Gregory Pratt

I don't think he's better than Rickey. But they were different types, IMO. Rickey could've hit 3rd, 4th or 5th. I don't think Ichiro can, although there are stories about Ichiro blasting away in BP but he doesn't do that in games. Kind of reminds me of Ty Cobb who COULD hit homeruns (and once hit about 5 in two days just to show Babe Ruth and the media that he could but he found his style more exciting). But no, Rickey is not my time. I was alive when he was the best in the game, but not really. QUOTE(Kalapse @ Jun 14, 2007 -> 08:15 PM) Ricky's was the greatest in the history of the game but was before Pratt's time. As I said, yes. Isn't he a little ahead of you, too? Or did you catch some of him? I can't believe you caught all of his prime years or even most of them. I'm under the impression that you're not THAT much older than I.

Has anyone else seen Leon The Professional? Best film I've seen in a long time.

I think they, and we, are laughing with him. Ichiro's the best leadoff hitter of my time so far, and he's a fabulous personality.

Thought so. Gotcha.

Kalapse, you think attendance will be "moderately higher" than last year? I was under the impression that attendance will go down and has been, but I don't know, so let me know.

"I hope he arouses the fire that's dormant in the innermost recesses of my soul."

It amazes me what people will do to one another and justify.

QUOTE(southsideirish71 @ Jun 14, 2007 -> 05:33 PM) I will try to keep this as clean as I can, but it will be hard. My ex-fiancee a liar, a cheat, and it turns out a demon from hell was banging her boss, probably everyone else also. She stole some money from me. ***TIP TO ALL*** Make sure that you make your financial decisions based on sanity, not how flexible or depraved your fiancee is. Well after catching her in the act, I found out that she had stolen a good amount of money. So I hatched this plan, of trying to get my money back. I would pretend to be with her, and then act nice and convince her to get my money back. Stupid yes, but with a funny ending. After a month of being nice I realized that the demon wasn't going to give me my money without legal help. So I hatched a good plan to give her a romantic day of fun. I took her to the lake, we had a romantic picnic and the day was very nice. I took her home, and told her I still loved her and wanted her to be the mother of my children. She was touched. Very touched it seemed. I fended off the sex, talk about hard to do, but I was worried about the slim chance of pregnancy. So she still wanted to take care of me, and she did. And in her blinded state(you figure out why) afterwards, I told her that I was leaving. She screamed, and stumbled trying to get her vision back, you had me do that dirty act and then you told me you wanted to break up. I laughed and said well, I had to remember you for what you are. A foul and dirty whore. It was very appropriate the state I had left her. I told her she had until 5 o'clock tomorrow to get her s*** out or I was having it sold. She wound up marrying some goof after 2 months of dating him. It took me a while after to find someone worth trusting. That's sad.

I see LCR has been reading Al Franken.

Also: I'm not sure he was talking about anything more than hittters in the Montreal system. Maybe his review was of pitchers, too, but I don't know. The article wasn't specific.

Good. I like Lucy. You might say I love Lucy.

We have too many pinkies and not enough brains

Let's have some more fun. So who would Ozzie say "can play" on this team? Who would you say?

QUOTE(southsideirish71 @ Jun 14, 2007 -> 11:19 AM) My comment my tounge and cheek. Next time I will put it in green so cub fans such as yourself can take it with a grain of salt. He hit over 300 in the IL last year. How much more polish does Fields need at the AAA level. He is what he is. Its time to see if he can hack it at this level, and that involves a long hard look at the kid. See if they can fix the holes in his swing, and see if he can adjust. The quotes about Mack and Gonzales getting more time at third were Ozzies. Aren't you the one who's always all over the hitting approach on our team and the swings and Walker and now you're talking about Fields not needing more polish? First of all, the IL sucks. Second, his approach is obviously bad. Who says he isn't going to get a good look? Ozzie just said something to motivate him, and if he meant it -- that Fields had better hit better or Mack/Gonzo would play for him -- then so be it. And even if your comment was tongue in cheek, I'll bet you meant it. There are so many people here who jump all over Ozzie as a racist or having racist preferences, and judging from your comments, you meant it.

The Interpretation to the quote of "All sox players should strive to be latin." is one of the craziest interpretations I've ever read. You can't complain about Fields + 3B until something actually happens. Also: "maximizing their ABs at the ML level" isn't always the best way to develop a struggling player. Fields' swing is going to make it hard for him to catch up to anything, and if he keeps going 0-4 at some point it becomes more important that he go down and work on his swing before he starts to think, "I'll never hit major league pitching." But I guess all players should strive to be Latin! is the last word.

That's not what he's saying. Maybe you should try again, both of you. A lot of Latin players come back in better shape from playing in winter leagues instead of relaxing in the offseason. That's all he's saying. But WHAT IF HE WEREN'T?!

The Indians were a dynamite offensive team with good starters and an awful bullpen. Still, they shouldn't have lost as many games as they did.

QUOTE(fathom @ Jun 14, 2007 -> 10:22 AM) I say this respectfully for the man, but Ozzie cares too much about winning to handle a rebuilding situation. He takes the losses so hard now, and it likely won't get too much better over the next few years. I'll gladly accept him as our manager if he can prove that he's willing to deal with the struggles of a young player so that they can prove they belong in the majors. Rebuilding with this organization won't be easy due to the horrendous development of our prospects. Not a fan? re: bold -- me neither. She isn't, obviously. Ozzie can deal wth rebuilding, I'm sure. It's different when you're rebuilding and know it than when you're defending a world title and your starting CFer has a crap swing and crap approach and you have no real alternatives except for Mackowiak which sucks, too, but you've got to get a bat somewhere. Rebuilding this team would suck for any Manager, what with our crap system and coaches.

QUOTE(BigSqwert @ Jun 14, 2007 -> 10:25 AM) Didn't Cleveland suck last year? They retooled and look great a year later. No, the Indians didn't suck. They lost. There's a difference. I don't know how they lost so many games last year. It's a mystery to a lot of people. "Suck" is what we're doing now, what the Nationals do, what the Royals do. Lose is what the Yankees are doing, and what the Indians did. Big difference.

QUOTE(southsideirish71 @ Jun 14, 2007 -> 10:18 AM) Its a dump. If few drinks and one night changes your mind on the dump, I can only imagine the possibilities if a season of losing on the southside and a season of winning on the northside will challenge you with. Maybe you should of kept the hat, and started to break it in. I didn't have any drinks. And the fun I did have had little to do with the team -- it was the fans! It's always fun to be the antagonist. And someone had to counter the f*** Suzeuski chants. It's not the best park I've been to but I had fun. It's not a bad place, IMO. Kind of charming. I'd have killed someone if I had to sit behind one of those poles, though. And while I know you're kidding about me switching sides, don't, or I will have to call Greg Walker. For the record, I think Wrigley Field TODAY > US Cellular Field before the renovations.

Ozzie is a special type of manager. He's Tony LaRussa with a mouth and there's nothing wrong with that. I love it. If we won't keep Ozzie as our manager, someone else will take him and we'll be stuck with crap for years and years. Again. I know everybody hates their manager, especially when they're losing, but any move to replace Guillen would be foolish. He IS the White Sox to the average fan; he loves the White Sox; he knows baseball.

QUOTE(southsideirish71 @ Jun 14, 2007 -> 09:30 AM) The park is a dump. They have weeds on the walls, no jumbotron or technology what so ever. The average cub fan that goes to the park is a dope, who sings some silly song if they win and worries more about beer than the game. They believe in goats, curses and bartmans. The only reason, I mean the only one to go to a game there is to pick up girls. That is it. Wrong. It's Ivy, and it's unique. There's nothing wrong with the Ivy. What's wrong with a throwback to the past? I don't mind it. I had to kid the guys that "Maybe this is why Dusty Baker left his pitchers in so long" when there was no pitch count anywhere, but it's no big deal. I guess people don't drink at Sox games or sing. (Let's go go...) The guys I was with didn't believe in Bartman goats or curses, although I tried to tease them into it. Beautiful girls, though. Did my own flirting. Got asked to hang out but declined. I guess we have to disagree. I used to hate Wrigley, and though I still enjoy the occasional Cub-fan bash, I'm not going to paintbrush everyone. But let me tell you, since we're talking about the negatives of Wrigley...there were these guys there....talking about how much they love....Greg Walker...

If Ozzie loses his job because his team was the worst in baseball this year, I think I'll hate KW and JR, especially if the replacement is someone like Razor Shines.

QUOTE(witesoxfan @ Jun 14, 2007 -> 12:24 AM) Let's have some fun... and speculate as to who. Obviously, Vlad. I figure Vidro too. If you count just half a year, I figure Bartolo is another. Then I'm torn on the final one; does he interview the veteran Galarraga, the so often used Latino reference Orlando Cabrera, the patient, homer or nothing Wilkerson, the numbers starter in Ohka, or the horse of the staff, Javier Vazquez. I say Vazquez, just cuz I'm a Havy Jomer. He's a big Vazquez fan, so it makes sense.

I spent the night at Wrigley Field and it was some of the most fun I've ever had. More fun than at any Sox game this year and perhaps last year, too, which says a lot because I love the Sox and Comiskular but today's day was so much better. Mainly because of the people I was with who were fun as hell. First of all, I was sitting to two Cub fans: one from Detroit, and one who looked like Ichiro Suzuki, along with my best friend (the reason we went was he's a HUGE Mariner fan and he's never gotten the chance to see them live and I said, "I'll take you, because it's unfair that you can't go because of money and I'll take you"). We sat about teasing about these people to our side, making jokes about players, sharing anecdotes and having a ton of fun. There were these hats given away to the first 20,000 or so and he said, "I'll barter with you guys. A hot dog and a beer for the hat" and I said, "Yeah." I was going to get a beer but then I said, "No, actually, forget it, get me a coke." Let's just say I didn't want him to get into any trouble. That's not the 100% truth but it was a part. If he'd asked me for the hat, PERIOD (for free), I'd have given it to him, but he offered to barter and free food never hurts. I peed in the sink at Wrigley. Twice. The urinals aren't urinals -- it's a giant tub-trough. I thought the sink was the tub so I peed in it. When we were leaving Cubs Park, the people were high-fiving from different floors of the ramps yelling "GO CUBS!" and I started going, "GO BREWERS!" and putting my hand over the side and they'd yell with me and high-five me because they were so drunk. Way to live up to stereotype, Cub fans. One guy said to me, "f*** you!" and flipped me off, and I said, f*** you! There were these guys going, "Let's Go Cubbies -- f*** Suzeuski!" and I kept going, "WHO THE f*** IS SUZEUSKI?!" You know, Wrigley's a nifty little place. I don't hate the stadium (though I'm not in love with it) and I loved the fans I was with, except the Suzeuskis and the random drunks. Great night, though.