Asymmetrical Information

As the grandson of a former Boston Braves pitcher and Arlington High graduate, I must evaluate last night's glorious triumph in its rightful context; God is Just.

One Babe deserves another.

C'mon Jane, at least you know that one side of the family is pinching themselves in stunned disbelief, and is sleeping very joyously. And isn't it time that the other part of our baseball heritage got it's day in the sun?

Alas, I to am in mourning, wearing my black cloak, sitting upon a rock thinking what might have been.

http://www.di-links.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=435

Is this how you feel?

The Curse of the A-Rod:

http://flyunderthebridge.blogspot.com/2004/10/mankerryan-candidate.html

Yeah, I'm pretty bummed. The walkoff homer in the 12th totally bummed us out.

"I will be crooning myself to sleep every night with a picture of The Babe nestled snugly in my arms." Didn't know you were a Beltran fan.

Go Astros!

I don't think there's any doubt the best team won. It just never occurred to me that that would have anything to do with it. The baseball gods have spoken. The idiots.

I used to enjoy watching professional sports until I realized how much of my money is being stolen by the municipal government to help pay for the stadiums and other facilities that these teams use to make their own money. Houston now has two stadiums built about a hundred yards apart (the Astrodome and the new football stadium), a baseball and basketball arena downtown (crammed in with all the other crap they're trying to cram downtown), an old basketball arena that is turning into a church, and a light rail line intended primarily to transport people back and forth between downtown (with it's stadiums) and the Astrodome/Reliant Park stadiums and convention center. ALL of that has been subsidized by me. Oh, and then there are the countless businesses that went bankrupt during construction of these various projects as well as the land that's been condemned to build privately owned, for-profit hotels and etc...

When they start paying their own way and stop using money that should be used for police, roads, etc..., I'll be happy to cheer them on.

Oh, and I don't care if people outside of Houston think we're a "world-class city" or not, especially if having professional sports teams is how we're supposed to make them think that.

Bolie IV

No, I'm not bitter at all.

I'm still basking in the joy of it....

if they're going to win the world series, why not come back from down three to beat the yankees and go on to win game seven of the world series in fenway with roger clemens on the mound

go red sox!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hey, if Babe Ruth's daughter can root for the Red Sox this year, "out of pity", maybe you could give them a break too.

Could be The Babe lifted the curse to do her a favor...
~~~~

Babe Ruth's daughter is a Red Sox fan, after years as a Yankee backer. And Julia Ruth Stevens, 86, said the "Curse of the Bambino" is way off base.

"I do not believe in the curse," Stevens told The Post yesterday in a telephone interview from her Arizona home. "It's just a coincidence. Daddy would have never put a curse on his old team. He enjoyed his time playing for Boston too much."

Since the Sox sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees in 1920 for a mere $100,000, the Bombers have won 26 World Series titles compared to Boston's zero.

A longtime Bomber backer, Stevens switched allegiance to the Sox a few years ago, out of pity and because she makes her summer home in New England.

"I pull for Boston now," she said. "For one thing, Daddy did start out with them. But even more because I think they're overdue after all these years of losing out to the Yankees. They've had such terrible luck for all these years."

But Stevens insisted her late dad isn't turning over in his grave because of her rooting interests.

"Daddy will always be a Yankee fan, but I think he'd understand me pulling for the Red Sox because it's good for baseball," she said....

Well, Jane, take solace in the fact that you lost to the best team in baseball.

Maybe Georgie can triple the payroll and hire some more mercenaries next year. The sad thing is that most Yankee fans arent even aware that the Yankee run was fueled by decisions made when Steinbrenner was suspended and divorced from baseball decisions. Everything he touches baseball wise (when he starts being the GM) turns to ash.

A nation's grief??? Jane, I can't believe one as intelligent as you would fail to realize that almost everyone outside the Tri-State Area LOATHES the Yanks, and is reveling in the glory of Boy George's comeuppance.

Now this is loyalty to the team...

~~~
Cadaver pitches in to help Red Sox

Somewhere on a slab in Boston is a citizen of Red Sox Nation who actually gave his body to the cause.

With the team's future increasingly dependent on Curt Schilling's right leg, doctors decided to try an apparently unprecedented procedure to keep a tendon from slipping around in his ankle. But first, they wanted to test it out.

So they used a cadaver...

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news;_ylc=X3oDMTBpcDBuM2RlBF9TAzk1ODYxNzc3BHNlYwN0aA--?slug=ap-alcs-schilling&prov=ap&type=lgns
~~~
It seems the Sox had the dead on their side.

As a Cubs fan all I have to say is - as ever -
"wait until next year!".

The Yankees must have known they were in trouble when they were shut down by a pitcher with a shoe full of blood. The Red Sox are a pretty scary bunch this year. They look like a bunch of barbarians and cannibals stuffed into uniforms at the last minute, and they play with that kind of merciless force. Go Sox!

a nations grief...The Nations joy.

RED SOX NATION!

I note a shortage of comments cheering on the best team in baseball this year, the St. Louis Cardinals. I write this before our own game 7, but are you Red Sox folks ready to revisit 1967?

Clutch pitching by Derek Lowe, too - whodathunk the Sox would win it with a medicinal chemist on the mound?

Seriously, I'd like to see a Cards-Sox series too - if not for the historical resonance, than at least to avoid a week of inane comparisons to the election...

After considering Arnold Kling's comments on "Red Sox technologies" ...

Well, it's too bad for the Sox that the Big Red Ones are going to break their hearts. Go Cards!

Go Sox!

I went to game one and game two at Yankee Stadium. I watched part of game three but was so disgusted, I had to turn it off. Unfortunately I can not watch the games as it turns out I am the Jinx. Every game I did not watch, the Sox won. So I am allowed to watch the 9th inning, that is it. My Husband shouts to me whenever something happens in the game.

The thing that's annoying me is the press is acting like the Sox have never made it to the series before. They're not going to win, but at least point out that the Sox have been to the series many times over the past 86 years...they just haven't won.

On another note I predict that George Bush will win the election if the Red Sox actually do win the series. Look, if the series goes to game seven, then they win on October 31st and all of New England will go on a three day drunk binge...and not wake up until the morning of November 4th, hung over and not able to remember that the election already happened!!!!

A Yankee fan expecting sympathy? Sheesh.

I don't like these Yankees much, but I hate the Red Sox more. The Yankees make no effort to disguise their arrogance; they spend good money to buy their championships, and they expect to get them. Meanwhile, the Red Sox operate under a phoney cloud of populism, ignoring that their payroll also dwarfs nearly all others. And how can anyone root for a team that has Manny Ramirez on the roster?

I hope they lose the Series in seven, after winning the first three, with Roger Clemons throwing shutout ball in Fenway Park over the 10th, 11th, and 12th innings.

I dont follow baseball, but the Red Sox win has me deeply divided anyway. I nearly always cheer for the underdog, and God knows the RS are post season dogs. But I love football, and the Pats have the special sort of contempt I reserve for any NFL team that wins the Super Bowl, not named the Pgh Steelers. Add to the that the fact that NE will be basking in the glow of Kerrys election in two weeks, and Im pulling for the National League WS representitive.

I love it when an owner can't buy a championship. So even though the Sox are a motley mix of disgusting hoodlums, I dislike the Yankees more. I'm glad Arod's multi-million dollar salary went to waste for another year.

Sorry, Jane.

It's not the nation's tragedy, it's NYC's - get it right. Damn Yankees can lose 162 for all I care - the Jays might even get a few more wins that way(well, I can hope...). Besides, as I've said repeatedly, the World Series is being decided tonight, since we know for a fact that the AL is losing this year. Let Boston go for it, it'll be funny to watch another state go into mourning when their team crashes and burns.

Nah. As someone far from either coast given the Yanks purchasing power versus my own small poor baseball market I have only two opinions about sports outside of my town. Any day the Yankees or the Cowboys lose is a good day.

Exactly which nation is grieving over the fall of the Evil Empire? Iran? North Korea? Mordor? ;)

As a diehard Mets fan, Yankee failure is pretty much all I've had to celebrate for a loooong time, and this one was the most satisfying yet.

I know it's small consolation to Yankee fans right now, but the postseason is little more than a crapshoot, anyway. (I'll never look at baseball the same way since reading Michael Lewis' excellent Moneyball)

I will be crooning myself to sleep every night with a picture of The Babe nestled snugly in my arms.

Oh my...I had no idea that sort of thing persisted beyond slumber parties amongst 12-14 year olds.

Out of curiosity, does this behavior make your pet dog jealous, or has he come to accept the addition?

As a natural born citizen of Red Sox Nation, all I can say is "Maybe next year." HAHA!

I don't think anything that happens in the World Series can match the emotionally gruelling spectacle that true believers on both sides went through Sunday through the pre game on Wednesday. Personally, I feel like the Sox are playing with house money anyway. Will I be disappointed about it if the Cardinals beat them? Absolutely. But we'll be back soon.

But I'm glad it the Cards and not the Astros. You can crow about the history and that the Cards beat the Sox in the World series twice 38+ years ago, but the ghosts of Clemens and Bagwell are a whole lot more frightening since they're, you no, corporeal.

The best part about Wednesday is that Darth Steinbrenner can go into ultimo destructo mode and overpay for all kinds of players. That's the reason beating the Yankees this week was so important. It makes us marginally stronger, I suppose, but it's likely to make the Yankees make themselves significantly worse.

How about Fidel?

http://redmindbluestate.blogspot.com/2004/10/fidel-george.html

You are well aware of all the usual arguments, I will not go there. Let me offer a slightly different perspective: the developing world.

I live in Nicaragua and have lived in Central America for years. From this perspective Bush and Kerry are very distinct from one another and part of that distinction will affect the lives of the millions of people among whom I live.

The first and most obvious reason is trade. Because I have regard for your intelligence I will not waste your time telling you all the reasons that liberalized trade is the single greatest hope for economic development in the developing world. I will merely restate that it is.

President Bush has been a regular dynamo compared to those who came before. I realize that some have sneered at treaties with Singapore, Chile and the rest. But I don’t care. To me this is of a piece with his overall worldview, which, if I am reading these particular runes correctly, might turn out to be quite extraordinary.

I understand that there are some aspects of this bold vision that give others fits and there can be no doubt that there are risks but the potential rewards beggar the imagination. Maybe this looks very different from the outside looking in, but from this perspective the big picture is the most intriguing thing to come out of US foreign policy in years.

Finally, there is something that we have been watching up close. For some time now studies have shown that perhaps the biggest threat to democracy – certainly in our region – is corruption. We are the direct beneficiaries of the Bush administration’s determination to fight corruption.

This is not the time to describe the events of the last few years here but you need to know just two things. This country is controlled – no hyperbole – by dueling caudillos. One strong man is the perennial leader of the Sandinistas, Daniel Ortega. The other is Ex-President Arnoldo Alemán. Both are the very essence of corruption.

I will assume that you have some idea of Ortega’s perfidy, his incompetence is legendary. He does, however, possess a kind of cunning and, upon getting trounced in the first free and fair election, 11 years after seizing power, he claimed he would rule from below. And to a large extent he does.

Ortega could never have won this position – he averages between 35% and 40% support, never more. But by wheeling and dealing with the last president, Alemán, he managed to get outsized percentages of seats on all the national institutions. He and the Sandinistas now control the courts, with the predictably dire results.

The man who gave him all this power, Alemán, did so to perpetuate his own power. His is a long story but all you need to know is that ‘’The Economist’’ said of him that others had stolen more but surely no one had stolen so much in so short a time from so poor a people. Lovely guy; a grotesque actually.

When time came for Alemán to – temporarily he intends – give up power, he installed his obscure Vice-President, Enrique Bolaños. Don Enrique was thought a bit of a rube, a clueless engineer Alemán and his party could control. But with the active support of the Bush administration and apparently Bush personally, Don Enrique allowed his prosecutors to indict Arnoldo. All hell broke loose.

Arnoldo, thanks to the limited cooperation of Sandinista judges, was convicted, he is sort of in jail and all the while Ortega pulls this string a little and then that one. Arnoldo’s adherents who are bafflingly monomaniacal in their fervent loyalty to him have bedeviled Don Enrique in every way they can. They declared themselves in opposition to their own president, they make common cause with their hated enemies, the Sandinistas, anything to rescue the spectacularly corrupt Alemán. Most recently going in-league with them to attempt a technical coup.

What stopped them this time? What continues to stop them? The Bush Administration. Sometimes the involvement is direct and sometimes, as this last, it is more subtle, moving behind the scenes to gather international support for Bolaños. After crashing in this last attempt against the brick wall of the international threats, they said, in so many words, that they would wait a few weeks and try it again.

I realize that this is long and I ask for your patience just a few lines more. I wish that Bush was more articulate, I wish he would speak up about just how comprehensive his approach really is and about the mounting successes. In the last three years we have seen the arrest and prosecution of Alemán, the flight from prosecution by ex-president Portillo of Guatemala and, in the past few days, the arrest of two Costa Rican ex-presidents, one of whom was recently elected head of the Organization of American States.

Why should you care? Maybe you won’t. But before Bush such circumstances would have been inconceivable – these men could not be touched and that knowledge kept democracy from delivering on its promise. The developing world deserves much better and Bush is the only American president who has acted as if he understands how high the stakes are.

A nation's grief? Surely Jane, you know, that while the Yankees have the largest fan base, that everyone outside of that fan base hates the Yankees?

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