The Sir

We need something to do since it doesn't seem like Machado's signing any time soon.

Disagree. The Hall should be about great baseball. Not sure who the explicit Klansmen were, but while guys like Anson, Cobb and others had terrible beliefs and, in many cases, were terrible citizens in myriad ways, they were great baseball players. The group I want to exclude from the Hall is the one who injected themselves with all sorts of junk to produce the ridiculously fraudulent stat lines of the late 90s, early 00s. Clemens, Bonds, McGwire, Sosa, ARod, Ortiz, the earlier Manny, Sheffield, so on. It might be again unpopular, but so far I've gotten my way on this one.

Well, we are all harder on ourselves than we need be. Think of it as an It's A Wonderful Life sort of thing. We don't see our impacts, but others do. You deserve to be reminded of that.

Pete Rose, yes. The other three, no. Sadly, Bonds would have made it easily until he decided 'roids were a necessary supplement to a career that had produced 445 homeruns, 460 SBs, and a .968 OPS over 14 years.

That was my first thought, too. Hall of Very Good. Not Fame. I'll say it. Not every Hall of Famer is equal, but look at someone like Ken Griffey or Frank Thomas and compare them to Paul Konerko. The first two dominated the game for years. And while we talk about Frank's "decline", there are several of his "down years" that would rank among Paulie's best (to put that in a firm comparison, Frank's OPS in his relatively lousy one-off, age 39 season, 2007, would best every PK season except for six). As much as we all love the guy, I don't think it's fair that PK be enshrined in the same place as the Hurt. Perhaps an unpopular opinion. Eh.

Hey, thank you for serving in your own way. It's all got a greater purpose. And as for that last part, I did Kandahar but there are areas of US cities that I'm content to stay the hell out of. 35 dudes with heavy weaponry and body armor would probably be out of place in South Dallas, even if that's what it takes. I should probably feel sad about that. Ugh.

Thanks to your father for his service! I would hope you are correct about that. Thank you for your kind thoughts. And don't beat yourself up so much. I'm sure what you've done thus far has more meaning than you know!

It might be strange, but I agree with your about deployments. We used to sit outside our tents at night and smoke cigars and shoot the shit. Kandahar is a pre-industrial wasteland, so it doesn't give off any light, and you can see a bajillion stars. So that was pretty cool. Of course, waking up some mornings and thinking, "man, I got seven months left of this shit" kinda sucked. It's a mixed bag, but I definitely have some fond memories. I wasn't directly involved in this, but my battalion had, within its area of responsibility, a native police chief who was rivals with another "police group" in another part of the district. One day, he got super drunk and went to the rival station, set up his machine gun, and opened fire (this is all out in the country, so every building is basically a windowless mudhut, so this gunfire is doing nothing). Of course, the cops inside took up positions and fired back. We had to send guys out to deal with this silliness, and while we were happy there were no casualties, it was disconcerting that we spent so much time training people who couldn't hit a damn thing at a range of a few yards. A darker incident was when some Afghan police intercepted some IED emplacers in the middle of the night. Similar to Vietnamization towards the end of that war, we were trying to have the Afghans take charge of their own battle. So these guys went out, apprehended the terrorists, machine gunned them on the side of the road, and ran over the corpses with their trucks as they left the area. I don't really feel bad for these douchebags who probably would have ended up killing some kids, but I'm not sure this was the standard we were trying to set. In short, Afghanistan is a fucked up place. It will be a fucked up place for a long time to come.

Nope. My station on Active Duty was an armored division, but a Stryker brigade (basically, armored personnel carriers). So the Army mans those with a mix of both armored and infantry guys. Did all my training at Benning and did the rest of my time at Bliss. Never even been to Knox. How is it?

Thank you, sir.

Thank you for your service as well! My parents were Navy, so I've been getting flak for my choices the whole time I've been in. Currently on a "deployment" with the National Guard. Scare quotes because it involves living in a hotel, so it's far from the worst thing I've had.

Thank you, buddy! Gratitude is never expected but always appreciated. Even on the internet, it does mean a lot to me, so thank you.

Not that I know of, but I firmly believe that the upgrade to the team is far less valuable if he insists on playing short. That’s not our eternal black hole; third is.

I sincerely appreciate that, man. It was my honor, honestly. My adventures in the service have been some of the greatest and funnest of my life. Wouldn’t trade it for any other job in the world.

I've seen parts of it. Old roommate used to make fun of me when we were in infantry officer school together because I wanted to go to the 101st but hadn't seen BoB. I got sent to an armored division instead, so I guess it didn't matter.

I saw it for the first time ever last night. Great film. I cried.

I lived in Gurnee when I was a child. Since this is apparently the topic now.

Deadspin should have an article about how much of a sleaze Deadspin is.

This is a terrible idea. The idea is to entice Manny Machado to play for us for most of the next decade, not to stress to Dan Lozano how high and mighty we are.

Like others have said, this isn’t being cheap if it’s the best offer. When we went to sell our old house, one of our neighbor’s sisters came to us before hitting the market and offered $50K less than we were going to ask for. We went to market, we’re offered $10K over asking price, called her back to see if she was still interested, and she said no. Hahn is the sister. No harm trying to save some money, certainly when there’s nothing better out there. But if the big offer does come for Manny like it did for us, Hahn better stop acting like the sister and get it done.

Ok, I’ll get yer money for ya. But if you don’t get the President of the United States on the phone, ya know what’s gonna happen to you? You’re gonna have to answer to the Coca Cola company. Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here. This is the war room!

Love the new thread title. MEIN FUHRER! I CAN WALK!

Sorry to hear that, man. I'll say a prayer for y'all.

Correct. But what you're suggesting is that the Phils are trying to lull the Sox into thinking they have the best, while in fact, the Phillies do. So the Sox decline to make a bigger offer and Machado will take Phil's offer. That won't happen. Lozano won't inform either team if the other quits, but he will tell either one that their opponent is sitting prettier. Whatever PHI's final offer is, Hahn and Co will be given the chance to beat it. If they don't sign Machado, it's because the prices got too high and they backed out (or Machado just preferred the other team/city/infidelity opportunities/etc).

Great post.