brettac1

Kenny Lofton was a really good player for quite a while, but I could probably rattle off at least 20 guys that belong in before him. Tim Raines is most definitely one of them. A guy can definitely be a very good player and not be in the Hall. Lofton is one of those.

I grow a pretty pathetic beard and work outside of the confines of my house, so I don't think I can join this fight. I have a goatee thing, so I could just not trim that at all until they are eliminated, maybe.

I wouldn't want that GM job, McClain is so meddlesome. He's the idiot who strapped these two with Biggio and to a lesser extent Ausmus (like end pointed out, pretty much). That's why Hunsicker bailed on that job, he's a good GM and he knew what was going to happen. I thought Purpura was for the most part a pretty smart guy before he got the job, and I don't think he got a heck of a lot of time to prove his ability.

The girls that were there that I saw were way more messed up than the guys. I saw a lot of them almost fall down. Like I was on the far left edge of the first deck and I don't know how many of them almost bowled right into me. I saw a lot of crazy stuff go down where I was, since that's where the medical area was. And a lot of public urination into the tigerlilys planted around the deck. The good thing was, once QOTSA came on, people pretty much just dug the music for the most part. It was on the edge of out of control when I was down near the front of the lawn during The Coup. And then that railing collapsed, that was kind of crazy. I thought The Coup was awful, and I was slightly familiar with them before.

I've been an A's fan since I was probably about 10 years old (along with the Brewers). So it'd be them. Lately I have probably been watching them more often than the Brewers, even though they've been out of it for a while. They had a similar run of horrible luck with injuries to what the Brewers had last season.

The effect it has had is that the bullpen has had to absorb more innings. That's a very real thing, it has nothing to do with the soft-tossers, as far as I can tell. That was pretty much the major concern I had when he got hurt, was that it would have a very bad cascading effect down the staff. There isn't that guy who is going to pretty much give 7 innings, or at the least 6, every start.

Yeah, and I misspoke, it wasn't during "Freedom", it was during "Wake Up". EDIT - Mudslide action:

Did anyone else notice the part where he appeared to pull out the cord on his guitar and use it to play? I am not sure how that works, but whatever. Yeah, it's the cord from his pickup. That's ridiculous. To see him play live was unreal. It's one thing to make those noises in a studio with production tricks and stuff, but to do it live shows how amazing he is. There is absolutely without question no one who plays like he does. He also had a string break during "Freedom", but then he was able to switch guitars, because I'm pretty sure it was during Zach's speech. It was totally worth it for me once they played "Take the Power Back". We heard them soundcheck it when we were waiting to get in, but they didn't play it at Coachella or any of the Rock the Bells dates, so I totally didn't expect to hear it.

I work 40 hours a week for a living, too, and I took vacation, because I planned. I bought my tickets at 10:30 AM the day they went on sale. My drive was four hours. You should have known it was going to take that long when you are going the last minute (and you really shouldn't whine since it only cost you $25). It's not Milwaukee with all kinds of entrances to the place. One way in, one way out. If you're going to go later, you're going to wait. That's how Alpine always has been and always will be. This is how it looked when we got there yesterday: http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1367/1234131389_cef001d6e3.jpg?v=0http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1367/1234131389_cef001d6e3.jpg?v=0 Of course it's not acceptable that it took 2 hours to get out, but you could have also bought VIP parking, which I think is $20 (we didn't either). I didn't really care because I had a good time at the show (except for the $10 pack of Marb Reds that my friend bought that we split, that sucked). You don't even live that far away and you got to see one of the most important bands of the last 20 years, who is only playing a handful of dates this summer, in an atmosphere that was just electric. To me it was a small price to pay to wait, even though I had to make a four hour drive back home. I was in no hurry, it was a Friday night.

First off it took us over two hours to get to alpine from Muskego. It was complete disarray. Once we got to the parking lot it was complete havoc. Mud everywhere, no parking attendants, cars parked where ever they felt like. Cars were triple parked. Complete BS The show itself was pretty good, even though we missed about 45 minutes of Rage due to not being able to get into the parking lot. I think this is pretty much your own fault (not the parking thing). This was pretty much THE concert of the summer in Wisconsin, you have planned it well enough to leave way early to avoid the hassle. I mean, if you're going to buy an $80 ticket how do you not get there early? And you completely missed Queens of the Stone Age? That almost defeats the purpose of going. They were awesome. If you missed 45 minutes of Rage (they only played for about 75), you paid $80 bucks for a half hour of concert? We left my house in Elderon around noon, and met my friend at a gas station a few miles from Eagle and parked my car there. We just took 67 to ES and got to Alpine and were parked at 4:00. Then we went up to Gate 2 to get in (behind 40 people, tops) and wound up in about the third row of the lawn to the right of the soundboard and stuff. Me and my friend eventually went down my the concrete area by the concession stand on the right side of the lawn and were just hanging out when some awesome girl that was on Deck 1 discreetly told us to come and watch the show up there, just to keep it a secret that Decks 1 and 2 were open for anyone. So we ended up getting to watch QOTSA and Rage on the deck with about 10 people. That was phenomenal. I only got hit with a little mud when were in the lawn when the opener was playing (Coup - they were absolutely awful), and we had bought some ponchos for $.90 before the show, so outside of my jeans and shoes I stayed dry. We were also able to avoid all the riff-raff, of which there was a lot. We did get to see 7-10 people get hauled out on stretchers and stuff, and some people who were on some pretty bad trips or just generally very messed up. All in all probably one the greatest concert "experiences" I've ever had, even though it took out two hours to get out of the lot and we ended up getting back to my house at 6:00 AM today. Here's the pics I took (I had to take some just because of how awesome our position was): http://www.flickr.com/photos/9001946@N08/sets/72157601655338488/

You know what other show is sweet on A&E? The First 48. That is awesome. I love Intervention, too. Sometimes I wish I was unemployed so I could watch American Justice, Cold Case Files, City Confidential, Infamous, The First 48, and Intervention all day long.

Yeah, everyone knows that but for whatever reason hauser has an axe to grind against Jenkins.

Wow. If Ned had sent Cirillo out to pitch in a blow-out, there would have been riots in the streets and a bloodthirsty mob forming around Miller Park.

This game was the best, for sure. The exclusive rights deal that Take Two got for baseball, coupled with the one EA got for the NFL completely turned me off to videogames all together. I honestly can't remember the last time I played.

Right, but you can't ask the guy to succeed in a situation that he's not playing in. When he has played this season he has gotten the job done.

As I said in that other thread a while back, Posada would be the guy I want the most. That's one spot where they would get a massive upgrade in FA. I really have a hard time seeing the Brewers being able to lure him in, though. I disagree with Posada hitting second, though. He typically hits into a lot of DP's. There's no way that spare parts deal gets a superstar level talent like Carl Crawford. He just turned 26 like two weeks ago, he'll fetch a lot if the ever do trade him (they shouldn't).

From my experience (and I have zero experience as a father/role model, or even big brother to a little brother), kids that live a sheltered life like that tend to be the ones that run into the most trouble once they hit the real world. They are suddenly overloaded with things that they have never experienced when they were younger, that most kids would have been checking out since high school. So then they start partying, etc. - stuff that most of us get out of our system in high school/college. This typically happened with kids that were home schooled, or went to a small private school until high school.

Wow. The salt of the earth is really sullying up the comments on that JSO blog. That is sickening to read.

I guess I don't understand how it's "sad". This was a man who made a conscious decision to stage dogfights, and kill dogs. That's not an illness or something. It'd be different if he had become a drug addict, where you could say "he is ill", but he's just stupid. What's sad is when bad football players with bad character (which was known to be the case) have that stuff glossed over by the NFL in order to sculpt that player into a "face of the league" type of player. Both the NFL and Vick got what was coming to them as far as I am concerned.

Aren't these about right??? http://pangea.stanford.edu/GES41L/motivation/agony.gif http://www.sxc.hu/pic/m/v/va/vandorsten/541501_agony.jpg

As far as I can tell, this isn't a bunch of people jumping on the mythical Gross bandwagon. I can even remember a thread that Russ started shortly after the Toronto trade prior to the '06 season where we discussed Gross. I think the same people (myself included) who liked him then are the ones who still like him now and have been the same ones that have always thought he should play a little more.

Free Mark DeFelice. Oh. Dear. Lord. It's come to this.

It's almost inexplicable, the same way it would be if they had a 1.10 ERA and a .650 OPS against in September. Both things are so on the extremes that it's probably equally difficult to accmplish. I mean, they really aren't this bad, but it is getting increasingly difficult to think that when things do straighten out some that they will be anything better than defense just because of the guys that attempt to catch the ball.

Yeah, I also have zero idea how they're going to replace Cappy when they have no replacement. There isn't an option on either the MLB or AAA rosters that I can see.

I didn't catch this game at all (thankfully, apparently) since I was at work since 6 this morning. Wow - Ned let Linebrink hit? Are you kidding me? It was stupid enough to trade for the chump, but man, how do you let a reliever hit?