Youk Of The Nation

The Millennial generation is generally defined as those of us born between the mid 80's through 1999, so you would be a Millennial, I think. Unless you were born in 2000, in which case by the loose standards of the social Generations, you'd be a member of "Generation Z". EDIT: Okay, yeah, I read your post after I sent mine. So yes, you'd be Z. I couldn't remember how old you were.

Horatio? Hannibal? Heathcliff?

Have they announced the name of the baby yet? I really hope it isn't JBJ III. Jackie's great, but the name itself is a little too boring to perpetuate for yet another generation. Roman Numerals should be reserved for outrageously memorable names. Benedict Cumberbatch should make sure his name reaches at least "The Fourth" or "The Fifth". John Smith should not.

In answer to the question, unfortunately, no, I don't remember it personally. I know a lot about it though. My dad took me with him and a couple of his friends to a Yankees-Red Sox game at Yankee Stadium, on one of those bus trip specials, when I was about 4 or 5. His friend Fran is a big Yankees fan, and the Yankees lost. Me, being an obnoxious 4-year-old little bastard, kept making fun of Fran on the bus back. He jokingly threw an empty beer can at me, and it hit the guy in the seat in front of me. Apparently that started an argument that snowballed into a near-brawl between a bunch of drunks on the bus, and the driver had to pull over and threaten to call the cops. My dad loves telling that story.

Just once, could I make some sort of comment or request that is not commented on in turn? How hard is it for everyone to read a post asking them to stop doing something or stop acting a certain way and just say to themselves, "hm, okay." Why does every single goddamn thing I ask everyone have to be commented on? Why does everyone feel the need to explain or justify things? When I ask people not to post a thousand superfluous threads, all I want is to not see a thousand superfluous threads. I don't want a paragraph-long response explaining why they disagree with the request, especially not when I have asked a hundred times and read that same paragraph a hundred times. When I ask someone not to respond to calm, polite comments with "bite me", especially directed towards someone that they have already spent a week calling a troll, all I want is for them not to do that. I don't want other people jumping in and trying to explain things. I don't need everyone's opinion on whether or not the thread I merged was necessary, I don't need everyone's opinion on everyone else's posting style. All I need is quiet acknowledgment that I am trying to do my best to keep this place from turning into Reddit. Now, I don't want to see anything past this point in this thread that in any way relates to the last four or five posts. Let's just stick to the topic, please.

Just a tip: This is not the way to respond to a polite comment. No one insulted you or got vulgar, he was actually quite reasonable. Your response was unnecessary and exactly the kind of thing that starts ridiculous fights. There was no need for you to respond at all, much less like this.

This is obviously not the same thing, please don't try to start arguments. They happen enough on their own, we don't need prompting.

The cherry on top of an already excellent day. Sox win, Orioles lose (to the Sox, which makes it doubly sweet). Yankees lose. Does it get much better than that as a fan this season? I love not only the Yankees losing, but that it is almost an afterthought. They've become so irrelevant as an opponent that it's almost boring to celebrate their losses. Almost.

The Pirates and Cardinals are stiffs? The Giants? The Mets? The Dodgers? The Nationals? Two of the teams in the Cubs' own division are among the best in baseball, never mind the National League.

Make sure to tell her a bunch of people of varying shades of pastiness, whom she has never met, most of whom speak at best ten words of Spanish, and live a thousand miles away are supporting her with all their hearts. I'm sure she will be touched. At least I hope so. Seriously though, best of luck.

We had something similar years ago before the hack and reboot, but it was basically never used. That more than anything is a good indicator of why we don't need it. We had it, and it was ignored. I'm sure it works fine for other sites, but we're a smaller, tighter-knit community. If we like someone's post, we quote it and say "great post" or "I agree" and list a bunch of reasons why, and that continues the conversation. Adding a "like" button just encourages less posting, because you can just click like and never respond to the posts you like the most. Responding to the posts you enjoy is what keeps things moving. "Likes" work fine for short-attention-span-and-shorter-post social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, and if this place ever started turning into Twitter I would drive a tank through whatever building housed the server and then hang myself in the rubble. "

Wait, isn't Ellsbury Native American? He certainly doesn't look "white as Wonderbread". Also, Wonderbread sucks. How does anyone eat that crap? You can't even spread peanut butter on it, it just falls apart. It's like trying to spread peanut butter on a Kleenex.

I think the temptation to downvote people you disagree with based on your personal feelings for them rather than the content of their posts might be too much for a lot of people, and in the same vein, failing to upvote excellent comments because you dislike someone might be just as prevalent. I may not be giving everyone enough credit for objectivity, but there is also the potential for the accusation of bias every time someone's rating goes down anyways. I don't like the idea of new members making hasty judgments about people based on their public rating without getting to know them first. A rating system is a fine idea for a site with hundreds or more active users, but for a smaller place like this where everyone basically knows everyone, I don't think it's necessary.

The "Dark Ages". by and large, are an exaggeration, if not an outright myth. Historical bias causes us to look back on those times with disdain for the culture, but in reality there were advances in medicine, mathematics, industry, biology, and dozens of other fields just as there were in any other era. Conversely, the Renaissance is highly exaggerated in the other direction. I'm going to stop before I drag this topic into a history lecture that will bore everyone except me, but you should all read up on this sort of stuff sometime, it's fascinating. Anyways, back onto another subject I know a lot about and enjoy very much: control through pain. I love the idea of umpire shock collars, but it's one of those great ideas that will be ruined by a union, like child labor, 23 hour work days, and whipping.

Yes, I think it is too early. The Sox have been playing since the first decade of the 20th century, and we are now in the second decade of the 21st, and it's only the end of May. It's too early to call these three the best outfield the Sox have ever had, especially since Swihart has been an outfielder for less than two weeks.

I had no idea what this thread was even going to be about until I opened it. Which made me suspect that it would probably need to be merged. That being said, I agree 100%, I have already mentioned several times how much this team reminds me of 2013. Everyone is playing like they haven't a care in the world, like they already know they're awesome and have nothing to prove to anyone. I love it.

I hope your Grandmother is okay.

Another day, another bullpen-saving, low run performance from Stephen Wright. Only once has this guy given up more than 3 runs. W/L numbers are such a travesty sometimes. Anyone looking just at that would see 4-4 (about to be 5-4) and that does not at all indicate how valuable he's been.

Get Jones, Machado, and Davis to hit into outs, but give up a triple, double, and single to the 7-8-9 guys. I'll never truly understand baseball.

This is another good point, I think. Everyone has calls go for and against their team. How do we really know what the results are? For all we know, one year the Sox may have gained 4 wins due to incorrect calls and lost only 2. Remember, a computer would call strikes or balls based on the EXACT strike zone. The umpires make calls all the time that we, as fans, and the players, as professionals, have no issues with. But a computer might. How many times would players strike out the pitch before they hit a HR on a pitch that an umpire called a ball, if a computer was calling it?

Actually, I thought of a way I could accept it. Install strike-zone computers in every park, and collect the data every season, on every pitch. At the end of the season, separate and examine the data by umpire. When an umpire's "bad calls" exceed, say, 15-20% of the pitches he judged, issue a warning and give him until the ASB the following season to correct it. If, by then, he has either not decreased his bad calls, or has actually increased them, suspend him for the other half of that season. The umpires stay, giving the game the feel of watching human beings play a game, and still decrease the number of bad pitch calls.

No one is ruining this place, it's just the typical "settling in" problems that result from this kind of situation. It'll all smooth out after time. Back onto the subject, I can't provide any serious mathematical support for my position because I don't know enough about the intricacies of the pitch-zone calculations and all of the associated scientific minutiae. All I can say is I would never, ever want robot umpires. Instant replay is fine with me, but balls and strikes should always include the human element. If you start having a computer call the balls and strikes, then you're a step away from having sensors installed in the bases and fielder's gloves so a computer can make safe/out calls. Every sport should always have a human being who is not associated with either team, either on the field or on the sidelines, to supervise. Robot umpires leaves just the teams on the field with no supervision. Computers can't supervise. They can't issue warnings, eject people, or be polite about giving a guy a second to recover from fouling a ball off of his foot. Increasing the level of technology in a game is not always the best idea. If we keep adding things until there is nothing left to add, in fifty years there might be no players! We'll just input a bunch of data into a computer and it will simulate a season's worth of games and tell us who won the championship. (It still won't be the Cubs). Okay, I'm exaggerating, but still. The human element, with it's potential for error, is part of the tapestry that makes baseball so interesting and entertaining. Yes, the umps make mistakes, but the largest ones (fair/foul HRs, SBs, safe/out calls on the bases, et cetera) have been largely eliminated with IR, which only adds two or three minutes to a game. But to make B/S calls as perfect as possible, you'd need replay, which is impractical at 300 pitches in a game between both teams, or computers, which I personally believe would make baseball feel less like a game and more like a bunch of guys working in a factory supervised by a supercomputer.

I've been keeping an eye on things, just not as closely as when I'm at home. I have matured greatly in the ten years since I started moderating here. I tend not to make rash decisions anymore. I do not want to become the kind of internet moderator who bans everyone who annoys me. (If I did that, this site would just be me and a lot of inactive members). Trust me when I tell you I am making a note of everything that happens, and I will take action when or if I think it is necessary, based on my read of the situation, not the opinions of a bunch of people with preexisting grudges against someone. We had enough problems with the Dodger Blues crowd, I refuse to allow this board to become a stage for the rekindling of drama from another message board yet again.

I think that was before YZ instituted the admin-approval process, so the guy didn't need to be approved, he could just sign up.

Why the umpiring change? I'm only following Gameday, I'm in a car on the way to Michigan, so I have no video and no radio, just a really crappy mobile hotspot for the internet.