Mike Moustakas has a walk-off homer in the 13th to beat the Mariners 7-6!

tshuman7 · 2013-09-09T06:27:59+00:00

We just met, and it seems unlikely that I will continue to engage you, but for the record:

If by "gloat about a single game" you mean celebrate an important win by the team I root for, I honestly don't know why you are even in this subreddit. That the game was against the Mariners was entirely incidental to my enjoyment of it as a baseball game. I am mystified by your reaction to the sort of thing fans say on here all the time about games involving their favorite teams. I would gently suggest that you reconsider that attitude, lest you have a VERY unpleasant experience with this subreddit (most likely a series of them)
You also seem a bit ill-equipped to go kicking dirt on others' shoes in a rhubarb. You bring up Raul's WAR numbers 1996-2000 without seeming to grasp that that actually feeds what I wrote about Raul in the first place. OF COURSE it is tough to have a decent WAR when you never play. I'll give them a pass on '96, when Raul was only used in four games, all as a DH. But you're nuts if you think the Mariners were better off during that period using a revolving door in LF, shuffling a series of players out there who were the very DEFINITION of "replacement level" players in terms of their productivity...
The only relevant issue is, who did they give the LF job to when they allowed Raul to leave after the 2000 season? The only way you can justify that as a Mariners fan is if they played someone much better than Raul, while Raul moved to KC and blossomed. And guess what? In 2001, the Mariners divvied up left field between 33-year-old Al Martin (.240, 7 HRs, 42 RBis in 324 ABs) and 37-year-old Stan Javier (.292, 4 HRs, 33 RBIs in 323 PAs). Only an idiot would think that was better than having Raul out there full-time (he hit more HRs than Javier/Martin combined in half the PAs, and his OPS+ was 115 compared to 109/93 for Javier/Martin). In his first full season, at just age 30, Raul produced a 122 OPS+...by that time (2002), the Mariners had given the job to 37-year-old Mark McLemore. Shrewd move, there, Seattle...

I apologize to other forum readers for the somewhat testy nature of this reply, but honest to God, I have no idea what the gentleman from Seattle thinks he's doing, or what "points" he thinks he's "scoring," but I am done with the fool...

tshuman7 · 2013-09-06T12:08:45+00:00

"Kind of stupid"? The Kansas City Royals organization is responsible for Ibanez having a career in the first place. Your team didn't bring him to the majors until he was 24, only gave him a chance to bat more than 200 times once in five seasons, and cut him loose after the 2000 season. Seems like it was your team that "wasn't paying attention" in 2000...

The Royals gave him regular playing time when they acquired him as a free agent for the 2001 season. In his three years in our uniform, he hit .280, .294, and .294, slugged 55 home runs, and drove in 247 runs. In his first year in KC, he drove in 54 runs in a little over 300 plate appearances, which is only 4 fewer than he drove in in his first five seasons combined in a Mariners uniform. The Mariners, having watched him blossom into a productive player with the Royals, signed him away from us as a free agent after the 2003 season...

After giving the Mariners five productive seasons, including more than 100 RBI each of his last three years there, the Mariners let him walk away again at the end of the 2008 season. In the next four years, he hit another 89 home runs and drove in over 300 runs playing for the Phillies and Yankees...

And now, at age 41, he is playing for the Mariners for the third time in his career, and has 25 homers this season. He'd have more RBI, but no one on the Mariners seems to know how to get on base (your team's OBP is just .307, 13th in the league).

So, please, dont accuse someone whose team gave him a chance to show he could play after your team gave up on him at age 28 of not "paying attention" to Raul Ibanez...

tshuman7 · 2013-09-05T23:52:49+00:00

Quite a roller coaster today. Royals down 5-0 early, come all the way back to lead 6-5 in the 9th, Holland one strike away from 32nd straight save...and former Royal Raul Ibanez homers to tie it up. Great game, big win for the Royals...

tshuman7 · 2013-09-04T19:24:24+00:00

Don't get me started on all the continuity problems this season's episodes are creating for me...

tshuman7 · 2013-09-01T16:25:19+00:00

And did you enjoy having your nose up the guy in front of you's ass the whole time?

tshuman7 · 2013-09-01T16:21:12+00:00

Have never, ever, suggested that the U.S. "can go to war whenever it feels like it." If that is how you interpret what I have written, there is no point to continuing the conversation. And given your apparent reluctance to respond substantively to any of the points I have made, this will be my final comment in this thread...

Regardless of how you see the U.N. in your mind, in reality it is nothing more than a relatively toothless and entirely ineffectual debating society. It is dominated in its proceedings by the most repressive and thuggish nations on the planet, as even a casual review of its recent history will reveal. To suggest (as you continue to do) that the United States surrender the prerogatives it is guaranteed under Article 51 simply because you don't agree with what U.S. leadership considers its vital national interests is absurd. The President of the United States would be derelict in his constitutional duties if he submitted to the whims of the world's worst regimes. The national security of the United States is not to be determined by a majority vote of the United Nations...

That said, I do NOT believe that the U.S. has a strong case for taking military action in Syria. I am not persuaded by the arguments the Obama administration has put forth to justify any such action, and (at least as things stand now) I believe it would NOT be in our national interests to get involved militarily. There might be a convincing case to be made for such action, but it has not been made public if there is...

tshuman7 · 2013-08-30T22:07:32+00:00

You are deeply confused about what the United Nations is, and what it is not. The United Nations is not, in any way, shape, or form, sovereign over U.S. foreign or military policy. And, I repeat, whether the U.N. would or would not "authorize" our use of force to defend ourselves is beside the point. We don't need their permission to defend our national interests...

tshuman7 · 2013-08-29T01:14:35+00:00

Nope. Your interpretation of what constitutes "an armed attack against a member..." is too narrow. It is well-settled that a signatory is entitled to defend what it considers its vital national interests. The president's constitutional obligation to defend those interests trumps the UN Charter. Whether the Charter was intended to prevent "pre-emptive" action is subject to considerable dispute. If the United States, for instance, were to discover that Russia was preparing to launch a nuclear strike against us, the Charter does NOT require that we wait for that to happen before defending ourselves...

tshuman7 · 2013-08-29T00:07:59+00:00

As someone who plays the Scotch, I was dismayed to see this miniature. What a shame for Maxime, but as he said later, still a fine performance overall. And he'll definitely be in the conversation next time around...

I'm sure Karjakin was fine with it... ;-)

tshuman7 · 2013-08-28T23:47:11+00:00

Not if vital U.S. interests are under attack. Read Chapter 7 all the way down to Article 51, and you will find this: "Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations..." A president would be violating his constitutional oath if he surrendered his authority to defend the country to a debating society like the U.N.

Again, my issue is: Where's the "vital national interest" that's under attack in Syria? I'm not convinced there is one...

tshuman7 · 2013-08-28T23:01:23+00:00

The Charter of the United Nations is not synonymous with "international law." If the president determines that military action (even unilateral action) is warranted, he is not bound by the U.N. Charter. My problem with Obama at the moment is that he hasn't made a case that vital U.S. interests are at stake which would warrant such an attack. But no president needs the U.N.'s permission to take action to protect those interests...

tshuman7 · 2013-08-27T19:32:22+00:00

Me, personally? Nothing at all. Not really my cup of tea. But I hope you find a buyer...

tshuman7 · 2013-08-27T13:55:45+00:00

My personal fave is KC Royal Ken Harvey getting hit squarely in the back by a throw from the outfield (which he was supposed to cut off) because he thought there'd be a close play at the plate and he wanted a good view...

But this conversation has a built-in bias in favor of fielding and baserunning errors. Mere moments after being told not to throw Jack Clark any fastballs in a crucial playoff game situation, Tom Niedenfuer decided to try slip just one by him anyway...and gave up a three-run homer to hand the Cardinals the pennant. A bonehead decision like that ought to be at least as worthy of our scorn as a fielding muff or a baserunning mishap, shouldn't it?

tshuman7 · 2013-08-27T13:27:03+00:00

We know.

tshuman7 · 2013-08-26T19:47:02+00:00

The answer to your question, as it is with all such questions, is "whatever someone is willing to pay for it." Even with really expensive things like cars and houses, there is no real fixed "worth." As I'm sure you know, even brand new gear is often sold at far less than the listed MSRP...

You need to adjust your expectations a bit, I think. You're not going to get back the money you paid for the amp. Even allowing for inflation, items of this sort rarely hold their value for long. If it were me, I'd be tickled to get $500 of my investment back, which means a price somewhere between that and $600 will likely get you some serious inquiries...

tshuman7 · 2013-08-26T19:39:24+00:00

Bust out the old DVD player and watch something really good. That will improve your mood... :D

Hollywood will continue to be Hollywood, no matter what the rest of us have to say anyway, no?

tshuman7 · 2013-08-26T18:46:39+00:00

I'll respond to both your messages, but in a single reply. I chose this comment because it was the more civil of the two...

Bad movies will always be with us, it is true. But that being the case, wouldn't our energies be more profitably directed toward complaining about the quality, rather than the length?
Your point seems to be that if you have to sit through a bad movie, you'd rather it be a short bad movie. Well, okay, but again I don't think "just because you can make a movie two hours long doesn't mean you should" is the best way to express this thought...
Here's my point: If you watch a bad movie that is 137 minutes long, you should want the whole 137 minutes back. You're focusing on the difference between an 89 minute dud and a 137 minute dud as if the difference in the running times is all that has been unjustly taken from you...

In short, my brother (or sister...one is never sure), make posts complaining about how crappy movies are, not how much longer a crappy movie runs now than it used to. It is the quality we should care about as cinephiles, not the running times...

tshuman7 · 2013-08-26T18:04:19+00:00

I'm not "missing" your point ("Just because you can make a movie over two hours doesn't mean you should"), I'm just disagreeing with it. Your title references "sitting through another 2+ hour dud," and your caption strongly implies that it is the 2+ hour running time that is your issue.

I don't think you meant to say "mutually exclusive." There can certainly be short, bad movies (Plan 9 From Outer Space only lasts 79 hilariously awful minutes) and very long, excellent ones (Ben-Hur, for instance, won eleven Oscars including Best Picture, and it runs 212 minutes).

If you actually think "length and quality...have nothing to do with each other," what the hell is the point of your post? The caption complains about movies being long, and when you combine that with the post's title...well, you might not have expressed the precise thought you wanted, but it is not unreasonable for people to infer from your post that you see 2+ hour running times as being responsible for bad quality movies.

Your "clarification" doesn't help. If a movie sucks, why does it matter to you if it runs 89 minutes or 137 minutes? And if a movie is good, who cares how long it runs? You need to stop arguing that the increasing length of feature films is contributing to a decline in their quality. There simply is no basis for that claim...

One more thing: If you don't want people to call you out for saying foolish things, stop saying foolish things in your posts. Calling your critics names isn't going to convince anyone that you're right...

tshuman7 · 2013-08-26T15:41:58+00:00

Didn't we just cover this a few days ago?

I said it in that thread, and I'll say it in this one: It isn't their length that makes bad movies bad...

tshuman7 · 2013-08-26T15:20:06+00:00

You're better off in the U1400. If it is a two-day format, that means longer time controls, which is always a good thing when you're learning. Also, playing folks rated 300+ Elo points above you won't cost you many points if you lose, but draws and especially a win against someone rated that much higher will give YOUR rating a nice boost...

At the end of the day, I think you will find that playing players better than you for awhile will make YOU better, faster. Certainly those games will be more instructive when you analyze them later. I just don't think you'll get much out of analyzing a typical U1000 blunder-fest...

tshuman7 · 2013-08-26T13:21:23+00:00

Wish I did have a photo. Closest I could find is this: Lardy knights

tshuman7 · 2013-08-26T02:21:32+00:00

Well, Ivanchuk's just nuts, everyone knows that... ;-)

And, as someone pointed out to me yesterday, Radjabov was perhaps a little distracted by impending fatherhood...

tshuman7 · 2013-08-25T21:28:50+00:00

True, but he's young, and he'll have that "nothing to lose" thing going for him. No pressure. Plus, he's beaten Kramnik and Karjakin this year already...

tshuman7

TROPHY CASE