caulfield12

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jan 25, 2010 -> 08:19 AM) There isn't one player on the Sox who fans haven't wanted gone at some point. Even Beckham people were down on after his slow start. I'm sure the White Sox have known Thome's first choice is them from before they traded him. Its not a new revelation. They need a bat. This Kotsay/Jones/Vizquel rotating DH thing is not going to work, just like Wise in CF didn't work. Just like Swisher leading off didn't work. Just like Darrin Erstad didn't work or Mike MacDougal or Andy Gonzalez.................................................They have to do something to correct it before it costs them wins. If its bringing back Thome fine. If its someone else fine. I agree Thome's popularity has increased tenfold, just on this board alone the past couple of days, but if the Sox had adequately filled his position, his potential signing with Minnesota would have been met with a collective yawn. Hmmm....I don't think I ever wanted to get rid of Robin Ventura or Lance Johnson.

QUOTE (bmags @ Jan 25, 2010 -> 08:14 AM) This is like going into a gun fight with a knife, pez gun, nail on a 2x4 and pillowcase filled with soap because you think it gives you more options. Which one is Omar Vizquel or Jayson Nix?

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 25, 2010 -> 07:22 AM) LOL, you were the one who started that! And what exactly has the Haitian government been able to do when compared to what the US government did? I WROTE THAT? ARE YOU SURE? Either the grammar's incorrect and it should read "what the US government is doing" (present continuous) or it's a comparison of Katrina and Haiti, isn't it?

I think both have equal weight. Ok, so to put it a different way, which general consensus would you value more? That at Soxtalk or that of Chris's callers? Sadly, I believe that those callers actually have more influence on the White Sox and KW, even though I don't want to believe it...there's that past history of comments about KW not caring at all what people think of him or his moves, then he spends more time than any GM in baseball explaining himself and reiterating that he doesn't care! Because the majority of people that call into shows like that, while they might not even attend any games, their "silent majority" opinion does have some influence. Just because posters here are more knowledgeable, that doesn't mean that we represent more than a sub-segment of White Sox fans. For instance, they help to reinforce stereotypes about White Sox fans as being more "blue collar" or complain about topics from 10-15 years ago like "Reinsdorf is cheap." It's interesting that Chris reacted the way he did, that he was surprised so many people wanted Thome back when in his mind, the majority of fans calling into the post-game would always complain about Thome when he had one of his patented TWO 4-3 putouts with a hat trick of strikeouts in a crucial game. Really, it's not that MOST fans really want him back, it's that they just can't believe that we would rather use Jones/Kotsay instead of spending an additional $2-3 million to bring Thome back as part of a platoon situation. And maybe I'm startled too that anyone would think of Thome as this point in his career being prohibitively expensive to add to the roster. That Phillies contract is over and done with...

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jan 23, 2010 -> 10:16 AM) So, if someone were to point out that Prince Bin-Talal owns 8% of newscorp, you think that'd make people stop watching, or question why that network's official policy is that there's no such thing as climate change? Somehow, I doubt it. I also don't think that nifty documentary about battery operated/electric cars will be making it onto the schedule of any Fox affiliates, either.

I'm still waiting for a single Republican to articulate a clear vision for the country. It's quite easy to say no and be obstructionist, it worked in 1994 and 1995 for the GOP as well, but eventually the newly-elected representatives and Senators and governors will be expected to accomplish something that actually improves the lives of a majority of Americans. Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Waxman, Frank, Baucus, Nelson, etc., have obviously failed that test so far. However, I would love to hear a GOP platform of new/creative ideas that doesn't involve simply lowering taxes for the richest Americans and for corporations, getting rid of the Department of Education, stopping "judicial activism" and supporting traditional marriage, etc. Do Republicans really believe there isn't a health care problem in the US and/or that nothing should be done about it? Do Republicans really have no concern about the environment, global warming or the future over-polluted world their grandchildren and great-grandchildren will inherit? Do Republicans have any ideas for ending our dependence on foreign oil? For funding Medicare and Social Security for the next 50 years? It's easy to say "no" or complain or say what's wrong with the other side, but at some point, there needs to be a leg for them to stand on. Because I think we tried that approach (cutting taxes, capital gains, estate taxes, business taxes) for eight years and it didn't work very well....trickle down became more like a "drip, drip." With the new election financial contribution rules coming into play, I can just see a re-run of the Gore/Bush election in 2000, with the Democrats deciding to fight a do-or-die "populist" war against the GOP. By the way, for all those who don't believe Obama is a US citizen or that he was born out of wedlock, what's your strategy for getting us out of Iran/Iraq and Afghanistan/Pakistan? How is it any different than the current strategy of the administration? I'll be laughing in 2012 when the Tea Party is running someone like Sarah Palin or their new darling, the Penthouse Senator of the Month from Massachusetts.

QUOTE (Ranger @ Jan 25, 2010 -> 01:43 AM) I wouldn't call the DH market a "great" one because there really haven't been that many good DH's available at a cheap price. Like I've said a number of times, I think this upcoming season would be a lot more comfortable for me if I had a better feeling about that spot in the order. What they have proposed at the moment isn't terribly exciting. It's not that it can't work, because I think that it can, it's just that it doesn't seem ideal. However, I've been an advocate of parting ways with Thome for a long time and I never really thought they'd come back with him or Dye. I always thought they'd keep 1 of the Dye/Thome/PK trio...2 of them at the most, but I thought even that would be unlikely. The problem with Thome, even though he's still been productive, is that he is not getting any younger and his bat speed isn't getting any faster. At any moment, he's liable to have a significant drop-off. That's what worries me about him. If what they have is, indeed, what they will start the season with, they'll find out by the middle of May whether or not it's going to work. And since they are right at their budget, with maybe a little breathing room, I have no problem with them being flexible enough to make a trade and take on some salary midseason. I like the idea of that flexibility being there in case some other need arises after the season starts (due to injury or poor performance or something of that nature). I'm aware that seasons can be lost in April, but I can't see that being the case in this division. Regardless of their DH, they should be able to remain competitive until they can make whatever midseason adjustments they need to make. You don't say? The money paid out to the likes of Vladimir Guerrero, Nick Johnson, Hideki Matsui, Miguel Tejada, Rick Ankiel, Aubrey Huff, LaRoche (a bit pricey based on his career results), DeRosa, etc., hasn't been anything CLOSE to exorbidant. To put it in perspective, it's roughly what we paid Octavio Dotel to be a serviceable 7th inning reliever for two seasons. With all the questions surrounding our offense, Rios' return to form, Beckham's possible sophomore jinx, Quentin's health, Teahen's actual impact/ceiling offensively, Konerko's future...it wouldn't be the worst idea in the world to add something closer to a "sure bet" than what we're going to run out there on a day-to-day basis. I just hope Alexei can pull his head out of his A-- the first two months this year. Nonetheless, there are still legit options out there like J. Damon, Winn, Orlando Hudson, Branyan, Carlos Delgado, etc. While I'm a BIT more optimistic some combination of Jones/Kotsay/Quentin/Tyler Flowers can put up "decent" numbers, I guess the only thing to say at this point is it's not QUITE as bad as starting the season with DeWayne Wise in CF and him getting booed the first home series of the season. I'm pretty sure the fans wouldn't turn on Andruw Jones like that. They might wait until May or June.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jan 24, 2010 -> 03:34 PM) IMO, that's exactly the kind of guy the Royals ought to be acquiring and giving PT to. If they bust, what have they lost? The question is...what are they going to do around them? Think about the 2008 Rays...yeah, they had guys like Longoria that they developed, but they also had guys like Navarro, Pena, etc., who were castoffs from other teams that they picked up and turned into something useful by giving them playing time. Wasn't Navarro a pretty highly-touted Yankees' catching prospect??? If you're talking about the likes of Howell in the bullpen (pretty much their entire bullpen), Aybar, Akinori Iwamura or Fernando Perez, then I'll bite. The Royals are waiting on those three big bats in their minors, but it seems like they were always waiting on "3 big arms" in the minors the last 20 years or so. Just look at their first round draft picks from 1990 on and it makes the White Sox look like the Twins in comparison from a development standpoint.

QUOTE (Princess Dye @ Jan 24, 2010 -> 11:32 PM) Even with his bad years as a Red Sox, Kotsay has stayed good at hitting righties. I like him used selectively. Thome is no guarantee to repeat his OBP from last year. There's some decline there and he's not getting any younger. True, there's no guarantee Kotsay keeps up what he's doing either. But you get bat control and situational hitting from him, which we have a serious dearth of. I refuse to believe you NEED to have great production from your DH. We basically need all our guys to have their regular numbers, and Quentin to have a better year than last. If that happens, then the DH spot can be a wait and see..(and even an eventual chance for midseason Flowers at-bats) Carl Everett was OK as a DH in '05. I will grant that he provided power. But we got by w/o good OBP from him. If we have added a bunch of HRs to the lineup with Teahan/Rios/Beckham, we can afford to use more of a slappy guy at DH. Beckham did it (thrived for most of his first season), but I don't think putting Tyler into the heat of a pennant race as a rookie DH is the wisest plan in the world for his development. KW has seen enough position prospects go bust than to put faith in Tyler saving the season. There was a thread presenting 30-40 different options and KW has passed on all of them (so far)...one would have thought that going into 2009 with no legit starting CFer would have taught him a valuable lesson, but perhaps he thinks it's a lot easier to just go out and find a DH at any point in the season or Spring Training THAN an everyday outfielder, especially a CFer.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 24, 2010 -> 07:46 PM) And what exactly has the Haitian government been able to do when compared to what the US government did? Either of the Long skeletons unearthed from their graves or even David Duke could have done a much better job. When you combine the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere with a totally incapacitated/decapitated UN mission...the Louis Armstrong Airport with what the Haitians have to work with, the sunken port/cranes and an obliterated National Palace with many government officers/police/firefighters/doctors dead or missing, there's really no basis possible to make any "governmental" comparisons between the US and Haiti. Not to mention 150-250,000 corpses that have to be buried quickly...the final totals will be greater than the Tsunami. The poorest 10% of Americans have a comparable life of luxury when juxtaposed with the poorest 90% of Haitians.

You're joking, right? Yeah, Brownie did a great job with that one...MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.

Well, then imagine the same ship was parking at a private coast off the coast of Louisiana/New Orleans in the weeks after Hurricane Katrina... Would you still feel the same way? Let's say some of the passengers on board actually knew of relatives who were killed and/or homeless there (imagining it's an around-the-world trip and they had started on it weeks or days before Katrina hit)...that wouldn't change things either? The economic argument is one part of it, sure. However, the impact is little more than a very, very tiny drop in the bucket in the overall scheme of things. Reading the statement from the cruise lines, it seemed very much like a rationalization for doing something that was already being construed by many onboard to be in poor or bad taste. If you say it doesn't matter what country it happened in, are you really being honest? Would you really consider it to be okay to dock offshore of any American state and consider the "boost to the local economy" good enough reason not to be upset while there were fellow American people dying in the hundreds of thousands less than 60 miles away?

The Royals are soaked with mediocre-to-bad outfielders. Well, first they have David DeJesus, who is actually a good player, though the sort of good player who will leave you wanting more. He can’t run, he probably will not hit more than 15 homers, and while he is above average at getting on base, he’s not that much above average (lifetime .358 OBP; last year .347). He plays good defense in left field, which is a bit like being a punter who can tackle — handy, but mostly beside the point. Left field defense is so much beside the point that the Royals now seem interested in moving DeJesus to right. DeJesus is the sort of guy who, I suspect, could really help a good team. He’s a bit out of place when he’s a team’s best player. Beyond DeJesus, the Royals have “right fielder” José Guillen, who will get $13 million in his final year of that disastrous signing. He can’t play right field anymore, which is why the position is in quotations, and there’s no reason to believe he can hit anymore either. But he’s getting $13 million, so you have to hope. They just signed Scott Podsednik, who is coming off a decent year that he is 98 percent unlikely to repeat. They signed Brian Anderson, a one-time big prospect the Royals apparently believe has some untapped talent. They have Mitch Maier, a longtime Royals farmhand who seems to be a lot like Brian Anderson. They also have Alberto Callaspo, a pretty decent line-drive hitter who seems to have been bumped off second base. They also have Josh Fields, who has played some left field … they supposedly want to give him at-bats though he doesn’t really have a position. They also have a couple of mid-20s prospects who are probably not in the picture but, hey, they’re out there. It seems to me that the outfield is chock-full. It’s not exactly chock-full of goodness, but, hey, we’ve been over the treading water bit already. Then they sign Rick Ankiel. I’m not saying this is a bad move — I’m so completely confused by it that I can’t even think in terms of good and bad. Ankiel is one of the more famous stories in recent baseball. He was the preposterously gifted 20-year-old pitcher who lost his nerve. He was the kid hitter in the minor-leagues trying to live the dream. He was the 2007 call-up who hit 11 home runs in 47 games and the next year banged 25 homers in a comeback year that coupled nicely with Josh Hamilton’s resurgence. And all that’s fine … but what is he beyond the storybook pages? He’s a 30-turning-31-year-old outfielder who has never had 500 plate appearances in a season. Last year, in 404 PAs, he hit .231/.285/.387. He is a guy with some power and no plate discipline. He is a pretty good athlete with a great arm and shaky instincts. He’s an interesting right fielder because of his arm, but the Royals figure to put him in center where he’s at-best OK. He has a gigantic hole in his swing … he hit .266 in the minors and .251 in the majors, and there’s really no reason to believe that’s changing. People talk about him improving … but guys generally don’t start improving at 31.* *It’s amazing that decades and decades after Bill James broke down the arc of big-league players’ careers that people still have this fundamental misunderstanding about how baseball players age. Back in 1988, when talking about what he had learned about baseball, he wrote “Ballplayers, as a group, reach their peak value much earlier and decline much more rapidly than people believe.” Joe Posnanski, KC STAR

QUOTE (PeavyTime @ Jan 22, 2010 -> 07:38 PM) Are you making the case for me or you?? That pretty much sums up everything I've said. Discounting teams like the Red Sox and Yankees because of their payrolls...think of all the teams with great offenses that went nowhere because of the lack of pitching. The 1995-2001 Indians teams are the perfect example. Or look at the offensive numbers put up by teams like the Rangers and Rockies historically. There's no doubt there needs to be a balance, or the Braves would have won more than 1 World Series title in 14 tries. And A's and Twins teams in the first half of this decade had very good or great pitching AND good to great defenses and they were simply lacking firepower offensively. If you looked at the teams that have finished above .500 over the last decade, I would guess 65-75% of them had "top half" pitching statistics in their respective leagues. Just looking at the White Sox, with the exception of 2000 when the offense mostly carried the team injury-depleted pitching staff until the end of the season, the best Sox teams have always been the ones that were in the Top 5-6 in AL pitching. This was the case in 05 and 08, as well as the pitching we got from the 89-94 teams.

The White Sox in 2006 lost because there were two better teams in ALCD. Our starting pitching staff was overtaxed in 2005. Contreras wasn't close to being the same pitcher from June, 2006 on. Jenks was hurt and really struggled the second half. The defense was fine with Anderson in CF until he proved he couldn't hit his weight and Mackowiak was just out of his element trying to play CF. And the offense really started to go into a funk in August/September and injuries started to take their toll. Vazquez disappeared over and over again in big games against teams like the Tigers. Around the ASB that year (after the infamous Boston/Papelbon game), we were only 2 GB. In less than a month, we were close to 10 GB. For some reason, I remember getting some very decent starting pitching but the offense wasn't scoring runs to save the pitching, especially in a later series at Boston. That, and the defense overall just wasn't as good, beyond the revolving CF situation.

QUOTE (Melissa1334 @ Jan 22, 2010 -> 03:59 PM) why is that? last yr, which was the final yr in the dome, they were in the race till the last game of the season, and they still only drew 2.3mil. i know people will want to see the new stadium this yr but the weather does get bad there and if they arent good, people wont go. even when theyre good, its still hard for them to draw fans But they've also outdrawn the White Sox for most of the last three years, at least the last two...when the White Sox should have had a five year window of opportunity after the World Series. Unfortunately, the final two months of 2006 and the 2007 season put a halt to that momentum quickly enough. Of course, you can come back at me with the fact that the White Sox have the fifth most expensive tickets (despite the so-called "blue collar" reputation) and that the revenues generated by the club by parking, souvenirs and media rights wipes out any advantage the Twins might have. What it definitely should give them is even more flexibility the next two seasons to add talent around their core, if the ownership group decides to be a little more aggressive and not so cautious as under Carl Pohlad. You will never see them spend like the White Sox from 06-10, but something in the $75-80 milion range, maybe even $85, wouldn't be completely shocking if they can keep Mauer in the fold.

Well, just add Thome to Guerrier, Cabrera and Crede. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery? It really sucks that we're just one player away and yet KW isn't in any hurry to do anything about it...maybe they've simply determined that bringing in the likes of Damon, Guerrero or Matsui wouldn't have affected season ticket sales in the least, but I find that hard to imagine. The big risk is if the team starts off slowly again in the first two months, and they will consequently have to fight a season-long battle to get the fans to jump on the bandwagon and start coming out in droves (in terms of walk-ups as well as split season tickets) to support the team. Or if any of the starting pitchers go down, although at least we have Hudson for insurance, so we're in decent shape there. Now if we have to go to Torres or Hynick or someone like that, well, I'm crossing my fingers it doesn't come down to that. As far as the Twins' stadium goes, there's very little doubt they will draw at least 3,000,000, if not more. The ONLY thing that might hurt that franchise is when/if it comes out that Mauer won't sign a long-term extension, but I think both sides are smart enough they wouldn't let that become a public relations distraction during the season.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jan 21, 2010 -> 08:18 AM) I don't know why I get the hell I get when I turned out to be correct all along. I called them cheap last year when KW went into his $.50 speech BEFORE he got Peavy and Rios. So they did have money to burn. It wasn't buried in JR's backyard. He didn't forget he stashed it above the drop ceiling in his office. They had the money. Now payroll is a little higher and they admit, first JR last week, now even Brooks, without 7-11's 500k, they have money for another "established" player. Its not like they have sold more tickets yet. Single games haven't gone on sale. Some season ticketholders that haven't been able to upgrade for years have moved to better locations, so its a good assumption season ticket sales have declined over last season, probably just not at the pace they were anticipating. They are even hawking sponsorships and ballpark ad placement on their website, something I have never seen before, so you would assume they have had more sponsors previously. JR has been quoted as saying he will not lose money to win games. These are all facts. I was correct all along. Bring on Johnny Damon. Maybe some of the TARP or stimulus package accidentally was diverted to 35th and Shields... Let's say the season tickets went from 17,500 down to 15,000...you're a season ticket holder, right? So multiply 2500 times the average price of a season ticket and maybe 1000 X the price of a parking pass and then also remove 7-11's $500,000 and whatever we were getting from Bank of America/Fifth Third Bank. That's a pretty significant amount of "missing" revenue at this point. So I wonder if their enthusiasm is simply based on the team as composed and "forecasting/projecting" that walk-up, Ozzie Plan/partial season ticket packages will be scooped up if the team plays as well as expected and June arrives with nice weather??? Is it based on the idea of a financial recovery starting to take hold as the year goes on in Chicago and sports marketing dollars again being freed up by the second half of the season? One thing I found interesting was about Spring Training. Didn't they charge some crazy amount for parking last year? Maybe that's wrong, I know it wasn't the same as regular season games, but I don't remember parking being free either? Or maybe it's simply because they feel they can make more from Spring Training with everything being more organized and the fact that Viciedo's contract/signing bonus doesn't affect the bottom line as much this year, I don't know.

A Dick Allen comment, lol? Well, I guess that's good to hear...although it certainly be "spun" to mean they won't do anything now and will prefer to wait at least until the end of spring training and possibly well into the season to make a move at DH. Of course, the White Sox are also putting themselves into something of a Catch-22, the same situation Congress and President face with health care...namely, if they pass watered down legislation or withdraw and do nothing at all, BOTH will be utilized as potent arguments in the fall, no matter what happens in the next 9 months. So, in a similar vein, if the White Sox DON'T add an additional player, they've put it out there before the season that there wasn't a reason for them not to do this financially. Heck, you can even over-read into the comments that if they can bring back a banking sponsorship and some of the "ovens in the fire" come through, then we'll have significant breathing room with the payroll. So are they really being truthful about another player being added or just trying to PR spin the fanbase to get more season tickets sold? That's why I am absolutely not buying the fact that Ozzie actually wants the Kotsay/Jones combo for DH, OR Kotsay/Jones in RF. If you said to Ozzie, you can have Vlad Guerrero, Damon, Matsui or Jones/Kotsay, does anyone really think he would prefer the final option over the first 3? Ozzie's stubborn, but he's not that stupid when it comes to talent.

Lisbon, Portugal, is another city that's directly in the danger zone for a possible earthquake and has many buildings that aren't reinforced, at least 40% of the city would collapse. Lisbon last had a huge earthquake about 260 years ago, the same time frame as the last huge Haiti earthquake. At the time, it was the worst to ever hit Europe.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Jan 19, 2010 -> 11:30 PM) To be fair, the Twins have more division and World Series titles in the past 25 years than the White Sox, yet the White Sox have spent more on player personnel and have consistently outdrawn them in the standings. Further, your point was that the White Sox didn't win with Jim Thome, and that only winning a World Series is winning. If during a 10 year period, a team wins a fluke world series and loses 90-110 games in the other nine, and another team wins 10 straight division titles, makes it to 4 World Series, but doesn't win one, which team is the bigger winner of the decade? I'd say the team that showed that they can consistently play at a high level, rather than some fluke. I don't have any teams in mind, but there are enough examples like this out there that someone could come up with one. The Atlanta Braves would be an example, the Indians in the 90's and early 00's. "Outdrawn" in the standings (overall winning percentage over that time?) or in attendance/revenues during that time? Would you put 2005 in the fluke category or can we say that we played at a consistently high enough level for the last decade to be satisfied? In many ways, the 89-94 White Sox and 05-08 White Sox are fairly similar, with '07 sticking out as the aberrational year.

Denard Span was a 1st round pick. As was Michael Cuddyer, and Morneau was a 3rd round pick. The fact of the matter is that the Twins development is far better than most teams in the league and that their scouting really isn't all-world. I also don't think that "odds are" Delmon Young will have a breakout season. He's had over 1800 plate appearances in the major leagues, his defense is still awful, and he's shown no type of power whatsoever in the major leagues. That doesn't mean he can't get better, since he's only 24, but I would say that he's probably going to end up being the same player he is. The only reason the Sox have to worry about the Twins is because they are good. They play good defense but traded their best defensive player away for a good shortstop in Hardy, they have 2 very good hitters in Mauer and Morneau, and have several other players who are good but not great in Kubel, Cuddyer, and Span. If anything, it seems like you are giving the Twins far too much credit. They have just as many question marks as the White Sox do, but I would say the Sox main problem - the lineup - can be fixed pretty easily. I would say the Sox are a heavy favorite to win the division, even with a poor offense. First of all, it would be nice if the White Sox could develop anyone that was CLOSE to the 20th pick in the first round. Most of our successes (Rowand/Crede/Buehrle) were lower picks too, heck, you can even put the likes of Chris Young or Brandon McCarthy on that list, too. Where they have been clearly better than the White Sox is with developing pitching internally, and that's part of their organizational philosophy, the so-called "first pitch" strike (simple enough?) ideal that's drummed into their draft picks from instructional and short-season leagues. Without the four way rotation (Cuddyer/Gomez/Young/Kubel), you're going to lose some defense but probably gain overall in OPS when you switch Hardy for Punto/Cabrera over a full season...and it's just a hunch, but I think that now that all the rumors of Young being traded are dissipating, he might settle down and start to play like Hawk thinks he's capable of. He's still 3-4 years away from his supposed prime, and his numbers and impact were much better overall in the second half of the season. (I'll just put it this way, would you be willing to bet your house or life savings on Alex Rios having a better season this year than Young, probably not...) And our bullpen is still a HUGE question mark...a lot of things have to break right for us to win the division without a DH. Yes, theoretically that's easier to fix than finding an everyday CFer (we have failed in that area four seasons in a row!), so we'll just have to wait and see if it's Kotsay/Jones on April 1st. While they do have question marks at the back end of the rotation, they have more depth. If we lost one or two starters (and there's concern automatically how long Garcia will last based on the past 2-3 years), who would we go to after Hudson? Torres? Hynick? Basically, both teams are flawed, but the Twins are a more balanced team overall at this point. Until the White Sox or Tigers knock them off, they should still be the favorites for the division.

I'm just curious if anyone here has read ZEITOUN, the Dave Eggers book about the Katrina aftermath? The first thing that came to mind is WHERE the authorities (if there's such a thing in Haiti at this point) were building their Guantanamo Bay outdoor cages for all the prisoners and looters in Haiti, as the Dept. of Homeland Security did the day after the storm at the Greyhound terminal in New Orleans, actually using prisoners from Angola and other prisons from Louisiana. Of course, back then, they were also arresting (mistakenly in the case of the main character) "suspicious" individuals and somehow trying to tie them into Al-Queda attempts to further sabotage the US during a time of national emergency. Hopefully everything will hold together in the next 72 hours before the the majority of US troops arrive.

QUOTE (Real @ Jan 16, 2010 -> 12:23 PM) Sounds to me that a lot of people here don't even have "high" expectations for this team, just "reasonable expectations" I don't see how anyone who pays attention to what other teams in this division are doing, can say we aren't the favorite as of right now to win this division Minnesota has Mauer, Morneau and to a lesser extent Kubel coming off a career year, moving outside of the metrodome (this fact seems to slowly become less acknowledged, and it's a huge factor in how their team will perform). They also have a starting rotation full of question marks. Which Nick Blackburn is the real one? Baker and Slowey are huge question marks as well. How will their team defense be affected by playing outdoors, especially in April and May when it's still cold Their bullpen also has question marks, outside of Nathan Detroit is trying to do what Kenny did last year, and that's rebuild on the fly. Dumping CG for cheap talent who may or may not perform well, given a starting position, and losing Rodney for Valverde. Their starting rotation is less questionable than Minnesota's due to having a true ace, and possible legit #2 , but Verlander (RHP) > Porcello (RHP) > ??? (Scherzer) > ??? (Bonine) > ??? (Bonderman) is going to most likely force their offense to score a lot of runs to win games, something we hopefully won't have to do You do realize the Twins are a coin flip, Thome homer, Griffey throw and Danks outing away from winning 6 ALCD championships in a decade? Dismiss them at your own peril. As far as the Twins' pitching, the fact that they made the playoffs without a true ace (Baker was the closest) should scare everyone in the division. Before, they had Santana, the best pitcher in the AL at the time, and a healthy Liriano breaking off nasty sliders and dominating. Baker is not a huge question mark, any more than Danks or Gavin Floyd are. Blackburn is very solid, and clutch. Yeah, Slowey's a bit like Sonnanstine, but never count him out, either. And a healthy Glen Perkins is a very talented pitcher. Liriano always has a chance to bounce back now in the 2nd full year after surgery. The Twins are always unearthing minor leaguers like Denard Span who can actually contribute at nearly an All-Star level. Plus they have Revere in the minors, and the odds are that D. Young might actually have a breakout season without the pressure of having to fight for a job or playing time. And if the key to their bullpen, Neshek, can return from surgery, they're a much different team innings 7-9.

Well, at least the former Real World SD cast member was good eye candy in Dragonball. So strange and sad to see a movie with two very talented performers, Emily Rossum and Chow Yun Fat, ridiculously underutilized.