In lieu of an opening day game thread (dang rain!) I think we should discuss this.
Do yous guys agree? Do you prefer the current crop of guys or the old motley crew of "idiots"? Personally, I thought the old guys were fun to watch, but their antics grew old (ahem. Manny.) by the time they left. And I don't think there is anything boring about Destroia, Youk, Papi or Papelbon.
Also, here is a really nice profile of J Bay. I really like him.
13 comments:
Nah, let's talk about 24. I haven't been watching, just tuned in tonight for the first time in 6 weeks or so. Did they just say that Jack has a prion disease? Is the WMD some form of weaponized Mad Cow Disease? How the hell is Jack showing symptoms of a disease with a 5-10 year incubation period? That has no cure??? Driving across DC in 5 minutes is one thing, but this is just preposterous.
And Laura...I kinda preferred the old guys, but it was mostly Pedro. Plus, I think it was more fun to watch Papi back then, when he was exceeding everyone's wildest expectations, than it is now, when he sometimes doesn't meet them. I love watching the kids develop these days, but a lot of the free agent additions haven't really appealed to me.
Yup yup, Jack acquired the weaponized version of a "variant of Cruzfeld-Jacob disease" by breathing air emitted from a breached canister for about a minute. It seems to have an incubation period of an hour or so, given the way his hand was shaking a minute ago while he was on the phone with Madam President.
But Caleb, really. 24 -- preposterous?? Come now. Be fair. It's not a reality show, after all.
Creutzfeldt-Jakob's Disease. Terrible, terrible thing. I did a 30 minute presentation on it on Friday, so when I heard Bauer had contracted a weaponized version, I had to watch.
Blogger recognizes the word "weaponized" as spelled wrong. It's not, though.
As for baseball, I think Pedroia and Youk are more fun than somebody like Manny, who might have funny hair but couldn't be trusted to play for his team, or Johnny Damon, ditto.
That's a great article about Jason Bay. I like the baggage claim story.
Apparently Blogger didn't recognize my misspelling of Creutzfeldt-Jakob's Disease, either. It is a terrible thing. But I'll bet Jack Bauer beats the weaponized version before Day 8 is done.
Well, DougWatts has this to say:
"Corporate and boring. Baseball is entertainment, not sports. If it was a sport it would be in the Olympics and there would actually be a "world series." As Shaughnessy alludes, Fenwaybaseball is just a revenue generating tool to sell food, parking, tickets, clothes. Give me Pedro and Manny and Damon any day of the week instead of a bunch of copier repair guys. When sports = business it is mindnumbingly boring."
"The Idiots and Manny and Pedro won the only two World Series since 1918.
We're still waiting to see how the boring, safe, quoteless, humorless, personality-free Boston businessmen do."
What a turd. Apparently you have to be a rude, sloppy, unfocused jackass in order to have "personality."
Anyway, the old Red Sox weren't actually that bad in my memory. There were occasional controversies and incidents involving a few members of the team, but for the most part it was all in good fun. Really it was just Pedro and Manny that caused any real problems. I have always disliked the "Idiots" nickname. The Red Sox have been successful, '03 and '04 included, by adopting the most intelligent philosophy in baseball. Really, there wasn't anything idiotic about them. And Papelbon and Pedroia still manage to stir up a lot of fun, but they do it without being total jerks like Pedro and Manny were at times. I think that Dan Shaughnessy is just being a media-man and looking for new angles to write about.
And here's another funny comment on the article from fra3pro9:
"CURIOUS THAT OPENING DAY COMES SO CLOSE TO APRIL FOOLS DAY. WILL IT BE A DAY OF HOPE, OR A DAY OF PRANKS?"
Ummm????
And I distrust Shaughnessy's statistics here:
"Red Sox television ratings were down 20 percent last year. The pregame show ratings fell by a full one-third."
Maybe that's true, but I want to know how the 08 ratings compare to the ones in 06, 05, 04, etc.. I would also suspect that a big part of a drop in ratings in 08 would be the lack of competition from the Yankees.
Oh, and on a side note, I cannot possibly begin to comprehend how wanting to win baseball games is "selfless."
That's a really great story about Bay, very nicely written. He seems like an incredibly honest guy. I'm very glad that he didn't give up in the minors and that he's in Boston now on our side. I really had no idea that things can be that difficult for a minor league baseball player. Man, it must have been one hell of a thrill when he signed that 18 million dollar contract.
The overarching reason that ratings and general excitement about the Red Sox have abated some is NOT that they are no longer idiots and have lost the Damons and Ramirezes and Martinezes. It is that there is no longer a sense of urgency about their prospects of winning. They are going to win and be competitive. Ho hum. In '03 and '04 there was still that feeling that this may never come again. Now, it comes every year. IOW, it (the Red Sox) have gone from being special to being routine.
Dad, I agree, definitely. But I also think that the long term ratings/ticket revenues are and will continue to be much higher as long as the Red Sox continue to be so competitive, which they will as long as Theo is in charge.
Yup.
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