Jump to content

MaybeACoordinator

Legacy Members
  • Posts

    7226
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by MaybeACoordinator

  1. The old watermelon in the cotton sack trick....One way slaves and sharecroppers used to get over on the man.
  2. I saw both Rose and Pujols at or near their primes. Rose was a nuisance. Pujols was the most feared batter in the league. He devoured souls. Literally, as with Brad Lidge. At their peaks Pujols was an order of magnitude better than Rose. As for career WAR I almost believe that formula was changed expressly to rank Rose much higher than he once was. I had a bound copy of the Baseball Encyclopedia from around 1996 and it had his career WAR in the 20s, down around Glenn Hubbard, that Atlanta 2b who looked like a hobbit. I remember Bill James, no Rose fan, commenting on how much it underrated Rose, and overrated Hubbard, who was ahead of Rose due to ungodly fielding stats stemming from huge assist totals he amassed via Atlanta's pitching staff of groundball experts. So no, Rose was much better than Hubbard and I am glad the formula was adjusted (if that was the case) to reflect that. But ultimately Rose ranks high in stats weighted toward compilation but his rates were...not great. His career OPS+ was tied for 411th all time. Career BA of .303 was 172nd. I still think he's bottom 25-33 percent of the top 100, if that. As a leadoff man, he was no Rickey Henderson by any stretch of the imagination, scoring 130 fewer runs in 2500 fewer plate appearances. Okay, well, Rickey was the greatest leadoff man of all-time -- it's not fair to hold Rose up to that standard. Is it not? And how many years was Rose the best player on his team? By my count, once, barely over Vada Pinson (having his career year in his early 20s), in 1965. And yes, some might say that's unfair because Rose played with so many greats, but again that makes my point -- he was a tier below Morgan, Frank Robinson, and arguably Bench with the Reds, Schmidt and Carlton with the Phils. I'll just pass over his stints in Montreal and the Reds homecoming during which he should not have been on the field at all. This is a complicated and nuanced case made moot to me by the gambling. He's irrevocably out because of that. But if he'd never gambled and I was a Hall of Fame voter, I'd have thought long and hard about putting him on the first ballot, hit king or not. It would depend on his competition in any given year. I'd vote for him some years and not others but all along believe he should make it in eventually. Okay, and now looking at the HOF class of '91, which would have been Rose's first year of eligibility, I probably would have voted for him over either Fergie Jenkins or Gaylord Perry. I would have ranked Carew ahead of him. And so Rose would have been a first ballot Hall of Famer and I would have assisted, but it is possible to be a first balloter and a little bit overrated -- see Jeter, Derek. He was a legit first ballot guy but also overpraised. One last thing -- in one of those articles I found, the writer stated that Rose's hits record was unassailable. First, you never know. All of us who grew up in the '70s and '80s once thought the same about Gehrig's streak. And there are some big records that almost certainly will never be broken, like Cy Young's 511 wins. The game has changed too much. But 4156 hits? Shit, give Ichiro five or six more years in his twenties at the MLB level and that record would easily have fallen, esp if Ichiro was granted seven years of mediocrity at the end of his career to chase it.
  3. no he can't no he didn't no he wasn't. While only one of those states the case explicitly, all wildly overrate Rose's value and this comes from a quick Google and draws from actual articles, some from shadier sites than others. The sentiment is far more common coming from the Mouthbreather Brigade in comments sections, and while it does seem to be dying down as the years go by. And yet you still have people saying Rose was comparable in greatness to Albert Pujols. Would you trade prime Rose for prime Pujols? Or even their careers?
  4. That wasn't my argument. I was saying he was very overrated, in that some mentally challenged fans equate racking up the most hits with being the greatest. ballplayer of all time. He was almost never the greatest ballplayer on his team at any given moment. There's this very good friend of mine with an ordinarily solid baseball mind who insists that Nolan Ryan was the greatest pitcher of all time because he had the most strikeouts. (I think it has more to do with my friend being an Astro Buddy back when Nolie was in his prime....It's created a blind spot in his logic.) It's pretty much the same as the Rose thing, but at least Ryan didn't hang around seven years too long chasing his record the way Rose did.
  5. So this friend of a great many friends of mine (and a social media buddy of mine) died a couple of weeks ago. He lived in Nashville and was universally beloved of all the cool kids in the music scene up there -- the old legends and the youngsters who bring real shit to the table, and not the "beer n'trucks on that old dirt road by the river where there are babes in cutoff britches" douchebags you hear on the radio, but people like Johnny Fucking Cash, who was on the record as admiring this dude's writing (he was a music critic and historian) and his musicianship -- he doubled as a singer-songwriter. When he died, he had maybe the coolest job in Nashville. He was so accomplished I kinda thought he was older than he was, because he had packed a hell of a lot in 52 years. And because that's my age too, and we kinda-sorta work in the same field, his career made me feel a bit inadequate. Something was a bit off in all the Internet chatter about his death. All anyone would openly say was that he had fallen down (apparently at his home) and suffered what proved to be a fatal head injury. DMs were sent to those who asked for elaboration -- I could tell because people would type "check your DMs" which has always seemed silly to me but I digress. Upshot was, there was more to the story, and that more was not for public consumption. If you read dozens of tributes, like I did, every now and then somebody would make mention of unspecified "demons," but those were very rare. \And I saw in his obit that his wife had recently left him. They had been together for 33 years. It seemed very odd to be splitting up then, especially given they had a kid at home still. I surmised that this fall had a proximate cause unrelated to any physical issue, and it freaked me out to the point where I called a sober buddy, who confirmed that this man had been to rehab three times in the last year and evidently the third time had not proven a charm...And so went the life of one of Music City's most beloved and respected public figures, his death cloaked in secrecy borne of shame, I guess. I understand the secrecy but I hate that the need for it exists. If ever there was a case of "If it could happen to XXX, it could happen to anybody," this would be it. Instead we are just left to whisper in the margins....there's no greater good to be had from this senseless death. It's such a gray area. By and large society accepts the addiction-as-disease model, but spouses leave drunken spouses with little or no guilt in a way they can't leave somebody hit with dementia or the big C because society still condones leaving an addict, and even sobering up can't change that. Once you've introduced addiction to the marriage, the stank remains within and without, even post-sobriety. And I guess because everybody loved this Nashville guy so much, nobody wants to tarnish his memory with the ugly truth of his final years, even though he apparently tried his best to fight back against his spiritual malady. I dunno. Like vodka-breath, I think the facts surrounding his death will be apparent to all those (like us) with eyes to see
  6. Airline Dr near 610 is another hotspot for impulse purchasing of methed- or cracked-out, likely exploited chicks.
  7. 1. Minus physical evidence (bruising, redness, etc.), the choking enhancement almost certainly gets thrown out. It's just he-said, she-said right now. As mentioned, the choking enhancement was added for a good reason, as it is a predictor of homicide. But this case likely gets dropped down to a garden-variety DV case. 2. For a site whose members purport to know all about the wily ways of the crazy bitch, and where the one-word proverb "undefeated" is rightly invoked frequently in situations like this, there has been a surprising amount of rushing to judgment here. It is unlikely but very much within the realm of possibility that Beard does in fact deserve exoneration. I can't find a link, but I remember a case ten or so years ago about a habitually volatile couple, wherein the chick was taunting the dude, "I could scratch myself and punch myself in the face a couple of times, and maybe even choke myself a little, and the cops will believe me and you will go to jail, just like last time. The only way you wouldn't is if your dumb ass was taping this, and your stupid ass would never do that because you are an idiot, mwahahaaaa." The argument continued and then the chick did just as she said she would do. Cops were summoned, either by her, or neighbors responding to an Oscar-worthy performance of screams of fake terror. But this time, in spite of the chick's taunts, the dude did in fact tape her throughout her whole Bond villain-like declaration of her diabolical plot. He played this recording on the scene for the cops and she was the one who went to jail, not him. Just this once, it was defeated. 3. That is one of the only scenarios by which Beard can salvage his career. Because he did not already play this card, I think it extremely unlikely any such completely exonerating evidence exists. 4. In that case, he gone. He is going to need to establish actual innocence here as opposed to a not guilty finding.
  8. This show is basically two seasons of pointing and laughing at a thinly disguised Elon and it's worth your time. I think it's a pretty good predictor of what mass space tourism would be like if Musk ever gets it off the ground on the cruise ship level.
  9. I bought a similar bag at Friedman's Army / Navy in Nashville in 1989. My girlfriend went out of town and well, there were these two strippers kinda crashing over at my place at the time, and so we had a threeway. No pics but it was a skinny blonde and fa rizz-headed ginger with a glorious rack....So, threeway, yadda yadda I get the crabs. Which I in turn passed on to my gf. Using all the bullshit my 19-year-old manchildwhore-brain could muster, I blamed the surplus sleeping bag. "Damn we might have some crabs from Nam," I said. "Can't they like, sleep for 20 years? Or more? We might be casualties of the Tet Offensive." Although she was a Vandy chick, and thus ostensibly very bright, she believed me. Or pretended to, anyway. Some context for you young uns. Crabs were lice you got in your pubes. I imagine they are a threatened species now chicks are shaving. Also, there was no Internet then so she couldn't check up on my story of the Methuselah crabs.
  10. As both Jett and I are Strake Jesuit grads, this coathanger abortion of a necrobump hits close to home.
  11. it's nowhere near as bad as Austin County. i will say that in its favor.
  12. Yeah me too. For medium-fancy dinners out, there was Bonanza, which is where I was introduced to salad bars. Fun fact: when I was a kid in Tennessee, Steak and Ale could not use that by state law, which banned the use of the name of any alcoholic beverage in a business name. So if you get to thinking it was our generation that invented pointless legislation, there was that. The restaurant chain went by Jolly Ox. K-Bob's is also the epicenter of fine dining in Bay City, where it stands kinda catty corner to that ugly ass Matagorda Cty courthouse.
  13. The first KFC in England is in my ex's hometown of Preston, Lancashire. There is an honest to God bronze plaque in there and it's one of the first things locals tell you about that poor city. I once read about Chicago blues / boogie legend Hound Dog Taylor and band on tour in the Far East and Australia. After weeks of subsisting on rice and whatever else they managed to choke down, they found a KFC in Sydney. According to their manager, the whole band was weeping tears of joy. I know the feeling -- after months in Israel as a kibbutz laborer, I got a few days leave in Tel Aviv. Where there was a Hard Rock Cafe. That had fajitas on the menu -- cheese and meat together. I cried.
  14. For whatever reason I did not grow up on JCI dogs, but when I worked downtown in Houston I'd hit up the Walker Street location on days when I was especially hungover. In those days (2000s) their specials were extra large Hebrew National dogs served either NY style (mustard, kraut); !Texas chili, or Chicago style. I'd mix in the Chi and NYC dogs with the standby chili dog and that, along with spunky service, a huge tea, and a vintage funk soundtrack would fix me right up. Then Hebrew National discontinued those megadogs, I quit going, and that JCI went under.
  15. Bennigan's is down to 12 US spots, including such Texas garden spots as Borger and Monahans, and Grapevine as the suburban, delivery-only outlier. And another in Matamoros which almost counts.... They do have a few globally, notably in Bahrain, the UAE and Cyprus. Expansion plans take in all the Central American countries except Panama and Costa Rica, so all the ones that are dangerous and/or poor.
  16. still for sale exclusively at Dollar General
  17. Probably on probation / parole and not supposed to be in such a low establishment. Not really kidding. i've heard of at least one similar hero having to bail before the cops got there for that very reason
  18. Some more Houston brands soon to go -- James Coney Island and Randall's. I once heard that fast food places sign very long leases -- like 20 years -- and so some zombie restaurants you see are just operating to avoid breaching those leases. Seems to be the case with all those ever-empty "JCI Grills." Nobody wants to go to James Coney Island for chicken tenders or a burger and hot dog restaurants just can't make it any more. Low end aficionados will just get them off gas station roller grills two for $3 and on the other hand nobody wants to pay $10 for a hot dog, wagyu frank and artisanal bun or not. Long leases must explain how even a few Randall's remain. Shit, HEB is wiping out Kroger now, and Kroger >>>> what's left of Randall's. (And of course HEB >>>>>>Kroger)
  19. Denny's. If anything goes away in the IHOP pocket of the national 24-hour breakfast restaurant industry it'll be Denny's. There was one kind of attached to this motel I was in fairly long-term a few years ago and Denny's national couldn't even make their food look edible in the food porn shots on their website. I figured if they couldn't pull that off what are the odds it will be any better IRL in any given kitchen?
  20. There is a HoJo motel (no diner) on I-10 in the Memorial Park /Heights area of Houston. Speaking of Beaumont, there are not one but two Stuckey's there: they are pretty much across I-10 from each other. Oh, and And of course
×
×
  • Create New...