caulfield12

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Nov 8, 2012 -> 11:19 PM) Let's see, which of those groups do Democrats give lots of free stuff to....... With the unemployment rate being so high in the 18-29 age group that ---ch-slapped both McCain and Romney in two consecutive elections, how can you explain Obama's appeal to those aforementioned young people? Just slick marketing? Palin and Ryan were roughly the same age as Obama or younger, why weren't they attractive enough to sway votes?

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Nov 8, 2012 -> 07:12 PM) get outta here Peggy Noonan, wsjonline.com Mr. Genius, I doubt you will read it, but I would like to see your reaction to this op-ed piece. President Obama did not lose, he won. It was not all that close. There was enthusiasm on his side. Mitt Romney's assumed base did not fully emerge, or rather emerged as smaller than it used to be. He appears to have received fewer votes than John McCain. The last rallies of his campaign neither signaled nor reflected a Republican resurgence. Mr Romney's air of peaceful dynamism was the product of a false optimism that, in the closing days, buoyed some conservatives and swept some Republicans. While GOP voters were proud to assert their support with lawn signs, Democratic professionals were quietly organizing, data mining and turning out the vote. Their effort was a bit of a masterpiece; it will likely change national politics forever. Mr. Obama was perhaps not joyless but dogged, determined, and tired. Apart from those points, everything in my blog post of Nov. 5 stands. So what does it all mean? It's hard to improve on the day-after summation of the longtime conservative activist Heather Higgins, of Independent Women's Voice: "A majority of the American people believe that the one good point about Republicans is they won't raise taxes. However they also believe Republicans caused the economic mess in the first place and might do it again, cannot be trusted to care about cutting spending in a way that is remotely concerned about who it hurts, and are retrograde to the point of caricature on everything else." She notes that in exit polls Republicans won the "Who shares your values?" question but lost on the more immediately important "Who cares about people like you?" "So it makes sense that many . . . are comfortable with the Republicans providing a fiscal brake in the House, while having the Democrats 'who care' own the Senate and the Presidency. And that is what we got." Ms. Higgins wasn't happy with it but accurately reported it. It is and has been a proud Republican assumption—a given, a faith—that we are a center-right country and, barring extraordinary circumstances, will tend to return to our natural equilibrium. That didn't happen this time, for reasons technical, demographic and I think attitudinal: The Democrats stayed hungry and keenly alive to the facts on the ground. The Republicans worked hard but were less clear-eyed in their survey of the field. America has changed and is changing, culturally, ethnically—we all know this. Republican candidates and professionals will have to put aside their pride, lose their assumptions, and in the future work harder, better, go broader and deeper. We are a center-right country, but the Republican Party over the next few years will have to ponder again what center-right means. It has been noted elsewhere that the Romney campaign's economic policies more or less reflected the concerns of its donor base. Are those the immediate concerns of the middle and working classes? Apparently the middle class didn't think so. The working class? In a day-after piece, Washington Post reporters Scott Wilson and Philip Rucker wrote: "As part of his role, [Paul] Ryan had wanted to talk about poverty, traveling to inner cities and giving speeches that laid out the Republican vision for individual empowerment. But Romney advisers refused his request to do so, until mid-October, when he gave a speech on civil society in Cleveland. As one adviser put it, 'The issues that we really test well on and win on are not the war on poverty.'" That is the authentic sound of the Republican political operative class at work: in charge, supremely confident, essentially clueless. It matters when you show people you care. It matters when you're there. It matters when you ask. The outcome was not only a re-election but on some level and to some degree a rejection. Some voted for Mr. Obama because he's a Democrat and they're Democrats, some because he is of the left and they are of the left. But some voters were saying: "See the guy we don't like that much, the one presiding over an economy we know is bad and spending policies we know are damaging? The one who pushed through the health-care law we don't like, and who can't handle Washington that well? Well, we like that guy better than you." That's why this election is a worse psychic blow for Republicans than 2008, when a confluence of forces—the crash, dragged-out wars, his uniqueness as a political figure—came together to make Barack Obama inevitable. But he was not inevitable after the past four years. This election was in part a rejection of Republicanism as it is perceived by a sizeable swath of the voting public. Yes, Mitt Romney was a limited candidate from a limited field. Yes, his campaign was poor. It's also true that the president was the first in modern history to win a second term while not improving on his first outing. He won in 2008 by 9.5 million votes. He won Tuesday night, at last count, by less than three million. Still. Many things would have propelled Mr. Obama to victory, but one would be a simple bias toward stability, toward what already is. People are anxious, not as hopeful as they were. Two memories. One was a late-summer focus group of mothers who shop at Wal-Mart. One asked, paraphrasing, "If we pick Romney, does that mean we have to start over again?" Meaning, we've had all this drama since 2008, will that mean we're back at the beginning of the crash and have to dig out all over again? The other is a young working mother in Brooklyn, a member of an evangelical church, who told me 10 days ago her friends had just started going for Mr. Obama. Why? "People are afraid of change right now." When America is in a terrible economic moment and the political opposition can't convince people that change might be improvement, then something's not working. *** A big rethink is in order. The Republican Party has just been given four years to do it. They should get going. Now. For clarity they could start with essential, even existential, questions. Why does the party exist? What is its purpose? What is possible for it in the new America? How can it prosper politically while leading responsibly? From there, the practical challenges. Some of these are referred to as "the woman problem" or "the Hispanic problem"—they presumably don't like the GOP. But maybe they think the GOP doesn't like them. What might be the reasons? Those who say no change is needed, who suggest the American people just have to get with the program, are kidding themselves and talking in an echo chamber. What will they do if the same party comes forward in 2016 to the same result? The great challenge for the Republican Party now is how to change its ways without changing its principles. Its principles are right and have long endured because they're right. But do all the party's problems come down to inadequate marketing, faulty messaging, poor candidates? Might some of it be policies, stands, attitudes? That will be a subject here in the future. For now, in politics as in life, you have to play the hand you're dealt. You have to respect reality. Which is where conservatism actually starts, seeing what is real.

from politico.com/arena Charles Sanders Pierce, the greatest of American philosophers, wrote a brief essay, "The Fixation of Belief," that holds some lessons as to what is wrong with the GOP and how, most likely, it will not solve its problem in the immediate future. Pierce showed that humans are not fundamentally seekers of truth; we mainly want to avoid doubt. And when events occur, like the 2012 presidential election landslide by Barack Obama when most Republican analysts predicted a Republican victory, doubt emerges. But as Pierce shows, people hold to their beliefs tenaciously long after it has become plain they no longer accord with reality. Notice how Karl Rowe refused to believe the conclusions of Fox News's own statisticians that Ohio had been won by the president. Or Donald Trump's rant that "We can't let this happen. We need to march on Washington and stop this travesty." These comical reactions are merely extreme versions of the looks on the faces of those assembled at Romney headquarters in Boston who could not believe that their beliefs were so out of step with most of America's voters; and the paid Republican prognosticators - George Will, Dick Morris, etc., etc. all failed to anticipate the 100 electoral vote thumping that Barack laid on Mitt Romney. Pierce states that what happens when we change our opinions is that once faced with overwhelming evidence that they no longer accord with reality, we scurry around testing new hypotheses until we find one - this he calls inquiry - that seems to explain the facts and - most importantly - is a belief we are comfortable with. In the coming weeks, we will see this scurrying around among Republicans, with the desire not to seek the truth but to remove the feeling of doubt, and to find an explanation for what happened that will protect the core beliefs that Republicans remain fixated on. Explanations like it was Mitt's fault, that he wasn't a good candidate, that we need a real conservative to run, etc, etc., all beliefs that will ignore the fundamental fact that a Copernican revolution has occurred in the American electorate, that the Republican Party cannot face. A majority of the historically oppressed in this country have reached the stage in their political development where they are able to vote their self- and collective - self interest. The people have spoken, and are no longer subaltern. We now realize why the disfranchisement of blacks after the Civil War and the refusal to allow women to vote for much of American history were such crucial ingredients to American political culture. It allowed white male elites to craft policies that served their self-interest and crushed those of other American citizens. But the revolutions of the 1950s and 1960s have changed all that. The Reagan counter-revolution merely slowed what was inevitable - that white male voting can no longer trump, to use a rich term, the interests of all the rest. And this election also shows that the working and middle class white male voter in many cases no longer wants that old racially charged baggage anymore. The American people have woken up - at least more than half of them. And when they listen to policies that are inimical to their self-interest, they reject them at the polls. The attacks on women's bodies by Republican candidates were heard. And also heard was Romney's refusal to repudiate or reject those who made outrageous comments about rape. That refusal to reject outlandish comments about rape is the party's representation, and it was heard, and absorbed, and rejected. Constant attacks on immigrants as if they were inhuman were heard. Insane inquiries about Obama's birth certificate were heard. And well heard was the argument that the only way to advance America economically is to give more tax cuts to the rich, thereby shifting the inevitable tax burden to come to the middle class. Large swaths of middle and working class Americans voted against those whose policies served the elite, and not themselves. The Republican Party has become the party of the elite, hence the precipitous drop on Wall Street the day after the election. The people spoke, and they said, "we didn't like what we heard from you." Notice that every one of the battleground states Barack won - Florida, Ohio, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Wisconsin, Iowa, - were states where repeatedly Romney and the Koch brothers concentrated the Republicans message. And they lost all of them. Why? Because enough of the people realized the policies articulated were not in their long term interest. It is the policies, stupid, that were reject on November 6. Republicans are caught in a Ronald Reagan mindset. When Barack chided Romney in the last debate that the 1980s wanted its foreign policy back, he could have said the 1980s also wanted its domestic immigration policy, its economic recovery policy, its climate policy, its energy policy, its regulatory policy, its gender and sexuality policies--back. The world that Reagan dominated does not exist any more. Prejudice and institutional racism remain, but many whites saw Barack, the black candidate, as the more rational subject, and viewed Republican candidates, including "blowing in the wind" Mitt Romney, as irrational, unreliable,and untrustworthy. Jefferson must be turning over in his grave. The Republican Party failed to beat a black candidate many in the electorate did not like, in a stalled economy. Wow! But unlike the Republicans, Barack listened - and adjusted to reality - and refined his beliefs in reaction to his negative experiences in the White House, especially the failure of his attempts at bipartisanship, and changed. Who is the most rational, the most nimble Republican thinker today, who has seen the rise of the New Populism and adjusted his thinking in accord to it? Start with Supreme Court Chief Justice, John Roberts. His decision to vote to uphold the Health Care Reform Act flowed from a realization that the people wanted it, despite the Republican brainwashing machine that convinced so many they didn't. Roberts was not so fixated in his beliefs that he couldn't change them - or act in such a way that he did not make the Supreme Court irrelevant because of them. There is something for the national Republican Party to learn from this. But they probably won't anytime soon. They will persist in their fixation on their beliefs for a while longer, to the delight of Democrats looking forward to 2016. Jeffrey C. Stewart UC Santa Barbara Former State Sen. Jeff Smith (D-Mo.) New School professor : 1) Remove all platform planks involving gay people. Quit worrying about people's sex lives in general. 2) While we're talking about sex, strike the words "contraception" or "rape" from your political lexicon. I understand that many of you equate abortion with murder. But the political facts of life are these: just 20 percent of the country opposes abortion in all cases. That number hasn't really moved in four decades and it isn't going to. So continue calling yourselves pro-life and appoint judges who are pro-life, but understand that if you don't allow reasonable exceptions for incest, life of the mother, etc., you're always going to struggle with women in their child-bearing years. Sure, some of them are pro-life. But more are pro-life in their OWN life w/o wanting to see the option eliminated from others - which for many (like me) is the essence of the pro-choice position. Your policies and rhetoric don't make that distinction. Most people in this country just don't want to criminalize women who make that choice and as long as the candidates who get the most attention are people like Akin and Mourdock, your party's screwed. (Sorry, couldn't resist.) 3) Stop opposing the DREAM act. Obviously the writing is on the wall. These approximately 15 million folks aren't going anywhere; they're not self-deporting and government lacks the will and the money to deport them, other than criminals who are apprehended. These 15 million mostly consider themselves Americans. Almost all work hard and play by the rules. Quit appeasing your eroding base of old white people and get with the program. 4) Return to your fiscal conservative roots. Adhere to your rhetoric about not crippling the next generation with debt by supporting policies that would actually balance budgets, as opposed to Ryan-esque chimera and other supply-side garbage. Look, every Republican legislator voted against Clinton's tax hike in '93 and you asserted it would kill the economy. We all know what happened next. Did a Republican Congress that limited spending help balance budgets and satisfy bond traders, keeping interest rates low and powering growth? Sure. But the public associates that growth with Clinton. Your doomsday rhetoric about his bill eroded your credibility. And a decade of feeble growth following the Bush tax cuts didn't restore it. So, stop it. A return to your roots as the true budget hawk party would be good for your party and even better for the country. And like most Democrats, I'd be happy if your party were more successful if you were ALSO more responsible and helped govern sensibly. 5) As part of your fiscal conservatism, take the lead in two areas where the nation could save billions: military spending (we spend more than the next 10 highest spending nations combined) and prison reform. Want to win the votes of young people and minorities? Bingo. As a conservative Republican friend in the Missouri state senate told me last night, "We're a Mad Men party in a Modern Family world." That pretty much sums it up .Steve Murphy Democratic consultant; Managing Partner at Murphy Vogel Askew Reilly : Sixty percent of Republican voters believe the government should offer no assistance to the poor. The Republican Party is actively working to make it more difficult for poor people to vote, with blacks as the obvious target. Rank and file Republicans are totally opposed to legalization of illegal immigrants who have been in the country for an extensive period. Republicans favor elimination of the income tax in favor of consumption taxes which would shift the burden overwhelmingly to the 50 percent of Americans who live from paycheck to paycheck, (or relief check to relief check). Neo-conservative Republicans promote aggressive American military intervention whenever it is in our strategic interest. Republicans are seeking to privatize both Social Security and Medicare, as well as eviscerating federal discretionary spending, aside from Defense funding. They are opposed to gay marriage - their base firmly believes gays are innate sinners, and Republicans want to ban gays from serving in the military. Republicans deny the obvious fact that our climate is warming at a calamitous rate. They are anti-science in other ways, too, with a majority believing the universe was created as it exists today 6,000 years ago. Many Republicans want a "personhood" constitutional amendment which not only would prohibit abortion in all cases but also ban many common forms of birth control. A majority of Republicans support overturning Roe v. Wade. How can they change all that?

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Nov 8, 2012 -> 09:54 AM) Exactly. These types of things change so rapidly there is no point in even discussing it. One wrong move or scandal, and the entire landscape changes within minutes. True enough. Look at the GOP primary. Bachmann, Cain, Perry, Gingrich and Santorum all were up at different times in that cycle.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Nov 8, 2012 -> 09:51 AM) Um, yes they did. The people in power, which were very few, made such decisions on behalf of everyone else -- for better or worse -- whether they, the people, were even aware of it. Especially back then when news took months to travel around. Many of these types of decisions were probably made without foreseeing population booms or busts in the future. As a matter of fact, I doubt many of such decisions were made looking that far in the future at all. Have you ever seen anyone use the "I moved with my family to South Dakota to have a stronger impact with my vote on the presidential race" excuse? Maybe they would mention lower or no property taxes, haha. But seriously, the Constitution didn't anticipate the primary or caucus system either. And yet how many people are moving to Iowa, New Hampshire or South Carolina, for example? Will people leave Florida since their state didn't count at all this year, essentially?

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Nov 8, 2012 -> 09:15 AM) I'm sure they knew and that it was simply "any Democrat is better than Mourdock" as well as being aware that you're not going to be able to get a progressive Senator from Indiana. The Tea Party is near dead. Allen West. Scott Brown, although he has a chance to run again if John Kerry becomes Secretary of State. Sharron Angle and McDonnell in DE gave away two sure GOP wins (one to an "on the ropes" Harry Reid) and took the spot away from moderate Mike Castle. Same thing this cycle, McCaskill was the most vulnerable Senate candidate on the Dem side and Akin self-imploded. The super PAC's killed Brunner, who would have defeated Claire handily. Then Lugar getting pushed out in Indiana for another bad candidate, who couldn't even win despite Indiana handily flipping back to the GOP side presidentially when it had barely gone Obama in 2008. Most importantly, their idiotic comments (Akin and Mourdock) were used to hang Romney by association (you can also ding Mitt for not coming out more strongly with condemning words too) and further solidified the Dems with women (overall....he still lost white women quite handily).

They're already writing an article at politico.com stating that the "favorites" for 2016 (at this EARLY point) are Hillary and Jeb. Jeb still has the Bush brand going against him. Amazingly, it has been since 1976 that a Bush or Clinton wasn't somehow involved in a national presidential election. More voters blamed Bush than Obama for the current economic predicament. That's quite telling, after four years of constant attacks on Obama from the right. Rubio's the obvious Golden Boy candidate of the moment. The new Indiana governor is getting lots of attention. Chris Christie, although his "embrace" of Obama will be hard for many to forgive. Mitch Daniels. Susan Martinez of New Mexico is rising and represents one of those states being flipped by immigration (Virginia, NC, Texas, NM, Colorado, Arizona). Ryan, although he couldn't even make much inroads against Obama...and with all the attention paid to the state over the Walker election, union battle and recall fight. I don't believe Biden has much of a chance, going back to the whole plagiarism thing that helped to sink him the first time he ran. Martin O'Malley from MD is one of the up and coming "darkhorse" candidates. The Clintons own the nomination unless they decide not to make one last run, which would go against every inclination Bill has (revived this cycle) to be a big part of the spotlight and not put out to pasture. Andrew Cuomo, although his father was a much more articulate and compelling candidate. http://swampland.time.com/2012/11/07/insid...lped-obama-win/ I wonder how much money it would cost for the White Sox to buy all the data mining information the Obama team has compiled on metropolitan Chicago and use it to help market to potential season ticket buyers....?

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Nov 7, 2012 -> 06:29 PM) I believe after a weak recovery we're in for another recession in '13-'14. I would have preferred not to have a lame-duck President in office over the next four years. We were definitely going to be in for another recession if we went over the financial cliff. That happening is a LOT less likely in an Obama 2nd term than a Romney first term. There's absolutely zero reason to believe that the country can "grow" it's way out of $16 trillion in debt by LOWERING tax rates. It has been tried 2-3 times already. And the last time we had a truly successful and expanding economy was under Clinton. One of the biggest reasons for the budgets to be balanced back then was capital gains taxes, yet another area where the Republicans believe it's "unreasonable" to be taxed. In the end, talking about 2016, too many variables are in play to say that the Dems are set up for a nice run...the demographics trends (young people, women, minorities expanding) definitely are aligned for them. But as we saw with the Vietnam War in the 60's (breaking the JFK/LBJ run), Watergate, the Iranian Hostage Crisis/inflation/fuel shortages, the LA riots and recession of the early 90's (combined with Bush looking out of touch and Ross Perot's siphoning off votes that would have gone more GOP), the make-up of the Supreme Court in 2000 (as much as some argue there's no way Obama should have won a 2nd terms, there's no way that Bush should have won back then because the economy was doing so well, but Clinton had his scandal and also Gore distanced himself on purpose, which turned out to be a huge mistake, along with his "populist" war against the wealthy)... There are just five million things that always get in the way of projecting "automatic" victories for Hillary...and it's not a slam dunk because of her age and the residual vitriol which the Clinton brand means for non-Dem's. And Rubio looks in the best position to be formidable simply due to his being Hispanic, which nullifies the immigration issue and rebalance the equation voting-wise to 50/50 or favoring the GOP even....of course, he's got a great storyline/bio, one that is somewhat similar to Obama's (and some of it is hype and myth more than reality, like his "escape" from Castro's persecution).

It's one of those cases of selective memory with Peavy. A lot of our gripes were about his record against the Tigers, particularly the 6-0 blown game, some of his starts down the stretch where he was "so-so" or okay instead of pitching like an ace. Of course, the counter-argument is that he's no longer the 2007 version, has diminished stuff, has had to adapt and learn to be a pitcher rather than just a thrower...THAT previous Cy Young glimmering version will never return again, any more (and I see some are still holding out hope that he'll bounce back into the mid 90's with his FB again). Statistically, there's no arguing with his stats, as an overall body of work, from 2012. And there's no arguing that if he put up those same numbers the next two years, the White Sox would have made a very sound investment. And then there will always be those who appreciate his "manning up" and coming back from a first of its kind surgery as quickly as he did, instead of packing it in and collecting a paycheck. The whole team just ran out of gas (Sale, Peavy, Quintana, the rookies), we had the injuries to deal with constantly throughout the 2nd half...most of us were not as angry as Greg about the "collapse" as it was pretty predictable to those who follow both the Tigers and Sox closely. (That said, I believed we would actually take it after winning the final Tigers game and then again when Dunn hit the homer to win another one in the following days).

QUOTE (DukeNukeEm @ Oct 31, 2012 -> 01:08 AM) If the Royals are willing to trade Moustakas to a divisional rival he has to be #1 on the wish list. I'd be willing to overpay just to see if he can turn it around Moustakas was one of their best offensive players the first half of the season. He's not a turnaround guy as much as Alex Gordon was...or Hosmer coming into 2013.

QUOTE (2nd_city_saint787 @ Oct 30, 2012 -> 08:20 PM) Oh ya he'd be nice too. He'd def take Rios+ to get and I'd like to keep Rios if possible. I'd give up Rios for Headley though just because he's much younger than Beltre and could be the face of the franchise in the coming years. They would have to move Cruz for that to make any sense.

Good news, not quite great, because you wonder about all the wear and tear that Robin and Cooper put him through, sometimes needlessly. On the other hand, it does afford us the luxury of packaging some guys like Quintana/Santiago (one of the two, probably), Thornton, Crain, Reed (possibly) to see what we can get back for 3B and possibly catcher. The biggest question marks are: 1) Does DeAza go back to CF? 90% chance, unless another starter is traded, like Rios, for a new CFer. 2) Who's the closer? 90% chance it's Reed, at least to start out. 3) AJ, Tyler or a new catcher not on the radar screen? 4) 3B

He will come out and blame SoxTalk and WSI for all of his bad trade ideas, surely.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Oct 27, 2012 -> 08:03 PM) I think your still starry-eyed from having Boyer chat you up. I think I preferred the baseball-related Straw Man arguments to this.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Oct 19, 2012 -> 05:35 PM) You think the marketing guy is now an economist? The White Sox are an extremely well run business from a financial standpoint. But they're doing it at the expense of expanding the fanbase. They're squeezing all the money they can out of the remaining diehards. Finally, they realized (and it might be too late if we don't win in 2013, '14, '15) that they needed to try to bring some of the fans they've lost since 2006-07 back into the fold somehow. That's not how more model franchises like the Cardinals (or even the Tigers, compared to us) operate. Since the World Series, they squandered 90% of the inroads that could have been made to capitalize on that championship...and this at a time when the Cubs were cratering and finally rebuilding.

If this means Morel is the starting 3B, that's a bit scary, as almost nobody has any confidence he's the long-term solution at this point. About a week ago, one would have guessed that Peavy was 90% likely to be gone, Youkilis around 65-75% and AJ 50/50, probably. Would the ownership group keep the payroll the same, or venture into possible deficit territory...? That hasn't been their modus operandi, except coming into the 2011 season. Trading Dunn and Rios, bringing in the likes of A-Rod or Ichiro, those are marketing ploys and Sox fans are WAY smarter than that. There's also the issue that at this point, you'd have to figure the Tigers have a pretty good chance to win the World Series. They'd be 2 time defending AL Central Division champions...adding Victor Martinez as the full-time DH, adding Alburquerque for a full season (he or Villarreal or even Coke would be in play as possible closers, or they simply spend money to acquire another one), and even if they lost Sanchez based on the end of his season, they're going to be able to replace him with Drew Smyly, whose numbers are much better than any 5th starter on 25+ MLB teams. Just looking at Peavy/Youk/AJ/Dunn/Rios/Ramirez/Floyd/Thornton/Crain, there's a pretty good chance at least 4 of them are gone, if not 5. Sure, they will be replaced. But we're still closer to competing in 2014 or 2015 (Marty's position for a long time) than 2013. I think it was Southsider who argued they could or should be a favorite to win the AL Central, and there's the flip side argument (we all witnessed it firsthand in 2006) that it would be better were the Tigers to win the whole thing, which would push their pitching staff to the limit in additional innings pitched as well as removing some of their incentive for 2013. However, them winning might help the Sox on the field, but it won't help to boost offseason motivation for the fanbase to buy into what's likely going to happen on the field in 2013. Surely, the Tigers will be picked by 45 out of 45 pundits to repeat as AL Central champions. Our two best hitting prospects (after Viciedo) in Carlos Sanchez and Trayce Thompson are at least 3-4 months away from being ready, arguably. Starting pitching is unlikely to be better than last year (swapping Danks for Peavy), Quintana possible regression, Santiago as a starter vs. reliever, etc.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Oct 16, 2012 -> 03:21 PM) I think you should be sentenced to watch the Saved by the Bell episode where Slater's pet chameleon Artie died and they held a funeral for it. God that episode is f***ing awful. But it's a suitable punishment. Or a threesome with Mr. Belding and Mario Lopez.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Oct 10, 2012 -> 09:37 AM) Ummm...Donald Sterling is by far the worse owner in professional sports. Daniel Snyder?

QUOTE (Swingandalongonetoleft @ Oct 14, 2012 -> 05:21 PM) Ernie Harwell's voice sounds like he contracted strep throat and then went out to a bar and did karaoke all night. It's kind of annoying. You're really going to complain about one of the top 3-5 all-time voices of baseball, now deceased? Anibal Sanchez, FWIW, earning himself a huge contract in free agency. Who do the Tigers go to in the 8th and 9th? Their options are Villarreal, Alburquerque, Benoit and Dotel.

A-Rod, with his current 0/3, is now 3 for 38 lifetime against the Tigers in the playoffs (as a Yankee), dating back to 2006.

QUOTE (SouthSidePride05 @ Oct 14, 2012 -> 03:20 PM) Could it be that baseball is just not that popular at the moment? Maybe it's not about the money, because even the cheap tickets aren't getting sold. I think popularity in sports goes around in cycles, and maybe in a few years, MLB will be all the talk at the water cooler. Right now it's all about the NFL. The casual fan just isn't watching baseball right now. One of the main reasons is because the epic rivalries of recent years have lost their spark due to some teams falling into oblivion. The Cubs/Sox crosstown rivalry is non-existent at the moment because Cubs fans are in hiding.. and likewise, the Yankees/Red Sox rivalry is non-existent due to Saux fans in hiding. The casual fans aren't hearing the trash-talking and are evidently finding other things to occupy their time. Revenues and team values have been soaring the last decade. Attendance is only 20-30% of revenue now for the large market teams...closer to 20-25% for the biggest. Baseball can also deliver product over 81 games, plus spring training, plus post-season, WBC, etc. NFL has a limitation to around 20 different dates in a year. If anything, the NBA kind of peaked during their battle to take over 2nd from MLB...when's the last time you watched an entire Bulls' game, except for when Michael Jordan was playing? I guess the Heat "superteam" has renewed some interest, but a large number of NBA teams have empty arenas, relocation debates and financial struggles. If you look at the big differences from the last 20 years, it has been the rise of NASCAR, MMA/fighting (boxing has slumped correspondingly, especially the heavyweight division) and golf due to Tiger Woods. NHL also kind of peaked...it's just not the same experience watching on television. Same with futbol/soccer.

The subsidy they'll have to send is rising by the minute. It's actually quite similar to the Youk situation, in the sense where it's getting untenable for him to return to the Yankees in 2013 if his performance against the Tigers continues to echo the lack of performance in the ALDS vs. the Orioles.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 13, 2012 -> 11:04 AM) Serious question here. $100+m payroll with prices where they are now, or $75 million with cheaper parking and top end tickets? I'll take the $85 million, lower option and bring back the fans...there's no way it's this kind of a spread ($100 vs. $75), with all of the other revenues that are generated, attendance is down to 20-25% of the overall bottom line for a majority of the big market MLB clubs. 1) By maximizing revenue now, we're cutting out a new generation of fans that would become loyal followers if games were more accessible financially. What's the cost of having very few fans in their teens, 20's and 30's when that older generation of White Sox season ticket holders is gone? What about when the decision makers who have faithfully allocated their company's money for season tickets and sponsorship deals/signage SHIFTS in the next 10-20 years to the younger generation who saw the 2005 World Series win but haven't been back to a game since 2006 or maybe 2008? 2) We lose a tremendous amount of our homefield advantage when we have the stadium half full, compared to the Tigers. More fans, more energy and enthusiasm, the team will play better at home, better record equals better chance at making the playoffs. From 2009 on, except for a couple of stretches in 2010 (we were still winning most of those games on the road during our 26-5 stretch) and 2012, we've been a pretty bad team at home. 3) Creating that buzz or excitement will lead to more excitement and interest from the local media as well as a higher likelihood of getting our games picked up by ESPN or FOX...and will drive the t.v. ratings higher, adding more revenue because of the Comcast relationship.

Bringing in A-Rod would be like the whole Albert Belle thing, without the one caveat that made that move tolerable...you had a player close to being in the prime of his career. This clearly wouldn't be the case, here. 90% of the time, the All-Stars we see on the White Sox roster have long left their best playing days behind them. If you went back to the year JR bought the team, I would be willing to bet $100 we've had the most former All-Stars (developed by other teams) playing on the White Sox after age 33, compared to any other team in baseball during that time span. At least KW added in the extra bonus of "most former first rounders" as well, which has occasionally succeeded in injecting needed talent we missed out on with our own misguided drafting philosophies.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Oct 12, 2012 -> 04:10 PM) If that article wasn't written by an employee of an entity partially owned by the Sox it would not be as laughable as it is. What do you think WGN and the Tribune did for the Cubs all those years? And attendance is down to only 20-25% of the team's overall bottom line, it's not the driver of payrolls that everyone keeps assuming it is...but KW and Reinsdorf have used it as a wedge or leverage against the fans for many, many years. As far as the other point about the Tigers, it might be better for us were they to win the World Series. They'll have a lot less drive and hunger next year, it's almost impossible to repeat and the wear and tear of the season got to Scherzer a bit down the stretch. The scariest thing about the Tigers isn't Cabrera and Fielder, it's Verlander/Scherzer/Fister/Porcello/Smyly (Sanchez will probably leave as a FA). The first two are Cy Young arms. Fister has been absolutely great the last two stretch drives. And even in Valverde's their weak link, along with infield defense, they can use Alburquerque/Villarreal or sign someone off the FA market to fix that glaring problem.