I think I should stop being a baseball fan, it's going to give me cancer.
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I think I should stop being a baseball fan, it's going to give me cancer.
I dont know why Oz keeps sending Marte out there. He's as rattled at home as LaTroy was at Wrigley. One batter, one walk, he gone!
Biggest choke of all time possible happining on the south side. Bigger than the '69 Cubs, bigger than the '78 BoSox. Although it wont have as huge as an impact as either of those teams, because they are beloved and the ChiSox are just a blip on the national radar.
I disagree. Although they aren't playing well, they are still over .500 since the All-Star break. It's more Cleveland playing insane then the White Sox choking. Although the White Sox certainly are choking a bit.Quote:
Originally Posted by ajk1080
Cleveland is fucking 15-2 in their last 17. 15 and fucking 2.
Quote:
Originally Posted by buttasuperb
Check this out, its pretty interesting about the 69 Mets-Cubs Race
The Mets just got insanely hot too, and the cubs couldn't keep the .600 pace going, just like the Sox couldnt keep the first half pace durring the second.
How ever you want to call it, the Mets hot, the Cubs choking, the Indians hot(the ChiSox havent choked yet so I wont say it)...the bottom line is, they are in a race and need to win right now under pressure, when you dont win under pressure, you are not a champion and will for ever remembered as a choker. If you cant win now, what kind of pressure do you think is added in the playoffs??
I dunno but if they don't make the playoffs, it's still White Sox > Cubs
Oh and after last nights game they are 32-32 since all-star break.
Sox > Cubs????? Whens the last playoff series you guys won? Check that...playoff game?!?
Winning a playoff series really doesn't mean much.Quote:
Originally Posted by ajk1080
When's the last time you won a world series? 1908 right. 1917 for the White sox bitch. :kekeke:
:crying:
Quote:
Originally Posted by buttasuperb
Thats all I have to say about Chicago Cubs/Sox baseball teams.
I WANT the ChiSox to make the playoffs. Playoff baseball in Chicago is awsome. It doesnt happen that often and there is a crazy energy that comes to this city. When I saw Prior beat the Yankees and Wrigley in 2003(Borowski picked off that Yank at 1st to end it), I have never been apart of anything more electric than that. The Braves series and even the Marlin series, were incredible.
I was too young to grasp what the Bears did in '85(I was six) and the Bulls were cool(I was still a little too young still to really feel the pulse of what was happening in the city) , but the 2003 cubs where freaking awsome.......I cant wait for that to happen again. Ill proly be too old to know whats happening.
Sounds like a "Who's shit smells better?" argument to meQuote:
Originally Posted by buttasuperb
PS
:chump: :chump: :chump: :chump: :chump: :chump: :chump: :chump:
Angels now 4 up. :kekeke: Where are all those A's fans?
Trust me,the Yankees' shit smells bad too,but 208 million $$$$$$ can buy a SHITLOAD of air freshener!!Quote:
Originally Posted by D-Lite
Typical.Quote:
Originally Posted by SamuraiShogun
If I were a Yankee fan(lobotomy not included),I would be emberassed of that fact too.Quote:
Originally Posted by D-Lite
If New Pork can't compete on a level with other teams,maybe they should just be dismantled and Yankee stadium plowed under. :buttrock: :buttrock: :buttrock:
I mean seriously,the Yankees' startegy must be the equivalent of deciding whether to kill a mosquito with a chainsaw or sledgehammer. :oh_no:
I have a new thought/prediction for everyone.
AL wildcard won't come from the East. So that means either yankees or bosox will make it to postseason, not both.
Thoughts?
Hahaha! :lol:Quote:
Originally Posted by SamuraiShogun
Just now, I switched to SC on the EasternSPortsNetwork (ESPN) to see how they would recap the Angels game. It was a replay I believe.
They started off with "Let's take a look at all the games involving AL contenders", and proceeded to re-cap the White Sox game against the Twins, the Indians game against the the Royals, and the Yankee game against the Orioles.
Then they talked about the Red Sox, who didn't play today.
After that, they put up a graphic with the pitching probables for "AL Contenders" for tomorrow (saying "Let's take a look at the pitching probables for all of the AL contenders tomorrow").
Then they showed the probables for the Stanks, Sox, Indians, and White Sox.
Not a mention of the Angels or their game or even the A's for that matter. Guess the EasternSPortsNetwork thinks they only have 4 AL contenders. Hmmmmmm... The only time they show the Angels is when they lose. They've been doing that for weeks.
Also, how much did they talk about Colon's 20th win the other night? I missed it but I would wager it wasn't very long. If that was Schilling or some other East Coast pitcher, they would have wanted to throw him a parade or other such nonsense.
I guess I shouldn't worry about ESPN. They'll be showing plenty of the Angels winning in the playoffs :buttrock:
Red Sox played today, won 9-3.
Yeah it was a SC replay. They do that on the ESPN News channel here.Quote:
Originally Posted by buttasuperb
My hope is that Cleveland will win the wild card so one of those "beloved" Eastern teams will NOT be in the playoffs.
When it comes to Baseball, ESPN is EAST COAST BIASED. Period.
Don't believe me? If an east coast team doesn't make the World Series, they probably won't even cover it. At the very least only basic minimal coverage.
California has FIVE major league baseball teams. Granted, some are bad teams but FIVE nonetheless. So how does majority justify bias? This year there are THREE California teams in contention. Last year all FIVE California teams were in contention! Minimal coverage.
The "typical" comment was saying that you're a typical fool making typical foolish statements.Quote:
Originally Posted by SamuraiShogun
Play by the rules. Baseball has no salary cap, but a luxury tax. As it turns out, the Yankees, which by the way set the all time AL attendance record for a season today, make a shitload of money from attendance and merchandise. As it also turns out they spend that money on making a product people want to go see. Good businesses reinvest. Perhaps you want to see a mediocre team play for you, but I much prefer a good team. Sure, I'd rather the money not be so large, but hell, it wasn't $200 million when they won those 4 recent World Series, right?
And fuck the small market teams like the Royals and Devil Rays. They feast on the luxury tax and don't put it back into the team. I'm not sure if you are aware, but the owner of the Royals is WalMart President and CEO David Glass. He can suck a fat cock for turning that team to shit. $36 million payroll, lowest in baseball. And they received $20 million in revenue sharing. $20 MILLION. So, one of the richest men on the planet spent a whopping $16 million on the team? Oh, wait, he MADE money.
Fuck the Royals, Fuck the Devil Rays, and Fuck anyone else that feels sorry for those teams and teams like them. Write to Selig and plead with him to change the rules. The only problem is you'll still end up with shit franchises like the LA Clippers, the Hartford Whalers, and the Arizona Cardinals.
Sure, money helps you win, but you still have to be smart. That's why the Yanks were so good from 1996-2000, rich and smart. Watch out now that they are starting to smarten up again....
Washington State? I assume you like a certain behemoth Redmond company that is quite the monopoly, yes?
And Mike, cry me a friggin' river. Watch your Fox Sports channel if you don't like ESPN. Peter Gammons whores himself out so bad to the Red Sox it's shameful.
And you're wrong. California has no major teams.
:kekeke:
Tell me, would you like to be a Royals' fan?
Gotta sign up to read the link. Copy and paste plz.
Weird it worked yesterday without it.
Here it is:Quote:
Here’s the thing: It’s hard to lose 100 games in one baseball season.
The Colorado Rockies have been awful. They’ve never lost 100 games in a season.
The Anaheim/Los Angeles/California Angels don’t have a storied history. They’ve never lost 100.
The Houston Astros have never lost 100.
The Montreal Expos of the last decade were baseball’s joke.
They didn’t lose 100.
The Chicago Cubs, everybody’s favorite losers, have not lost 100 in almost 40 years. They have lost 100 twice in their history.
The Royals are about to lose 100 games for the third time in four years.
This is a series of Royals thoughts and opinions, each exactly 100 words long. The Royals have been so bad for so long they merit their own form of prose. Call these Kansas City Royals haikus or Roykus, if you prefer.
Some will be angry, some will be mocking and some, perhaps, will even be hopeful. I cannot overcome my weakness for hope. In Cleveland, in my childhood, the Indians were perpetually dreadful, yet every year I believed Johnny Grubb would blossom and Neal Heaton would win 20.
The names become Mark Teahen and Denny Bautista.
The kid keeps hoping.
The adult, though, gets angry. Nobody likes associating with a team this awful. The last seven years — even including the mirage 2003 season — the Royals have lost 202 more games than they’ve won. That’s 29 more losses than wins every year.
No fan deserves 29 more losses than wins every year. Life’s tough enough.
How did it get this bad? Here’s a quick recipe: Take an unfair game, add poor scouting, mix in colossal blunders, add a pinch of pennies and top it all off with a loser’s glaze. That’s how you lose 100 games three out of four years.
To lose 100 games in a season, you have to lose about 17 times per month. That’s four or five every week.
If you go on a five-game winning streak, you have to lose eight to keep up.
That’s a 100-loss pace — five wins, eight losses, five and eight, that same march to the grave all summer long.
The Royals have been too inconsistent for that. They played awful. They hired Buddy Bell. They swept the Yankees. They played pretty well. They lost 19 in a row.
The Royals are not even consistent enough to be bad all the time.
Here’s what I mean by “loser’s glaze.” Going into the last game of 2002, the Royals had 99 losses. They had never lost 100, not even in their first year.
That day, they sent out a minor-league lineup with Kit Pellow batting cleanup, and Dusty Wathan, son of former Royal John Wathan, making his only major-league start. The Royals lost.
After the game, Royals general manager Allard Baird said it didn’t matter, that 99 losses were fundamentally no different than 100. “They’re both really bad,” he said.
True. That attitude seems like a good way to lose 100 every year.
People often say the Royals are being run like Wal-Mart. I don’t think that’s true at all. People say that because Wal-Mart cuts costs, I guess.
But Wal-Mart is the biggest and most dominant company in America.
Wal-Mart has invested billions into cutting edge technology — for instance, the temperature in every store across America is being controlled in Bentonville, Ark.
Wal-Mart does not ask anyone to share and certainly does not share with anyone.
Wal-Mart relentlessly tries to get bigger and better.
Wal-Mart tries all sorts of new things to beat the competition.
And say what you will: Wal-Mart wins.
Poor scouting? Here are the Royals’ top draft picks (not including the last three who are too young to judge or unsigned):
2002: Zack Greinke. He’s 4-16 with a 5.95 ERA. He’s the success story.
2001: Colt Griffin. Will probably never pitch in the big leagues.
2000: Mike Stodolka. Will probably never pitch in the big leagues.
1999: Kyle Snyder. Had Tommy John surgery and two major shoulder surgeries.
1998: Jeff Austin. Sat out a year, got big bonus, never won a game for Royals.
1997: Dan Reichert. Won 21 career games. He also led league in wild pitches once.
I asked the thoughtful baseball fans on the message board called “Baseball Think Factory” ( www.baseballthinkfactory.org) to tell us what they would do to save the Royals.
This item comes from a poster called “Albert Pujols 4 Pope.”
“Hire the wife of the owner and have her implode the team. Bring in a convict with a 100-mph fastball, a catcher with gimpy knees, a prima donna third baseman who will go out of his way to avoid getting injured, a center fielder who would get 120 stolen bases if he only got on base, and a power-hitting outfielder who practices voodoo.”
Royals manager Buddy Bell said something frightening the other day. He was talking about shortstop Angel Berroa and his unique talent for swinging at every pitch. Anytime you pitch an idea to a client, for instance, Angel Berroa is swinging a bat somewhere.
Berroa has 22 errors. He has 16 walks.
Here’s what Bell said: “I love plate discipline and on-base percentage. But I just think if you stay aggressive — if you’re always ready to hit — then you’ll get on base.”
I can’t imagine worse advice.
This is how you end up 28th in on-base percentage and 29th in walks.
Here is what is so infuriating about the Royals: They don’t do a single thing well. They don’t hit for power (28th in slugging percentage, dead last in home runs), and they don’t have any speed (they will steal fewer bases than any Royals team ever).
Their pitchers get smacked around (dead last in batting-average against) but they also have no control (dead last in strikeout-to-walk ratio).
They are a dreadful fielding team (only the Tampa Bay Devil Rays have made more errors).
And they are at their worst in close games (they have the worst one-run record in baseball).
The Royals’ all-encompassing awfulness is what makes you wonder if there’s a plan. If the Royals sent eight Andres Blancos out there — that is, eight guys who can’t hit but do play superior defense — that would be a plan. It might be a bad plan, but at least you would be able to say: “OK, the Royals believe in strong defense.”
If the Royals had four starters who threw plain 87-mph fastballs but always threw strikes, that would be a plan. You could say, “OK, the Royals believe in control pitchers.”
Right now, there’s no telling what they believe in.
Everybody likes catcher John Buck. He’s a solid person, a team guy; he has all the attributes to become a leader. Except one. This season, Buck has shown that he cannot hit. His average is .229, and his .276 on-base percentage ranks 51st among catchers with at least 100 at-bats. That’s bad.
The Royals hope this year is a fluke. They hope he will hit.
Then, this often seems to be the Royals strategy: Hope. Here was the headline with the Royals 10 games into their 19-game losing streak: “Bell hopes day off will help.”
It has come to that.
More save-the-Royals ideas from Baseball Think Factory: From Der-Komminsk-sar: “Redesign Kauffman Stadium. … Swap the ‘R’ and ‘E’ columns on the scoreboard.”
From Death to Immobile Things: “1. Increase concession prices: Beer, $1 million; Hot dog, $5 million; Nachos, $3 million. 2. Send free tickets to Bill Gates, Paul Allen, the Waltons.”
From Devin McCullen: “Tear down the outfield fences, plant corn, hope the ghosts of the Kansas City Monarchs show up.”
From Sweeper: “Live up to nickname. Fire all existing players, hire real nobility.”
From Joshuacottrose: “(A) Stockpile young talent; (B) Develop young talent.”
How did Josh get in here?
When you’re the worst team in baseball, everybody assumes you are wrong about everything. I think the Royals are right about No. 2 draft pick Alex Gordon.
The Royals have offered Gordon $3.8 million. That’s a lot of money. It’s substantially more than the third pick. It’s more than last year’s second pick. I understand the Royals are also willing to give Gordon a major-league deal.
Gordon and his people realize the Royals are in bad shape. They’re trying to cash in. You can’t blame them, I guess. But at some point, you either want to play or you don’t.
I wish Royals owner David Glass would speak out more. Many people wish Glass would sell the team, but that’s a silly dream. Nobody in Kansas City wanted to buy the Royals then. Nobody wants to buy them now.
I wish Glass would tell us what he’s thinking. Is he angry? Embarrassed? Is he really spending all of his revenue sharing? Does he go to bed grumbling about a Berroa error or Jose Lima or the Dance Off?
Nobody even knows how he feels about the stadium.
I wish he would talk. Royals fans would like to know he cares.
I didn’t mind when the Royals signed 37-year-old Matt Stairs for another year. Stairs is a good ballplayer. He takes a walk, hits with some power and plays defense enthusiastically.
The problem comes when Baird says he would consider bringing back Jose Lima, Terrence Long, Joe McEwing and other veterans for lesser contracts. Baird will only say, “I won’t rule anything out.” He’s surely just being nice.
Look: Fans are panicked. These Royals are going to lose more games than any in team history.
Nice or not, it might be good to start ruling out some of the people responsible.
Richard Dodson writes in. He wants reasons to dream.
Well, Zack Greinke could develop into a frontline pitcher. Denny Bautista has the stuff to dominate. David DeJesus is a good player. Mike Sweeney is a terrific hitter when healthy. Mark Teahen has improved. Ambiorix Burgos, Andrew Sisco and Mike MacDougal might make a fierce late-inning bullpen.
Justin Huber looks like he can hit. Billy Butler is one of the five best hitting prospects in the game. Andres Blanco could win a Gold Glove at second or short.
Nobody said dreaming is easy. Not with 100 losses. Not in 100 words.
So we need like $20,000 to buy the team...
Anyone want to invest in the Royals?
Dean and I can make whoopie under the waterfalls.
Light up that Halo! Angels Clinched the WEST! @ Oakland!
Where are all those A's fans now that were talking smack? :lol: I guess I won't be hearing from you guys until next season huh?
How about Norton or was it Dangerous K who predicted the A's would win the AL West, and said the Angels wouldnt be in the Post Season? :lol:
http://www.mikekanaly.com/temp/yell.jpg
The stubborn Yankee fans are hilarious. You guys never get old. :lol:
Close enough? :angry:Quote:
Originally Posted by DangerousK
I was wondering... if we clinch in Oakland and only 4,200 people see it, does it really happen? They still talk about how K-Rod celebrated on the mound last year. haha.
Some of the A's fans were talking on their MB and they can't stand the idea of seeing happen twice.
I'm glad we clinched on Wednesday when it is dollar rootbeer and ticket night at the McaFee Virus Protection Colisuem of Alameda County. That way 4k A's "fans" can choke on their dollar hot dogs as they see us celebrate.