a700hitter

Yes, that's true. These guys were long standing stars who were so closely identified with their teams. It was very strange for the Yankees to play the Sox without Mantle or the Tigers without Kaline. The Red Sox without Yaz was very weird. When you saw those guys play you knew you were seeing all time greats even though they were still playing. I'd pick games on the schedule (at Yankee Stadium and shea Stadium) just to see certain guys like Mays, Aaron Clemente, McCovey,Bench, Mantle, Kaline, Killebrew, Oliva, Dick Allen, Reggie, Brooks and Frnk Robinson and on and on. The tickets were affordable and you could buy them on game day and get good seats. Those guys played damn near everyday. They didn't sit out with some soreness. When you bought a ticket to see one of those guys, they were in the lineup. Other than the NBC game of the week, you didn't get to see a lot of the visiting stars on TV, so if you went to a game to see them it would be very disappointing if they did not play. I don't like that today's stars don't feel enough obligation to the ticket buying fans and they sit out for minor aches and pains. That will never sit well with me. Sixty percent of David Ortiz is a bigger offensive threat than 100% of Daniel Nava. People come to the stadium to see David Ortiz. Daniel Nava couldn't fill a phone boot with fans. People who never went to a lot of games do not take the resting of players that seriously, because it doesn't take any money or effort to watch a game on TV. When you go to a game you are investing time, making a commitment. You are there to see the best players on either team. It's disappointing when they don't play.

I said that no one "will" come within a thousand games of his mark, meaning in the future. Williams did not come within a thousand games of the mark due to his war service. Had he not missed the time due to war service, he would have fallen short by 4-500 games.

The penalty is too light. Melky Cabrera was a 4th OFer type that would top out making $1 to 3 million. He takes PEDs starts leading the league in hitting, wins MVP of the All Star game etc. And he drives up his market value five-fold. If he gets a 50 games and has to forfeit 30% of a $10 million salary, he's still way ahead of the $2 million that he would have made without the PEDs. It's absolutely worth it for players to cheat. Unfortunately for Melky, he got caught before his FA eligibility, so he may never get a $10 million/year contract, but he did make $6 million this season and he'll still have $4 million after the suspension. That's better than he would have made as a 4th OFer.

I made a mental note to add this thread today, but I got busy and you beat me to it. Happy Birthday,Yaz!!! If any of Boston's fine sportswriters or media members are lurking here, or if members of the Front Office stop by to read our kind words, it's about time that a statue honoring Yaz is placed at Fenway Park. It was on his shoulders that excitement returned to Boston baseball. It was the generations of fans that watched him play for 23 years that gave birth to the modern day Red Sox Nation. He played over 3300 games in a Red Sox uniform. No one will come within a thousand games of that record. He is Mr. Red Sox. He should be honored with a statue.

This will hurt the A's.

He has not been a big prime time producer in meaningful games throughout his career. Between Boston and San Diego, he hasn't played in many meaningful games, but he seems to compile his numbers best when there is nothing on the line. He has been far from the offensive powerhouse that I had expected him to be. I thought that he would be a lefty version of Manny. He is not close to being in Manny's league.

They are in a free fall. I only hope that they can manage to beat the Yankees in some of their remaining games and help knock them from the top of the division.

If he is a puppet, we will really be seeing how LL does. Bumbling Benny is just his stooge. He's not going to wrest power away from LL.

He's not part of the solution as a puppet. Powerlessness is not an excuse. It explains what has not happened, but doesn't excuse it. He needs to go.

All these guys in number 6 is a little nightmarish for me. It's like an invasion of Buckners.

Youkilis with a grand salami against Nova. Yanks down by 4 runs.

They are in a death spiral.

The pitching always has us in a hole. No one is being unfair to them. They never do their job. Period.

Another pummeling of our starting pitching. What else is new.

I hope they stay there.

I tried to temper some of your enthusiasm at the start of the season so that the thud back to earth would not be too painful. I'll caution you again. Don't expect too much this off season if Bumbling Benny is at the helm. You are right to be concerned about his statements. The one good thing about the off season is that no matter how unrealistic we are about the team's chances in 2013, they will be undefeated until April..

Also, over the last two years Texas has had Cliff Lee and CJ Wilson walk away.

I don't want anything to do with that 33%.

Tonight is a rare no lose situation as far as I am concerned. If the Sox win, great! We get to see our guys play some winning ball. If we lose, we will help the Angels pull out of their tailspin, right their ship and be a big threat to the Yankees in the Playoffs.

So, he needs an operation to restore his weak-ass arm?

Today people drug the kids to shut them up. Anyone who has had dogs knows that if you don't run certain breeds, they will chew up everything in your house. If kids sit in school and then the house, they will act out, but thousands of medical professionals will prescribe mind altering drugs to modify their behavior on the theory that they have chemical imbalances or diagnosable conditions. In my generation in Brooklyn, our parents sent us out to play and we didn't come home except for meals. All that energy was expended outside the home to the point of exhaustion. There were plenty of games, arguments and fights, but no one shot up their school and slaughtered their neighbors. I realize that it is not as simple as that, but a friend pointed out to me that in almost all of these shooting rampages by young adults there was a history of prolonged treatment with a cocktail of mind altering meds. There is certainly a use for those medications, but IMO it has been terribly over-prescribed as a sort of panacea.

Good points about the texting and driving. In some ways it is more menacing than drunk driving. Drunk driving can occur at anytime, but it predominantly happens in the evening hours and very early morning hours. You can reduce your risk of encountering a drunk driver by not venturing on the road at those hours. There is no such pattern for these idiots texting. There is nothing anyone can do to limit their risk of encountering one of these *******s. The accident we had with the texter was at One O'clock in the afternoon. Then of course there are the drunk texters, who should be put to death. Occasionally, the system works. A good family friend lost a brother to a drunk driver. Her brother was in his late 20's or early 30's and left 4 little kids and a wife, a mother, father and a sister. That guy went to jail. I am not sure about the length of his sentence. That was more than 25 years ago, and although there is more public scrutiny of the drunk driving today than back then, it doesn't seem like many of these killers go to jail today.

Yep. Even if Bard had become a decent starter, the move blew a hole open in the late inning pen that needed to be plugged. It made no sense that he took a guy who was a high performer in qa certain role and moved him to another role where he had no track record of success to fill that hole while creating a need in the pen. We needed a starter. He should have obtained a starter. If Bard had been terrible in the bullpen as DLowe had been in his last season as closer, I could see him getting moved to the rotation as a last ditch effort to save his career. He was building a good career in the bull pen, but the FO made a last ditch effort to ruin his career, and they succeeded.

It's an overriding theme. The guys is a major jackass, and we know that they never punish anyone until they take a life. They guy that nearly killed my wife was on a cocktail of Prozac, Xanax and Vicodin and he topped that off by getting blind drunk. I know this because I heard him being interviewed by the doctor in the emergency room. He was on the other side of the curtain from my wife, who was strapped to a board. If he hadn't been guarded by an armed State Trooper, I would have exacted my own measure of justice. He couldn't understand why he was under arrest, because he felt that he had done nothing wrong. He had prior convictions for leaving the scene of an accident and another DIWI. The DA called us about the case, but my wife was never asked to testify, and I am pretty sure that he got off with no jail time. BTW, he didn't have a scratch on him. They never do. Not enough attention gets paid to the texting while driving problem. That is every bit as bad as the drunk driving. We got hit by one of those jackasses too-- a young girl returning to college who totaled 2 vehicles other than her own and sent 4 people to the hospital strapped to boards including me and my wife. Penalties need to be harsher, and fame should not be a ticket out of the penalty. Can I go back to bashing the Red Sox FO now?

Let's not fall into the trap of blaming Yankee money. The Red Sox are not poverty stricken. They have more money than almost every other franchise not named the Yankees. Unfortunately, our ownership and management has squandered hundreds of millions of dollars. The Pineda problem was a trade not a big money acquisition.