Youk Of The Nation

Thank ​you.

Yeah, reading through the archives is a nicely balanced mix of "uncontrollable laughter" and "weeping for the bleak and ignorant future of humanity".

Don't go into the Off-Topic Forum! IT'S A COOKBOOK!

If that's otherworldly, what do you call 11 consecutive 100-plus assist seasons, bookended by a season of 86 and a season of 90? Bobby Orr is 59th in career assists and 90th in career points. He was certainly a great player but doesn't even belong in the same discussion as Wayne Gretzky.

Pettitte will last longer on the ballot than Posada, but neither will get in.

Millions of fans, the ownership of the stadium and team, and the city of Boston. I mean, the church may not have had enough members to justify staying open, but Fenway isn't lacking for visitors or money.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_career_achievements_by_Wayne_Gretzky This list is just mind-boggling.

Wayne Gretzky holds more records in his sport than most of the great players in other sports COMBINED. Most of his records will likely never be broken. I can entertain 'best of all time' arguments in football and baseball (I don't give the tiniest s*** about basketball), but not hockey. Wayne Gretzky is THE hockey player. If you had a baseball player as good as Gretzky was at hockey, he would have a lifetime batting average of about .700 and be the HR king, RBI leader, walks leader, and also have thrown five perfect games.

I'm not even sure what just happened here.

Gangrene would be an improvement over being a Jets fan.

Well, in pretty much any other baseball team with a large fanbase, (Yankees, Red Sox, Cardinals, et cetera), he'd be a forgettable player at most. He's good, but not overwhelmingly great, and in a big-media team he'd be way too milquetoast to stand out. On the Mets, though, he's basically Derek Jeter or David Ortiz. I can see how being the face of a franchise and the go-to guy for the team and its fans would have an appeal, as opposed to being the voice in the background in the Bronx or Chicago or wherever.

There is no such thing as a Jets fan, much like Mets fans also do not exist. There are simply Giants or Yankees fans who are pissed off at their team and need to step away for a little while and root for something else. The Jets have been pretty ugly the last couple of years though, even for them. I haven't seen Jets in New York this bad since 9/11.

How would eliminating the DH speed up games? If anything, adding the DH to the NL would speed up games. You would lose the need for eight thousand pitching changes and pinch-hitting assignments, that's like a half hour of an NL game right there.

If you have to pick a single show to enjoy and be knowledgeable about, you certainly can't do much better than Seinfeld.

I was in the pool!

I tried to make them tasteful and artistic, though I concede that the wind machine and lighting equipment may have been substandard.

I would take Shields as well, but the contract almost certainly would get crazy. It's virtually impossible these days to sign guys to sane contracts. Remember when Gil Meche got 55M/yr from Kansas City? Isn't Mike Hampton still getting paid by Colorado, and won't he be paid by Colorado until the sun expands into a red giant and the Earth's oceans boil away? I think we, and by we I mean all baseball fans, should resign ourselves to the fact that pitchers will cost money, a lot of money. Instead of passing up on guys or complaining about them based on money, we should accept it as part of the evolving business of baseball and focus on what the team should do with the rest of the money they have.

World Series winners is kind of a misleading category, though. When you expand it to "Postseason winning teams" including the winners of each LDS and LCS, it becomes much murkier in regards to "ace" pitching. I don't think you can only hold up WS wins as the qualifier for postseason success. In a league with 30 teams where each team plays 162 games, just making it into the postseason is pretty successful. And since there are not that many aces in baseball, when you step back and look at the league in it's entirety, it definitely seems less important to me. An ace obviously can't hold up a team with no bullpen or no power or no speed. You can have a Pedro or a Randy Johnson on the mound every day, but if he is backed up by eight Alex Coras, you're still going to end up losing 100 games. Balance is what is important, in sports, in life, in diet, and especially when having sex in a tree. (FYI, I recommend only doing this in trees with trampolines underneath them.) As long as a team's rotation consists of at least 3 or 4 guys who could qualify as #1-#3 starters, they should have a healthy chance at winning the World Series every year. Unless it's the Cubs, because hahaha the Cubs.

Exactly. Look at Uehara. Going into 2013, he was not expected to dominate the closer spot and significantly impact the Sox's postseason success. But he did. You don't need 5 Pedro Martinezes (Martinezi?) in a rotation to compete in October.

...also, I did respond to her PM but it doesn't show up in my Sent folder. Hmph. Oh well, it's fixed now. Welcome, new person.

I am around, actually. I come on every day, I just don't post much during the offseason. YesZir, however, is the only one who can authorize accounts. I am but a lowly Super Moderator, not an omnipotent Administrator.

One person voted for Darin Erstad. Really? I mean, just...really?

Brett Gardner as the starting #3 for the Yankees? Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair.

Not surprising. In fact, the only thing that surprises me is how long he was with the O's. I figured they wouldn't have been able to hold onto him once he was eligible to sign elsewhere. That was how many seasons ago now?

He doesn't fit anywhere, including standard airline seats.