caulfield12

And, there's always the possibility we take another "MLB ready" collegiate pitcher in the draft again... While that won't please the minor league followers, KW has never really cared about ranking our farm system #1. With that full emphasis on the major league club, we'll see how the lack of depth might hamstring him finally if it comes down to a full-scale rebuild. Here's hoping we never have to find out. And wondering if either KW or Ozzie will be around to patiently see it through. Doubtful.

Serious: Sergio Santos becomes the closer at some point this season, Beckman and Ramirez make All-Star team as reserves, Dunn breaks Borchard's record for longest homer in USCF history Wacky: Lastings Milledge finishes in the Top 10 in the AL MVP race, Oney gets a job at Baseball Tonight

But you can also go back and look at how things "appeared" or seemed going into both 2005 and 2008. I don't think many Sox fans would have made large bets that either of those teams were heading for the playoffs. It always seems to be that way with the ALCD, with the exception of the Twins, whenever the Sox, Tigers and Indians have been the prohibitive favorites, they've failed to live up to expectations. As mentioned, besides Peavy and Teahen, there aren't any contracts that are prohibitively untradeable. Of course, they'd have to think long and hard if they wanted to trade an Alexei Ramirez or even a Gavin Floyd, because Quentin/AJ/Rios/Jackson/Buehrle/Danks/Thornton are obviously the players with the most immediate value and/or likely to be dumped to playoff contending teams. What to do with Konerko and Dunn in the case of that major rebuild is yet another question, not sure it makes any sense to hold on to either of those guys if you're not sure about competitiveness until 2014 or 15. It is a bit scary when you look at the minor league depth, or lack thereof. Then again, the ALCD has never been like the AL East, so even if you trotted a team out there with a Milledge or Mitchell, Viciedo, Flowers and Morel....if you could get the starting pitching somehow, anything's possible. It still remains to be seen how strong Mauer/Morneau/Nathan will be in that 2012-2014 timeframe, and Liriano's the only starter over there that scares you, and he will eventually get too expensive for the Twins to risk a long-term contract with his injury history. I guess it all depends on your faith/confidence in KW and the front office in procuring the right talent back in terms of those mid-season dumps. Historically, a lot of them haven't worked out, but you don't have the willingness on the part of JR to take losses throughout an entire season....they'll wait, as usual, until the last possible moment to pull the trigger on acquiring or dumping. Last year, it seems they were so in-between on which way to go that it really kind of bit them in the butt. That and the fact that Manny Ramirez turned out to be a shade of his former self. I, for one, am glad they still have Viciedo. It would be nice to see his develop as a young player at the major league level, rather than watching the Kansas City Royals "retreads mixed with prospects and suspects" approach.

QUOTE (fathom @ Feb 26, 2011 -> 03:18 PM) Wow, Ozzie should have just STFU. Oney did enough damage by calling him out a few months ago, and if Ozzie didn't think Jenks was going to say anything in return, then he's very naive. And it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that Jenks has gone back to some of the bad habits that he was involved with. At this point, I just hope he can live a healthy life. Bobby Jenks=Charlie Sheen? Minus Denise Richards and a string of prostitutes, but the guy's been enabled by too many others ever since his fastball lit up the scouts' guns and he was a top prospect (then busted) with the Angels. I guess Sheen's worst due to the more varied hardcore drugs he's put into his system, but both are still very much in denial of having problems.

Jenks was babied and coddled by the White Sox, in his mind, they turned on him and didn't show him loyalty and now he's pouting. I'm sure if you asked anyone in the Sox clubhouse if they wanted him around this year, the answer would be "no way," not with the way he's pitched the last two seasons and how he's let himself get completely out of shape. As far as Ozzie goes, if we don't make the playoffs this year (barring massive injuries)....then he should go. Ozzie and KW have never learned how to let an open microphone or opportunity to justify themselves go by, and, if you took Oney out of the equation, I'd argue KW does just as much damage as Ozzie.

Just saw Drive Angry. All I can say is it's so bad that it's almost good. Ebert gave it 2 stars, I have to agree. It's not quite atrocious enough to be 1 star, and Cage/Finchtner were actually half decent. The funniest part was Billy Burke (the sheriff in Twilight) as a cult leader. His accent cracked me up every time he opened his mouth. And Amber Heard is pretty darned hot. I think she would have been better than the Victoria's Secret model that Bay selected for Transformers III. We'll see.

What does everyone think about Sucker Punch? It has a Tarantino/Rodriguez vibe to it in not only appearance but also marketing materials... I guess I have always had a crush on Jamie from Real World SD (the Korean one with implants) as annoying as she was/is and can be.

I've seen everything but the Javier Bardem performance in "Biutiful"....

I can't say Winter's Bone is an "enjoyable" movie but it's excellently directed and performed....especially by the girl who was nominated for an Academy Award and the actor who plays her uncle suffering from the meth problem and dealing with the conflict between helping and his immediate family and retribution from the police and the other part of the family who want the problems to disappear. It definitely stays with you....unlike most movies these days. Wasn't part of "Up In The Air" also filmed in Michigan? Or "The Company Men"?

Unknown... 2 1/2 stars, not nearly as good as TAKEN, preposterous plot, January Jones looks like she's on Dawson's Creek and Diane Kruger, for some reason, is playing a Bosnian refugee taxi driver even though most of the action/movie takes place in her native Germany Cedar Rapids....3 1/2 stars, very funny movie, you just have to see it, it's a bit quirky but the lead actor (from Hangover) and Anne Heche and John C. Reilly were all cracking me up throughout this movie, plus I'm from Iowa (fyi, the majority of the movie was actually filmed in Michigan) Hall Pass....DVD/rental, not worth the admission price but probably worth a rental for diehard Owen Wilson or SNL fans Just Go With It....same category as Hall Pass, Jennifer Aniston actually was pretty decent in this one

Let's see, the Twins have traded Johan Santana, Kyle Lohse and Matt Garza when they were important parts of the rotation. They were looking to deal Slowey or Blackburn at different points last year as well because of the logjam in their rotation...and for salary/non-performance/injury reasons. Off the top of my head, I can't remember if Carlos Silva left as a free agent or was traded. He was another of those classic guys who "overachieved" when pitching for the Twins. Of course, in the middle of all that, you have Brad Radke bulldogging his way through a decade of pitching for them.

And let's not forget the "hometown hero/Paul Bunyan" side of this... They really had little choice but to give him that contract. Now, with the Cardinals and Pujols, that's a somewhat different story...because they would be giving Pujols contract dollars far into what could be the downside of his career in his 30's. I can't remember what website does the "true financial value" analysis which incorporates souvenir sales/marketing "Q" ratings, etc., but the Mariners until recent years have always felt they were getting a good ROI on the Ichiro contract and this is definitely one of those situations. Now a Morneau that's not healthy/productive or a Nathan that requires at least a year to work back to prior levels as the closer, that's going to hurt them a lot more than a down season for Mauer.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jan 21, 2011 -> 01:57 PM) I assume you mean "dan in real life." If so, all I can say is that that movie was absolutely terrible. Borderline unwatchable for me. 64% positive on Rotten Tomatoes (this has become like OPS quote in refutation, lol) Usually the movies that are at 50% or above have SOME redeeming qualities to recommend to at least a majority of filmgoers. Not a great film to me, but certainly head and shoulders over lots of similar movies from that genre.

Fincher will clearly win Best Director for The Social Network. King's Speech could still pull the upset for Best Picture, although I'd say the odds are only about 20-25%. A lot of critics have read into the Mila Kunis character and many parts of The Black Swan....that she didn't even exist but in Natalie Portman's imagination, to goad and push her (just like the director, Cassel) along the way on her evolution (literally and figuratively) into the black swan, a complete physical and mental metamorphasis. I agree the Barbara Hershey as Mommie Dearest (can I also use Tiger Mother now?) character was a bit over the top and too grating/stereotypical...but you need those kinds of one-dimensional, simplistic characters in the background to make Natalie's descent into artistic hell (and ultimate "rapture") more credible, that everything around her, "dark forces," are pushing her in this direction. It's strange her next movie being released after she probably wins the Academy Award (it's her or Anne Benning for The Kids Are All Right) will be a two-star romantic comedy with Ashton Kutcher (Bruce Willis' dad, and the one surviving Univ. of Iowa basketball fan left).

Remember Jon Van Benschoten or whatever his name?....although I think he must have had more injury problems, about the last players who have come out of nowhere to make the Sox pitching staff have been Loiaza and Boone Logan. I guess you can count someone like loogy Williams, but he hardly made a huge contribution, I suppose he was "okay" in 2009 when almost nothing was expected out of him but he was quickly overexposed ala D-Weezy. We hardly turned around Jeff Marquez...another high draft pick that a lot were hoping could turn it around with Cooper. Another pitcher that kind of comes to mind in this category is Jason Grilli with the Sox...although he did his best work in DET, the White Sox are the team who resuscitated his career. And... If Bruney looks like the Bruney of old (doubtful) and less like Jeff Nelson in the last year of his career, he's got a definite shot. Dolsi is another candidate....he's definitely got a live arm, it only takes one or two pitchers having Politte/Hermanson/Cotts career years to really make a bullpen.

Saw Dinner for Schmucks, I remember at least one or two posters here really didn't like that movie....but actually thought it wasn't bad at all, and definitely not a Steve Carell fan (unless it's offbeat like Little Miss Sunshine or Life of Dan). Really like Paul Rudd, Role Models and I Love You, Man are two of my favorite comedies of the last 5 years or so. If I remember correctly, he was also in Knocked Up, too. I know Katherine Heigl has a lot of haters these days (because of her movies and her "attitude" in interviews and a few controversial issues with Grey's Anatomy)....but I liked Knocked Up, and I'm really getting bored with Seth Rogen. The only thing I liked about Green Hornet was Cameron Diaz (horribly underutilized) and his tech-savvy sidekick, the famous Chinese singer Jay Chou. Christopher Waltz from Inglorious Basterds was a barely tolerable villain, seems like the role was way underwritten and he was trying to hard to force it, but not good at all. Definitely not the type of movie you pay $10 to see.

The Way Back, looks like an excellent movie with a fine cast...my kind of historical tale. http://www.boxofficemagazine.com/reviews/2...12-the-way-back

QUOTE (Kenny Hates Prospects @ Jan 20, 2011 -> 09:32 PM) Nobody on this site is less of a Teahen fan than I am, but the last thing you ever do with a rookie is make it out like a starting job in the Majors is his to lose. Teahen, Omar, Lillibridge, and Viciedo should all get good reps in Spring to push him and for good reason, because it'll benefit everyone. The team as constructed though seems to point to our starting rotation and middle of the order offense are our key strengths, which means we can afford a light-hitting 9th place hitter in theory so long as he helps our strong pitching become even stronger. Nobody we've got aside from Omar is going to outplay Morel defensively, and Omar can't be relied upon every day, so it really is Morel's job to lose. You won't find a positive quote from Greg775 or myself on the Teahen debacle either (since we are/were both witnesses to his atrocities committed in Kauffman Stadium)...I still wanted Uribe back in 2009. He was always my favorite player. Well, Teahen's a great interview, always available for a quote, good sense of humor, stellar clubhouse guy, etc. It's the Erstad/Mackowiak/Kotsay thing all over again. On the other hand, when Wise and Anderson faced off in ST coming into 2009, Ozzie at least temporarily gave the job to Wise when conventional wisdom says you have to give it to one of your own home-grown prospects and a former first rounder. Wise was the dictionary definition of a journeyman player with limited upside if overexposed. Ozzie's not blind, if Morel can hit somewhere between Crede and Anderson (2006)/Beckham first half of 2010, then the position is his. Everyone knows the impact Vizquel had not only on 3B but on Alexei as well....it's the old domino effect.

Watched Blue Valentine. Had the same feeling I did watching Reservation Road, I respected the acting performances, but it's not the kind of movie you really want to watch again. Actually, Gosling performed in a similar lesser-known movie about the dissolution of a family and marriage (based on a real life story) called "All Good Things" with Kirsten Dunst that I enjoyed twice as much as Blue Valentine. I would still recommend anyone watch B.V., but it's not close to the movie that Half Nelson is in terms of his best performances, or even All Good Things. Finally watched "She's Out of My League" and you can't help but root for Jay Baruchel and his "aw shucks" niceness....his character is so helpless and passive at times, but that's the whole point of the movie. The best part, at least to me, was the constant banter amongst the 3 friends who are all rooting for him while simultaneously jealous and masking their own relationship insecurities by putting up bold and brave fronts. I'm sure TSA didn't exactly appreciate their portrayal in this movie...especially the harassment of cute/hot female passengers when going through security, guess they didn't have the invasive full-body scan when this picture was wrapped or the director would have had another scene to make hilarity out of.

I guess this is Colin Firth week for me so far. A Single Man and The King's Speech. Although Love Actually, still, is my all-time favorite of his. Has anyone seen Hereafter? The reviews were so mixed (Ebert gave it a 4), I didn't know what to expect. It's obviously a BIG topic to deal with in a movie, but I thought it was quite well-done and thought-provoking. It wasn't Gran Torino or Million Dollar Baby, but I actually enjoyed it a lot. Damon's perhaps evolving into one of the top 3-5 actors of his generation. You can put him right up there with Bale, Russell Crowe, Depp, DiCaprio and anyone else you might care to name...Will Smith when he has the right role, too.

I'll echo the comments about Vanguard. My dad a long time ago put me in a very conservative/traditional stock fund called Nicholas Fund out of Milwaukee. Of course, in the late 90's, like everyone, I got greedy and sold low on it (just like everyone giving up on the antiquarian Warren Buffett) and bought high on one of those "high tech/computer driven" model funds at American Century in Kansas City. I've made the same mistake before picking up Bill Miller's funds (Legg Mason Value Trust) when he had beaten the S&P 12-13 years in a row. Bill Nygren and Oakmark weren't too far behind, both had impeccable track records and have underperformed. I actually have Berkshire stock now (3 shares, haha) and mostly Vanguard Index funds, international/emerging markets, small/large cap, some gold (and mining stocks), utilities, a good mix. It's always those basic rules like never have more than 10% of your net worth in any one asset (including houses) and take 100 minus your age for the amount of money you should have in stocks....100-40, I still should be at least 60% in growth stocks, and I'm probably closer in reality to 80-85% (the rest is in bond funds, some CDs and money market, etc.) in a bid to make up for the last decade of lost growth in the market. Should have listened to my dad and not been overcome by hubris. I still remember buying JDS-Uniphase at $110 per share (it was only 100 shares, but still) riding it to $140, not selling, and seeing the whole thing collapse...as my uncle said, there's no such thing as a bad profit, I could have made a great 27% return on investment in less than a year and I got greedy. Well, I'm sure there are millions of stories out there that involve losing a lot more than $10,000 the last 13-14 years. At least I wasn't a Madoff investor. Something like that just makes u sick to your stomach, all my mistakes were made with nobody to blame but myself, I won't blame brokerage houses and places like Edward Jones, everyone was caught up in the same spirit, and it happened with houses too, luckily I sold my house in 2004 and made a pretty good profit.

Dead time in movieworld.... Did anyone see THE GREEN HORNET? Ebert gave it a 1 star, quite unusual for him. Of Gods and Men and Exit Through the Gift Shop...both "high recommends" Tried to watch Season of the Witch online and gave up after an hour...Burlesque was so-so at best and not an Aguilera fan (she has a great voice, you have to give her that much, but as an actress, forget it), Love and Other Drugs was actually better than I thought it would be because I liked Jake Gylenhaal's character (Anne Hathaway, not so much, except for boobs) and Hank Azaria, he's one of those character actors like Steve Buscemi, Stanley Tucci and Richard Jenkins I almost always enjoy, but never quite rising to Agadore Spartcus in The Birdcage...(even watching the original True Grit, it made me think of Nathan Lane's John Wayne impression, quite hilarious) Conviction you'll like if you are a Hilary Swank or Sam Rockwell fan, based on true story...that role is a "fastball down and in" for LH hitter Hilary Swank, in my opinion Will try to watch Hereafter and She's Out of My League (yes, reaching the bottom of the barrel) and figure out some better ones to watch from the last five years or so that I haven't already seen....any recommendations? Am going to watch The King's Speech, will be interesting to see if Social Network wins the OSCAR, all momentum seems to be pointing that direction.

I think that's a LARGE reason we're seeing the fingers pointed...because of the anti-government rhetoric in movies like the aforementioned one, or Collapse. Of course, there are "conspiracy theorists" on the liberal/radical side (think of JFK the movie, for example)...but I can't count how many times the last two years I've heard that the Federal Government in Washington has no right to impose or levy taxes, about the IMF/World Bank/Trilateral Commission, Davos, World Economic Forum, WTO, George Soros, shadowy world bankers, etc. But the weirdest part of this guy's "world view" was the one of the grammar/mind/thought control...based on the preaching of some guy in Hawaii who I'd never even heard of, I guess the anti-Noam Chomsky as it were.

Did THE Dallas Green, the grandfather/former manager, ever put forth a public quote about this whole situation?

The week of that interview (with Chuck Todd) began with the House passing the health care bill on Sunday. Within hours, on Monday morning, vandals smashed the front door of Giffords’s office in Tucson. The Palin “target” map (and the accompanying Twitter dictum to “RELOAD”) went up on Tuesday, just one day after that vandalism — timing that was at best tone-deaf and at worst nastily provocative. Not just Giffords, but at least three other of the 20 members of Congress on the Palin map were also hit with vandalism or death threats. In her MSNBC interview that Wednesday, Giffords said that Palin had put the “crosshairs of a gun sight over our district,” adding that “when people do that, they’ve got to realize there’s consequences to that action.” Chuck Todd then asked Giffords if “in fairness, campaign rhetoric and war rhetoric have been interchangeable for years.” She responded that colleagues who had been in the House “20, 30 years” had never seen vitriol this bad. But Todd moved on, and so did the Beltway. What’s the big deal about a little broken glass? Few wanted to see what Giffords saw — that the vandalism and death threats were the latest consequences of a tide of ugly insurrectionism that had been rising since the final weeks of the 2008 campaign and that had threatened to turn violent from the start. Giffords’s first brush with that reality had occurred some seven months before her office was vandalized — in the red-hot health care fever of August 2009. She had held another “Congress on Your Corner” meeting, at a Safeway in the town of Douglas. There the crowd’s rage and the dropping of a gun by one attendee prompted aides worried about her safety to summon the police. The Tucson Tea Party co-founder, Trent Humphries, told The Arizona Daily Star afterward that this was a lie, that “nobody was threatening Gabby.” After Loughner’s massacre, Humphries was still faulting her — this time for holding “an event in full view of the public with no security whatsoever.” .......... But that sidesteps the issue. This isn’t about angry blog posts or verbal fisticuffs. Since Obama’s ascension, we’ve seen repeated incidents of political violence. Just a short list would include the 2009 killing of three Pittsburgh police officers by a neo-Nazi Obama-hater; last year’s murder-suicide kamikaze attack on an I.R.S. office in Austin, Tex.; and the California police shootout with an assailant plotting to attack an obscure liberal foundation obsessively vilified by Beck. A few unexpected voices have expressed alarm. After an antigovernment gunman struck at Washington’s Holocaust museum in June 2009, Shepard Smith of Fox News noted the rising vitriol in his e-mail traffic and warned on air that more “amped up” Americans could be “getting the gun out.” The former Bush administration speechwriter David Frum took on the “reckless right” that August, citing the incident at the Giffords Safeway event. But when a Department of Homeland Security report warned of far-right extremism and attacks by “lone wolves” that same summer, Gingrich called it a smear and John Boehner demanded an apology. Last week a conservative presidential candidate, Tim Pawlenty, timidly said it wouldn’t be his “style” to use Palin’s target map, but was savaged so viciously by his own camp that he immediately retreated. A senior Republican senator told Politico that he saw the Tucson bloodbath as a “cautionary tale” for his party, yet refused to be named. What are they and their peers so afraid of? No doubt that someone might reload — the same fears that prompted Gabrielle Giffords to speak up, calmly but firmly, last March. Unless and until they can match her courage and speak out too, it’s hard to see what will change. Frank Rich, nytimes.com