cabiness42

Yeah, but Veal has no options left so he's vulnerable to waivers.

When Abreu gets days off, it will be Dunn at 1B, not Konerko. Outside of some weird emergency, PK's days of using his glove are over.

Obama has been the least supportive of Israel of any President in my lifetime yet US Jews gave him 69% of their votes in 2012. I guess now if they want to complain about this they should do their complaining in front of a mirror.

Please don't even try to pretend that you know 1% as much about how government agencies work as I do.

Well, Detroit lost so still in 1st.

Jose Abreu created the game thread before midnight. Next thing you know SoxTalk crashes for over 12 hours and Leury Garcia is pitching.

Jon Lester (L) 1-2, 2.57 vs. Chris Sale (L) 3-0, 2.66

I'm rounding the numbers off a bit to make the math easy, but: Bears play 8 home games with 65,000 tickets available per game so they only have 520K tickets to sell. Bulls/Hawks play 41 home games with 20,000 tickets available per game so they have 820K tickets to sell. Sox/Cubs play 81 home games with 40,000 tickets available per game so they have 3.24M tickets to sell. Plus the Bears have been to a Super Bowl and and NFC Championship game in the last 8 years and the Hawks have won 2 Stanley Cups in the last 5 years. I know growing up 106 miles from Chicago (yes, my house was exactly that far from downtown), getting tickets to and going to a Bears game was a special treat we got once a year if we were lucky. Going to Sox games was something we did at least five times a year.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/04/16...act-obamacare/# Just want to give some expert insight on this. The claims that the changes are political are pure BS. The Census Bureau has thousands of employees and exactly one employee is a political appointment. The rest are career statisticians that have served through multiple administrations. The changes to the survey are purely for statistical reasons, and were in the works well before Obamacare was passed. There is a very extensive testing and review process before even one question can have its wording slightly changed. It's the same as the BS about how the Census Bureau is fudging unemployment numbers. Never happened, never will.

Two postponed games plus two more off days.

Right, but it's not like the D'backs were going to be serious contenders this year (maybe they thought they were, but they were delusional) where they were giving up a guy who wasn't going to help them immediately in order to get a closer. Davidson will be with the Sox by 2015 if not later this season, and Reed will be hitting arbitration and becoming more costly.

A team in the D'backs situation trading for a closer was a massively stupid idea. Glad we were the ones to profit from it.

It's still April, and there's no guarantee that Dunn keeps this up all season, but in the hypothetical scenario where he actually puts up a .240/.420/.500 season, then why would you not take him back on a 1-year/$14M deal? It's hard to get guys his age on 1-year deals because they're generally looking to get 3-4 years to cover their decline. Even so, I don't think if Dunn is hitting .240/.420/.500 in July that he will still be here. He will have very good trade value and despite the nice start, I still think it's unlikely the Sox are in serious contention in July. Too many bullpen issues, and too many hitters (Ramirez, Flowers) that are destined to come back to earth at some point.

I would think there would be enough Cubs fans in Iowa to generate demand for CSN Chicago, but yes, that's a perfect example of a location that doesn't get CSN Chicago but is still blacked out for Sox/Cubs games on mlb.tv. Indianapolis is another such location.

Tickets, no? Tickets are pretty reasonably priced. You aren't getting lower level seats behind home plate at any ballpark for less than $60. Between ticket packages, discount codes, etc., you can score pretty good lower level seats that aren't behind home plate for $20-30 for a lot of games. Food, yes, but nobody forces you to buy food. Parking I think is the biggest turnoff. I haven't studied the issue like I'm guessing the organization has, but I think lowering parking a bit might help improve attendance. I also think it has to do with what you're looking for in an experience. When I lived in Oak Park and could easily get to 20+ games a year, I never paid for parking, and I very rarely bought food. I was using all my money to be able to get 20+ tickets, and I was sitting in the outfield in order to be able to do that. Now that I live almost 300 miles away and can only get to 1-2 games per year, I don't mind as much paying for parking and food and paying higher prices for better seats.

I'm not even certain Dunn WANTS to keep playing beyond this season. I definitely don't see him being interested in a 4-year deal.

A pitcher named Bad(en)hop got the loss because of a throwing error.

UD was closed last night due to safety concerns because of ice on the ramps. Had nothing to do with expected attendance.

Tigers are gonna have a lot of DH to make up all those games.

Everybody knows not to start the game thread for a game after a win. You don't need to worry about rushing to get it made.

That's not what he's looking for. Closest poker room to downtown Chicago is Horseshoe Hammond, which is an excellent room. Harrah's Joliet, Hollywood Joliet, Hollywood Aurora and Grand Victoria Elgin all also have poker rooms. Pretty much all of them should have 1-2 NL Hold'em and 3-6 Limit Hold'em cash games going at any time. Most will also have NL Hold'em tournaments 3-5 days a week. EDIT: Horseshoe Hammond and Harrah's Joliet use the Bravo online system, where you can see exactly what games are running and how long the wait lists are: http://www.bravopokerlive.com/site/scasino

Well, I think it needs to go beyond 150 miles unless another team is closer, but nobody should have more than 2 teams classified as local except for a few small areas. I think the real question is which RSNs are getting distribution in Iowa. If local cable/Dish/DirecTV aren't carrying CSN Chicago as part of their main package, then blacking out the Sox and Cubs is stupid. Same with the Cards and Royals and whatever RSN carries them.

I'm not close enough to consider going anyway, but even if I were I'm not sure I'd take free tickets for tonight's game. Unless there's some kind of giveaway--then I'd consider going, watching Abreu bat once, and then leave.

Attendance is going to be bad this year. Deal with it. Abreu winning ROY and Sale winning or at least competing for CY will help for next year.

I think it depends on how far the Sox think they are from contending. DeAza is perfectly fine as a starting LF on a team that isn't expected to contend. He will be streaky, play good LF defense, and can cover CF on occasion if needed. On a contending team, he's a 4th OF, and you have to ask if it's worth paying him $4M more to be a 4th OF than you would have to pay Jordan Danks. I will say that from DeAza's perspective, he very likely wants to stay. If any AL team trades for any of the Sox lefty bats and then sends them out to face Sale, they aren't going to be too happy.