Youk Of The Nation

This is the big thing for me. A lot of guys make their displeasure with backup or non-starring roles very plain. Bard comes to mind when I think of that. But Carp seems happy to just be playing for a contender, and I can't deny that he appears to have thrown himself wholeheartedly into the off-the-field persona of the Sox clubhouse. The fact that he can hit with some pop off the bench whenever they need him to clinches it for me.

I have no fantasy baseball skills, but maybe I could bet some money on the winner? I'm terrible at winning these kinds of things, but I'm excellent at choosing winners and profiting from their expertise and success without putting forth any effort of my own. I'm kind of like an agent, actually.

In less than four hours, the 2014 Major League Baseball season will officially begin with a two-game series between the Dodgers and Diamondbacks in Sydney, Australia, the land of "Everything Will Kill You If You Don't Pay Attention". This thread will be for all discussion pertaining to specific MLB games that don't involve the Red Sox or Yankees. I am so excited for this first game. I know it's not the Sox and I know I'll still have to wait another week for the rest of baseball to start, but knowing this is an official game makes this awesome. Go baseball!

Moved, because it's always wonderful to have this forum reopened.

You'll get a lot of facetious responses here on Talksox. However, I truly have been known to bludgeon random people without warning. This site used to be a lot busier. Anyways, welcome! I love the avatar, by the way.

Yes, but with us, a few seconds after the picture is taken the baseball bats are being used to bludgeon. Those smiles are "I'm gonna cave your skull in like an egg" smiles.

What is the point of banning home plate collisions unless the catcher is blocking the plate with the ball? Isn't that when they happen anyways?

Exactly, if I banned people for having stupid arguments, this site would be a ghost town.

Yes. Besides bumping an old thread after I explicitly closed the stupid discussion on another thread, I just couldn't stand to read "Y not" and "U r" one more friggin' time.

Zac, I locked that other thread for a reason. When you PMed me to ask if you could 'post your proof' and I ignored you, you should have taken that as a no. Shut the hell up.

Always strive for specificity, it is the soul of debate.

"A few"?!

Well, this thread hasn't been about Jeter retiring for a couple pages now.

The saddest thing about this argument is that it actually isn't the dumbest one TalkSox has ever seen. There are plenty of people on both sides of the 2000/2001 debate. As far as baseball goes, the Yankees have won two championships in the 21st century. Not according to me, not according to anyone on the other side of the debate, but according to MLB historians and writers. You may not agree with it, but as far as baseball is concerned, that is what is so. Debating whether or not 2000 is part of the 2000's doesn't really matter. All that matters is what baseball says. I'm not saying you are wrong, a700, because there is no Official Bureau of Century Marking. I'm just pointing out what baseball is saying. There is no consensus on 2000/2001. Argue away on that, just not as a semantic point in a baseball thread.

I've always simply thought of 2000 as part of this century since it starts with "2". Nineteen-hundreds ended with nineteen-hundred-ninety-nine. Doesn't that make more sense than creating bizarre mathematical formulas for the express purpose of proving that 2000 is part of the 1900s?

There are two problems with skating. One, not nearly enough skin, and two, sometimes it's hard to tell the men from the women.

I don't really follow them either. I prefer the regular Olympics, specifically the women's fencing competitions and the Chinese and Japanese women's volleyball teams. I'm not watching these things to see women in parkas and ski suits, goddammit.

So what I'm getting here is that a700 thinks Dempster is...dumb? I'm not sure, a700, you haven't really established a clear position on this issue. As for me, I have no idea what factor, or confluence of factors (man, I love that word), led to his decision, so I will assume that since he made it, it was what he considers best for him at the moment. Most of us would find it hard to concentrate on work after doing poorly for the entire previous year, going through a divorce, and taking care of an ill child. Dempster is one of the rare few in that situation who is financially able to take time off of work without necessarily impacting his situation negatively. His job also, unlike ours, involves being in the public eye, under constant criticism or adulation. If he chose to take himself off of the team to deal with any of his issues rather than continue to pitch and possibly impact both the Red Sox and his own (and his family's) physical and mental health, I can't fault him for that. I'd rather he chose to sit out now than choose to do it halfway through the season after pitching terribly due to stress and distraction.

There is plenty of Drew discussion going on, I'm going to fold this into one of the offseason discussion threads.

Well, what about Roman Rodriguez? Let's hate on him. What a douche that guy is.

I'm going to focus all of my hatred on Brett Gardner. With all of the attention on A-Rod and Sabathia and everyone else, that little son of a bitch has had it too easy the last few years.

I don't think I could ever call my sexual exploits 'classy' with a straight face.

Like I said, I don't have a problem with it. And no, I am not jealous (I've been laid enough in my life to not let other people's success in that regard make me envious), I'm young, and I'm an atheist.

Not that I care either way about Jeter's sex life, but if you really must know....no, that isn't "classy", by the common definition of the word. Classy has, in our society, come to mean respectful, elegant, or well-mannered, and is applied almost exclusively to wealthy people who are not rude and obnoxious and are not known for being sexually agressive or vulgar. No one I know fits society's definition of classy, and neither does that behavior. Jeter is not a bad person by any means, but classy people don't give goodie bags to one-night stands. Classy people, by definition, don't have one-night stands that we know about, because they don't talk about them for fear of embarrassing the other person, and they certainly don't blow them off in a way that heavily implies that they never want to see them again. Again, I have no problem with the behavior, but the definition of it is "crass", or at the very least, "dismissive and unlikable". However, I know this argument of language interpretation and the nuances of society will fall on the deaf ears of someone who posts on a message board using chatspeak.

Time for him to spend his golden years at a home on the limited range.