Bad links, BG. 'NYC' and 'sometime' didn't give me much. Maybe it's just my computer?

NATIONAL league? What is that? I thought they just gave the shiny rings to the American League champs every year!

Yeah, I knew about the National League. There's a Midwest League and I think maybe an International League. Of course, they're all (including the NL) minor leagues.

I think that when Tony Gwynn gets elected into the hall this year that Batgirl should go to Cooperstown and read the prayer to Gwynn.

Tony Gwynn and Cal Ripken will make it in this year. Big Mac will not get in for a few years if it all depending on how the whole steroids era ends up getting judged.

p.e.m.

National League? no I have nothing

How many votes McGwire gets will be really interesting. Whatever happens with him establishes a precendent for other tainted players (bonds, sosa, palmero et al). If he goes in how can you keep them out? If he doesn't get to stay on the ballot then how do any of the others go in? In the middle? It all gets interesting for a very long time.

I think the electors will be looking at each other a lot. No one wants him to go in this year, can you imagine him lining up with Cal and Gwynn? It's enough to make you spit just thinking about it. So if people thought he might get in they might not vote for him to avoid that. Now the perception is that he won't he might get more votes, enough to make it clear he'll go in in the future. We'll see.

The voting on Bonds when the time comes will be interesting because he was a no doubt first ballot guy before the drugs, is doing what he did enough to block out the good stuff?

Cal might be unanimous, I can't see how anyone is going to say, 'no I'm not going to vote for him'. Tony will be over 90 percent.

outside the big three there's some good players on the ballot this year.

D

I see Scott Brosius is on the ballot. Look for a New York campaign for him, after all, say what you like about A-Rod, but we all know he's not as good as Scott Brosius.

D

Congrats on your picks, BG!

There's a National League? That sounds fascinating--I'll have to look into it...

I love this quote: "No one picked the Tigers to win the wild card, including guest picker Sam Walker, who wrote, "I am deeply disgusted at myself for missing the boat on my hometown team, the Detroit Tigers. I will never again doubt Dave Dombrowski and Jim Leyland. I will never again say, 'Kenny Rogers and a bunch of teenagers does not a pitching staff make.' ""

Heh.

Oh, and Cal had *better* be unanimous. (*sharpens pitchfork*)

I've heard rumors of the National League and their strange traditions. All of the hitters have to pitch, I'm told. And the outfielders play on horseback. I'm not sure if I believe.

I was watching some talking heads on ESPN last night (or rather they were on one of the shows, Rome maybe, and the TV was on... cant say I was really watching) and I couldn't believe the hypocracy.

Both guys said there's no way Mac goes in to the Hall, ever, because (a) he cheated (tho they acknowledged what he did wasnt against baseball's rules at the time he would have taken 'roids) AND (b) he didn't fess up about it (one of them said he might vote differently had Mac owned up).

In practically the next breath, they BOTH agreed that Bonds WOULD get their votes because, supposedly, he was already well on his way to having a HoF type career before he "bulked up", where Mac was just a little bit of an above average player.

Talk about your double standards.

I can appreciate both sides of the argument on these guys. But either you look at every player's body of work and judge all of them based purely on their numbers OR you apply the same "character" standards to every guy that you know or suspect was juiced.

JC

How is it that you picked the Cardinals... BEFORE the start of the season?

Dear Ms. Goddess,

Truly, I have no idea.

Sincerely,
Batgirl

I know - I know why- BG picked the Cardinals -
ALBERT =)

Cal and Tony Yup for sure!

Much Love
Wonder Woman

I just read the Capel Page 2 link and it's interesting to see a "professional" with the same take that I have had from the beginning on the Red Sox 50 million dollar bid just for negotiating rights to a pitcher who's never thrown a pitch in the majors. I don't see any way the Red Sox sign the guy and say good bye to all that cash. But they knew if they didn't bid, the Yankees WOULD get the guy.

By bidding an unreal amount, they keep the Yankees from getting the Japanese star for at least one more year and it doesn't cost them a thing, since they get their bid money back if they don't sign the guy for this year.

Makes good business sense to me.

JC

Cal was my hero as a young ballplayer. I don't doubt it'll be first ballot for him. Gwynn will go on ballot one, as well.

I don't know, I just don't think that McGwire should be in. I agree with the idea that if he'd just come clean in front of Congress, it would probably all be alright. However, he didn't come clean, he still won't, and that's despicable (especially if he doesn't think what he did was wrong). Now if someone's not going to vote for Big Mac but will vote for Bonds, I'm totally lost on that one. I mean, hell, if they put his face on the plaque, they'll need to reinforce the wall it's hanging on. They'll also need to tap into some serious bronze reserves. The guy just flaunts the fact that he's juicing, but lies about it. Flaxseed oil, my heiney.

Maybe the non-Big Mac votes will go toward Bert or Jack. I mean, the F-bomb has to help Bert get in, doesn't it?

Congrats, BG on your 2nd place finish! Well done. BG, I waited oh so patiently for the BatStore to resurface, but wonder....what happened to all the shirts with player names, i.e. nathan saves, mauer to the people, etc.? I was looking forward to padding your wallet with a purchase. Good thing my second choice, the offseason sucks, is still available. Cuz, it really does...suck. Ugh. Is it March yet?

Stacie

JC, I had read the Page 2 article already so it was no surprise that I agreed there..

the one that got me was hearing basically my own words repeated back to me from the NEW YORK TIMES!! *swoon*

for someone in my career and lifestyle, why, that's nearly unheard of!

Who is this Anne Ursu fellow they speak of?

Dear Mr. Paul,

No idea. Sounds unpleasant though.

Sincerely,
Batgirl

BG, you may have finished behind Will, but at least there isn't video footage of you acting the fool on the internet- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7pEadGEpkE

Perhaps this can be used in getting an admission as to your superior baseball knowledge.

Babs, I can understand how you feel but I tend to try to avoid even reading the Times for fear that I might discover I agree with them about anything and thus cast an even greater shadow of self doubt on my life and value system than I deal with already.

JC

BG - the NYC piece was not nearly as whiny as most. The writer did say he would've voted for the good doctor if he had a ballot.

On the other hand, I can't believe you let that smug little wimp Leitch beat you!! Must be that Gawker Inc. coast bias.

I admint I'm a bit surprised that our fearless (and peerless) leader is being given a free pass for having picked the Cardinals to win the WS, rather than our own Twins.

I'm SURE she, at the very least, picked the Twins to fall (barely) to the Cardinals in the Series, right?

Cal will not be unanimous, believe it or not there are some baseball writers that don't vote for guys just because they don't like them,I know unbelievable. I think Mike Schmidt has the record for most votes, and even he wasn't 100%

FWIW I picked 5 of the 8 playoff teams at the beginning of the season, including the Twins winning the central and the Tigers winning the wc.

p.e.m.

I've heard of this National league. I think the Twins have an affiliate in Florida... 'cause isn't that where Castillo came from? It might have two extra teams, though, so I guess we are to assume that there's an extra Yankees and Red Sox affiliate out there.

I don't think I want to admit how bad my preseason predictions were...

They do have an affiliate in the NL, it's in Cincy and it's where we send all of our cast-offs for promising minor league prospects. I know where Shannon Stewart will be playing left field next year....

Who doesn't like Cal? Who doesn't like Gwynn? by all accounts the two most decent human beings ever to play 20 years for one team.

Also check out Cal's career record, particularly his homerun totals. That is a player not on steroids, it should be used as a control against whom all these 20 homerun guys who become 40 homerun hitters in their 30s, and I wonder how they did it. (full disclosure requires me to mention Tony's late career power surge, all the way up to 17HR).

It should be mentioned that steroids have always been against the rules, they just weren't tested for. And using steroids without a doctors perscription is against the law. This argument will be trotted out by the Mcgwire defenders and it's bogus. If it wasn't against the rules why didn't he say, yeah I'm on drugs and they're great?

And Babs on the New York Times thing, don't worry we all have these strange moments, as long as it doesn't become a regular thing.

D

JC,

There are only two things wrong with the scenario you discuss with respect to the Red Sox and the Japanese pitching market.

First, it is generally recognized that if the deal falls through and Matsuzaka returns to the Seibu Lions, it will be recognized as a failure reflecting on Scott Boras and the Boston Red Sox -- partly because neither the pitcher nor the Lions want him to return next year. Boras, in turn, will not be selected to represent any future Japanese pitcher (he wont let that happen) and the Red Sox will be viewed as deadbeats in the (upcoming lucrative) Japanese market.

As much as I might like to see some of these things happen, I just cannot see Boras or the Sox cutting off a nose to spite a face -- or ruining future business allegiances simply to keep the Yankees from spending $20M/year on a pitcher who may or may not have a succesful Major League Baseball career.

Does anyone think that this guy (or, frankly, the guy the Yankees won in bidding recently) is worth the money? Factoring in the buyout, these clubs are spending $15M+/year for unproven pitchers with major mileage on their arms...

Also, it is weird to me to see the contracts provided to guys like Soriano, Juan Pierre, etc.... I mean, the Yankees spend less per year on A-Rod than the Cubs will spend on Soriano... makes the Manny deal look like the sweetest deal ever. I mean, we live in a world where Manny makes 3 mil per year more than Soriano... if I were a GM I would take him, give him the 2 year/$40M extension and keep him for the next 5 years. And if I were an AL team, split him at DH. Worth every penny, especially compared to other contracts being given out there.

YankeeFan

McGuire is an interesting case. Everyone slams his testimony in Congress as a self-admission to steriod use.

Yet when I watched, I simply saw a man who refused to rat out his buddies. And I respected that immensely.

Apparently the media saw something else...

JohnWayne,

You can confess to something yourself without "ratting out your buddies". McGwire could have come clean, he didn't, and now he has to live with the consequences. He didn't have to say he was sorry, if anything, he would only be sorry that he was caught.

The same people that said McGwire saved baseball are now the same guys that are saying he shouldn't get in and its wrong. Everyone knew he was using andro, which wasn't banned by baseball but is banned by almost every league, so it turns out it was more then andro and now it that bothers them ?!

They can't disqualify his numbers because you then need to disqualify his teammate's numbers and any than any team numbers, which would be just too hard to do.

His numbers are good enough for the hall. He didn't get caught breaking any rules and was most certainly not caught breaking any that ban him from baseball. I think he should go in first ballot.

These baseball writers that are pretending to be offend make me sick. In fact all baseball writers except for BG make me sick anymore. F them all

p.e.m.

Methinks perhaps BG should make a "the offseason makes me cranky" t-shirt. They might make great stocking stuffers :)

Jestfully yours,
YF