NorthSideSox72

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Oct 3, 2007 -> 12:50 PM) Well, to be more precise, the Sox can still offer Podsednik arbitration, which does leave him under our control. If another team were willing to pay him $3 mil + for a year, and give the Sox something, the Sox could work that out. He still has one more year in arb? OK, I stand corrected. He isn't a free agent - he'd have to be signed and traded. Somehow I don't see anyone bothering, but you never know. Anyone know when the arb offer deadline is?

QUOTE(Colorado Sox Fan @ Oct 3, 2007 -> 12:42 PM) Sign ARod. Bat Richar leadoff. If ARod stays with Yanks sign the little guy from St. Louis and bat him leadoff. Sign ARow. I'm not making more of him than he is, but Jones is past prime. Maybe Torii. Keep Garland. Trade Contreras, Erstad, Pods and minor leaguers for a serviceable fourth starter. Use one of the kids as fifth starter. Trade for bullpen help. Hope Crede is recovered. Hope Ozuna is recovered. We're going to the playoffs next year. Have faith. We can do it. Kenny can do it. The PLAYERS can do it. 1. Pods is a free agent, you can't trade him. 2. No one will want Erstad in trade. 3. Trading Conteras will not get you very much, if you can trade him at all. 4. What little guy from St. Louis? Eckstein? 5. How do you propose to fit ARod into the salary situation without moving Garland or some other high priced player(s)?

QUOTE(Kalapse @ Oct 3, 2007 -> 12:36 PM) Rowand - 30% Owens - 30% Hunter - 20% Jones - 8% Cameron - 7% Patterson - 4% Erstad - 1% And there will be no discounts. I think there is also a chance they pull a pro guy from Japan or LatAm we haven't even considered yet. Not the most likely scenario, but a possibility (also a possibility at SS).

QUOTE(Kalapse @ Oct 3, 2007 -> 12:37 PM) Top 3-5 in baseball IMO. Really? Numbers don't look quite that good, but for defense, numbers aren't the whole picture. If he really is a fairly high end defensive CF, with his potential on offense, I think 13-15/per for a year or even a few years would definitely be worth the gamble. Any baggage on Jones?

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Oct 3, 2007 -> 12:32 PM) What if it was $13-$15 for one (i.e. if no one offered the $18+/6 that Boras will probably demand) Well... that might be worth a gamble. How is he defensively? I really don't know, at this point in his career. I don't mean 5 years ago, I mean now.

QUOTE(Yossarian @ Oct 1, 2007 -> 09:02 PM) Oh boy, I just keep taking my lumps in this thread. There is no way any of the major cities in the US can compare with their zenith, which in my view was from the 20s to the 50s. Not Chicago, not New York, not any of them. Suburbia drastically changed the whole landscape. When the US had a total population of 120 million, and 7 or 8 million of them lived in NYC and another 3 million or so lived in Chicago, that was real power. I'll take the Chicago of my childhood (50s and 60s) hands down over the gentrified, yuppified city of today. To be sure, some things are better than ever. The lakefront, the skyline just absolutely takes your breath away. It's far more spectacular than it was in my youth. The museums are more numerous, and the older established ones are bigger and better than ever. In my youth Navy Pier was a dump, and in the 50s the area just due west of the northern part of the Magnificent Mile was dicey. There was no jazz festival, no blues festival, no Taste of Chicago. In many respects, the city is better than ever. In others, hell no. There was no jazz or blues festival, but there was a plethora of real jazz and blues clubs all over the city. Many of them in black communities, and they catered to a mixed clientele. You know, kind of like Bill O'Reilly and his visit to Sylvia's, only the whites who patronized these establishments didn't express astonishment at the ambience and class they were experiencing. I'm digressing, and I've only begun. One such place was the Pershing Lounge in Bronzeville, where a Ahmad Jamal and his Trio recorded a Jazz classic in front of a live audience in January of 1958. There was the grandeur of the Edgewater Beach Hotel, and many classic movie theatres too numerous to mention. There was the funkiness of the restaurant at Sieben's Brewery, Riverview, and a thousand other lost places. But most of all there were neighborhoods. Real neighborhoods with real working people striving for a piece of the American dream. The Germans on North Lincoln Ave, from North avenue all the way up to Foster. The Poles of Milwaukee avenue, centered at Milwaukee and Division. I remember the neatest Italian neighborhood on Chicago Aveune between Kedzie and Pulaski. In 1953, when we first moved to Chicago we rented a nice two bedroom apartment in a neighborhood that was really better than our status for $100 a month. When we left 8 years later it was still $100 a month, factored for inflation about 700-750 in today's dollars. The so called renaissance of the American city is being propped up by young professionals, empty nesters, gays, and to a degree recent foreign immigrants. Mommy and Daddy middle class and the kids started leaving in droves in the fifties. They haven't stopped. Today's Chicago is two tiered, the middle class is pretty much in the suburbs that almost stretch to Iowa now. The population of the city of Chicago is more than 20% off its 1950 peak, and after a brief resurgence in the 90s, is dropping again. The white population, more than 3 million in 1940 and 1950, is now below 900 thousand. I'll probably catch hell for mentioning that, but whatever. Yeah, the Loop, skyline, Lakefront are better than ever. The city and metro area as a whole, hell no. To get a better idea of what I'm talking about read Lost Chicago by David Garrard Lowe, The Lost City: The Forgotten Virtues of Community in America by Alan Ehrenhalt, or a great Chicago guidebook from a long ago era, Chicago an Extraordinary Guide by Jory Graham. The Beautiful Bronx 1920-1950 by Lloyd Ultan, isn't about Chicago of course, but it captures the vibe and energy of those times. Another New York centered book, The Shook up Generation by legendary New York Times reporter Harrison E Salibury, published in 1959 is a classic. You can see how our great American cities were started to fray at the edges in the 50s. I could give more real life or literary examples, but anyone who's read this so far probably has glazed eyes at this point. As a follow-up, check out this in the Trib. A solid study, using a lot of hard numbers, showing just how dramatically Chicago recovered in the 80's and 90's.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Oct 3, 2007 -> 11:59 AM) Also interesting to note, Illinois could be losing some national influence because of illegals... http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Top_News/2007...nal_seats/6221/ Major flaw there in that article... Illinois gets HUGE numbers of hispanic immigrants. Chicago gets more than any other city, including cities in those border states - the Trib released those stats a while back. Assuming that the percentage among them that are illegal is similar from state to state, Illinois would not lose, but may in fact gain.

D-Backs over Cubs in 5 Phils over Rox in 5 Sawx over Angels in 4 Indians over Yanks in 5 Phils over D-Backs in 5 Indians over Sawx in 4 Indians over Phils in 6

QUOTE(Kalapse @ Oct 3, 2007 -> 11:58 AM) He only has 4 years of service time so he has 2 arbitration eligible years remaining. OK, gotcha. We'll see if KC offers it. Back to A Jones... no thanks, even for 17 or 18 per over 5. Not with the salary situation the Sox are already in, and with Jones' career trend.

QUOTE(Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 3, 2007 -> 11:55 AM) I wasn't attacking you, so I didn't intend to bring anything up a notch. There is a general consensus among the country (Jesse Jackson, et al) that thinks these kids got screwed - as if the justice system would allow a racist states attorney to fill a racist jury whose verdict would be upheld by a racist judge. It just simply doesn't work that way. That's why this situation became a national story. It's ridiculous to think this would happen in 2007 with the amount of media coverage that is available. And I have to disagree with your thoughts about the shoe. Using a shoe to beat someone with your hand might be laughable, but putting your heel into someones skull is quite a different story. I'll have to look up the definition of deadly weapon in the state statute, but I'd imagine a good argument could be made that it could be viewed that way. My understanding about devices, in the legal sense, is that a deadly weapon has to in itself present greater harm than a non-weapon, such as a fist or a foot. A shoe doesn't really qualify. It is also my understanding that you do not need a deadly weapon per se in order for attempted murder to be applicable. If some huge weightlifter dude beats a scrawny guy senseless while screaming "I'll kill you!", that is probably attempted murder, but without a deadly weapon.

QUOTE(Texsox @ Oct 3, 2007 -> 11:09 AM) http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/10/03/military....ref=mpstoryview Their case Conservatives Point of View: One more thing Shall we file this under support our troops and family values? Just curious... if she is married to a citizen, and the marriage is legal, doesn't she pretty much become a citizen at that point? Especially since she entered the country legally to begin with? And why on earth does a marriage to a citizen nullify citizenship? I'm sorry but that is just assinine.

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Oct 3, 2007 -> 11:33 AM) You know the wierd thing? This doesn't convince me at all that "Nation building" as a concept is inherently flawed. This debacle convinces me that nation building by people who don't believe or care about nation building is guaranteed to be a debacle, and that imposing a built nation on a group that doesn't want it by force is virtually impossible. Yes. I think its amazing that this administration's logic seemed to go something like this: 1. We want to oust Saddam and put up a democracy in Iraq, to spread good cheer in the region. 2. In order to invade, oust and take military control we need 150k soldiers, and plans X, Y an Z. 3. OK, let's implement plans X, Y an Z. *invasion occurs here 4. Oh wait... we forgot about the nation building part. What do we need for that?

QUOTE(Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 3, 2007 -> 11:13 AM) What would it take for this to be attempted murder? I have yet to hear anyone actually talk about the charge in a legal context. Six people sought out a kid to beat up and hurt badly. Did they intend to kill him? I don't think the media has talked about that. But apparently there was enough evidence to suggest that yes, they did. It amazes me how people often discard the justice system. Let's assume the first jury was a bunch of white racist scumbags who wanted to see black kids thrown in jail. The fact still remains that the judge in the case didn't see any evidence of that, otherwise he would have thrown it out. Moreover, a second judge, who was thrown into the realm of media scrutiny because of the popularity of the case, also agreed that the charges were ok (at least concerning one of the kids). Laugh and ridicule the states attorney all you want, but the fact is there was enough evidence to convict him of that charge, otherwise it would have been thrown out. Wow. OK, this has gone way beyond what I intended. Look at Jim's post, and mine after. What was ridiculous to me, and still is, is the idea that a shoe is a deadly weapon. I have not said, and would not say, the charges of attempted murder are unjustified, because I haven't read enough on the case to even begin to have an opinion on that. Discard the justice system? Seriously, take it down a notch.

There is already a thread in Diamond Club for the Phils-Rox series... why don't you start one for the Cubs-D-Backs series? I'm sure there will be plenty of discussion.

QUOTE(Kalapse @ Oct 3, 2007 -> 11:05 AM) No he isn't. Really? This is his contract: Is he still arb-eligible or something? Anyway, no matter, I was mostly just kidding.

Andruw Jones. pfffft. Who cares? Let's stick to the real headliner free agents... I mean, Ross Gload is available, for crying out loud! Get it done KW!

QUOTE(RockRaines @ Oct 3, 2007 -> 10:16 AM) The trib today hinted that both Gooch and A-row were going to be back next season. Gooch said he even kept all of his white sox stuff. Link. I wouldn't go so far as saying it hinted they would be, more like they might be. The Gooch comment certainly was interesting. They both seem to like the idea of being back.

QUOTE(Yossarian @ Oct 3, 2007 -> 10:11 AM) I'm sure I'll never be able to overcome the dumb as dirt image you seem to have of me. Yes, one might laugh at the DA or whoever calling a shoe a deadly weapon. However, was not the youth attacked by six other boys, and beaten unconscious? If that is not a fact, then yes you are correct, in this instance I qualify as dumb. It's too bad someone listed a shoe as a deadly weapon, it doesn't alter the fact that this was a brutal assault, that was on its way to being a fatal one. I'm glad it wasn't my kid on the end of such a savage beating, I'd surely be in jail now myself. OK I did some checking and I'm not wrong. Schools superintendent Ray Bleithaupt stated that the attack was no ordinary schoolyard fight. "It was a premeditated ambush and attack by six students against one," Bleithaupt said. "The victim attacked was beaten and kicked into a state of bloody unconsciousness." So you and Florida can LOL all you want. Hope something like that never happens to you or yours. What's with the paranoia? Did FlaSoxxJim, myself or anyone here ever call you dumb? Or even hint at it? I just pointed out that you made what seems to me to be a bizarre association of his post with a particular political wing, and also said I agreed with him that to call a shoe a deadly weapon is pretty ridiculous. And further in fact, Jim was not making light of the attack - he was making light of the apparently trumped up charge being levied. So, the question still remains... what does that post have to do with left wing or right wing? I am trying to understand how you came to that conclusion. I was not LOL'ing at a kid getting beaten up, nor do I think Jim was.

QUOTE(Yossarian @ Oct 3, 2007 -> 09:56 AM) You're making light of a very serious and savage beating a young man took. You're very glib and articulate but can always be counted on to take a predictable left wing viewpoint on any given subject. Did you actually see what he was responding to in his post? I find it laughable as well. A shoe as a deadly weapon? How is that not ridiculous? And what on earth does it have to do with left wing or right wing? Not to mention that some "right wing" folks responded in agreement.

It really looks like the system is finally on the upswing, with some pretty talented guys, particularly at the lower levels. Hopefully they can keep that up the next couple years and make the system more loaded from top to bottom.

QUOTE(gosox41 @ Oct 2, 2007 -> 10:20 PM) But who do you think the Sox will dump of those players under contact for next season. Garland is a given. Maybe Contreras but they may have to take on some salary or eat some of his to trade him. Dye, Buehrle, & Thome all have No Trade clauses. Right now Crede is untradeable (I'm assuming the Sox bring him back.) Sure the Sox may be able to dump Cintron and McDougal and Hall but hey won't get much if anything for them. Getting rid of all 3 means we're going to see more A-Gon and a crappy hitting back up catcher. McDougal isn't a major loss. Bob Players likely to be traded, or have their options not picked up, or not re-signed, for 2008 (and their 2008 salaries): Garland ($12M) Uribe ($5M option) Podsednik (~$3M or so) That is about $20M right there. Now add players who already dropped off payroll from 2007: Mack ($2.75M) Gooch ($3.25M) Add that $6M and you already have $26M in flexibility . Then a few more players, at least some of which might go too: Contreras ($10M) Crede (~$6M) Erstad ($3.5M option) MacD ($2M) Thornton ($875k) So you've got between $26M and $48M of flexibility, depending on who from that last list might leave. That's a pretty large amount of money to play with, assuming the payroll will be allowed to stay at similar levels, with the built-in increases coming up.

QUOTE(LosMediasBlancas @ Oct 3, 2007 -> 02:37 AM) Sure the kid did some reckless things and made stupid mistakes, but was his pursuit and search for whatever he was searching for stupid? If the film makes the same point that he was a very, very, very stupid kid, will you find the film more enjoyable? I think that needs to be one of the messages, yes, in order for the movie to be faithful to the material. It doesn't have to be THE point, as there are certainly other themes present, as you point out. My fear is more than the film will make him out to be a hero. I don't find him to be a hero - I find him to be selfish and short-sighted, and his family and friends paid the price. If that isn't a strong message, then the movie will miss the mark.

QUOTE(knightni @ Oct 2, 2007 -> 03:19 PM) Hm. I've never really thought of myself as being that conservative or that entrenched in the religious right. Well, its just a survery. I wouldn't read too much into it. I am not aware of the balance of questions in the surveys, but many of them were not social or religious issues, and you may also happen to align better with conservatives on those issues.

QUOTE(knightni @ Oct 2, 2007 -> 03:07 PM) Who is Duncan Hunter? Duncan Hunter Score: 21 Sam Brownback Score: 18 Mitt Romney Score: 17 John McCain Score: 17 Duncan Hunter (68%) Tom Tancredo (62%) John McCain (57%) Rudolph Giuliani (56%) Fred Thompson (56%) Hunter is a house rep from Cali, tends to be very conservative (like Brownback), and is firmly part of the religious right. He's on the Armed Services committee, and has also been a big proponent of the wall along the border with Mexico. Also like Brownback, he's got zero chance.

QUOTE(southsideirish71 @ Oct 2, 2007 -> 02:52 PM) One hits 23 homers, the other has one good month. I would rather have Fields in left and let Richar lead off. At least Richar knows how to get on base. While I agree with you about Fields being in LF... Owens' OBP since his July callup was .342, while Richar's during his callup (also in July) was .289, some 53 points lower. So to say "Richar knows how to get on base" isn't really looking accurate. I like Richar, but he isn't getting on base too often yet.