cabiness42

In appreciation of Ozzie, I will tell my favorite Ozzie story, though it's from his playing days: August 1996--I've just moved to Michigan and am going to Tiger Stadium for the first time ever to see the Sox. I am with a friend who is a baseball fan but not really a fan of any team so he doesn't really care about the outcome. Depite the fact that the Sox are decent and the Tigers are on pace to lose 100 games, the Sox are getting owned by some retread pitcher and trail by 2 after 8 innings. My friend wants to take off to beat the traffic. I am desperate to stay and blurt out, "No, we have to stay, the first two guys are going to get on and Ozzie Guillen [due up 3rd in the inning] is going to hit a home run." Now my friend is not as much of a baseball nut as myself, but he knows enough to realize how ridiculous that is, yet he agrees to stay. Well, the first two guys actually do get on and we look at each other with that, "No, this isn't actually going to happen, is it?" look. Well, damn if Ozzie doesn't line one over the fence just inside the RF pole. We can't stop laughing for at least 5 minutes because I've just said probably the dumbest thing anybody has ever said at a baseball game and then it actually happened.

I was living in Chicago in 2003, and most of my friends were Cubs fans. They had a big game-watching party that night. My wife went, but I declined to go for two reasons: 1) If the Cubs actually won, I was worried about riots/fires to the extent that I was worried for my personal safety being anywhere other than home 2) If the Cubs blew it, I wanted to be by myself so I wouldn't have to contain any of my pure, unadulterated joy in the moment. I didn't think too much of the Bartman play at the time, but when Dusty put Kyle Farnsworth into the game, I called my Dad (also a Sox fan) and said, "Yep, this is the end for the Cubs."

Are they really becoming the Miami Marlins? I'm just asking because in Back to the Future 2, the Cubs beat Miami to win the 2015 World Series. If they really do change their name to Miami, and there is some kind of realignment that makes a WS with the Cubs possible, I'm going to be freaking out come 2015.

Sorry, wasn't actually being serious there. Unless of course the Marlins are really that dumb.

Any chance the Sox can get Florida to take Rios too???

I know the TV schedule is set far in advance, but it would be nice if the Sox, WCIU, and WGN could work out a deal to get this game on WGN so that everybody could see it.

He's making the league minimum, he had to wait for the after-Labor Day sale.

Dunn and Peavy have reasonable chances of being a lot better next year, and you're stuck with Peavy for only one more year anyway, so I don't see them being moved. Also, if you keep Quentin, you can move him to DH if Dunn doesn't recover. I'm not as optimistic on Rios and I'd eat up to half his contract, maybe even 3/4, to get him out the door and free up a roster spot. The Sox already have 4 outfielders that have had success in some form this year in Quentin, Viciedo, deAza, and Lillibridge. The money saved from Rios pays for Quentin's arbitration raise.

I think Oakland's accomplishments are artificially inflated by the division they competed in. It was a 4-team division to start with. The one "big market" team in their division is even more of a second fiddle in their city than the Mets or Sox. For most of the 2000's, Texas didn't even know what a pitcher was.

If you were running the Bears and were offered the opportunity to make one of the following two trades, which one do you take? 1) Jay Cutler for Aaron Rodgers 2) Bears' five best OL for Packers' five best OL Assume that all players involved are healthy (which I know is not the case for Bears OL right now) and that there would be no salary cap problems with making the swap (you would not be forced to give up other players on the roster).

"Weird Al" Yankovic didn't attend a BCS school.

Yes, as in one league championship + one WS championship = two championships

So I guess KW is overqualified to have a movie about him, having actually won league and WS championships.

I'd think the same thing, but I've lost count of how many times I've thought that the over was a slam dunk and had it come up short. Good thing I don't actually bet on games.

Don't need help with exposure for football, but it's no coincidence that the basketball program has gotten a lot better since joining the Big East. Football games are all on Satrudays and get national TV exposure anyway, but college basketball TV exposure is still very regional, and getting ND on TV in New York/New England/Philly/DC/Pittsburgh is a big deal. Moving a lot of that exposure from the Big East to the ACC at the very least makes ND reconsider its options.

The Big East has lost Western PA and Upstate NY at TV markets. If Rutgers and UConn bolt, the conference loses it's biggest remaining draws in New England and New York. ND would no longer be getting nearly the media exposure they now get from the conference, and that would probably be enough to push them to give up football independence.

Basketball is going to end up the driving factor in ND's decision to join a conference more so than football. Even with all the conferences realigning, teams are still going to play 4 nonconference games a year, and the $$$ you get from playing ND will keep plenty of teams willing to schedule them. Now, if these super-conferences all go the way of the Big Ten and move to playing 9 conference games, that might make finding opponents more difficult for ND. However, if the Big East loses more than Just Pitt and Syracuse, then it's time for ND to leave the Big East, and any of there new prospective conference homes are unlikely to accept them in basketball + other sports without joining in football.

Silly to found a Catholic university in the Midwest. Should have put it in the South where all the Catholics are.

I would like to be the official scorer. Always been my dream job.

Mark Buehrle's 2001 and 2005 are pretty much a toss-up, so I wouldn't argue with someone who would swap out those years. Javy's 2007 beat Garland & Contreras' 2005 on WHIP and K/BB, and Garland & Contreras won on ERA. It was a very close call.

Javy had a pretty awesome year in 2007. 3.74 ERA and 1.14 WHIP in an extreme hitters park. 4.29 K/BB ratio also. We forget how good he was in 2007 because of how bad he was in 2006 and 2008.

Sorry, I meant to put 1994 for Frank and have fixed it, but I will stick with 1983 for Fisk.

Starters: DH Jim Thome 2006 C Carlton Fisk 1983 1B Frank Thomas 1994 2B Juan Uribe 2004 SS Jose Valentin 2001 3B Robin Ventura 1996 LF Albert Belle 1998 CF Aaron Rowand 2004 RF Jermaine Dye 2006 Bench: C AJ Pierzynski 2006 IF Ray Durham 1998 OF Magglio Ordonez 2002 OF Chet Lemon 1979 Starting Pitchers: Lamar Hoyt 1983 Mark Buehrle 2001 Esteban Loaiza 2003 Javier Vazquez 2007 Jack McDowell 1991 Relievers: Bobby Thigpen 1990 Chris Sale 2011 Keith Foulke 2001 Neal Cotts 2005 Bobby Jenks 2007 Matt Thornton 2008 Cliff Politte 2005

I'm a huge Danks fan, but if 1) someone will take Rios and all or most of his contract with Danks and 2) Buehrle can be re-signed, then I'm all for it. Best-case scenario for the Sox is a massive pitching fail for the Yankees and/or Red Sox in October.

Crap, my son's 4th birthday is in late April and I was hoping to take him to his first game, but the only weekend series near his b-day is against Boston, which will cost me an arm and a leg. EDIT: Also, WTF is this making 4 trips to the West coast to play 15 games? JR needs to be chewing Bud's a** up and down for putting together a schedule like this?