I really enjoyed the existence of the Gaelic conversation in the last thread.

So, a lot of fears about Lugo at first or gosh knows what people worried Little might've done seem not to have come to pass.

I'm thinking Nomar comes back to the Dodgers now.

If you're a "fan favorite", you'll be here.

So I expect Gagne/Nomar to both be here, and likely be overpaid as a result.

with all due respect, that just your speculative opinion on that matter. do you have any examples to back up that claim?

Maybe I can get Joe Morgan to look at it after the game.

--I think the inverse has been proven to be true so far. The "bad apples"-- (Odalis, Bradley, Choi--wasnt a bad apple but a polarizing figure), were all shipped out of the organization.

And if you look at the Giants, and how they have been managed....They tend to hang on to veteran "name" players.

I've seen nothing from Colletti that makes me feels he's any different than Sabean.

You are correct, that at this point its all speculation...But what else are we supposed to type about?

It's way too soon to know how Colletti will handle this off season. He re-signed Kent, mid year; maybe he's the only old guy coming back. In a couple of years, Colletti will probably be pretty predictable, but this year, I can't see why anybody would bet on what he'll do.

I can empathize with Josh. He has to spend every day for several months with the team. And his day to day mental health is affected by the Dodgers performance more than any of us. After all, it's his paycheck! And he could be seeing the end of one season coming very quickly.

Fortunately, I'm assuming Josh is salaried and works year-round.

Despite being up 2-0 and playing at home, the Padres are favored at -220 against +180 for the Cardinals.

Gamblers don't seem to think much of Greg Maddux and think very highly of Chris Young.

As you can see, the + and - numbers are never reciprocals.

The house hates reciprocals.

So in this case, you play $180 on the Mets to win $100. For the Dodgers, you play $100 and win $160.

Leave it to the Mormon to explain how gambling works.

31- I don't know if they're wrong to think what they think, I think kicking a teammate in the press isn't a good move. In the first place, that's not their job. In the second, there's no shortage of people to do it for them.

So your current job is a bit of a dream job...?

I'm certain that no Utahns ever go over to Las Vegas or Reno.

I've been to Vegas on business, and I have to say I hate the strip. Nothing to do with religion, I just don't go for crass commercialism and money uber alles. Interstingly, there are tons of Mormons that live in Vegas -- there's a whole different side of the city away from the strip. So lots of Utahs go to Vegas -- depending on their religious background they either go to the strip to gamble or to the residential areas to visit relatives.

So my complaints about the lottery are half economics, half grudge.

47 Bob, I just can't imagine you holding a grudge.

1. Lottery
2. Cardinal fans
3. Rubber-ball-at-neck-throwing fans
4. Scorer who didn't give Jae Seo the 3-inning save

I never hold grudges. Grudges seek me out!

I guess it's just that Utah and Hawai'i have no legalized gambling of any kind.

58

Now, it all makes sense!

Must depend on the field. In political science, first application deadlines are in mid-September. Interviews have already begun for this cycle. They sometimes last through March/April, but not often.

I gave a talk at BYU a couple years ago (friends in the polisci dept). I agree - great place to teach. The undergrads are really bright and hardworking. My only complaint was that I couldn't get a cup of coffee in Provo before my talk. Not surprising, but not real great for my concentration level either.

And also to escape Arkansas, if only briefly.

There is no coffee on campus at BYU, but you can certainly get a cup in Provo. There's a coffee place right downtown. On the other hand, no, there isn't a Starbucks on every corner. In fact, there are no Starbucks in Provo, but there is one 3 miles down the road in Orem.

So I guess the 103 ties him with Mark Wohlers for fastest ever clocked on a radar gun...

I believe I owe GoBears a beer next year at DS since part of the bet was that Nomar would hold up physically and he didn't.

Consider this statement.
Then consider the person saying it.

Then, try not to let your head explode.

Considering that Nomar has been injured for some time (obviously), replacing him with Loney COULD be huge. Now, if only Little could break out of the box and replace Lofton with Repko, it would improve the Dodgers chances by a large margin.

When the Dodgers where down by 4 in the 9th of that game against SD, I thougt to myself down the 3rd base line that somehow, someway the Dodger were bound to get back into this thing. I thought to myself "they will have to hit 4 home runs because otherwise there is no way they could hit a grand slam against hoffman" and they turned around and hit 4 homeruns, two against hoffman. This team WILLLLLLLLL win on saturday, I can feel it.

Which is actually a bummer, I was gonna put money on the Dodgers to win if the odds were good.

Don't shoot me, I'm just the messenger...

Was Shedow in that Seventh Inning Seal movie?

And I think Mr. Rogers had "the pause" long before the blue paw prints. Not that it's a bad thing to be interactive with kids.

Yes, I need to go to bed...

I used to have Lance Berkman as my most under appreciated player, simply because he's not recognized as a superstar when he should be, but Guillen takes the lead from now on.

Give some respect to the other good teams in this league.

You folks should talk to UCLA alumni around the ages of 55-65 about basketball.

They are insufferable.

Of course, they aren't insufferable, they just wanted to destroy Steve Lavin.

They aren't, however, the rabid fan types. They just expect the basketball program to be a perennial top 10 team (as do I), which I don't find to be an outlandish expectation for UCLA.

Of course, with Coach Howland here, I think that UCLA's prospects for the future are just fine.

Wasn't that what the whole thing was about?

Of course, I heard him more and more on ESPN, and began to realize what a mess he is.

fairpole.baseballtoaster.com/archives/407684.html

We negatively need to have more life, ...that inner confidence that says, 'Every time I go up to the plate, I'm going to get the job done.' And when you don't, the next guy needs to have that confidence.

I've been a baseball fan for 40+ years, and I've never understood how anyone could root for the Yankees. Not only is the team given every advantage that money could buy, but their fans are repellent! A bunch of extremely spoiled 11-year-olds with a roomful of toys who do nothing but throw violent tantrums. They remind me of the "before" kids on one of those "Nanny 911" type shows.

Dodger fans, any fans, can get negative. But at least there's some appreciation of how hard the game is, how much respect a good opponent deserves, and how much luck is involved. Yankee fans truly believe money buys happiness -- guaranteed! Ugh.

Sorry Bob.

Fans of all the good teams in sports do so with a great sense of entitlement. Why does Notre Dame fire a football coach once he has one bad year? Why did UCLA go through basketball coaches for a while like Imelda Marcos on a shoe shopping trip?

I see your point, although Notre Dame isn't quite the same thing, in that their fans do seem to understand they can't be #1 every year. They seem to have a particular expectation each year, and if it isn't met or exceeded, there is hell to pay.

Yankee fans' only expectation seems to be: We spent the most, we should win it all. Kenny Rogers, that bum, beats us? Waaaaa!

Meanwhile, I have exactly one free hour today when I'm not wrangling kids or otherwise occupied (including a dispiriting and unavoidable potluck dinner tonight from 8 to 11) and it's right now. Amount of baseball on tv -- zero. Expect I'll just catch the Cards-Pads warmup before I've got to go.

114 - God bless Buck O'Neill. I hope the HOF voters who voted no to keep him one vote short can sleep at night with a clear conscience. Shame on them!!

To that, I can can only respond thusly...

Go Tigers.

http://tinyurl.com/nfqr4

The bit about the dinner check was really cool, I don't think I'd heard that one before. I have a feeling this kid's gonna be even more of a fan favorite than LoDuca was.

Did everybody like LoDuca as much as I'm led to believe?

I always thought it was more of Dodger fans trying to wash away the memory of Piazza and fooling themselves with LoDuca than anything else.

Re: LoDuca, I did like him because of the energy he brought and because he was indeed an improvement on people they'd been trying out at catcher before his arrival, but I understood why they traded him, given his continual drop offs after every all-star break. Russ Martin's arrival has made it even easier to forget about LoDuca. (I would have preferred we keep David Ross as a backup, too, but also understood why management had given up on him...)

Even though Jenkins' is a little hard on everyone, most of what he says on the surface is pretty much true. But he makes his own assumptions about the Dodgers that they could do something to disprove with a couple of wins here.

There's me and one other guy.

This is the first game I'll get to watch all the way through!