Youk Of The Nation

I can't believe my life has been reduced to defending a Yankees fan against internet comments.

No, the only reason he commented was presumably to start a discussion about Ortiz's records and whether or not past events will have an impact on whether those records allow him into the HOF. Oddly, he seems to be the only one who wants to have that discussion. You guys have spent two pages accusing him of trolling, but trolls do not work that way. If he wanted to troll, he would have said "Ortiz is a juicer and no matter what he does this year, he's not going into the HOF ever. Sox suck!" and then left the thread, never to return. Instead, he posted a comment that would usually open some sort of debate like the one MVP, TBSB, and I have been trying in vain to have. Instead of defending his position or offering more data, though, he has been stuck defending himself against you guys for two pages. Instead of coming up with a list of reasons why he posted what he did, why don't you rebut it, or talk about it? Respond to what he said instead of to who said it.

The one thing you can always say about Yankees fans who aren't Divinity is that they are generally willing to stick around even when their team is just awful. They take their lumps as well as they give them, and it keeps us from stagnating in a pool of our own smug superiority. It's like having a few Star Wars fanboys on the Trek boards or letting Somalia onto the UN Security council. You don't want to just surround yourself with people who all support the same team. It's just masturbatory navel-gazing after a while.

Oh my God, you are the most insufferable, intransigent, obnoxious person I have ever seen who hasn't actually done anything worthy of being kicked off the site. Cut it out with the martyr complex already. This thread was about Sox records, and TBSB made an entirely valid point about the possibility of Ortiz's HOF candidacy being difficult because of the PED era and the DH situation. That's what this site is for, discussing baseball, from both sides of an argument. He was not trying to prevent discussion of making history, he was literally starting a discussion about future history.

Because those seasons with lots of HRs were their only noteworthy accomplishments. Neither of them sniffed 3000 hits despite 16 and 18 years in the majors hitting bombs. They didn't accumulate a HOF-worthy resume of hits, walks, batting average, or anything other than those HRs. McGwire isn't even on the top 1000 list of career batting average. Sosa is in a five-way tie for 840th that includes Erick Aybar. McGwire and Sosa are low on the list of top career WAR. (160 and 197 respectively, behind guys like David Cone and Chase Utley.) On the list for career OBP, McGwire is 81st, behind Johnny Pesky, Bobby Abreu, John Olerud, and John Kruk. I could go on and on. Most of the guys ahead of them in these categories are not in the HOF, that's how far behind they are. HRs are the beginning and end of their skill set.

Yeah, that's what I meant about the HRs. Without them, they are slightly-above-average players at best, and they broke down quickly. But I think with the HR numbers, and without the PED cloud, they would have gotten more votes. I doubt they would have gotten the HR numbers in the first place, but if they had done it cleanly, a lot of voters would automatically vote for guys with their HR numbers regardless of other stats.

Well, it's not just them. Sosa, McGwire, and Palmeiro's vote totals are clearly being affected by the voter's opinions on PEDs. Granted, those three guys might not have the same slam-dunk case for the HOF, given that HRs are basically their only claim to greatness, but they should at least be getting a far higher percentage than they are. Your basic argument is one I agree with, however. They played in an era of baseball where a lot of guys were doing it, guys who did not accumulate the stats and longevity that makes a case for the HOF. That should be an indicator that the PEDs, while reprehensible, were not responsible for their success. Clemens and Bonds would have been HOFers without PEDs, and they should still be HOFers with them.

I swear to God I'm going to pistol-whip the next guy that says shenan-uh, I mean, troll. Enough already.

TBSB made a valid point, even if he is a damned Yankees fan. Proven or not, there is talk of steroids associated with David Ortiz. Maybe not as much as with Bonds or McGwire, but enough to make me doubt that he will be inducted within his first few years. I do think that eventually all of these guys will be inducted; Bonds, Ortiz, Clemens, et cetera cannot be denied forever. Their stats are just too good, even from the years where they were not proven to have used or allegedly used PEDs. As for the DH issue, Edgar Martinez has still not been inducted, and that indicates to me that TBSB's other point, that Ortiz' career as a DH might hinder his chances, is also valid. We've had to learn after years of posting by jacksonianmarch that we can't ignore unfavorable opinions or insights about the Red Sox just because they come from Yankees fans. TBSB may be annoying, but in this particular thread, he is absolutely correct in that there is a chance that these issues might hamstring Ortiz's HOF chances. Accusing someone of trolling simply for posting a contrary opinion has long been the last refuge of those with no rebuttal. If you disagree with TBSB, then explain why with opinions, facts, and debate instead of insults. And TBSB, stop responding to it with more insults.

"Nitwit"? What is this, 1955? Oh, and both of you knock it off. Just ignore each other and continue your discussion, no need to insult one another. As far as the topic, the record I'm most interested in at this moment is obvious: the hit streak. Yeah, Jackie is only halfway there, but he's hitting at such an incredible pace that it seems much closer than it did when Rollins was doing it a few years ago. I'm genuinely excited about it.

Thank you, Houston. And thank you, Baltimore, for intentionally walking back-to-back guys to load the bases with no one out. Has that ever worked out, for anyone? Do you really think you can count on the third guy to not hit even a moderately deep fly ball?

Which is why I made a thread to explain all of this. I don't particularly enjoy having to merge a half-dozen threads and/or posts every day. Which is why I asked, several times, for everyone to think about their topic before posting it, not post and then tell me to "do whatever" with it. Regardless, even if your topic needed its own thread, it should have been pretty clear that it belonged in the TalkSox forum. The Gamethread forum has nothing but Gamethreads in it, I never felt the need to explain that nothing else goes in it.

I'd like our new guys to be able to express opinions that we might not necessarily share without being accused of being trolls.

On the subject of Buchholz not pitching well, does anyone know offhand the starters who will be free agents this offseason? I don't really pay attention to that stuff until after the postseason ends, so I don't have the names. Is there anyone who might be available at the deadline because their contract is up in a few months anyways?

I don't think he's intentionally trolling, I think he actually believes this. It doesn't matter though. Yes, Price was pitching badly at first, but he is already improving in leaps and bounds and looks to be on form soon, while Clay is getting worse and worse. I care very little about this argument, I just wanted to make it clear to both of them (that means you too, UN?) that you can have this argument without the personal attacks. It is, in fact, possible to tell someone you think they're wrong without calling them a moron or accusing them of being a Tampa Bay Lightning fan. I honestly don't know which of those two things are worse.

I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say. Let me get it straight: Are you trying to say that Buchholz is as good as Price? Or has anything like the history he does? Everything UN? said is true. Price has had a history of pitching poorly early in the season. Maybe it's the colder weather, maybe he just takes some time to settle in, maybe he gets distracted until the summer off-season for new TV shows (did anyone watch the series finale of Castle? Disappointing.). Buchholz has neither the history of success or the established durability of Price. There's no reason to cast aspersions on someone's fandom whenever they disagree with you. Oh and by the way: No one is a Lightning fan. Not just no one on this site, no human being currently living on this planet. It's dimly possible that through a quirky mistake, Cape Canaveral has been beaming Lightning games through space instead of equations and language tapes in order to seek out extra-terrestrial life, and making lightning fans out of some slimy, tentacled, ammonia-breathing monstrosities a few light-years from here, but that's about it.

And I can't even merge it with the Gamethread it belongs in because it was started before hand and merging it would cause the Gamethread to be listed as "started by Maxbialystock". So it's going in here, despite the fact that it's a post suited perfectly to the Gamethread. If you copy and paste it and repost it in the Gamethread, that would be great. Was I too subtle before? Am I doing something wrong? I thought I did a very good job of explaining the problem with all of these unnecessary new threads. I tried to do it firmly but politely without insulting or alienating anyone, I really did. Am I wrong? Should I just be an ******* about these things?

That is one of the best Broadway musicals of all time. The movie was pretty good too, much better than some of the Broadway-to-film adaptations in the past.

No way, 2003 would have meant the Sox won the ALCS in 7 regular games, that would not have been nearly as satisfying as winning the World Series after coming back from down 0-3.

He gave up four runs, three of them earned. 50% of the hits he gave up went for extra bases. He gave up a home run, walked more guys than he struck out, and took the loss. So yeah, I think he sucked last start.

It's awesome. Clean, spacious, affordable, everything you could want in a modern ballpark. It doesn't have the history of a lot of other parks (Fenway, Wrigley, the original Yankee Stadium), but it really was a great place to go. It's a shame that their first decade of operation lacked a competitive team to bring in enough fans to make it worthwhile. I can't even imagine what it's like now that the Pirates are contenders, when the stadium is almost full. There are few things greater than 30 thousand baseball fans making a stadium shake and deafening you whenever a HR is hit.

I'm actually going to a Mets game next month. My Dad is a Pirates fan (lapsed, he stopped following baseball regularly after the 1994 strike), and he hasn't been to a game since about 2002-2003. We used to visit family in the Pittsburgh area once or twice a summer and go to games. We went to probably seven or eight games from 1999-2007 or so, and they lost every single one. We're going to a Mets-Pirates game at Citi Field, it will be nice to actually go to a Pirates game in the early summer where they haven't already been mathematically eliminated from the playoffs.

What does post count have to do with anything? This is about the dozenth time that someone from the old BDC boards has used "high post count" as a pejorative term. Most of the people on this site with high post counts have been here a long time. I've been here for 11 years, a700hitter has as well. Jacksonianmarch has been here way too long, most of our other regular members have been here for at least 5 years, most of them more. You accumulate a lot of posts in that amount of time. It has nothing to do with knowledge of baseball or the enjoyment of games.

Haha iortiz that is the most Mexican coffee table spread I have ever seen.

The most accomplished professionals in the fields of linguistics and international communications estimate that there are more than 6,500 languages spoken in the world, some of them confined to small aboriginal tribes, some of them spoken by hundreds of millions of people on every continent, some of them completely unknown by anyone due to the uncontacted status of the communities that speak them. In all of those languages, from English to French to Tagalog, from Navajo and Dutch to Punjab and Khmer, there are no words or phrases which adequately describe the depths of my loathing for the f***ing New York Yankees.