caulfield12

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ May 15, 2016 -> 09:49 AM) You have opinions, I have actual numbers. I am not sure where you got your numbers, but the figures you are quoting here are not at all right. Even if you want to give Caray the credit, and not the team on the field, you are ignoring the fact that the longer he was with the Sox, attendance wasn't still going up. It was down a full 25% off of its peak. So if you are right, and attendance depended on him, and not the team, he must have been losing the effect, because numbers were down a full 400,000 fans over his last full four years here, 700k if you include 1981. Also, if you want to key attendance off of who is in the booth, Ken Harrelson must be a freaking Sox fan magnet, because since he started with the Sox, he tripled their attendance at its peak, pushing it from just under a million when he started, to almost 3 million at its peak. Even last year it was still at double what it started at. By your silly standard, Harrelson > Caray, by a mile. http://www.baseball-almanac.com/teams/wsoxatte.shtml If you look at 1971-1981, there is a 30-35% increase over that time period in attendance. 1981, obviously the numbers were down because of the strike, I think you must have forgotten about that. (You're comparing everything back to 1977 onwards, the most important aspect is comparing the 1960's, especially the last three years before Harry Caray started with the Sox, which was 1968-1970). Even in the 1959 World Series year, the Sox were only a 1.423 million and then 1.6+ million getting the Series bounce. That was their "modern" peak in attendance at that time. Look at 1966-1970. The White Sox were at less than 50% the average league attendance in 1969 and 1970 (once again, look at the numbers in Chicago in 1968-1970)...the year before Harry Caray started, the White Sox AVERAGED 6,115 fans per game. That went up almost 70% the first year Harry Caray was there. In general, there was an upward trend of attendance all those seasons from 1971-1981 (1975 was an exception). If you want to attribute all of it to Caray, then obvious the 1977 Southside Hitmen might disagree with you. That was the peak of the Harry years. From 1979-81, it was a below average attendance draw, but still MUCH MUCH better than the late 60's. Of course, the records of the 1979-1981 teams were pretty pedestrian, so no surprise to see the attendance shrinking. Even in the year where they competed in the final days of the season (1967), they only average 12,168 fans per game. Both arguments have points, but the main one is/was how badly the White Sox were doing from 1968-1970 (you could argue that's the time the team could/should have moved from a financial standpoint to Milwaukee)...

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/15/us/polit...p-news&_r=0 Crossing the Line: Donald Trump and His Complicated Relationship with Women... https://images.search.yahoo.com/search/imag...mp;action=click Not so shocked he was willing to help this pageant contestant...she's like a younger version of Melania (Bulgarian originally)

The number of arrogant parents who feel they can effectively teach their children...versus the percentage who are really qualified in terms of content knowledge and effective pedagogical style, there's HUGE disconnect there. And, as mentioned, the "I'm always right/#1/the best because my parents told me so" and social awkwardness issues tend to be lingering ones as adults.

CLE Weaknesses: 1) Brantley's hurt again, and Gomes' bat isn't quite back yet. 2) The rotation hasn't really clicked yet, and Kluber especially has fallen off from 2014 in terms of stuff. 3) Lack of resources to make big additions, have to trade from their farm system. 4) Bullpen in front of Cody Allen, and Allen has walked a lot of people for a closer although he flies under the radar except for roto owners/daily fantasy gamers. 5) Defense 6) Back end of the rotation, Tomlin and Anderson 7) Health Strengths 1) Core of Kipnis/Lindor in the middle infield is one of the AL's best. Lindor is an even better fielder than Carlos Correa, more speed but less power and highly deserving of more national acclaim. 2) Additions of Uribe, Napoli and Rajai Davis have helped to stabilize the club. 3) Santana's OBP. 4) Potential of Bauer if he comes back to the rotation, 5) minor league system 6) stuff of Carrasco (when healthy) and Salazar ROYALS I'll just go through their weaknesses, lol. 1) Injuries to Moustakas, Medlen and Young (partially due to ineffectiveness as well, those DL trips) 2) Morales has looked like the version who sat out the beginning of 2014 and never got his stroke back 3) Escobar has a terrible OBP and has gone backwards offensively...Alex Gordon also has struck out too much and hasn't looked like the same player from 2014. 4) Swapping out Soria for Madson has been a disaster. The rest of the bullpen, especially Hochevar and even Herrera recently has been more human than the 2014/15 iterations. 5) Infante's basically toast and Mondesi's suspended, so no quick fixes there. 6) Cain, until recently...has struggled offensively and had single digit XB hits a week ago 7) Duffy hasn't stretched out his arm and Dillon Gee's a waiver claim...putting a lot of pressure on Volquez, Ventura and Kennedy to carry the rotation 8) Ventura hasn't emerged as the "true ace" he was projected to be and his stuff has degraded a bit in terms of crispness Tigers... Why bother discussing them for now? If they get closer to .500 I'll waste some time on them, but for now they're toast just like Ausmus.

QUOTE (SCCWS @ May 15, 2016 -> 07:04 AM) Too late. I posted several times last winter that we should move Q for Bradley Jr, Swihart or vazquez and Owens. Obviously at the time Bradley jr was coming off an off-season and Vazquez off Tommy John. I knew they had 5 outfielders and they desperately needed pitching. Now Bradley Jr is probably an untouchable for them. I thought Vazquez would be available rather than Swihart. But Vazquez won the starting spot and now Boston thinks Swihart is better as a left-fielder and have moved him there. I would be worried just trading for Swihart unless White Sox think he still is an ML catcher. I think you mean the 2014-2015 offseason in terms of targeting Bradley, Jr. It was clear this year that they needed his defense and Betts' in the outfield, and that Hanley Ramirez and probably Rusney Castillo would be the odd men out (Ramirez was moved to 1B.) So they would have offered Castillo/catcher/Owens instead...or we would have gone after the same targets that were traded for Craig Kimbrel (or maybe not, since they were too far off in their development to impact the White Sox until 2017 at the earliest, but probably 2018).

Of course, that's also true of about 85% of Latin American hitters (swinging at sliders off the outside of the plate with 2 strikes/down in the count)...and a large majority of US born players as well. Guys like Miguel Cabrera, Victor Martinez or Abreu when he's going well will foul all those off until they get a pitch they can square up and drive.

"The next president (Clinton) is going to inherit a recession that this president has largely been able to avoid due to the timings of things. Regardless of the party politics, out of a recession you are faced with a political opportunity to redirect the message," Bahnsen told CNN. In his article, which is making the rounds with social conservatives, Bahnsen added: "We simply must prepare ourselves for the fight ahead, which is in diminishing the power of Hillary Clinton by preserving divided government, and then in replacing Hillary in 2020 with a pro-growth candidate of character and seriousness." http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/14/politics/202...race/index.html This all sounds sort of vaguely familiar...where have we heard this before? Obstructionism, so good for the country.

Trump, $1.5 million per speech...Bill Clinton $750,000 Nobody wants to hear Hillary Clinton speeches, that's why they're remarkably cheaper compared to the big guns. http://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-do...one-else-2015-8 Although I'm not 100% sure you're going to get accurate numbers. In all likelihood, his accountants write them off as donations to The Trump Foundation or other charities.

http://www.amazon.com/Clinton-Cash-Foreign...s/dp/0062369288 Writing books attacking the Clintons is an industry that has earned publishing houses millions and millions of dollars over the years...that's not to mention right wing radio and tv hosts like Ann Coulter, Matt Drudge or Rush Limbaugh whose careers have basically been made off them. Fox News owes the Clintons and Obamas half of their advertising revenues. There's even a book UNLIKEABLE: THE PROBLEM WITH HILLARY Amazing, right?

How many examples are there in American where middle and high school football players are "openly identifying as gay/transgender" in order to gain access to the woman's bathroom? Should the members of my girls' JV basketball and volleyball teams have refused to change in front of their lesbian coach...or asked her to use the men's room instead? She didn't have a penis but made them feel uncomfortable that she was watching them change, not even taking a shower, because they all knew she was a lesbian and had a g/f or "partner." Here's the problem Greg...if you substitute Native American for "transgender," you have about the same exact number percentage-wise of the US population. Imagine the reaction you would get openly campaigning about giving any benefits or "special programs" or scholarships or whatever to that "tiny percentage of the US." You would be crucified, even in Kansas. Well, maybe not in KS but in many parts of the country, a lot of people would be rightfully outraged by that kind of talk. It's not about numbers or cost...or we wouldn't have passed the Americans With Disabilities Act and retrofitted lots of school buildings with ramps/elevators/disabled accessibility, new public stadiums and theatres, etc. Many countries around the world don't have them because they're inconvenient or more expensive or those countries believe it's the responsibility of handicapped people to figure out the solution for themselves.

Watched the Eaton play a couple of times. Pretty clear that he simply thought that a ball Aaron Hicks hit to almost straightaway RF wouldn't carry that well. Not sure I'd call it a misplay, more of a misjudgment based on the lack of familiarity with the wind tunnels in Yankee Stadium. Abreu's defense has been dissected too many times to cover again. It would a tough play, but one that some of better 1B make. Very thin line between winning and losing...a couple of plays that get made there, Quintana is 6-1 instead of 5-2. The walk to Headley was really the key to the inning, but you'd like to have a little more confidence out of a pitcher who entered the game as the AL ERA leader facing the bottom of the Yankees' line-up. That said, Jose, as usual, recovered and kept his team in the ballgame. We really didn't have much of a chance after Nova was pulled. I actually started to go back and forth and follow the Tigers and Royals at that point. Just a boring/fast game from the Frazier homer on, unless you enjoy strikeouts and ground balls.

How in God's name would they enforce that? Guards at all public restrooms? The police are going to deal with 911 calls on this issue? Citations/fines? Would you support camera/monitors in the public restroom? Wouldn't that be even MORE invasive towards all those people who don't care about the issue one way or the other? 3D sensors/body scanners when you go into a bathroom that would give an electric shock to someone who didn't belong there OR notify the nearest law enforcement personnel? Are you going to have individuals feeling empowered by laws that aren't really meant to be enforced seeking out confrontations with people going into the bathroom...then you're going to end up with even more shooting deaths in the US as self-righteous individuals took it upon themselves to "evict" people from the restrooms. I don't know the answer on this one, but escalating the problem or increasing conflict might not be the answer.

Yeah, but he also hit around .200 and didn't have a ton of XB power for someone with his frame...he was more of a singles hitter. http://www.baseball-reference.com/register...id=jordan001mic Thrown out 18 times (30 steals)...556 OPS wouldn't get a regular minor league a sniff of the majors. Only a .266 SLG percentage, to his credit, he had 51 walks and struck out 114 times, which isn't too bad considering how rusty he was not playing baseball since the early 1980's.

I blame this loss on God Loves the Infantry starting the game thread too quickly. Actually, Gonzalez has pretty decent numbers against most of the current Yankees career-wise, but Tanaka's not an easy pitcher to beat, even with his stuff not quite what it was when he first joined NY. That said, I'm sure the betting line is hugely in favor of them.

Lebron to the Warriors...haha...that will help repair his legacy. Trying to see him co-exist with Green and Curry would be fascinating. But it will never happen in a million years. What's the latest conjecture about where Durant will end up? 50% return to OKC? Or less? Or depends entirely on how this season ends for Oklahoma City?

Losing 11 of 12 or 12 of 13 or whatever it is right now...there might be no choice left for Avila but to can Ausmus and see if they can salvage the season somehow. He's not the reason for the recent bullpen struggles, Miguel Cabrera and JD Martinez to be shades of their former selves (Cabrera actually pulled a 93 MPH fastball to left for his first "typical" homer in weeks), for Justin Verlander's fastball to be 90-92, for Anibal Sanchez to blow up every other start, for a talented rookie in Michael Fulmer to go through growing pains...the scapegoat more than anyone though seems to be Ausmus/Justin Upton and Anthony Gose to a lesser extent. It's pretty remarkable with Castellanos, Zimmerman, Kinsler and Victor Martinez playing so well that they could lose that many games across a stretch of almost two weeks.

Pitching in San Diego in meaningless games in one of the friendliest parks for pitchers isn't the same as pitching in the American League. (The likes of Clayton Richard and Eric Stults were made to look good out there). Look at Shields' 2014 stats with the Royals, particularly the 2nd half of the year and the post-season. Giving away Anderson and Fulmer AND paying his terrible contract would be insane. Now, if they were willing to pay for half of it or 40% and take two prospects (maybe Adams would be the one dealt, along with Hawkins), it might at least be plausible. Keep in mind, Hahn has ridden Miguel Gonzalez and Latos to just one loss the entire season in their starts, at a cost of under $5 million total. At least for the present, there is not any desperation to overpay on a starter. Of course, that could change in one month.

Yeah, that's an interesting one to ponder...or if Bo Jackson miraculously returned to his former athletic status after the hip surgery. Of course, the problem there is the strike KILLED the White Sox more than most teams, so the only way the Jordan theory makes sense is if he was good enough to help push the Sox back into the playoffs from 1995-97. And then he's leaving his legacy as the greatest player in the history of basketball behind to be, maybe, an All-Star...I guess the post said "awesome," sure...if he was an MVP-caliber outfielder, that would have made a huge difference. Same with the "what if Sammy Sosa became the same player (enhanced) for the White Sox he was for the Cubs?" Can go around and around forever with those thoughts.

Along with that: 1) The quaintness of "day baseball" and the fact that Wrigley Field was slowly moving towards historic park status while Comiskey was an aging and decrepit dinosaur. 2) Arnie Harris'/Caray's constant promotion of the "bikini babes in the bleachers" and Budweiser/party atmosphere, which has always been sorely lacking around 35th and Shields. If you were to name the top reasons to go to Sox games, "seeing pretty girls" was never one of them. 3) The 80's also saw more polarization/gentrification with the public housing....I remember as a 12-13 year old feeling a little bit scared in that area (at night), coming from my relatively protected environment in Iowa. All the favorable trends economically were moving to the Northside. 4) The excitement around Ryne Sandberg at that stage of his career...Baines was a great hitter in his own right, but, beginning with that Bruce Sutter/Cubs and Cardinals national Saturday game in 1984, there was just no much hype around Sandberg and also Andre Dawson compared to the quieter Sox players like Baines (I won't go there with Ozzie). Later on, you'd have a young Greg Maddux and then the Sammy Sosa Show. 5) Frank Thomas just had this aspect of his personality when he became a superstar that kept him from reaching that same "beloved" status as Jordan and eventually Sosa...you respected the hell out of Thomas and his hitting ability, it's a bit hard to explain, part of it being related to marketing, part of it to perception. Same thing with Carlton Fisk while he played for the Sox, greatly respected but far from beloved by everyone.

Even if Davidson went on the tear of the century, still not 100% convinced they would give him Avi's at-bats in the heat of a pennant race and really trust he could hold down the DH job at the big league level. But maybe it will restore a glimmer of trade value...one of those "down and out" NL franchises might be willing to provide him an opportunity like we sort of gave Mike Olt last year.

Even if Davidson went on the tear of the century, still not 100% convinced they would give him Avi's at-bats in the heat of a pennant race and really trust he could hold down the DH job at the big league level. But maybe it will restore a glimmer of trade value...one of those "down and out" NL franchises might be willing to provide him an opportunity like we sort of gave Mike Olt last year.

That's why we have the Constitution. To protect the rights of the minority from being infringed upon by the majority or even "factions" (feels like the perfect word for this election cycle.) I wondered when I read Greg's line what an internet message board would have looked like in say, 1935, "those pesky Jews, why should we, the Nazi Party be afraid to step on..." Of course, bathroom discrimination vs. holocaust atrocity isn't quite the same thing (nor is Trump Hitler), but the point remains that the system exists to protect individual rights from being trampled. The operative question, of course, is what are those individual rights and who defines them. During the Bush Era, we saw that the Patriot Act could supersede our rights, rightly or wrongly. What are Greg's rights (to be offended or to "protect" his daughter, even it's an imaginary need) vs. the rights of those wanting to utilize the bathroom where they feel most comfortable? What provides the greatest good for the greatest number of people? Are there millions and millions of fellow Greg's out there, a Nixonian silenty majority on this topic that are afraid to join Greg's crusade openly and publicly?

Auteur and Assassin's Creed in the same post? Things that make you go hmmm.... CRIMINAL with Kevin Costner was much better than the reviews give it credit for. Very nifty like CIA/global domination/action flick with Costner playing a baddie or ambiguous character much better than he does the hero. Reunited Tommie Lee Jones, Gary Oldman and Costner from nearly a quarter century ago when those three were all in their primes. Also supporting work from Ryan Reynolds (bit part), Michael Pitt and Gal Gadot wasn't bad to look at, either. Interesting to see her in "domestic drama" scenes compared to just action. Jones acted like he had just shown up for the paycheck, Oldman overracted the hell out of it in fine Nicholas Cage B movie fashion (Quaker Wells, London CIA Chief?) and Costner with his usual earnest approach (Jericho, another "movie" name) carried the film. Worth a watch. Not sure about Self/less, which is also now playing in China. That might be too much Ryan Reynolds for one weekend.

Game over, 6-3 Indians (Gomes hit a homer in the 9th off Jepsen). Still 5 GB. KC and DET still to play. If Baltimore wins tonight, they'll tie us for the best record in the AL again. Last week, they were something like 4 games over .500, and we should have been at +14 after Tuesday. (They beat up on the A's just like the Sox did, and took the first two against DET).

By my count, the Twins will now be up 3-2 against Minnesota on the season series. Even if they were to lose tmrw (Twins), that's a helpful 2 game swing between the Sox and Twins right there in the standings. It's also why "not who you play but when you play 'em" means so much. NY had won 5 of 7 coming into the weekend, and just got Chapman back to form the most intimidating bullpen since the Nasty Boys in the late 80's/early 90's and arguably a better iteration of that trio in terms of overall ability. We will also have the advantage of facing the Royals w/o Moustakas, Danny Duffy without having built up his arm strength after going to the bullpen the first six weeks and Dillon Gee. Finally, the KC pen is just not nearly as good as NY's, simply because Soria and the 7th inning have become such an adventure with Soria, and Hochevar hasn't been as sharp, either.