skyking162

In addition to reading an unhealthy number of baseball blogs, I’ve been sucked back into perusing a few discussion forums. One of the “benefits” of keeping up to date on what hundreds of people feel like sharing is that I see hundreds of ridiculous opinions on every topic available. (Unfortunately, it’s the few quality opinions that keep me reading.) As the debates over Cy Young and MVP awards tend to bring out the real loonies, I thought I’d share some paraphrased arguments I’ve stumbled across and couldn’t quite forget (although I’ve tried.)

• Randy Johnson was listed as an MVP candidate in one poll.
• Evidently the MVP goes to the best pure hitter. — “Travis Hafner is the best hitter?!?! Maybe the most well-rounded, but Ichiro and Michael Young are better pure hitters.”
• Heck, why not Duaner Sanchez? — “Guys who merit discussion and nobody else: Jose Reyes, Carlos Beltran, David Wright, Andruw Jones, Ryan Howard, Chase Utley, Miguel Cabrera, Alfonso Soriano, Albert Pujols, Chris Carpenter, Bronson Arroyo, Freddy Sanchez, Lance Berkman, Carlos Zambrano, Matt Holliday, Garret Atkins.”
• Is this an argument for Pujols or Howard? — “Take Pujols off the Cards, and Howard off the Phillies. Which team would be losing more?”
• This time it counts. — “Hoffman would get my Cy Young vote if he hadn’t blown the All-Star game.”
• Evidently you can only think of OBP? — “Pujols is the MVP. No one else is even close. Ryan Howard’s homerun total seems impressive, but Pujols is killing him in every other category I can think of.”
• Come again? — “Ryan Howard, because he plays first base.”
• How’s life under that rock? — “Pujols is probably everyone’s first choice and he’s not a bad choice, but I think the Phillies’ Ryan Howard deserves to be at least considered.”
• Once is still impressive, but I wouldn’t say it’s a lot. — “Pujols has won the MVP a lot of times, so either Howard or Beltran should get their turn.
• Yay, hyperbole. — “Lance Berkman, because without him the Astros would never score. Ever.”
• Uh… ok? — “Valuable has to do with the value that a certain player has on their team. It doesnt necessarily mean they are the best player on the team. Example: the Phillies believe that Chase Utley is their MVP. They think he’s the most valuable for their team, but he’s statistically not their best player; that would go to Howard.”
• A thread title: “Halladay will run away with the Cy Young.”
• Really? Did you accidentally pull the wrong lever? — “I voted for Vlad.”
• Another dark horse candidate. — “Manny and Big Papi have never been as valuable to that to the Red Sox as Varitek, as the past month has demonstrated.”
• He’s 12 games better than replacement level? — “The player who is getting absolutely no respect in all of this is Justin Morneau. Without him the Twins would likely be 10 games back of the wildcard.”
• Another circumstantial case for Morneau — “The Twins were floundering with no offense until he took off, and they took off with him.”
• The Dark Ages argument for Dye over Hafner — “SLG% and OBP might be considerations, but are not more important than HR, RBI, and AVG.”
• And let’s close with one comment that’s actually intelligent. In response to someone asking if more meaningful, but less popular stats like VORP should be considered in forum discussions — “Just because the voters are idiots doesn’t mean we have to be.”

Exactly.

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I’m currently in the library (not avoiding Joe Morgan, but because it’s 100 degrees outside and my apartment isn’t air conditioned). There are a number of hard-working college students around, as well as some older ladies intently reading trashy magazines between naps. As it’s a highlight of my week (in addition to illegally downloading Deadwood, thrashing my brother at tennis, and withstanding verbal assaults from ex-students), I’m reading through firejoemorgan.blogspot.com’s analysis of today’s JoeChat. The following lines would have made milk come out my nose if I was drinking milk. As it was, the industrious students and napping ladies now have a new library-nemesis.

Barry ((Providence,RI)): How does Abreu’s aquisition effect Sheffield’s chance of getting the option picked up?

KT: Excellent question. So good, in fact, that I would like to ask Joe to answer it by spontaneously writing a free-verse slam poem, entitled, “It Doesn’t Look Good.”

Joe Morgan: It doesn’t look good. Obviously, I don’t know what’s in their minds, but it doesn’t look good for Sheffield. Matsui’s already signed to a long deal and so is Damon. It doesn’t look good for Sheffield.

Addendum: Do you think Barry put his own parantheses around “Providence, RI”, not realizing ESPN’s brilliant chat software would do it for him?

Second addendum: I was once featured prominently on a friend’s slam-poetry album in college. On two tracks you can clearly hear me in the background making fanboy noises. And in my moment of glory, I had a solo belch. I can’t remember why the belch was needed, but it was clutch, believe me.

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Last night my family, my brother’s girlfriend, and I watched the Twins AAA farm team dismantle the Mets’ AAA team 6-2. Our Red Wings outhit, outpitched, and out-birthdayed the Tides. Boof Bonser pitched six shutout innings, lowering his season ERA to 0.65. The only redeeming aspect of the game for the Tides was their right fielder, Julio Ramirez, showing off his arm. Ramirez nailed a runner at third and later a runner at home, who I assumed would score but ended up being out by eight feet. Ramirez thought he’d pulled the assist trifecta in the eighth when he almost caught a runner trying to extend a single into a double on a ball that bounced around the right field corner. Count me as impressed.

I was not impressed, however, with the performances of two mid-inning fan contestants. Early in the game they pulled a father out of the stands to guess if the actual price of some car product was higher or lower than a suggested price. Now, everybody knows this game is played for the sole purpose of advertising that the sponsor has low prices, but this doofus decides to guess higher. When the crowd booed relentlessly and the announcer asked if the contestant wanted to change his mind, he stuck to his first choice. What a moron.

In the seventh inning another gentleman was escorted onto the field to pick which of three options was the actual paid attendance for the game. Now, everybody knows this game is played to make the crowd seem surprisingly large resulting in more fans wanting to return to future games. The guy picked the middle attendance choice. What a moron.

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From Will’s Under the Knife injury column at Baseball Prospectus:

Jake Peavy is putting Icy Hot in his jock before starts, reportedly because Roger Clemens told him that?s what he does. Anyone else have a feeling the Rocket is on the floor, laughing his ass off about now?

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While I often take pleasure from hearing about people’s lack of sanity, I really do wish them well. With that disclaimer aside, get a load of this.

I’ll just let the quotes speak for themselves:

“I’ve been thrown in jail five or six times,” Daulton says from his home in Tampa. “Nicole thinks I’m crazy. She blames everything on drugs and drinking. But I don’t take drugs and I’m not a drunk. Nicole just doesn’t understand metaphysics.”

So, Darren, do you think your view of the world is good? Or bad?

“There is no good or bad,” he says, explicating the Dutch Theory of Being. “We’re all the same, but we’re all different. The higher we ascend, the more the same we are.”

Have you always been this confused?

“I didn’t have my first out-of-body experience until I was 35,” he says. Curiously, the epiphany occurred at one of baseball’s holiest shrines — Wrigley Field. “I hit a line-drive just inside the third base line to help win a game,” he recalls. “The strange thing was I didn’t hit that ball. I never hit balls inside the third base line!”

Any words of widsom you’d like to share?

“Reality is created and guarded by numeric patterns that overlap and awaken human consciousness, like a giant matrix or hologram. They are created by sacred geometry — numbers, the language of the universe, codes of awakening — such as 11:11, which represent twin strands of DNA about to return to balance. Eleven equals BALANCE.

I’ll keep that mind.

Hat Tip…

… to Tommy. I love you for sharing this article with me.

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