Jonathan Last has been pumping up the Harry Potter 7 speculation with posts discussing the possibility of an early-in-the-book death for Mrs. Weasley and speculation that Professor McGonagall is a double agent. I don’t buy the latter at all – I don’t think even a fictional character could be convicted in a court of law of treason on such flimsy evidence, most of which consists of (1) sour facial expressions and (2) questionable decisionmaking.
Month: May 2007
This Is A New One On Me
Pud Galvin, steroid user?
To be frank, he wasn’t even that good a pitcher except for the talent-diluted 1884 season (more here), but is in the Hall due to his exceptional durability. Galvin died at age 47 from “catarrh of the stomach.”
Trivia Time, Single-Season Record-Holder Edition
Now that HostingMatters has fixed the comments, let’s try a little trivia. Hard-core baseball fans know the single-season record holders for a variety of records – but in most cases, there is also a best-ever in the other league. Let’s see how many of these you can guess. The ones listed below include some easy and some hard – a few of these formerly held the overall record – but most of these guys are either recently active or in Cooperstown, and none of them is hugely obscure.
Questions: The Single-Season League Records
Batting:
1. AL, Batting Average
2. NL, Doubles
3&4. AL, Triples (two players tied)
5. AL, Home Runs
6. AL, Runs
7. AL, RBI
8&9. NL, Hits (two players tied)
10. NL, Steals
11&12. NL, GIDP (two players tied)
13. NL, At Bats
14. AL, Strikeouts
Pitching
15. NL, ERA (Post-1893, so this doesn’t include Tim Keefe in 102 innings in 1880)
16&17. NL, Saves
18. AL, Games
19. AL, Innings Pitched
20. NL, Strikeouts
21. AL, Shutouts
Scoring:
1-5: Softballs Only
6-9: Not embarrassed
10-14: Good showing
15-17: In the zone
18-21: En fuego
Answers below the fold
Continue reading Trivia Time, Single-Season Record-Holder Edition
Scott Boras Wants You To Like Him
Journalists love to write about baseball superagent Scott Boras. First, because fans generally hate him, it’s a chance to flex their “let me tell you something you don’t believe” muscles. Second, because front office people generally hate him, it’s easy to get a steady stream of colorful quotes about what a malignant SOB he is. Third, because Boras talks non-stop, works very hard and is very good at what he does, a profile of him is never short on worshipful detail.
Thus, a lengthy recent profile in LA Weekly. Now, let’s start with what is undeniably true about Boras: he is very, very good at squeezing the extra marginal dollar out of teams to pay for the players he represents. That’s clearly in the best short-term interests of the player, and as Boras often points out, for many players the short term is most or all of their lifetime earning potential.
Boras’ most significant accomplishment is his work in negotiating large deals for players in – and finding loopholes in – the amateur draft. This, too, is in the best short-term interests of his clients, a number of who then pull in the only big contract they will ever get. It also provides one arguable benefit to Major League Baseball – by driving up entry-level salaries, Boras helps make the sport more competitive in reaching young American players who might otherwise go into football or basketball, both of which generally require at least a year or two of unpaid apprenticeship in college but then offer the big bucks. (Then again, guys who have legitimate shots at the NBA or NFL have always had more leverage at draft time, even before Boras). That said, Boras’ machinations have clearly undermined the entire purpose of the amateur draft, which is to level the playing field to benefit the poorer and weaker teams. Whatever that does for the players, and however indifferent the owners may be to the effects, it’s bad for the fans.
Of course, some agents are content to live with the position that they represent the players’ interests and need answer to nobody else. Not Boras: he wants you, the fan, to believe that he is good for baseball (“I look around the room and ask, ‘As caretakers of the game, what have we accomplished?’ . . . We should look at each other and say, ‘We’re honoring the game.'”). He wants the owners to believe that cutting deals with his players is good for them (“To offer Maddux less money than he is worth, “Now you’ve done something that you should never do.”). He wants everyone to believe that when a negotiation goes badly, it’s because of some foolishness or moral failing of the GM and not because his client wanted more money or could get more money elsewhere (“In response to critics who say it’s all about money, Boras says, ‘Really? I think it’s about respect.'”).
It’s hard to tell whether Boras’ relentless self-justification is driven by a desire to make himself more respectable and respected than the average sports agent, or whether he’s just continuing to serve his own economic interests – after all, if GMs start believing that Boras’ deals are bad for the buyers, they may think twice before inking the next A-Rod, Barry Zito, or Chan Ho Park.
But then, one thing the LA Weekly profile makes clear about Boras’ tactics is that the GMs alone aren’t his audience – he makes maximum use of the fact that he is wealthier, more powerful and more secure in his position than the average GM, who after all is a salaried employee with a boss as well as a fan and media base to answer to:
General managers might resent such statements. But one way Boras gets into their heads is to pit them against their owners. “The process is informational,” he says. “There are GMs who are information sensitive, and their opinions are in the rear. There’s a whole group of GMs who put their opinions out front, and they view me as an obstacle. I tell them, ‘Let me help you and your owner make good decisions. Why wouldn’t you want good players?'”
As for the financial pressures of running a baseball team, Boras finds the topic irritating. “You might [as a general manager] keep your budget eight years in a row, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to keep your job,” he says. “Your job is to win. You have to cater the franchise to winning. That means I’m not the most difficult person to negotiate with. It’s your owner. He’s going to give you the wherewithal to do what you have to do. Then you just have to have the confidence and the skill to do it effectively.”
It’s an effective negotiating tactic, and of course because GMs lack Boras’ job security, he’s always around to get the last laugh. Nonetheless, you have to think that even aside from the question of how believable his advocacy is, it would be obvious to most GMs that the premium to be paid for a Boras player over and above the cost of a comparable player with a less aggressive agent makes his clients a bad deal. Not that all of them are a bad deal – A-Rod, for example, was and is a unique commodity. But first you sign an A-Rod, and then you go back to Boras and you sign a Chan Ho Park, and the value of the A-Rod contract goes down the tubes, to the detriment most of all of A-Rod, who got blamed for the Rangers’ inability to spend wisely to build around him.
Another hardball tactic in evidence here is that when Boras feels spited – as the example of Dodgers GM Ned Coletti’s decision to send subordinates to negotiate with him over Maddux, or as in the case of Johnny Damon – his players have a tendency to end up on a direct division rival, sending the message that Boras and his clients will go out of his way to screw you.
Still, I had to laugh at one set of examples here, the two Seattle signings – first, the article notes Dodger fans’ angst at losing Adrian Beltre, without mentioning quite how badly that worked out for Seattle. And then, we have Boras’ laughable attempt to spin the Cardinals as having made a bad decision to get outbid by the same Mariners for the services of Jeff Weaver:
Last year, another longtime Boras client, Jeff Weaver, was traded to the St. Louis Cardinals after a poor start with the Angels in Anaheim. Weaver was dominant in the postseason, and the Cardinals won the World Series, but St. Louis offered Weaver only a one-year, $5 million contract – which Boras found insulting. “That’s what you’d offer a relief pitcher,” he says.
Weaver eventually signed with the Seattle Mariners for $8.3 million. “You have to respect that teams have a right to make their own decisions,” Boras says, before turning around and passing judgment on Cardinals general manager Walt Jocketty. “Here’s a GM who never played the game [i.e., the GM of the defending World Champs who have won five division titles, a Wild Card and two pennants in the past seven years -ed.] saying, ‘We’re going to go with our young guys,’ and I go, ‘You can’t.'”
The Cardinals simply blew it, Boras concludes. “The Cardinals not signing Jeff Weaver is how you don’t win divisions, and my prediction is the St. Louis Cardinals won’t win their division this year.” (At press time, the Cardinals were at the bottom of the National League Central.)
At press time, Jeff Weaver had a 14.32 ERA and had managed to lose all six of his starts while allowing 50 hits in 22 innings. I’m sure the Mariners are just thrilled that Boras talked them into spending $8.3 million on him.
The bottom line: Boras is out for his guys. He’s good at getting them their money, and there are certainly far less respectable ways to make a living. But nobody should make the mistake of thinking he’s doing anybody else any good.
Kerry Campaign Busted Spending Limit – On Customized Jets
Dignity. Integrity. Duty.
Aw, heck, why not just blow it all on fancy airplanes?
Sen. John Kerry broke spending limits by nearly $1.4 million during his 2004 presidential bid, including some funds spent on customizing his campaign jets, a Federal Election Commission draft audit concludes.
The FEC could rule that Kerry’s campaign must reimburse the government. Because his general election campaign was taxpayer funded, Kerry would have to pay back the U.S. Treasury.
Much of the disputed money was spent on customizing jets used by Democratic presidential nominee Kerry and his running mate John Edwards, according to auditors.
Continue reading Kerry Campaign Busted Spending Limit – On Customized Jets
The Next Mondale
“It’s foolproof, I tell you! What’s the downside?”
In 1984, Walter Mondale famously promised to raise taxes. He lost every state but Minnesota, and when he resurfaced to run for office again in 2002, he lost Minnesota as well. Now, Barack Obama is apparently looking to follow in Mondale’s footsteps. He’s offering a Hillary-style “universal” health care plan that he admits will be enormously costly:
With savings from healthcare efficiency, Obama’s campaign estimated it would cost $50 billion to $65 billion a year to cover the uninsured. That sum could be raised by allowing President Bush’s tax cuts for upper-income taxpayers to expire, the campaign said.
That cost estimate is too optimistic, [health policy analyst John Sheils, senior vice president of the Lewin Group, a top healthcare consulting firm] said. “If you want to have universal coverage, it’s $100 billion to $115 billion,” he said.
(Predictably, John Edwards blasted the plan for not going far enough – “Edwards spokesman Mark Kornblau said Edwards’ plan, estimated to cost between $90 billion … and $120 billion … annually, is “truly universal.””). So where is Obama planning to get that kind of cash? Not by selling motivational books, but by soaking the taxpayers:
The experts [in a memo released by the Obama campaign] also said Obama could pay for his plan mostly through steps that the candidate has already said he would take — allowing President Bush’s tax cuts on dividends and capital gains and on those making more than about $250,000 a year to expire in 2010 instead of acting to make them permanent.
The rest of the $65 billion funding could come by raising taxes on inheritances worth more than $7 million. Many Democrats want to repeal Bush’s elimination of taxes on estates worth more than $1 million. Obama wants the exemption to be higher but has not yet said exactly where it should be set.
Got that? More taxes on income, capital gains, dividends, and a hike in the estate tax. Assuming that all those tax hikes are enough to come up with $50-65 billion according to Obama’s own estimates, which one would assume are probably as lowball as he thinks he can get away with – if they don’t raise enough revenue or the program is more expensive, he will keep digging. And that’s just to pay for one program – remember that any time he proposes anything else from here on, he has to come up with money from somewhere else besides these tax hikes, having already spent them.
Hey, it worked out well for Mondale, didn’t it?
Davey for Perlozzo?
Soccer Dad says the hot rumor in Baltimore is that Sam Perlozzo may be sacked and replaced by his old boss, Davey Johnson. He doesn’t like the move; he’s closer to the situation than I am, but in general I don’t see Davey as the kind of guy you bring in in the middle of a season, nor as the kind of guy who can squeeze extra performance out of a team with mediocre talent. And either way, you don’t want to alienate Leo Mazzone.
Do Your Homework First
Senators who criticize the Bush Administration for misreading the pre-Iraq War intelligence on WMD really should be embarrassed if they didn’t read the National Intelligence Estimate themselves.
The full, classified report was 90 pages – maybe a bit lengthy for the average citizen to digest even if access wasn’t restricted, but hardly a great burden on the people making the final decision on whether to authorize a war. It’s hard to go around saying that the Executive Branch should have taken a more skeptical look if you didn’t bother to look yourself.
B.O.G.U.S. Hotline Attack on Fred
So Fred Thompson gives a speech, and in that speech he talks about the need to guard the borders better, and in the course of that he says that “We’re are now living in a nation that is beset by suicidal maniacs…”
What conclusion does Marc Ambinder of The Hotline draw from this? See if you can guess, then click below the fold:
Bust-Out
My son and I have been using teams of Hall of Famers in Strat-O-Matic, and the thing about a lineup full of Hall of Fame hitters is, they are apt to get shut out all day and then suddenly blow the doors off a game in a single inning. These Mets are like that, as we saw in the 5-run ninth tonight.
We also had a marvelous performance by El Duque on the way back from an injury, and yet another example of why Billy Wagner can’t be trusted with more than a 3-run lead.
John Edwards’ Fantasy World
I hate to waste my time, and yours, beating up on a minor candidate for the presidency. And I am tempted to dismiss John Edwards as just that – the man served but a single wholly undistinguished term in the Senate (which he rarely attended and had to leave because he could not have been re-elected), he has no accomplishments whatsoever in public life, and he is unserious to the point of claiming that he was not personally involved in his own haircut.
That being said, Edwards is currently leading the Democratic field in Iowa polls, and tied for second in New Hampshire, so one must take seriously his recent statement that “[t]he war on terror is a slogan designed only for politics,” rather than an actual, live struggle against murderous fanatics. Put simply, Edwards is living in a left-wing fantasy world where the war is just a political “frame” and George Bush’s greatest sin is in choosing to fight it.
The McGovernites
Democrats labored long and hard to frustrate and hamper the war effort in Iraq, a job the troops want to finish, but at the end of the day even the likes of Jack Murtha couldn’t pull the trigger on voting “no” on continued funding for the men and women in the field. Continuation of the war effort – at least, for long enough to give Gen. Petraeus and the rest of the military leadership and rank and file the time to make some real headway under the “surge” strategy – ended up garnering broad, bipartisan support, with only a handful of left-wing extremists (and a few Republicans casting votes of protest at pork in the bill) voting no. In the Democrat/Socialist-controlled Senate, for example, the vote to fund the troops was 80-14.
But consider that the few extremists who voted against it and against the mainstream consensus includes the top two Democrat contenders for president, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. John Edwards and Bill Richardson also voiced their support for a “no” vote (Chris Dodd, rumored to be conducting a 2008 campaign, also voted no). In 2004, of course, John Kerry famously tried to get out of a vote of this nature by saying he voted for it before he voted against it. The odds are pretty strong that the next nominee of the Democratic party will once again end up going before the general electorate in search of some mealy-mouthed excuse for taking the McGovernite position. Or maybe by next year, they won’t even bother to hide the fact that the far left will be calling the shots if they win the White House next November.
Yes, The Troops Want to Finish The Job
Via Allahpundit, Spencer Ackerman – as vociferous and intemperate a left-wing war opponent as you could hope to meet – reports from Iraq that yes, the troops want to stay and finish the job:
The truth of the matter, however, is this: many troops in Iraq, perhaps even most of them, want to stay and fight. That doesn’t mean that we should stay in Iraq any longer. It does mean, however, that if Democrats want to bridge the divide between themselves and the military – an effort further complicated by their opposition to the war – they’re going to have to recognize that arguing in the name of the troops isn’t going to work . . .
[F]or many troops in Baghdad, the surge had brought a significant boost in morale. . .
Democrats would do much better to speak honestly: to acknowledge that many fighting men and women want to stay in the battle and would be willing to do so for years longer.
But, you know, the only people who support the war are “chickenhawks,” so Ackerman must be ignored, and so must the views of the people actually fighting the war.
Smoltz is Cooperstown Bound
John Smoltz’s 200th win last night has to ice his credentials for Cooperstown, as it should. While 200 wins is hardly distinguishing on its own (see here, here and here on the Hall’s de facto standards for career wins, winning percentage and 20-win seasons), there are a number of reasons why he deserves it. First of all, he doesn’t just have 200 wins; he’s also 61 games over .500, is closing in on 3000K (Bert Blyleven is the only eligible pitcher with 3000 K who isn’t in) and has 154 career saves, 144 of them in a 3-year stretch (he’s tied for the NL single-season saves record), and a Cy Young Award. He’s the only NL pitcher since Dwight Gooden to win 24 games in a season, and threw as many as 291.2 and 271 innings in 1996 and 1997, counting the postseason. Second, he has had an ERA equal or better to the league, at least by Baseball-Reference.com’s park-adjusted measure, every year since 1989, which is really hard. Third, he holds key career records for postseason play – career wins, Ks, third in IP. He’s 15-4 with a 2.65 ERA and 4 saves in 207 postseason innings, a far better mark than Maddux, Glavine, Clemens or Randy Johnson and a much longer record than Curt Schilling.
The Hardball Times had an in-depth look at Smoltz’s case compared to Schilling, whose credentials are generally quite similar.
Milledge and Dontrelle?
I probably don’t pay enough attention to trade rumors in general, so excuse me if some of you have discussed this to death already, but Bruce Markusen discusses the revival of the ever-popular deal of prospects, headlined by Lastings Milledge, for Dontrelle Willis. (Joel Sherman of the Post also thinks they may target Willis).
In theory I’m all in favor of a deal like that – Milledge is a serious talent, but guys who are prime quality starting pitchers now are a very rare commodity, and Willis can’t become a free agent until after the 2009 season.
The problem is whether Willis really is an elite pitcher. We’re talking about a guy who had a 4.02 ERA in 2004, 3.87 last season and 4.80 this year. In 292.2 innings since the beginning of 2006, Willis has allowed 311 hits (9.56 per 9 IP), 30 HR (0.92), 113 BB (3.47), and 212 K (6.52). In Florida. Those aren’t terrible numbers by any stretch, but for a 25-year-old in a pitcher’s park, who has a complicated pitching motion and has been worked very hard, that kind of regression, especially in his control, is worrisome.
More of the Same, Please
The Yankees are apparently interested in Todd Helton and Rockies closer Brian Fuentes. (h/t). What’s interesting is that not only would a deal for Helton and/or Fuentes involve addressing the Yankees’ strength (veteran hitters – the team is third in the AL in scoring with only two regulars, one of them the 31-year-old A-Rod, under age 33) and moderate strength (the bullpen – the Yankees have three middlemen pitching solidly, Proctor, Myers and Bruney, plus they have Rivera, although the setup men – Farnsworth and Vizcaino – and Rivera have all struggled) and not their weaknesses in the starting rotation, but they are dealing with a team, the Rockies, that will likely want some of the Yanks’ stable of young starters in return.
Not that a deal would be a bad idea – Clemens is on the way to help the rotation, and Helton and Fuentes would certainly be an upgrade on Mientkiewicz and Farnsworth. In fact, a willingness to act opportunistically to add to their strengths, rather than dealing on their weaknesses, has long been a hallmark of Yankee strategy, from signing Howard to go with Berra to adding Gossage to Lyle to adding Abreu to Matsui and Sheffield.
Milestone
Everyone Else’s Fault
The father of Josh Hancock filed suit Thursday, claiming a restaurant provided drinks to the St. Louis Cardinals relief pitcher even though he was intoxicated prior to the crash that killed him.
The suit, filed in St. Louis Circuit Court by Dean Hancock of Tupelo, Miss., does not specify damages. Mike Shannon’s Restaurant, owned by the longtime Cardinals broadcaster who starred on three World Series teams in the 1960s, is a defendant in the case along with Shannon’s daughter, Patricia Shannon Van Matre, the restaurant manager.
Other defendants include Eddie’s Towing, the company whose flatbed tow truck was struck by Hancock’s sport utility vehicle in the early hours of April 29; tow truck driver Jacob Edward Hargrove; and Justin Tolar, the driver whose stalled car on Interstate 64 was being assisted by Hargrove.
The Cardinals and Major League Baseball were not listed as defendants.
Authorities said the 29-year pitcher had a blood alcohol content of nearly twice the legal limit when he crashed into the back of the tow truck. He was also speeding and using a cell phone and wasn’t wearing a seat belt, police chief Joe Mokwa said after the accident. Marijuana was also found in the SUV.
***
The lawsuit claimed Tolar was negligent in allowing his vehicle to reach the point where it stalled on the highway, and for failing to move it out of the way of oncoming traffic. A police report said the car became stalled when it spun out after being cut off by another vehicle.
Police said Hargrove noticed the stalled vehicle and stopped to help. The report said he told officers he was there five to seven minutes before his truck was hit by Hancock’s SUV. But Kantack said the tow truck may have been there up to 15 minutes, yet failed to get the stalled vehicle out of the way.
“Were the police contacted?” [Keith] Kantack[, a lawyer for Dean Hancock] asked. “Why weren’t flares put out? Why was the tow truck there for an exorbitant amount of time?”
Let’s see how many things are wrong with this picture:
1. Isn’t Hancock responsible for knowing that drinking for hours and then getting in his car is a bad idea (to say nothing of speeding, talking on a cell phone and not wearing his seatbelt)? The man had pot in his car, the bar didn’t put that there. He made bad choices, and there are consequences for those. It’s not like this is a lawsuit filed by some innocent bystander injured by Hancock.
2. Hancock made good money, died single as a grown man, left no dependents. Why should his father be entitled to get money on his behalf?
3. He’s suing the guy whose car stalled on the highway? Because his car stalled out after he got cut off? And from whom he will presumably seek a share of the lost wages for a major league ballplayer who was driving drunk while yakking on the phone? Gimme a break. The tow truck driver may have been in some ways negligent, but even then, the guy drives a tow truck, and it’s not his fault that Hancock was plastered and on the phone.
4. The cell phone manufacturer hasn’t been sued. Yet.
Boys Will Be Boys
I Hate Hewlett Packard, Movable Type, HostMatters and Kenmore
Sorry, comments are down right now, because HostMatters sent me an email telling me that they were cutting off the comments until I upgrade to Movable Type 3.2 (which I did months ago – I’m running 3.33 now) and do a bunch of other technical goobledegook that is beyond my free time and technical expertise. What drives me nuts is dealing with people who think that running a blog means you understand how to download plugins and rewrite scripts. I have no way of knowing whether the problem here is that HM is a bad host or MT is a bad platform, or both, and given how little time I ordinarily have to blog in the first place, I don’t need to spend a bunch of time trying to find out.
Meanwhile, 13 days after my new PC arrived from Hewlett Packard, I still have no functioning computer other than to keep borrowing my wife’s laptop. The service guy who was supposed to come last Friday to replace the motherboard – to provide the expanded warranty service we paid hundreds of extra dollars for and repair a brand new machine that does not work at all – simply never showed up. When my wife called (I’ve been reminding her to take notes – dealing with computer companies is like litigation, you need to document every conversation), they finally admitted that the part the guy was supposed to bring hadn’t come in and won’t until the end of this month. So, no computer. The fact that I don’t want to go through the hassle is the only reason I have not returned the whole thing yet, but I may.
We also have no functioning washing machine. My wife got the call from Sears asking us to buy the extended warranty/service contract on our Kenmore machine, since the 1-year warranty will soon run out. She said no – and just a day or so later, the machine basically melted down, and won’t run at all because all of its fancy electronic parts are dead. (Dare I ask whether this has anything to do with the fact that this is an energy-saving washing machine). Progress on having that fixed is also slow.
(I won’t even get into the fact that I can no longer connect my iPod to my wife’s Dell laptop without frying the USB ports, which means no more downloading music).
Losing Our Heritage
American Heritage magazine suspends publication after more than 50 years, awaiting a buyer to bankroll the magazine, which still boasts 350,000 subscribers. A sad day for a fine magazine.
Year in Review
As regular readers know, I like to take the 365-day look back through David Pinto’s database now and then; let’s go there again with the hitters.
Quick thoughts:
1. I would not have tagged Chipper Jones as baseball’s most potent slugger over the past year.
2. David Wright: .302/.521/.375. Jose Reyes: .321/.520/.377. Talk about a matched set. Of course, with 60-odd more plate appearances, 50 more steals, half as many GIDP and his defense at short, Reyes has surpassed Wright. It remains to be seen which will give the Mets more value over the next four years, but it’s a nice question to be able to ask.
3. Mr. Ausmus? It’s the glue factory…
4. Stock up when you slice the numbers this way: Mark Teahen, Greg Norton, Jimmy Rollins (.508 slugging and .338 OBP probably means we’ve seen the last of him as a leadoff man), Endy Chavez. Stock down: Miguel Tejada (still productive, but where’d his power go?), Jim Edmonds, Craig Biggio, Eric Chavez,Craig Wilson, Sean Casey, Morgan Ensberg, Damian Miller, Scott Thorman, Jonny Gomes.
The Hindenburg
Tax Amnesty For Illegal Immigrants: Paying Taxes is For Suckers
As I have explained at great length before, there are two types of amnesty for violations of the law: complete amnesty, meaning no penalties whatsoever, and partial amnesty, by which people are absolved from consequences for lawbreaking for some penalty less than the full force of the law. It’s been obvious for some time that the current immigration bill would provide a partial amnesty for people currently in the U.S. illegally. For people who oppose any type of amnesty, that’s reason enough to oppose the bill. For people like me, who are willing to support a ‘legalization’ process under the right circumstances, the question is the details. But one thing should be absolutely non-negotiable: anybody who wants to stay in the U.S. legally has to pay their taxes.
The bill currently under discussion appears to fail that test. The immigration bill would bestow a massive tax amnesty on illegal immigrants. The supporters of this bill think that you, as an American citizen, should pay taxes – but illegal immigrants can become legal residents without paying their own share. This is scandalous. The bill should be rejected for that reason alone, and its supporters should be made to explain why they didn’t want illegal immigrants to pay the taxes they already owe.
Continue reading Tax Amnesty For Illegal Immigrants: Paying Taxes is For Suckers
Over His Head
As Bill Simmons would say, there’s comedy, there’s high comedy, and then there is claiming you were not personally involved in your own haircut. (H/t).
Sad But True
1. Five pitchers have started all of the Devil Rays’ games this season.
2. Edwin Jackson has a 7.78 ERA in 8 starts for Tampa.
3. Jackson’s ERA is the third-best on the staff. (Jae Seo and Casey Fossum are both at 7.80).
The sad part is, you have a team that has some exciting young players (Tampa is still 10th in the league in scoring; not great but they’ve finished a season that high only once in their history, in 2005), Scott Kazmir and James Shields in the rotation (Shields is having a tremendous breakout year, with a 62/13 K/BB ratio and the lowest baserunners/innings ratio of any major league pitcher) and a rejuvenated Al Reyes ringing up a 1.31 ERA in the closer role. But between the back of the rotation and the middle of the bullpen, Tampa is just getting knocked out of the box too often to move up in the fluid (behind Boston) AL East. And that may end up costing them a last chance to bring fans to the Trop before ownership decides to hit the road.
What Ills L Millz?
I can understand why the Mets would not be thrilled with Lastings Milledge, with such limited big-league success under his belt, recording a rap album, and still less so with him recording one full of all the standard offensive cliches of the genre. But why is the team going after him in the press, a move that is likely to turn the fans against Milledge and make it harder to deal him for value if the team decides to trade him?
It’s certainly starting to look like the skids for a deal are being greased, and without much regard for his market value. There are three possibilities for why they are doing this in the press, as opposed to just sitting him down and talking to him:
(A) Fred Wilpon has bad memories of guys with personality problems from the 1991-93 period and is overreacting. This would have to be Wilpon and possibly Jay Horowitz – they’ve been there long enough. Omar Minaya doesn’t seem the type to let a rap album stand between him and a talented player, and Willie Randolph, Joe Torre disciple that he is, would handle something like this privately.
(B) The team is nervous about Milledge doing something fan-unfriendly (especially after the Imus kerfuffle) and is trying to get out front of condemning it to control the PR narrative.
(C) The team knows something non-public that is wrong with Milledge (e.g., drugs) and wants to build a separate, public case for dumping him cheaply (which they may have to do if other teams know it too).
Both (A) and (C) would suggest he is not long for NY. (B) could mean he stays and they are just doing damage control.
Listening Tour
WSJ Blog notes yet another story about how Justice Thomas doesn’t ask questions at oral argument.
The logical answer to this would seem to be that Justice Scalia is an extremely aggressive questioner, and Chief Justice Roberts has now joined him in that regard – and on a nine-judge Court, there is a diminishing return in having multiple voices from the Right asking the same questions. But as I noted last fall, Thomas’ own explanation is rather different, and in fact seems to be almost the opposite conclusion:
Thomas said that as a young state attorney general arguing before the Supreme Court of Missouri, he recalled justices who “actually allowed me to make my argument. They listened to what I had to say. … Nor did I ever feel I had not been heard or did not have my day in court.”
. . . “It seems fashionable now for judges to be more aggressive in oral arguments,” he said. “I find it unnecessary and distracting. … I truly think oral arguments would be more useful if the justices would listen rather than debating the lawyers. … I think the judges need to listen if the arguments are to be effective.”
Sliding Scale
More Than Just Notice
In what will almost certainly be the most practically significant case of this term, a major, major win for defendants, especially corporate defendants, today in the Supreme Court, and via a 7-2 decision written by Justice Souter from which only Justices Stevens and Ginsburg dissented.
The Court, in Bell Atlantic v. Twombly, No. 05-1126 (May 21, 2007), held that plaintiffs in an antitrust conspiracy case may not survive a motion to dismiss the complaint at the outset under Rule 12(b)(6) by a bare assertion of conspiracy. In so holding, the Court significantly clarified the Rule 8 pleading standards governing motions to dismiss non-fraud-based claims.
To put the matter in non-lawyer-ese, the Court held that plaintiffs’ lawyers (in this case class action plaintiffs in an antitrust case, but the ruling will affect all civil lawsuits in federal court) need to have more of a factual basis for filing lawsuits before they can kick-start the expensive and intrusive discovery process.
Two Sopranos To Go
I’m a little bleary-eyed from watching the Sopranos last night after the Mets got shut down by Tyler Clippard on the way to his junior prom….thoughts in the extended entry below, SPOILERS INCLUDED.
Forget the War, Taxes, and Abortion
John Hawkins, who I usually respect, is joining the caucus that is ready to blow up the Senate GOP over immigration. As I have said, I’m not thrilled with where we seem to be headed on this issue, and I understand the concern of people who think that more immigration will damage the GOP electorally (and help offset the Democrats’ natural demographic disadvantage that flows from being the party of people who don’t bear or beget children).
But I can’t sign on to going bonkers over this issue. There’s a war on. There are still fundamental differences between the parties on scores of core issues – taxes and economic liberties, life, the courts, the rule of law. Face it, we have lived with bad immigration policy for decades. We should fix that – but it’s not the end of the world if we don’t, and electing Democrats, of all people, won’t help.
Hank’s Rib
Some guys just can’t catch a break; just when Hank Blalock was just back in the kind of groove he’s been missing the past few years (with teammate Mark Teixeira also blazing hot), Blalock has to be out the next three months to have a rib removed to relieve “thoracic outlet syndrome,” which is apparently some sort of nerve or vascular condition. The Rangers, already mired in last place 4 1/2 games behind the Mariners and with the second worst record in the AL, lose one more reason to hope they can get out.
Subway Spring
Yeah, David Wright is all the way back.
Hated Yankees down 10 games to the Red Sox going into today; I won’t feel good until they are more than 14 1/2 down.
Would you rather be a Yankee starting pitcher or the drummer for Spinal Tap?
Mike Myers threw 54 pitches today – wonder when the last time that was? 10 is usually a long outing for him. ESPN’s game longs go back to 2002 and he hasn’t thrown 50 pitches in a game in that time period.
UPDATE: For a game with a 6-run lead that was waaaaaay too close at the end. What on earth were Cano and Wagner thinking – Cano rushing a throw to first in the bottom of the 8th with Julio Franco trotting up the first base line on his way to the shuffleboard court and tossing it up the right field line, Wagner throwing home with a 4-run lead and one out instead of getting the easy out at first (and catching Paul Lo Duca totally unawares).
Why Harry Can’t Reid
Regular readers will know that immigration isn’t exactly my top issue. The system is broken in many ways, unfair to legal immigrants, impotent in the face of mass illegal immigration and unlawful entry by criminals and terrorists, and lethargic and undermanned even when it takes action, but I remain skeptical that our political system is even capable of dealing seriously with these issues. I’m in favor of comprehensive reform, but only if it contains real enforcement teeth; I’m OK with more legal immigration and fine with allowing present illegals to become citizens, but only if there is a substantial price of entry paid for the privilege of citizenship (I discussed the “amnesty” issue at much greater length here).
All that said, there is no reason whatsoever for the Senate to be rushing a vote on the massively complex immigration bill when there will barely be time for Senators to read the thing and no ability for the public to examine its provisions and peaceably assemble to petition for redress of grievances with the bill.
In a Word
No.
Sandy Berger Won’t Say
Allahpundit notes that Sandy Berger has surrendered his law license rather than face cross-examination about his destruction of original classified documents to obstruct the investigation of the 9/11 Commission. Allahpundit thinks that Berger would have been able to assert the Fifth Amendment to avoid answering those questions, but I’m not so sure; after all, he has already been sentenced for the conduct in question, and in light of the Double Jeopardy Clause the right against self-incrimination no longer attaches after sentencing.
Unless, of course, there are other crimes he could still be charged with besides the ones he was convicted and sentenced for.
Eliot Spitzer’s Pro-Abortion Zealotry
Most of you should be familiar by now with the Seven Stages of Liberal Legal Activism:
1. It’s a free country, X should not be illegal.
2. The Constitution prohibits X from being made illegal.
3. If the Constitution protects a right to X, how can it be immoral? Anyone who disagrees is a bigot.
4. If X is a Constitutional right, how can we deny it to the poor? Taxpayer money must be given to people to get X.
5. The Constitution requires that taxpayer money be given to people to get X.
6. People who refuse to participate in X are criminals.
7. People who publicly disagree with X are criminals.
We have known since very early on in Eliot Spitzer’s tenure in public office that he was a pro-abortion zealot who would stop at nothing to serve the financial interests of the abortion industry. The only question now is whether New York’s Governor is at Stage Six or Stage Seven.
Read On…
Meche Godzilla
Gil Meche, who entered 2007 with a career ERA of 4.65 and no seasons with an ERA of less than 4.48 in 100 innings or more, has an ERA this season of 1.91. What gives? Let’s break out Meche’s numbers for thus far in 2007 compared to his full season numbers for 2006 as well as his good first half in 2006, which ran through July 19 before the wheels came off. Stats courtesy of ESPN, THT and Pinto; the detailed stats aren’t available for just a part of 2006:
| Year | ERA | IP | H/9 | R/9 | 2B/9 | HR/9 | BB/9 | K/9 | LD% | DER | GB% | DP/9 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2007 | 1.91 | 61.1 | 8.36 | 2.93 | 0.73 | 0.88 | 2.35 | 6.90 | 14.4 | .710 | 56.4 | 1.17 |
| 2006 | 4.48 | 186.2 | 8.82 | 5.11 | 2.03 | 1.16 | 4.05 | 7.52 | 18.5 | .705 | 43.1 | 0.77 |
| 2006-1 | 3.83 | 122.1 | 8.24 | 4.12 | NA | 1.10 | 3.46 | 7.43 | NA | NA | NA | NA |
The immediate fact that jumps out is that Meche is allowing just over one unearned run per 9 innings, a high enough number to suggest that his ERA is misleadingly low. In fact, his overall numbers are much more consistent with a guy with an ERA in the high 2s than below 2.00.
That said, Meche is pitching dramatically better, even though his K/9 ratio is actually down a bit and the percentage of outs on balls in play (DER) is not much changed (even though the number of line drives he surrenders – LD% – has improved). Meche’s improvement has come in a large step forward in his control plus a great improvement the proportion of ground balls among balls in play, which has resulted in many fewer doubles and home runs and many more double play balls.
The warning signs are twofold. First, the improvements in control and ground ball percentage are both way out of line with his career (ESPN lists him as having a 1.98 G/F ratio this season compared to 1.01 for his career and 3.89 BB/9); while he has shown real improvement and not just luck, the issue will be how long he can sustain that. Second, of course, is the durability issue. Meche flamed out in the second half last season after passing the 120 inning mark, he’s never thrown 200 innings, and of course when younger he missed two full seasons with arm trouble. At his present pace, which puts him just an inning off the league lead, he is on track to throw 242.1 innings. There is a very serious question as to whether he can keep that up.
So far, Meche really has been worth all that money the Royals paid him. Stay tuned.
Shenanigans
Patterico responds again to the idea (see here, h/t here) that voter fraud is a non-existent problem simply because it is hard to get criminal convictions for voter fraud. More background in this post, and that’s before we even get to some of the voter-turnout figures for cities like Philadelphia and Milwaukee (I’ve never heard a legitimate explanation as to how a large city can have voter turnout in excess of 100%).
Random Thoughts From Last Night
I was switching back and forth last night between the GOP debate and the Met game before catching up on last night’s “24,” so let me give you my observations on what I did catch, plus a few other bits:
*It may almost be time to add Shawn Green to the list of Omar’s successes – I’m really amazed that he is hitting .324 and slugging .525, when he looked for all the world like he was headed irreversibly downhill last season. It’s a Mike Lowell-style resurgence. Green doesn’t look like a power hitter; he’s built like a finesse pitcher. The Mets have batboys beefier than Green.
*24 has just gone catastrophically off the rails since the end of the plot with the Arabs. They should probably have ended the season right there. In particular, we have seen no explanation of how Chaing new where and when to call Jack to start this whole thing, and no good reason why the White House should have agreed in the first place to negotiate with a state actor holding a U.S. citizen hostage in Los Angeles. It’s gone downhill from there. The Russians seem awfully touchy about nuclear technology that their own consul was basically handing out like Halloween candy, yet blase about threatening war with the U.S. when they know that the U.S. has access to that technology. The simplest explanation is this one.
It looks like Jack is finally leaving Los Angeles after this season. This means we can ask a question that would come up for no other show: will they kill off Los Angeles?
*The account of the White House hospital visit to John Ashcroft, by the way, sounds so much like something from 24… a scene very, very radically different from the caricature of Ashcroft as a jackbooted thug. I would love to have been a fly on the wall for Bush’s talk with Comey to know how his concerns were ultimately dealt with or whether Bush just twisted his arm on the importance of the intelligence being collected.
*That set for the debate looked like a bad game show…I missed the rules, were the candidates actually buzzing in for rebuttal time?
*Rudy had the best response of the night when he slammed Ron Paul for essentially saying the U.S. had invited 9/11. I think Paul misread his invite to the Green Party debate. As I have said before, one Ron Paul in Congress is a good thing, but more of them would be a disaster. Any time he opens his mouth on foreign affairs you see why.
*Runner-up line goes to Mike Huckabee: “Congress has been spending money like John Edwards at a beauty shop”.
*Of course, both of them have stiff competition from Fred Thompson’s brilliant and hilarious response to Michael Moore.
*Having seen only transcripts of the first debate, I had not seen Paul or Tom Tancredo live before, and they were much unlike my image of them from reading their statements for years – Paul seemed like a frail old man, and Tancredo seemed meek and nervous; I was expecting a guy who looked and sounded like Bob Dornan.
*Goldberg and Vodkapundit had basically the same reaction to Romney – of course, Romney’s father was a car salesman (well, a CEO of a car company, actually). In positioning himself as a conservative, Romney is basically a smart businessman pursuing an underserved market, not a man seeking higher office out of a firm belief in anything in particular, and it shows.
*There is really, really no purpose to Thommy Thompson and Jim Gilmore being in this race, none.
*Other than his position on trade, I can’t think of a single thing I have seen from Duncan Hunter to dislike. Hunter has no realistic chance of getting the nomination, but he might not be a bad running mate – he’s a serious guy who looks and sounds like a serious guy.
*From what I saw, compared to some of the last debate’s questions, I have to say that the Fox team was just miles better than the MSNBC team in asking questions that GOP primary voters would actually want to see answered (one exception was the justly-booed question to McCain about the Confederate flag) and avoiding speechifying by the moderators. From here on out they should just have Brit Hume & co. do all the GOP debates and Tim Russert do the Democrats.
Jerry Falwell’s Legacy
Like a lot of conservative pundits, I could exhaust my server with examples of things Rev. Jerry Falwell said that I would not want to associate myself with, the short summary of which is that for much of his career, he was not a political asset to the conservative movement. (Go here, though, for one example of me defending Falwell on theological grounds)
But a man’s passing has a way of focusing attention on the big things he did with his time on this Earth, rather than the raw, rough edges of his public statements. And an article in the current New Republic inadvertantly gives Rev. Falwell a legacy any man would be proud to leave behind:
The Catholic Church was the first to attack abortion: Even before Roe, the Church hierarchy coordinated a parish-by-parish effort to stop any sort of reform bill, including those for therapeutic abortions. This predominantly Catholic movement didn’t broaden into the more ecumenical one we know until the late ’70s and early ’80s, when Protestant evangelicals first joined in. In 1978, Jerry Falwell preached his first sermon on abortion; a year later, the newly formed Moral Majority put abortion at the top of its list of secular humanist scourges. Two years later, Ronald Reagan was the first presidential candidate in U.S. history to run on a party platform that condemned abortion.
R.I.P.
PS – That TNR piece also claims – revealingly, of the dehumanized mindset that sets in on this issue – that partial-birth abortion isn’t a big deal because “only” 2,200 of them are performed a year . . . how, I ask, would the writer of that piece respond if a conservative said that “only” 2,200 deaths from the Iraq War per year was too small a number to be of concern to anyone, or that “only” 2,200 executions a year shouldn’t be enough for anyone to care about.
I thought so.
Home of the Braves
Write First, Think Later
Enter the Lefties
Tom Glavine, with 294 wins, is on the verge of becoming only the fifth lefthanded pitcher in Major League history to win 300 games (Randy Johnson, if he manages 20 more wins, would be the sixth). Which leads me to an interesting issue: the fact that it took some time for lefthanded pitching to take root in the majors. While this story would make a fascinating article by someone with more time to do the research, I’ll lay out here the outlines in statistical terms.
Over the first 11 years of major league ball – the five year run of the National Association from 1871 to 1875, and the first six years of the National League from 1876 to 1881 – lefthanded pitchers were at best a curiosity:
| Years | League | Total IP | LHP IP | % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1871-75 | NA | 17,228 | 624 | 3.6% |
| 1876-81 | NL | 29,114 | 1,962 | 6.7% |
| 1871-81 | Both | 46,342 | 2,586 | 5.6% |
Granted, there were a few hundred innings thrown over those years by pitchers whose handedness was not recorded, but those were rarely guys with significant pitching roles. In both 1874 and 1876 there was no lefthanded pitching at all.
Those 2,586 innings were thrown by just 11 men, three of whom (Charlie Pabor, Ed Pinkham, and Hall of Fame slugger Dan Brouthers) were full-time players who never threw more than 30 innings in a season, and three others of whom (John McMullin, John Cassidy and Curry Foley) also spent the bulk of their careers as everyday players, plus two (Jack Leary and John Greason) who never pitched as many as 70 innings in a season.
If there is a common thread among the earliest southpaws, it’s that they were ineffective. McMullin threw 249 innings for Troy in 1871, the first lefty to play a significant pitching role, and was pounded, walking a league-leading 75 batters (an astoundingly high total for the day) and finishing with the worst ERA of any significant pitcher in the league. He spent most of the rest of his career as an outfielder. Next up in 1875 was John Cassidy, who was likewise spectacularly ineffective in 214.2 innings for Brooklyn and who likewise set off on a career in the outfield.
The first semi-significant lefty in the National League, and the first to spend his career primarily as a pitcher, was Bobby Mitchell, who threw 100 innings for Cleveland in 1877, 80 for Cincinnati in 1878, and 194.2 for Cleveland in 1879. Though ERAs were not tracked in those days, Mitchell never did manage a league-average ERA and ended with a losing record, but he at least pitched respectably, and had the highest K/IP rates in the NL in 1877 & 1878. In 1879 he was joined by Foley, an OF-1B who threw 161.2 innings in 1879 and 238 in 1880, both for Boston, with middling results. But most teams in those days used a single starter to handle most of the work, and in 1880-82, the first lefty to take that job emerged, as Lee Richmond threw 590.2, 462.1 and 411 innings for Worcester. Richmond pitched well his first season, but the Worcester Ruby Legs finished last in 1881 and 1882, so he didn’t exactly inspire a rush of imitators.
In 1882, however, something new happened: the American Association sprang up as a rival major league. The first ERA champ in the league was 21-year-old lefty Denny Driscoll, who got a full-time rotation gig the following year. And then in 1884, a sea change set in: the rules were liberalized to allow pitchers to throw overhand. I have to believe that the ability to abandon straight underhand was the change that made lefthanders proportionately more effective, and the AA was the early adopter (as startup leagues are often quicker to process innovation): the first lefty to lead a league in IP or K was Ed Morris in the AA in 1885 (his second season as a rotation anchor, at age 22), the first in Wins was Morris in 1886, and lefties led the AA in innings and strikeouts from 1885-87, with young fireballers Matt Kilroy (age 20, 513 K) and Toad Ramsey (age 21, 499 K) posting the two highest strikeout totals of all time. The unfortunately nicknamed Lady Baldwin became the first star lefty in the NL, posting a 1.86 ERA in 1885 and going 42-13 while leading the league in wins and strikeouts in 1886.
Even so, significant lefthanded pitching was still a relative rarity through the end of the 1800s. While multiple righthanded pitchers racked up large career win totals, only six 19th century lefties won as many as 100 games: Morris with 171, followed by Frank Killen (164), Ted Breitenstein (160), Kilroy (141), Ramsey (114), and Duke Esper (101). One can look at the records of lefthanded hitters in this era and see, perhaps, the benefits of the relative dearth of lefthanded quality pitchers.
The end of the 19th century brought on the two men who would set the template for lefthanded pitchers to follow, and they plied their trade once again mainly in an upstart league, the American League. First came Rube Waddell, baseball’s second pitcher (after Amos Rusie) to compile a multi-year record as a strikeout pitcher. Waddell, of course, was an eccentric, childlike, unpredictable drunk and – Bill James suggests – possibly mentally disabled, and likely contributed as much as anyone to the stereotype of the flaky lefthander. His teammate Eddie Plank, by contrast, was more like Glavine, a cerebral, college-educated pitcher who set the mold of the crafty lefthander. Together they brought a lot of success to Connie Mack, and Plank became the first lefty to win 300 games – indeed, the first to win 200 games. With 305 of his 326 wins coming in the AL, he holds to this day the career record for wins by an AL lefty.
As we know, the concept of platooning first began to be tried around 1906, though it did not come into heavy vogue until around 1920 – which was around the time that the emergence of Babe Ruth created a much more pressing need for teams to find their own Hub Pruett type lefties who could shut down the Babe. By 1919, the career leaderboard for lefties looked like this (and recall that by this point Walter Johnson was three wins from becoming the ninth righthanded 300-game winner, including five with 340 or more wins; counting wins in the NA, there were by then 14 righties with 250 or more wins, 24 with 225 or more). A few of these guys, as you can see from their career timelines, would win a few more in the 1920s; Marquard would become the second lefty to win 200 games, and two others who would as well (Eppa Rixey and Wilbur Cooper) were already active.
| # | Pitcher | Years | W |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Eddie Plank | 1901-1917 | 326 |
| 2 | Jesse Tannehill | 1894-1911 | 197 |
| 3 | Rube Waddell | 1897-1910 | 193 |
| 4 | Doc White | 1901-1913 | 189 |
| 5 | Ed Morris | 1884-1890 | 171 |
| 6 | Frank Killen | 1891-1900 | 164 |
| 7 | Slim Sallee | 1908-1921 | 162 |
| 8 | Ted Breitenstein | 1891-1901 | 160 |
| 9 | Hippo Vaughn | 1908-1921 | 156 |
| 10 | Rube Marquard | 1908-1925 | 149 |
| 11 | Matt Kilroy | 1886-1898 | 141 |
| 12 | Hooks Wiltse | 1904-1915 | 139 |
| 13 | Nap Rucker | 1907-1916 | 134 |
| 14 | Noodles Hahn | 1899-1906 | 130 |
| 15 | Lefty Liefield | 1905-1920 | 124 |
You can see how Plank towered over his contemporaries . . . I haven’t crunched the numbers to see how the proportion of lefties increased over time from the 1880s or when it reached modern rates, but by 1920, besides the above, there were a number of other active lefties on their way to decent careers, and in 1925 Mack came up with his third lefty superstar, Lefty Grove, who would go on to become the second lefty to win 300 games, followed by Warren Spahn (now the winningest lefty of all) and Steve Carlton. Today there are 25 lefthanded pitchers who have won 200 games, including 10 who have won 250 or more, compared to 83 righthanded 200-game winners, 34 righthanded 250-game winners, and 18 righthanded 300-game winners. I’ll close with the top 10 winningest lefties of all time as of yesterday’s action:
| # | Pitcher | W |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Warren Spahn | 363 |
| 2 | Steve Carlton | 329 |
| 3 | Eddie Plank | 326 |
| 4 | Lefty Grove | 300 |
| 5 | Tom Glavine | 294 |
| 6 | Tommy John | 288 |
| 7 | Jim Kaat | 283 |
| 8 | Randy Johnson | 280 |
| 9 | Eppa Rixey | 266 |
| 10 | Carl Hubbell | 253 |
Ferreting Out The Crazies
A contrarian view on Rudy Giuliani and obsessive ferret enthusiasts.
I’m pretty sure “suffers fools gladly” is not on Rudy’s resume.
KSK Classic
Was behind on my KSK but this is hilarious.
Just What We Need
More environmental propaganda from Hollywood children’s movies. Oh, goody. Quoth Cameron Diaz: “Well, hopefully there’ll be a planet in four years.” Ya think?
First Roll of the Dice
Through tonight’s game, Daisuke Matsuzaka had an ERA of 3.25 when facing a team for the first time, 6.00 when facing them a second time.
Granted, part of that is that one of the three teams he has faced twice is the Yankees, who have hit him hard both times. Still, a trend that may bear watching.
IMDb Protected
A California appeals court throws out a lawsuit against the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), holding that under California’s SLAPP statute (designed to reduce lawsuits targeting public speech), IMDb was entitled to immunity from suit for basing its listing of film credits on the credits used by the studios. The plaintiff claimed an entitlement to be listed as a producer on three films but had had his credits deleted by the studio after he left its employ.