Texsox

QUOTE (greg775 @ Oct 4, 2014 -> 02:51 PM) Another family made their plea to ISIS to let their son go. The family just should have resisted the urge to do this. This is what ISIS wants. More publicity. The family asking for mercy to a group like this just assures their son being beheaded IMO. I can understand why the family did this but you can't reason with individuals who are the scum of the earth. http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/04/world/isis-p....html?hpt=hp_t1 People feel the need to do something, anything. Better the families try that then our government.

The coming of age and membership rituals go back centuries. From long periods of fasting and isolation to debutante balls they all are part of the same ritual behavior arc. We have graduations, retirement parties, swearing in ceremonies, and dedications. Think about the blood brother rituals, the fight your way in, or sex your way in to certain groups. Prove you are tough, can take pain, be silent, respect the traditions, etc. Now why do some groups take these to extremes?

QUOTE (LDF @ Oct 4, 2014 -> 07:18 PM) Hey TEX were you here when we had that huge arguement / fight with the espn white sox forum. If I remembered they had to shut it down to banned us? man I miss Yansy. I wasn't here, but that may have been about the time I went from ESPN to here. Someone from Soxtalk, I always thought it was SS but he said it wasn't him, invited me to come here. Talking about early days, even AOL had a really great discussion area with some excellent fans. I believe that was where I first met Steff. I thought I was going to be banned at WSI in 2005. They had a poster in September who kept predicting the Sox would not make the playoffs. One of the two main mods made a deal. If the poster was wrong and the team did make the playoffs he would be suspended/banned. If he was right, and the team did not make the playoffs, he could stay. I responded that that was stupid. Why would you want a guy around saying "I told you so" instead of having the guy around to shame when the Sox made the playoffs? The next dozen posts all anticipated my banning. Somehow, I escaped the without punishment.

So I switched from my 20 year old Taylor Made bubble shafted driver to a Titleist 913D and seem to be giving up some distance in exchange for accuracy. The main issue seems to be I feel like that giant club head is hitting so much wind resistance, like a giant jib in front of a sailboat. Does that feeling go away? I had my players out on the range with our range finders targeting in our wedge distances, learning how to hit wedges from 30 to 80 yards with some accuracy. Afterwards it was bang the driver time. So I know the distances are accurate and I was hitting both drivers side by side. The 913D is more lofted, but the overall height of each shot was roughly the same. What I couldn't seem to judge was the shape. I'm not certain if the Taylor Made was a flatter overall trajectory and that the Titleist was peaking and dropping straighter down.

Tears in my eyes moment. My players who won that tournament last week were named Athletes of the Week by our local newspaper. I received the certificates in my mail box this morning. I'm planning on framing them and giving them at our team meeting tomorrow.

I agree with you Balta, I'm just saying if we found out the CIA was financing a program running somewhere I wouldn't be shocked, just disappointed and angry.

Wow, I hadn't posted there in ten years. I forgot they even existed.

The death penalty is a strange thing.

QUOTE (knightni @ Oct 2, 2014 -> 11:31 AM) The big question... Will there be a "Party in the USA" parody song made from this article topic? No man can tell. I was feeling more a parody to Back in the USSR. But we're a syllable short.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 3, 2014 -> 03:23 PM) I've seen a couple Sox minor leaguers tweet links to articles talking about the conspiracy idea that this was created by the US for that purpose. They seem to believe it. It's amazing what some people believe, in contradiction to all things factual. We've done some interesting things through the years. Different countries believe different things about their enemies. Our view of Russia during the cold war as this evil country out for world domination certainly wasn't how Russia viewed itself. Of course their view of the US was markedly different than how we viewed ourselves. But stuff like Bay of Pigs shows we do like to meddle in the internal working of countries. In some corners of the world we are the country that dropped the bombs. Would the CIA or military experiment with a biological contaminate? I pray not, and don't know what I would do if I learned we did. Move to Mexico? But I can certainly believe that people in other parts of the world believe it. Isn't the US always around when these diseases break out? We call it humanitarian aid. We're like Jim Cantore, you know your weather is going to suck when you see Jim and TWC show up. Maybe he creates the bad weather.

A few times today I was telling the guys "I hope you enjoyed hitting that as much as I enjoyed watching it."

What's the quote in this case? Lies, damn lies, and statistics.

I'm surprised so many went with soft.

With the singular issues every summer I have travelling around the north to northeast where they have almost no service, T-MO has been great to deal with. For example they have one tower in Jackson Hole, out by the airport and unless you know where to look, you won't find it. They also throttle your date amount when roaming.

Coaches get too much credit and too much blame. Unless they go bat s*** crazy and become a PR nightmare, then they deserve all they receive. But give me great players and a bad coach over mediocre players and a great coach.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 1, 2014 -> 04:41 PM) The Cardinals are always near the top for me as a big fan of Machiavelli. St. Louis is a great baseball town. And as long as Cub fans hate the Cards, so much better.

Boom my three scramble teams finished 1 - 6 - 7. My top team of a freshman and junior shot a six under 66 and won the tournament by 8 shots. Nothing like bringing home some hardware. I celebrated by picking up a Titleist 913D3 driver. My twenty year old Taylor Made may finally be getting a long rest in the back of the closet.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 1, 2014 -> 09:11 AM) Good luck to Adam. I know his time here was quantifiablely awful, but he was always a stand up guy. He was an easy guy to pull for, because he was a good person and a great teammate. He never tried to blame anyone or anything else. He was a positive influence on a lot of the kids in the clubhouse. Hopefully the next stage of his life is good to him. saved me some typing.

QUOTE (flavum @ Sep 29, 2014 -> 02:15 PM) Who are you rooting for to make the World Series, in order of preference? American League 1. Royals 2. Tigers 3. Angels 4. Orioles 5. A's National League 6. Pirates 7. Cardinals I always go AL Central then AL then maybe find a NL team to root for.

QUOTE (Chilihead90 @ Sep 24, 2014 -> 02:05 PM) I played with one in the store yesterday. I hate that the phones keep getting bigger, but it was very slick and nice looking, and of course, super fast and took incredible pictures. Back in the days when I was working in sales and selling electronic components (micros, memory, caps, resistors, various ICs, etc) developers were lamenting that human fingers were not getting any smaller and there would be a limit on how small personal electronic devices could be. At the time we were still talking Palm Pilots, pagers, and the earliest Motorola phones (the luggable brick cell phone). We also complained about carrying an organizer and a cell phne and a MP3 player. Convergence was the word. Thirty years after I first heard the complaint about huge man hands, were trying to fit a giant screen in our pockets. I'm predicting the foldable screen. At 1/8th size you can send text messages, check weather, etc. Unfold it to watch movies, surf the web, etc.

My freshmen took 5th of 12 in an open tournament Monday. They were so nervous a couple had a hard time steadying their hands to place the ball on the tee. They totally forgot their pre-shout routines. If they had played to their potential 3rd place was within sight. Varsity tournament today. It's a small tournament played as two-man scramble teams. I was looking for an opportunity for the new varsity core to get together and play an event that would help bring them together. I was also looking for a "soft spot" next month to maybe get them a little success early. But a couple of the smaller school tournaments would not allow a school our size to enter.

I am liking Watson's coaching so far.

QUOTE (Heads22 @ Sep 15, 2014 -> 10:08 PM) No matter the sport, it still has to be to the point where the athletes are the ones taking ownership. What are different ways you could accentuate this? It starts with them taking ownership of their practices. I have 28 players out there. I've been working on one area with them each practice. I split them up into three groups, range, chips/pitching, and putting. Each day I am at a different station. I have a couple captains/better players who are now supervising the two areas I am not at.

The nice thing is I determine which events we enter. There isn't a district or conference schedule to contend with. Instead teams schedule invitationals or open tournaments and hope other teams sign up. I run one at a nice country club that has 18 holes and generally have about 200 players out there. Every player can play in as many as seven tournaments before our district tournament. So basically I could play two teams of five at any varsity event. Or have some of my underclassman play in JV tournaments and probably start winning a couple. The parental support has been amazing. I have committees for transportation, fundraising, and communications.

Where will you be sitting as you read this poll?