial contender, but, at the expense of success in 2006, a year in which we are built to defend our World Championship? Count me out. Now that we've gotten 1...if I felt like it gave us a better chance to win the W.S. in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, etc., yes, I would be willing to sacrifice 1 pitcher in 2006. We will still be a contender if we do trade him, and whether or not we win 120+ games would then depend on how well everyone holds up. But if we got a couple more young pieces, of any sort, to stick into our lineup in 07-08, that makes the rest of our players (read: Mark Buehrle) more affordable, and makes us better for the long term. Long-term gains weren't worth sacrificing winning the first one. That I can understand. But I could understand how long-term gains could be worth waiting 1 year for improvement.

QUOTE(CanOfCorn @ Jan 19, 2006 -> 09:32 AM) If the right offer comes around...I'd trade him. If we don't have any needs...then keep him. I still don't like the idea of having as valuable of a chip as him and letting him walk with us getting absolutely nothing in return, given that we want to build a franchise that can win for a long time here.

QUOTE(RME JICO @ Jan 18, 2006 -> 04:56 PM) I agree 100%. It is hard to see anyone having a significant drop-off. People always said that it would be hard to repeat by winning all those one run games again, but with the new lineup I don't think the Sox will be in as many as last year. If the offense scores more, that will also take the pressure off the pitchers, which is always a good thing, especially for someone like Vazquez. You take all that into consideration, then you throw the postseason experience into the equation and they are a pretty tough group to match up with. If Anderson can match Rowand's numbers from 2005: 13 HR, 69 RBI, and .270 AVG, .329 OBP, .407 SLG, .736 OPS, and have a lower K total (Rowand 116 in 578 AB), the Sox are going to be looking really good across the board. I would go even farther than that and say that it seems nearly impossible to expect a significant drop-off offensively...for the simple reason that some of our guys' performances last year were so far down from where they should have been that if they fall any farther...then suddenly we'll Pablo, Machowiak, the Widge, or maybe even Borchard getting more playing time. If Crede falls below hitting .240...it's not that hard to find someone who'll perform better. Ditto Uribe. Ditto Anderson. If our guys on the bench don't wind up working out either for some reason, then it's also not going to be that hard to peel off some old, veteran infielder or something like that from a team like the Royals or someone who has fallen completely out of the race. We didn't exactly give up a ton for Blum, and there's no reason we won't be able to find a backup somewhere who could hit .250 for us if given regular playing time.

So...talks with Contreras have dried up. In other words, he'll either sign by Monday or be traded by then.

QUOTE(EvilMonkey @ Jan 18, 2006 -> 07:22 PM) Last I heard, Target was not union either, and while they don't have the scandals that Walmart does, they also don't pay a 'living wage'. And to take your question one step further, why should Walmart help to shoulder the burden of healthcare? Seriously, how many companies do in todays world? I don't offer it for my employees, I couldn't afford to do it. The one plan I did offer was a catastrophic plan for my salesguy, and even that one cost me almost $200 per month. See, again, that's the problem...if employers are going to stop offering healthcare, as they have for the past many decades, due to the increasing price of health care, the only people left offering it will be private insurers or the government. The problem with private insurers remains the spiral one...when employers don't offer health care...the only people who really need to find health insurance are the people who really need health care...i.e. the expensive ones. Lots of people could make use of it, but with me for example, even with 2 bad knee injuries in 2 years, the insurance companies are making a lot of money because my employer provides good health coverage which I use very sparingly. We end up with the problem I've described before...because employers aren't providing coverage, the only people seeking out coverage are those who cost the insurers the most. By reducing the pool of people paying into the insurance pool, costs have to go up. This drives more and more people away from insurance because eventually the insurance becomes too expensive, and people basically are left hoping they don't get sick or die. Eventually, at this rate, insurance could very well become too expensive for a large majority of the American people. If the employer-provided health care system is collapsing because of rising health care costs, there are 3 options...1. "You're on your own" - we just let the system collapse, let the people who can't afford treatment sit on their couches and suffer, and hope it doesn't kill too many peoploe. 2. Forceably lower health care costs so that employer provided insurance again becomes practical, or 3. Let the government take over.

Why the Hell is this guy still alive and able to run free?

QUOTE(IlliniKrush @ Jan 18, 2006 -> 04:56 PM) Yeah i'm watching it as well...could tonight be the night?

Fresh on the heels of Google Earth and whatever Microsoft's satellite viewing software was called...I present A9...this one is fairly interesting in that you don't get satellite photos to go with maps, instead, if you're looking along a major route, you can get pictures of the fronts of buildings and actually see what things look like. And see people walking in front of them. Etc. Here's Pasadena.

QUOTE(RME JICO @ Jan 18, 2006 -> 03:53 PM) The good thing is that as long as each player can at least do what they did last year and at the same time have a few of these guys improve, the Sox will be improved offensively next year. That is not even taking the addition of Thome into consideration, which in itself should be a huge boost. So regardless of how many second-order wins the Sox had last year, I cannot see how they will be worse than last year unless several players regress unexpectedly or get injured for an extended period. The other side of that token is this one...we did what we did last year with only 3 people in our lineup really putting up numbers that weren't below their career numbers, maybe 4 if you count Iguchi (since half of what he did was move Pods over anyway). Therefore, we won the world freaking series with Crede, Pierzynski, Rowand, Uribe, and DH all having significant room for improvement offensively, and very little room to get worse offensively. If any of those guys (BA instead of ARow), and Iguchi and Konerko, step it up next year...we could wind up going from winning a world series on entirely pitching to having one of the best combinations of pitching, offense, and defense seen in years. If you just look at our lineup, and try to project "What is the best reasonable numbers we could expect from this guy", then there's enough there for people to really be afraid of our lineup, up and down the list.

QUOTE(Cknolls @ Jan 18, 2006 -> 10:24 AM) Did Kerry ever release all his medical records? John Kerry signed standard form 180 early in 2005. The Boston Globe reviewed all of his documents and found them to be as expected. Nothing hidden in them, nothing out of the ordinary or missing, etc. Basically all duplicates of stuff already released. Of course, one could ask why the Hell he didn't do that during the election campaign so that we could have shoved it back at the swift boat folks and asked why Bush couldn't match that level of disclosure of his national guard era documents...but then again, he wasn't a very good candidate anyway. Globe link.

You know, I always love watching the rounds of 64 and 32 in the years when the Big Ten is actually good...the Big Ten teams are always so good that they beat the living hell out of each other and all wind up ranked lower than they should be, and then they come out and start stomping people. I just hope IU doesn't wind up as a 5 seed this year.

The Fiance just got a raise! Woo-Hoo!

QUOTE(Gene Honda Civic @ Jan 18, 2006 -> 03:15 PM) Best.Thread.Evar. You are writing in the correct color.

QUOTE(sayitaintso @ Jan 18, 2006 -> 02:00 PM) Agreed. But i do feel that uribe will do better this year than in 05. I think that Gooch, Uribe, Crede, Pierzynski, and (God willing) Konerko all have good shots to do better next year than in 05, I just think AJ has the best shot at improving the most.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Jan 18, 2006 -> 01:18 PM) Well instantly MD made two of those just more expensive for WMT. That's assuming that they'd employ the workers at a distribution center for the same minimum-wage no-health-care numbers that they do for the workers at their stores. In fact, it's probably a lot more likely that if anyone in Wal-Mart is being paid well, it's the folks who run those facilities, since they would likely be higher skilled positions (manning machines, physical labor) and would probably involve more injuries as well, possibly justifying the expenses on health care. Edit: That all said, I think it's highly probable that they won't build it there. If their history with shutting down stores to punish workers who unionize is any history, Wal-Mart has been more than willing to sacrifice immediate profits in order to work towards long-term political challenges. They're willing to shut down profitable stores to fight unions, there's no reason to expect that they wouldn't move that thing in order to fight a political battle in MD, even if it does cost more elsewhere.