nah, Jefferson was the last great president we had.

looks to be him, especially with the swooping curves of Y and G in his autograph. Is there a higher-resolution photo of the quilt available? (Alternately, given who bought it - time to schedule a trip to Cooperstown!)

ask Tiger's PR staff.

one is far less likely to go down the Travis Bickle route ...

the one game I keep going back to is Diablo II, which I believe is approaching its 10th anniversary

not much W either.

15,420,000 enough to buy him a senator who will legalize his favorite leafy plant

I certainly click on the hidden comments. And come away disappointed. I am a living example of why reality TV, the National Enquirer, and TMZ are major hits. Woo hoo.

re: Mark DeRosa - I thought baseball age was defined as age on July 1st of a calendar year, so why is a birthday of February 25th particularly notable? (if it's March 1st, then yes, that makes sense.)

the Yankees don't mutter incoherently about Operating Thetans. Not even A-Rod is that wacky.

now can the mainstream media learn some statistics and get off ARod's back?

King Cole's '08 wasn't bad at all. He declined some in '09. hmm wait a minute!

"I don’t care how long you look at it William Black’s out there, you won’t see the boat .. umm … spit hit the ball." I alas cannot parse this.

could this be due to the higher starting speed? I seem to remember that (very roughly) drag is proportional to velocity squared, so the deceleration is disproportionately stronger at 98mph than at 83. a drag racer with a parachute may take the same time to slow down from 300 to 100mph, as from 100 to 50.

yes, kinda reminds me of the 2004 Yankees, who won game 3 19-8, and then closed out the series with a competent pitching performance from Mariano Rivera (who is, indeed, tough to run on)...

ouch. horizontal scrolling. hasn't that been a no-no for presenting information since the mid 1990s?

his pitching has not exactly been noticeable.

I just check the site about once every 24 hours.

this. and also, what about a free agent signing. how do you notify the league and the union to pass the newly signed contract along to them, and then make the necessary roster moves to make the new player a part of the team?

nonetheless, Jackie Robinson paved the way for those players to be in the majors too... for Orlando Hudson to claim Jackie Robinson for African-Americans only is not representative of the big picture.

wonder what this analysis would run for Pedro in his Red Sox prime.

any substantiation for this? a link to a beat column perhaps?

they should have been named the Grays, which was one of the finalists for the new name. but now, they are the Natinals, and they suck. The curse of Cumberland Posey?

solve for x?

they do, so the American term "first name" is not universal. "family name" and "given name" are somewhat more globally fitting (but also do not give 100% coverage; for example Arabic names do not fit this pattern). Ichiro is an exception both in American and Japanese naming convention ... he is rare to be known by just his given name.

that David Price; someone's gotta keep an eye on him. He could be dangerous.

how on earth does Scott Feldman have the second-best expected win percentage? his ERA is nothing to shake a stick at, nor are his 46 Ks and 31 walks in 96 innings. His BABIP is a supremely lucky .240. How is this gentleman a good pitcher, as opposed to an average one whose opposing batters are hitting them where they is?

your comments are not what I pay for. Go away.

agreed. as a more extreme case: Usain Bolt couldn't throw 95.

I've always thought Cy Young's wins record was the most unassailable, though Connie Mack's is also up there. both of those records are likely not breakable because of changes in how baseball is played. Pitchers do not make 50 starts a year, and managers are not hired for life. what about a record that is mathematically improbable, but was set under similar conditions as are around today? For that, I'd say DiMaggio's 56. Batting averages are about the same today as they were in 1941.

I think today was the first day I discovered that the Idol banner wasn't a banner ad.

hmm... hits marginally worse than Koufax... Koufax only managed to really learn how to pitch after about 5 years in the majors - so once Willy gets the hang of the curve, he may be a useful member of a major league team after all.

... and vice versa?

moving the wall back a foot may just be the extra difference. A diagonal leap is more efficient than a vertical one and if the wall gave way to allow that, it may let Mr. Hunter make a catch he otherwise wouldn't with an unyielding wall.

although Richard's post has an 8.2 Value Over Replacement Joke, the average reader does not comprehend this because it doesn't do sacrifice bunts well. (the Replacement Joke, btw, is the one that ends with the dog saying "DiMaggio?")

because it is more reasonable to assume that *someone* is the highest-ranked clean HR hitter, than to assume that *no one* meets that category. if not Thome in #5, the implication would then carry on to whoever is in the #7 spot ... #8 if necessary ... etc etc.

s/egan/ick/

streaks, hitting and otherwise, are completely dumb. yep, this coming from a guy with a 3.9 GPA ... and a 26% attendance rate.

and why not? .380 is above average, and 40HR implies a power that makes up for not having a spectacular .430-.440 OBA ... I'd take him for sure - and I'd know that there aren't 1-2 people better at his position, so I'd vote him an all star. Yes, even at 1B or DH.

I am not a fan of the recent trend towards audio/video and away from plain text. I like to read. Quietly. At my own speed.

Watch Ricky Hatton's arms as he's knocked out in Sunday's fight against Manny Pacquiao for comparison. and somehow boxing is maintained to be a legitimate sport ...

maybe a two-piece solution? Acrylic goggles under the shield - when the popup comes, toss off the mask but keep the goggles on. Dorky, sure, but if it keeps ya in the lineup...

that's a grave insult! horseshit never misspelled its own name on the front of its own uniform.

Kimmy never could hit the curveball.

wonder how many fans of Henry Aaron are turned off by Barry Bonds. jerks come in all colors.

what is the Great White Hope thing? I was born in 1981; growing up I knew that Barry Bonds and Andy Van Slyke played for the Pirates, but little about their personal beliefs. a google search reveals little beyond a whole slew of references to this very interview, and the esoteric fact that "www.baseball-analysis.com" is a mirror for BP.

despite that weighing, the Sox are down to 20th? The absence of Matsuzaka I can see being a damper, but ... Lugo and/or Lowrie are that valuable?

42,000 capacity they sure are milking that number ...

did we see shots from the dugout of Fredi Gonzalez berating the living #&!( out of him immediately thereafter?

if Bronson Arroyo's problem is due to playing guitar, do the Reds have any power to restrict him from doing so? The contract is already signed, so it would be difficult to throw in an explicit "no guitar playing" clause - can they do something based on the more general "player will present himself fit and ready to play ball for the club" sections?

Cliff Lee: 21 2/3 IP is 65 batters retired. 45 via methods other than the strikeout. I don't know how many HR he gave up offhand by the end of the season, but I know the number was 2 when he had 16 IP, so let's say 3. 45 retired batters on balls in play, and approximately 44 hits on balls in play implies ... a BABIP of nearly 500. Wow. His K/9 and K/BB are fine. Is there anything to imply that this is anything but a freakishly improbable run of bad luck?

I hope they charged for the ad.

I wish I remembered for sure and had evidence to corroborate it, but watching the live feed that day in 2004, I remember the commentators noting that the blood stain was increasing in size as the innings passed.

at the risk of posting on political topics ... I initially supported the war on Iraq, as defined in 2003, with information presented to me in 2003. Shock and awe ... WMDs, yade yada. clearly the war actually waged is somewhat different from the war presented for public consumption.

but here is hoping that several years later, Schilling will be watching Moose's speech. is Mussina the least lucky pitcher ever in terms of "great moments"? The 20 wins in his last season helps him; but before that he was a consistent "19" and "18" guy... add in no championship rings (no fault of his own; he just joined the Yankees a year too late)... never pitched a no-hitter, but did famously lose several perfect games in the late innings, including one to Carl Everett with one strike left! (I am a diehard Sox fan but with one pitch to go, I was rooting for a perfect game instead of Mr. Dinosaur getting a hit!)... so the Moose doesn't end up with one defining bloody sock/10IP/etc moment ... but still, ERA+ of 123 over 18 years, with 270 wins for the traditional crowd - I do hope he makes it in. Mussina, Blyleven, Schilling, Smoltz - yes Morris, John - no

Schilling had about 200 fewer IP than Morris, which I consider about even ... in that, Schilling had an ERA+ of 126, while Morris's was only 105. To me that separates the two and makes one a hall of famer. Blyleven is a no-brainer. (As for postseason excellence, it will be Smoltz who will hopefully be judged favorably in that regard: an entire season's worth of starts against the best teams in the league, with Cy Young-worthy line.)

only by his producers when he doesn't notice the "on air" light!

it should be 5.384% if geometric compounding is used. The 17th root of 2.439 (implying 143.9% growth over 17 years) is 1.05384. Similar to compound interest formulas.

While I agree that Bug... he's not a bug, he's a feature!

well, sneak in your own glass then. and D batteries. and Carl Everett.

Dick Pole! Will Rusty Kuntz be next?

does that imply he should have been called up earlier?

A-Rod and Ted Williams both OPS+ed 160 at the age of 20. Compared to those two, Upton and Wieters are both chumps ;)

what about the postseason blackout? I don\'t have a TV. I sure do have a computer. Do I need to set my proxy server to spoof a Romanian IP address or something??

I wonder how many extra tickets will be sold per Mariners home game due to Griffey\'s return to the team. Also: how many more would be sold compared to a generic 40-year-old 270/360/460 hitter with no particular name value.

great interview. I\'m really digging the wide variety of people you\'ve got on Q&A!

Barry Bonds as manager? (Barry Bonds as active player?)

... or not.

I think +/- has much flexibility through vagueness. Sometimes I use + for \"I agree with this suggestion\" (i.e. to second Vin Scully as a suggested interviewee, on a comment that consisted only of his name) while other times it is \"this was a well-written comment and it brought me enlightenment\".

he had Andro in his locker in \'98. that is all that we *know*. 583 home runs. OPS+ of 162. and, my favorite stat... his last year, when he was essentially crippled by his injuries, he posted this line: .187/.316/.492 yep, that\'s a better line than the David Ecksteins of the world that the media worships. Find me any other batter who gained nearly *two and a half* bases per hit, and tell me that they are not a Hall of Famer.

Rubios for sure. Excellent Mexican food.

\"booger-eating spazzes\" That Charlie Gehringer, always up to no good.

I apologize for the nitpicking nature of the question... is \"androstendione\" a typo for \"androstenedione\" (note \"e\" in 10th position) or a completely different substance?

can you get express written consent from the commissioner of Major League Baseball? ;)

what on earth? Did the poster ROT13 this, or is it a BP script that munges comments deemed inappropriate?

Tim Raines in the HOF maybe?

// when all else fails, brute force it foreach $team in (\"Aachen Aardvarks\"..\"Zzyzx Zygotes\") { foreach $years in (1..150) { foreach $millions in (1..10000) { foreach $date in (\"Nov 11, 2008\"..\"April 1, 2010\") { printf (\"%s, %d/%d, %s\\n\", $team, $years, $millions, $date\"); } } } } // I win. :)

Yankees, 6/160, 12/2

will this article be transcribed? I have no idea how popular my opinion is, but I prefer written media to audio to a similar extent that I prefer donuts to root canals :)

ROY Ovechkin, in a brilliant marketing move, changed his name to Crosby? Interesting. Ocho Cinco had nothing on this!

that\'s the worst part. can we set up something like the Phillies playing the Japanese champion team or something? really, the only thing I want to hear involving Scott Boras is if he throws a no-hitter in Venezuelan winter ball.

I would imagine it to be easier to hit: 1) the pitchers were lacking command due to not being able to get a feel for the ball 2) the fielders could not get to balls, allowing them to drop for hits the disadvantage in baserunning is not enough to offset the advantage in hitting - the rain helps the offense. I think the Rays scored a run that, on a dry field, had a much smaller probability of happening. One of course cannot know for sure, but I don\'t think Upton would\'ve been on 2nd to score on the base hit.

me too. but I could never field a lick to start with, so I had no dignity to lose ;)

when will the game get resumed? the wags at ESPN.com have no actual news, just \"it could be thanksgiving\". I am sure that they have a tentative resumption time in mind (barring further rain, of course) - but no one seems to know what that time is.

hooray! now let\'s get rid of the epileptic \"win a free iPod\" ads and we\'re golden ;)

don\'t forget the punch line! \"On second thought, they’d probably just blacklist him.\" Hilarious!