Navafan29

You should watch. I had never watched a complete soccer game before the 2010 cup, and got sucked right into it. It has the low-scoring tension of the NHL but with the increased stakes of it only being once every 4 years, and it's a worldwide competition.

I tried to find a better vid but they were all just people recording their TV with a camera :l

Yeeeah the USA made it! I don't think a lot of people realize how hard it is to even get into Fifa. Didn't the USA have to compete with like 20 other teams and only 3 were allowed into the 2014 Cup? The 2010 world cup was one of the most exciting things I've ever watched. The low-scoring isn't boring at all because the stakes are so high! One mistake and your team gets scored on and goes home for 4 years. Looks like we're in the same pool as our arch-rivals Ghana. This is going to be TOUGH.

What are the Yanks now? Are they even the Yankees? You need some established presence on a team for it to count as your team. Cano, Grandy, Arod, Pettite, and Rivera are now gone after a year that was already run by fill-ins. I guess they have a few vets left, but this isn't the most fun era for fans.

Victorino Pedroia Ortiz Napoli Nava/Gomes/Carp Middlebrooks Bogarts/ (Drew???) Pierzinski/Ross Some outfielder

I'm not mad because he's gone. I'm mad because he decided to be a traitor by going to the Yankees. I'm not a big Yankees hater (more of a Rays hater), but you can't just do this. It's the lame of all lames. Ellsbury was my favorite player and the best player on the Sox. This is worse than the Damon trade because Ells won two WS titles with us before doing this. I guess temptation can defeat anybody. We should get a new center fielder. I have a feeling Bradley Jr will be a .230 hitter.

This is a tough question. It's probably easier to understand the rules of baseball than football. Football formations are probably harder to understand than baseball shifts. But what if you include the deepest level of the two sports? What about the strategy in forming a team, assessing value in players, etc.. If you want, you can rate different sports based on difficulty to understand.

If they add more than one challenge per game, I will flip out. Not a fan of challenges that you get back on overturns either. I don't even mind the game taking longer; that's not the problem. If the # of challenges exceeds the average number of blown calls that drastically change a game (somewhere between 0 and 2) then managers are just going to challenge every time they can; this will ruin all strategy involved in deciding if you want to use a challenge or not, and make the whole system boring. If you get rid of the drama surrounding blown calls, you have to replace it with something to keep the game as good. That something is the strategy behind using challenges. More than 1 or 2 challenges = no strategy = boring. We don't yet know if replay is going to make the game suck, so even if you want more challenges, just keep it to one per game for the first year. On the strike zone subject, they should call the high strike again. The whole point of the strike zone is that it's the area where a batter can realistically get a hit. With the umpires' current incorrect strike zone, there's an area above it where you can hit the ball, but it isn't in the zone. This incorrect strike zone takes the drama out of a fastball being painted at the top of the zone, because the batter could have hit it even if it was high. I like how it's hard to decide whether or not to swing at a high fastball with the actual zone. They should go back to the old zone by continuing the thing where umps are rated based on performance, but make calling the high strike part of this. Umps that successfully call the textbook zone will be allowed to ump important games such as the WS and the all star game. Also, going by the textbook definition will create much more consistency than "the top of the strike zone is roughly a baseball's length lower than the letters. It's kind of right here. You just have to kind of learn where it is." I'm also not in favor of the electronic strike zones mainly because they are quite inaccurate and don't take the batter's height into account. Even if you programmed the strike zone readers to take the height into account, you could never tell where the zone is because everyone has a different posture. According to the textbook, the posture used to figure out a batter's strike zone is the one they have as they prepare for the pitch, right before it is thrown (I think). To make electronic zones law, you would have to actually change the definition of the zone to make the top and bottom a certain percentage of a batter's height. Electronic zones would also just suck the life out of the sport; no more ump noises, just the sound of the ball hitting the glove, lame.

I'm afraid to look up what "naroclept" means, so I won't. Sox are the Oakland A's with more money.

I really like the fact that there is a sport as low scoring as association football (soccer). Only makes the goals that do happen more interesting. It's like a chess match. The fifa world cup is one of the most exciting things I've ever watched. I can't really get into games that I don't know the stakes of though.

Harold Reynalds is the best MLB Tonight guy when paired with Dan Plesac, although he got a little star-pitching happy with his predictions....

"This is a cardboard box. It's a Cardboard BOX." He actually stopped blowing out the candles for moment to mention the cardboard box for a second time. McCarver does say stuff that I don't like by stating the obvious sometimes, such as "The key to Game 5 for both teams is to go to Boston up 3-2" (idk the exact phrasing). But I guess 70% of the stuff McCarver says is good insight. But I do like Joe Buck, and McCarver does go with him. Buck is good at stating things quick with a bold voice in a way that lets the game show us how exciting it is by itself. Most announcers would need to raise their voice, but Buck has that way of making everything seem self-evidently important. (I do wish he would raise his voice just a little more in high intensity situations though)

Championship dvd comes out in like 20 days.

I just had a dream. Halloween was winding down and David Ortiz came to my house for some reason. He helped me hand out halloween candy to the last few kids to arrive. He's a pretty cool guy.

First overtime game of the year. Went to a shootout and we won. Thanks Iginla.

If we get Salty, Ross, Victorino, Gomes, Nava, all the pitchers except Morales, all the obvious players, and Middlebrooks back then I'll be happy. Also, give Ellsbury and Napoli at least a reasonable offer.

Consistency won the regular season. Clutch pitching and clutch hitting won the postseason.

No superstars on this team except for Ortiz and Pedroia. Only Sox to make the all-star team this year were an injured Buccholz, Ortiz, and a benched Pedroia. Koji did not make the team in that "vote for the final man" thing because right before the all-star game he had his like only bad save attempt of the year (although we would have won the game of Brandon Snider didn't make that error throw to second).

Also, people who don't think Salty should be back are delusional. He's our main catcher and caught like 130 games. It's just that Ross, the best backup catcher in MLB, stole his thunder in the end, lol.

What happened!! Every "where you were when this legendary thing happened" story is interesting.

I'm in heaven. Already typed a ton of stuff on MLB.com gameday comments so Idk if I can type another big long thing here, but basically, life is fantastic no matter how bad it is for Sox fans right now. Random: Ever wonder what "place" each team finished in at the end of a year? This is how every team ranks based on how far they got. Teams that made the playoffs are ranked by how far through the postseason they got before elimination, and teams that didn't are ranked by their regular season record. Teams that got eliminated in the same stage of the playoffs are separated in ranking by their regular season record. The A's are ahead of the Braves even though they have the same regular season record and got eliminated in the same round because the Athletics' ALDS went 5 games whereas the Braves were eliminated in 4. Teams that didn't make the playoffs and had the same record are separated by who had the better run differential. If you think you know all about the 2013 season, pick a team and guess where they ranked, then look at the list to see if you are right: 1. Red Sox 2. Cardinals 3. Tigers 4. Dodgers 5. Athletics 6. Braves 7 Pirates 8. Rays 9. Guardians 10. Reds 11. Rangers 12. Royals 13. Nationals 14. Orioles 15. Yankees 16. Diamondbacks 17. Angels 18. Giants 19. Padres 20. Blue Jays 21. Brewers 22. Rockies 23. Mets 24. Phillies 25. Mariners 26. Cubs 27. Twins 28. White Sox 29. Marlins 30. Astros

I want a re-vote after we win the WS (and with the title having "re-sign" instead of the confusing "resign"). Gotta get the championship team back together. You can't just play 100% moneyball by changing the entire team every year. There's value in having veterans around. Makes the team feel like our team.

But I guess there could be some secret condition we don't know about. Maybe Salty is secretly not 100% or somethin and Farrell doesn't want to release the info.

Oh yeah cause the 162 game regular season is a crappy sample size to show that Salty is better than Ross. Salty has been catching huge playoff games for Lackey and is a better bet against RHP but everyone panics with one throw that Middlebrooks had a pretty good chance at catching.