Mueller Report Finally Released...

He should do like Tolstoy and just give all his money away to beggars. Tolstoy then became a wandering ascetic (his wife dumped him once he was broke, imagine that), which is a much more honest profession than a politician of any stripe.

 

We know what the genesis of it was, and we know that the Left was willing to talk itself into whatever they had to in order to dispute Trump's legitimacy.

 

Most people did not vote for either of the two lame jerks and won’t next year. They are all lying crooks and you guys get way too worked up over it

Try breathing exercises and turn off the tv

 

Yeah, I didn't vote this time around because of the limited choice of candidates. Probably won't this next round since it will be Trump and some far left Dem.

 

Does it matter to you if the appointments for SCOTUS are Conservative or Liberal? That's all we have left in my opinion. I believe the Left is fully committed to changing the Constitution in the courts and the Conservatives will hold the line and require amendments for change. At least that's how I think a real Conservative would view things.

 

You are correct about the Left, which is why they sound silly whining about the "rule of law," when discussion populism. Their primary method of policymaking is based on not have any rule of law - certainty not having any rule of written law.

The Right should hold the line on the Constitution and do so better than the Left does. However, the Right isn't immune to making things up as they go along when they need to.

 

Ted Williams was a jerk and is also the last player to hit .400.

 

He was a jerk, but some of that was exaggerated by a bunch of assholic New York-centric sportswriters who resented the fact that he was a better hitter than Joe DiMaggio. (That doesn't diminish DiMaggio's greatness. He was a legendary hitter and a great centerfielder, but Williams was even better at the plate.) And of course they screwed him on the MVP award many times for prickish reasons.

 

From Wikipedia:

Williams' 1941 season is often considered to be the best offensive season of all time, though the MVP award would go to DiMaggio. The .406 batting average—his first of six batting championships—is still the highest single-season average in Red Sox history and the highest batting average in the major leagues since 1924, and the last time any major league player has hit over .400 for a season after averaging at least 3.1 plate appearances per game. ("If I had known hitting .400 was going to be such a big deal", he quipped in 1991, "I would have done it again."[61]) Williams' on-base percentage of .553 and slugging percentage of .735 that season are both also the highest single-season averages in Red Sox history. The .553 OBP stood as a major league record until it was broken by Barry Bonds in 2002 and his .735 slugging percentage was the highest mark in the major leagues between 1932 and 1994. His OPS of 1.287 that year, a Red Sox record, was the highest in the major leagues between 1923 and 2001. Despite playing in only 143 games that year, Williams led the league with 135 runs scored and 37 home runs, and he finished third with 335 total bases, the most home runs, runs scored, and total bases by a Red Sox player since Jimmie Foxx's in 1938.[64] Williams placed second in MVP voting; DiMaggio won, 291 votes to 254,[65] on the strength of his record-breaking 56-game hitting streak and league-leading 125 RBI.[62]

"Williams also won the Triple Crown in 1947, but lost the MVP award to Joe DiMaggio, with 201 votes compared to DiMaggio's 202 votes. One writer (who Williams thought was Mel Webb, whom Williams called a "grouchy old guy",[93] although the identity of the writer remains unknown) completely left Williams off his ballot. Williams would have tied DiMaggio or won if one writer who had voted Williams as second had voted him first.[94]

 

I realize Republicans are not immune to making things up as we will never rid ourselves of the effect of politics in our society. Do you have any examples of egregious forms of "making it up" by the right?

 

To be honest, no it doesn't matter to me. Sounds dumb but most rulings have little to no effect in my personal life. Maybe I am being to myopic but I just don't value the court as much as some.

 

I guess I do believe that SCOTUS rulings affect my life. What if Roberts had not opined that ACA was Constitutional because it was a tax (even though Obama insisted it was not a tax during the campaign)? What a huge difference it might have made in our lives.

 

I know in the Babe Ruth days there wasn’t relief pitchers. The same guy that started the game finished the game. Even if the score was 26 to 0. I’m not sure when the relief pitcher started but it has to be gradual from where we are now. So because of that we will probably never have a player with a 400 batting average again. Those guys back then didn’t face the kind of pitchers they have now and they were fresh coming out for every inning either. But still lots of respect for what those guys did back then like Ted Williams because hitting a baseball is one of the hardest things to do in sports........ or it was for me.

 

That particular ruling would not have had an impact on my life. I was covered by military and now post military I am still covered by Tricare and United Healthcare, by employer.

 

You may be shocked to learned Nadler is a big fat hypocrite
Or maybe not

 

In recent years, McDonald v. City of Chicago. Some are also showing an interest in reviving the Lochner Doctrine, which the Court used to use to strike down state economic policies.

 

If you look at the 1927 Yankees, their pitchers did get relieved but far less often. They completed just over half of their games. However, you're right that they didn't have what we'd call "relief pitchers." What they really had was spot starters - guys who would start from time to time when the guys in the rotation weren't 100 percent or in double headers and relieve them in blowout situations or when the team wanted to pinch hit for the pitcher late in the game.

The relief pitcher was a gradual development. By the '50s, teams often had maybe 3 or 4 pitchers who pitched mostly in relief, and complete games started being the exception rather than the rule but still very common. Most of those pitchers were decent but not good enough to start.

In the late '60s and '70s, teams started to put dominant pitchers on the bullpen (so-called "firemen") who could enter 7th inning jams, shut them down, and finish the game. Think guys like Goose Gossage, Rollie Fingers, Sparky Lyle, or Lee Smith coming in with the bases loaded and nobody out in the 8th (or even 7th) inning, striking out the side in order and then locking down the rest of the game. These dudes were lights-out and nasty as hell and had to be because they had no margin for error - my favorite era of relief pitchers even though I only saw the tail end of it in the mid '80s.

In the late '80s, Dennis Eckersley made the one-inning "closer" common, which is what we still have today. I think these guys are a waste of talent. Plenty of them have great stuff, but 90 percent of the time, they pitch only one inning and when the game isn't really on the line even when they pick up a save. Since they're only pitching one inning and since starters are now out of gas in the 7th inning, bullpens have to be a lot deeper. So teams now have a mess of setup men and middle relievers as well as a closer.

I think guys like Ted Williams (or Stan Musial or Joe DiMaggio) would still be great even in today's era, because they had ridiculously good plate discipline and could judge a pitch. Would he hit .400? Who knows, but he'd flirt with it. He didn't flail at crappy pitches and try to hit a home run in every at-bat like hitters do now. He hit a lot of home runs because he knew how to work a count and force a good pitch to hit - a skill very few hitters have today. Tony Gwynn is the only guy in our lifetimes who was even close, and sure enough, he got close to .400 when he was at the top of his game.

 

Thanks for your service MilitaryHorn. However, I find it sad you feel no sense of duty to your country to vote no matter what your political beliefs are.

 

You
I sat next to Warren Spohn at a Gold Sox game in Amarillo back in 1980.

Nice guy

 

That’s good info. I was thinking I seen a thing on Babe Ruth and his legendary status and someone brought up the points about Baby Ruth not seeing relief pitchers. But they also mentioned that the pitcher mound was slightly closer to home plate.

I was going through stuff in storage boxes and found an old Baseball with a faded Willie Stargell autograph. I took it and asked my wife where she got this baseball because it was in one of her boxes. She said “oh, he was a player for the Pittsburgh Pirates.” Really? LOL. Her dad took her and her two brothers to the Pirates training in Florida when she was young. But that was a surprise.

 

I tend to not get hung-up on the gaudy stats of yester-year. I think the greats would have been great today and vice-versa. Talent is talent relative to the times. I think baseball was much rougher back in the day though. Throwing at players. Slashing with your spikes. Inferior equipment.

People adapt.

Though the evolution of relief pitching was a real change (thanks for the excellent summary @Mr. Deez) there was also the advent later of night ball and cross-country trips. But we also know there were no black players (or from other countries?) playing so we can safely argue the greatest players in the world were not represented fully.

I believe players such as Babe Ruth barnstormed in the off season including playing the top black players of the time. I'd love to read up on how he did.

 

The mound was the same distance during Ruth's era, but it was 5 inches higher, which put pitchers at an advantage that they no longer have. The mound was lowered after the 1968 season when Bob Gibson posted the 1.12 ERA and Denny McLain won 31 games. (The AL batting champ only hit .301!)

It's also worth noting that the enforced strike zone was much bigger in the '20s and '30s than today. Pitchers used to try to overpower hitters like Ruth by busting them high and inside, because the zone reached from the knees to the shoulders. (Of course, it was a risky strategy, because if the ball wasn't inside enough he could easily pull it to right field.) A shoulder-high pitch is always a ball nowadays, which would take away the most obvious way to get Ruth out.

Here's what I think is interesting to consider. The main reason Ruth became such a dominant hitter is that people saw what he could do at the plate on the days he pitched which led to the Red Sox changing his position to get him into the lineup every day, but what if the AL had always used a DH (which is a horrible rule)? He wouldn't have gotten the opportunity to prove himself as a hitter, and he was far too good of a pitcher to change his position just on a hunch that he might also be able to hit. It's one thing to let a pitcher who sucks try to change positions to see if he can hit. It's quite another to have one of the best in the game change positions. Everybody would think you were crazy for trying.

 

For me it depends on the stats and era at issue.

There have been a lot of changes over the years - the ball, the gloves, the strike zone, demographics, etc.

I've always read that he hit the negro leaguers hard. Was he always facing their best? Hard to say. Based on what we've seen post-integration, I don't think there's any question that the top negro leaguers (guys like Josh Gibson, Satchel Paige, etc.) would have been huge stars. Hell, Paige dominated MLB hitters in his 40s and AAA hitters into his 50s. What could he have done in his 20s and 30s?

 

Go figure ...

"The largest donors on the left will be given a private briefing on investigations into President Trump by House Judiciary Committee chairman Jerrold Nadler (N.Y.) during a secretive Texas gathering this week..."​

Liberal Dark Money Group to Receive Private Briefing From House Dem Jerrold Nadler

 

How is it that so many of these idoits continue to do this? How can he not be aware of what he said then vs. now? Oh yeah, he's a Dem, so the media will ignore it, and no one will care.

 

The main reason is probably that our corrupt media always lets them slide on these things, never calls them out. In addition, late nights comics and shows like SNL used to do funny skits shaming them. Not anymore.

 

The only thing wrong with that Onion line is that it would only drive the coastal lefties mad, plus a healthy portion of Austinites.

 

Yes, and thank God that Republicans' current position is perfectly consistent with their position on the Starr Report.