Gregory Pratt

QUOTE(greg775 @ Dec 6, 2007 -> 11:44 PM) Yes. If DiMaggio beat his wife then I now consider him a total total slimeball. I did not know he did that. If what you say is true, then he is scum. No man should hit a woman ... ever. If he did do that, I despise the memory of Joltin Joe. Where is proof of this? If he did that, he is even worse than Bonds in my opinion, if Barry has not hit women. As far as Bonds ... I am assuming he did knowingly use steroids. If he did, he lied to the grand jury (and should go to jail for this like his pal the personal trainer who had to serve time for being quiet), he lied to the public a zillon times about this and from the stories in SI, USA Today, and how he treated a friend of mine in the media, I definitely "hate" Bonds if that is the right word. Now he appears to be a good family man from what I saw on TV with him involving his family in the home run chase, so that is good. I shouldn't say I hate him, but I definitely do not like him and would root for us to lose every game if we stooped so low as to sign him, which we won't. Jerry is old school. He can't want Bonds. He and the commish surely have had many a cigar ripping Bonds in the war-rooms. Not only did DiMaggio slap Marilyn Monroe around, he had a huge fight with her that led to their divorce over this: To be fair, though, I should say I have mixed feelings about DiMaggio. I love him as a baseball player and I sort of pity him as a man. He was jealous and paranoid in ways that would make Richard Nixon appear a patient saint, and he didn't truly know or understand how to be a good husband. He was a very conservative man, so when Marilyn Monroe or even Dorothy before her looked good in a dress, he'd make them change because "you can't go out in public like that!" and it wasn't with true "skank" attire. It wasn't this: Just classy dresses that plunge a little too low. "TAKE IT OFF!" "But Joe!" boom. The thing that complicates their marriage, and how I view it, is that DiMaggio really loved Marilyn Monroe more than any man ever did. To everyone else, she was a trophy and a warm sexual object; to DiMaggio, she was someone he loved and he desperately wanted her back after their divorce. Years after their divorce, when she was running with Sinatra and the Kennedys, Joe DiMaggio tried to get back together with her and she agreed...but within two weeks, she was dead, and DiMaggio -- according to his friends and his diaries -- believes the Kennedys murdered her. He was furious; they'd spoken about his jealousies and insecurities and he'd promised to let her wear what she wants, be who she was and she'd taken him back. Then she was dead. It was an interesting marriage, full of many jealousies and affection. A powerful wave of passion. But I try to avoid any harsh feelings toward DiMaggio for beating Marilyn Monroe up every few weeks, or for the emotional torment he put on the other women in his life (not to mention the hell he gave teammates, like Mickey Mantle). I've never beaten a wife or a girlfriend or a woman, and I don't think I'm the type -- nobody does think they're the type, it should be noted, but I'm not the type and nobody who knows me would think I'm the type -- but I understand that there was a lot going on in their lives and marriages and it's up to them to figure that out. They had, and then it was gone as soon as it came. He sent a dozen roses to her grave several times a week until the day he died. As for where all this is from -- a variety of places, but the best source is Richard Cramer's book about Joe DiMaggio. But enough about the history of baseball's characters... BARRY BONDS FTW

QUOTE(Linnwood @ Dec 7, 2007 -> 08:51 AM) "Gary Matthews Jr., Rick Ankiel, Troy Glaus and Scott Schoeneweis also were linked to performance-enhancing drugs, but baseball decided there was "insufficient evidence" to determine they committed a doping violation." How do you spell toothless? M L B It's not toothless; they could act. They just don't want to. Bud Selig has been involved in an effort to cover-up from the beginning.

1. The Jerky Boys. 2. LOL@ "never smiled!" 3. Running roughshod over a league, and having an oppositional relationship with it There's a lot more but those might be the big things. And by those might be the big things, I mean I'm hiding my hoodie.

I've liked New England since about Year Two of the Brady era, but much more intensely in the last two years as I've started to enjoy and research the game of football.

QUOTE(fathom @ Dec 6, 2007 -> 09:03 PM) I meant to ask you, why do you like the Patriots? Success, and I love Belichick's attitude. I love Brady's cool style -- if I'd been alive and grown in the 80s, I'd have been a Bears fan because of how nasty that defense is but I'd have certainly shifted to the 49ers because of Joe Cool. I just love cold, sustained success and excellence. I love that Bill Belichick doesn't allow the league to tell him what to do; I love his hoodie (it's the only material wish I have for this Christmas); I love his coy treatment of the media. And I have a lot of things in common with Belichick that I won't get into. When I was a kid, I didn't really care for the Bears. I loved the Broncos, back in the Elway days. I enjoyed the Packers a little. I really enjoyed last year's team until it became clear to me that they were a fluke but damn, that defense was good for awhile.

QUOTE(fathom @ Dec 6, 2007 -> 07:41 PM) Enjoy Griese and his dump off passes. I don't enjoy Chicago Bears football

QUOTE(fathom @ Dec 6, 2007 -> 07:31 PM) Freaking offensive line. That's probably the last we'll ever see of Rex on the Bears. Tragic!

And people got mad at me for asking if Floyd would be our opening day starter!

This Dodgers deal is not bad at all.

I spoke to a train conductor once who told me that almost every train driver runs someone over at some point or other in their careers, assuming they have a long one. It's awful.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Dec 6, 2007 -> 01:39 PM) I don't put them in the same level (your MB example and injecting illegal steroids), any more than I'd put murder and jaywalking in the same level. They are both crimes, or alternately, both cheating. But to say there is no scale, there is just evil or clean, would be kind of ridiculous. Cheating of the sort on the playing field - stealing signs, etc. - is barely even cheating. Its part of the game. Its a bit dirty, but its just not in the same league. Are you telling me you think MB occasionally using happenstantial sticky stuff on his glove, or a guy on 2nd stealing pitch signs, is the same as a guy who uses illegal steroids? No, I'm not -- but you didn't state that you hate steroids-cheating...just cheating because they're stealing your money, so I figured, Is that all cheating he's talking about or just certain forms of cheating? I would counter that doctoring the baseball is as significant as doctoring your body, but I've started to develop this view that players should be judged in context and relation to their peers: if everyone was juicing because that medical technology was available for anyone to use and baseball wasn't testing (was, perhaps, encouraging it) then by all means, I don't have the contempt for it that others do. Then again, ask me about Barry Bonds playing for the White Sox and I become a ferocious animal. It's complicated.

QUOTE(whitesoxfan101 @ Dec 6, 2007 -> 01:31 PM) Anybody see 61 year old Mercury Morris rapping on sportscenter last night as he promotes his rap career? It was painful to watch. Yeah, that was f***ed up and I can't stand that pseudo-intellectual bulls*** he's showing off.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Dec 6, 2007 -> 01:28 PM) I have an intense dislike for Bonds. Same for other juicers, whomever they are. Same goes for McGuire, Sosa, Guillen, etc. The fact that Bonds is ALSO a compelte asshole to everyone, and that he ALSO broke one of baseball's most coveted records without earning it, happens to add to my dislike. But I do not "like" anyone in sports who achieves their end by cheating. To me, its stealing, and its ultimately stealing my money (being a paying fan). In the same way that wite's question is fair and innocent I ask mine -- do you hold that rigidly with all 'cheating'? What about, say, Mark Buehrle who is on record as saying he doesn't always or often put pine tar on his glove but "if it's there, from shaking hands or being in the dugout, I use it" -- do you hate him? (That isn't a direct quote but that is about what he said: I don't go out of my way but if I get pinetar on me, I'll use it.) How much cheating is too much cheating? Is sign-stealing a form of cheating to lead to hatred?

1. One of the writers on my newspaper, where I am the Copy Editor, had a complaint with me that day which turned into his grudging admiration of me (we're really good friends). 2. Just a funny conversation with the most conservative person I've ever met. 3.

http://www.doubtaboutit.com/2007/11/watch-...g-chrysler.html

QUOTE(Tony82087 @ Dec 6, 2007 -> 10:49 AM) http://www.zoomerang.com/survey.zgi?p=WEB2278M5NFUGH Take this stupid survey for a class I'm in. What the hell was that all about?!

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Dec 6, 2007 -> 01:06 PM) Apparently, to YOU its all image, all media. To others of us, its his cheating that is the biggest reason for the dislike. Kind of arrogant to think that everyone other than you is simply brainwashed by the media, no? I never accused you of being "brainwashed" but who cares about that? And no, it isn't just all image to me. I have a long history of nuance on this subject as it is a sensitive, complicated subject. But there's a reason, beyond race, why Barry Bonds and Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire are treated so fundamentally different by baseball fans. Part of it is media; part of it is their own behavior/attitude.

QUOTE(shawnhillegas @ Dec 6, 2007 -> 12:59 PM) Taking illegal steroids and lying to a federal grand jury under oath IS the problem here, not greed or temperament. So no, I don't feel the same. Joe DiMaggio used to have slush funds arranged for him by the mob + restaurants. Read Cramer's biography on him. (Cramer is a Pulitzer Prize winning author.) So, uh, let's not pretend that he was a saint, and as for "cheating" -- well, shoot, I can't think of any "cheating" offhand by DiMaggio but the fact is that we have contempt for Bonds for much more than just his cheating. People hate Bonds for his cheating, sure, but plenty of people cheated, and while we can say, "Oh, the other guys didn't break the Homerun Record!" and it's true, there's certainly much more at play with Bonds than just cheating. Nobody ever liked Bonds; his "cheating" makes it worse but it's all image, it's all media. He's very little different compared to DiMaggio and others.

QUOTE(Jenks Heat @ Dec 6, 2007 -> 12:56 PM) How dare you compare Mr Steroids to Mr Coffee. Have you no class? I hope you're not seriously furious with me. All I said there was true: DiMaggio was a wife-beater, rude to fans, didn't sign except for money much of the time, a primadonna (holding out, insisting that he be referred to as the greatest living former ballplayer). Bonds beat his mistress (she says), he's rude to fans, doesn't sign sometimes and throws fits, is a primadonna, takes steroids. They aren't all that different but because DiMaggio drank with the writers sometimes and hung out with Ernest Hemingway while Bonds was taught to be rude to the media because they wouldn't respect him as a black man, anyway -- well, you've got a good idea why they're perceived so differently. (Mays/Bonds Sr. always told him about the media and distrusting them, per Book of Shadows and Love Me, Hate Me.)

That probably just says that Rowand's clumsy.

QUOTE(The Critic @ Dec 6, 2007 -> 12:45 PM) I've said it before, and I'll say it again: if the Sox sign Bonds, I stop following the Sox until the second he's gone. I think he's vile, and I won't support any team he's on. honestly, I share a distaste for Bonds but it's tempered and nuance -- that said... would you feel that same way about Joe DiMaggio, who was greedy, a jerk, a wife-beater, an asshole to fans...he was Barry Bonds without "cheating" or a hostile media.

QUOTE(Kid Gleason @ Dec 6, 2007 -> 12:49 PM) I used to have friends like that. We also work together, so I can't just cut her off or anything. I don't care how crazy and silly her beliefs and superstitutions are because we're friends, and I don't care what my friends believe as long as they're decent people which means they can't believe in, I don't know, sabermetrics or something.

About a month ago, Flash and I met again for a general conversation about some things outside of baseball and then baseball. When that conversation was ending and we were walking off, someone comes running up to me yelling, "Pratt! You asshole! You asshole!" I turn and we stop to wait for him. "You asshole! You f***ing asshole!" I didn't skip a beat. Just said, "Henry, this is Flash, my Life Partner." ["Henry"'s name has been changed to protect his identity; he is not a SoxTalker. Dude doesn't even like baseball!] (They shook hands and then Henry turns back to me.) "Asshole!" "Umm, what's up?" "Yeah, hey listen, I should run," Flash says, and he was on his way out anyway (we were at our place of departure). "See you Flash," I say, and turn to Mr. Henry. "What's up?" "YOU TOOK THE WORD JACKASS OUT OF ONE OF MY ARTICLES BUT PUT THE WORD 'ASS' IN YOURS! YOU ASSHOLE, I love you, you're so sinister." Was very funny to be walking with Flash and have one of my writers come up to me yelling and then praising me for being "sinister". It was nothing of the sort, but it was certainly entertaining. Didn't see Flash since then until today when I was talking with my Communist friends and Flash came over as I was leaving the building and yelled, "Pratt! Hey Pratt!" I stopped and turned, wondering who it was and it was Flash! "Yo, buddy, what's up?" and we walked and talked about life and baseball. Lots of fun.

QUOTE(Kid Gleason @ Dec 6, 2007 -> 10:34 AM) Not you, I'm talking about Pratt. Pratt's friend is weird. Yeah, and that's why we're friends and nothing more. She's crazy, and I love her to death, but she says ridiculous things that lead us down silly roads.

QUOTE(Texsox @ Dec 6, 2007 -> 10:39 AM) I feel I lose a couple IQ points every time I read a GP post . . . Yet I am sickly drawn to them.