EndlessSummer wrote:Without John Mayberry, life on earth wouldn't be possible?

smitty wrote:If Darin Ruf was a peninsula, he would be the Yucatan.

I'm pretty sure.

We probably make too much of this, but Ryan Howard‘s platoon splits couldn’t be more noticeable if he’d divided a group of about 40 soldiers.

My parents have a kitten who has a habit of walking into the bathroom, nudging the door closed and pulling a drawer open so you can’t open the door. She then realizes she’s trapped and meows and meows, too stupid to realize that she could just nudge the drawer closed and slip out the door.

So why do I want to outlaw the shift, Sam? Because at a certain point it gets too annoying to rescue the kitten over and over, and you have to just leave the bathroom door closed.

One of the constants in baseball in the 2000s has been the Cardinals' and Red Sox's status as contenders. Not every year, sure, but most years.

For years, it seemed like Brown would never get any stability, that he’d be bounced from corner to corner, up and down the lineup, from the majors to AAA, from the bench to the field, like the belly rolls on a running fat man.

People confuse allegiance with unthinking and unwavering support. Like you can be a Phillies fan and see nuance in what they do without being GRRR BARVES FAN NOT A REAL FAN WHY ARE YOU SO NEGATIVE. In short, there are some in the Phillies blogosphere (Joecatz of The Good Phight, for example), who insist on reacting to every Phillies story as would a sort of sleepwalking, lobotomized Axis Sally, spouting concern trolly nonsense like a cross between a less-well-read New York talk radio host and the lunatic birther uncle you have to block on Facebook. Because that’s the kind of half-cocked yet wholesale asshattery it takes to side with the corporation trying to squeeze the last couple grand out of unpaid labor over the kid who wants to go back and enjoy his last season of college. To have such a slavish devotion to “the rules” or “the team” without stopping to question for a second what kind of moral, social or economic end “the rules” are geared toward. In a just world, such people would be pressed to death like Giles Corey in The Crucible, except instead of stones we’d use copies of Das Kapital. (“More weight! More exploitation of labor!”) Ordinarily, I wouldn’t provoke a conflict with someone who’s 1) capable of such spectacular mental gymnastics and self-delusion as are necessary to construct such a wrongheaded magnum opus of a comment chain and 2) so entirely not worth my time. But I’m really curious how they managed to get the internet in London at the age of the Industrial Revolution, and I’m wondering if you can send an email to Charles Dickens for me and tell him to hire a goddamn editor. I hope to Christ you don’t vote.

phdave wrote:

People confuse allegiance with unthinking and unwavering support. Like you can be a Phillies fan and see nuance in what they do without being GRRR BARVES FAN NOT A REAL FAN WHY ARE YOU SO NEGATIVE. In short, there are some in the Phillies blogosphere (Joecatz of The Good Phight, for example), who insist on reacting to every Phillies story as would a sort of sleepwalking, lobotomized Axis Sally, spouting concern trolly nonsense like a cross between a less-well-read New York talk radio host and the lunatic birther uncle you have to block on Facebook. Because that’s the kind of half-cocked yet wholesale asshattery it takes to side with the corporation trying to squeeze the last couple grand out of unpaid labor over the kid who wants to go back and enjoy his last season of college. To have such a slavish devotion to “the rules” or “the team” without stopping to question for a second what kind of moral, social or economic end “the rules” are geared toward. In a just world, such people would be pressed to death like Giles Corey in The Crucible, except instead of stones we’d use copies of Das Kapital. (“More weight! More exploitation of labor!”) Ordinarily, I wouldn’t provoke a conflict with someone who’s 1) capable of such spectacular mental gymnastics and self-delusion as are necessary to construct such a wrongheaded magnum opus of a comment chain and 2) so entirely not worth my time. But I’m really curious how they managed to get the internet in London at the age of the Industrial Revolution, and I’m wondering if you can send an email to Charles Dickens for me and tell him to hire a goddamn editor. I hope to Christ you don’t vote.

SK790 wrote:

phdave wrote:

People confuse allegiance with unthinking and unwavering support. Like you can be a Phillies fan and see nuance in what they do without being GRRR BARVES FAN NOT A REAL FAN WHY ARE YOU SO NEGATIVE. In short, there are some in the Phillies blogosphere (Joecatz of The Good Phight, for example), who insist on reacting to every Phillies story as would a sort of sleepwalking, lobotomized Axis Sally, spouting concern trolly nonsense like a cross between a less-well-read New York talk radio host and the lunatic birther uncle you have to block on Facebook. Because that’s the kind of half-cocked yet wholesale asshattery it takes to side with the corporation trying to squeeze the last couple grand out of unpaid labor over the kid who wants to go back and enjoy his last season of college. To have such a slavish devotion to “the rules” or “the team” without stopping to question for a second what kind of moral, social or economic end “the rules” are geared toward. In a just world, such people would be pressed to death like Giles Corey in The Crucible, except instead of stones we’d use copies of Das Kapital. (“More weight! More exploitation of labor!”) Ordinarily, I wouldn’t provoke a conflict with someone who’s 1) capable of such spectacular mental gymnastics and self-delusion as are necessary to construct such a wrongheaded magnum opus of a comment chain and 2) so entirely not worth my time. But I’m really curious how they managed to get the internet in London at the age of the Industrial Revolution, and I’m wondering if you can send an email to Charles Dickens for me and tell him to hire a goddamn editor. I hope to Christ you don’t vote.

Crashburnalley, regarding the gifted storyteller, wrote:Earlier today, Michael Baumann posted Crash Bag #94. I thought it was entertaining and informative as usual, but in discussing the Ben Wetzler issue, Baumann targeted The Good Phight contributor Joecatz. Some unflattering terms were used to describe Joe and the way he arrived at his viewpoint.

Correctly, this received some criticism. When I started this blog back in 2007, I wanted to bring an objective, level-headed perspective to the Phillies. I like to think that we’ve done a good job of that since then, even in the days of fisking. Baumann was not completely level-headed and objective in his response to Joecatz’s take on the Wetzler issue. There are, indeed, times when opinions deserve derision (see: vaccine denialism), but this was not one of those times. Joe, as he typically is, was willing to discuss points of disagreement and deserved the same respect in return.

I would like to publicly apologize to Joecatz for the way he was treated here. I failed as an editor to identify this and stop it from being published. Joe is a boon to our Phillies community and deserves more respect than he was shown here. Going forward, I will do my best to make sure that issues of disagreement are handled with grace.

I firmly believe the Phillies have the one of the best blogging and commenting communities because we work with, rather than against, each other. Sometimes it’s easy to lose sight of that.

* As a note, since this post isn’t particularly germane to the Phillies or baseball in general, I’ll be taking this off of the front page shortly. If you’d like to save this post for future reference, you can bookmark it or jot down the URL.

I was really hoping not to have to write at length about Ben Wetzler, but that's all the Crash Bag questions I got.

smitty wrote:I enjoy laughing at Baumann's writing but the last thing is just plain weird. Can't make heads or tails of it. Maybe he should stick to comparing his prospect evaluations to his failed attempts at getting some trim.