No, Marktgarten, Rikkeller's right, it's Mencken, not Barnum. I think you're thinking of "Never give a sucker an even break." That was Barnum.

And Rikkeller, you're right, it's nobody ever went broke. I meant to write nobody ever got rich OVERestimating, a play on it, get it? But I screwed it up. I've fixed it now, eons after it ceased to have a chance to be funny.

No, it's like having pointless spam removed from a moderated thread.

Although it took a long time for Frazier to forgive Ali, he has.

You have a citation on that?

This profile less than two months ago in the N.Y. Times doesn't make it sound like Frazier's buried any hatchets:

http://tinyurl.com/yelt2l

Fair enough. It sounds to me like maybe he's reconsidered, but who knows. Not me from reading one article, I admit that.

jackburden It seems to me that we are seeing a lot of backlash against sabermetrics and performance analysis this winter. Morneau and Howard won MVP awards largely because of their gaudy RBI totals.

Did I miss the lash? When did the MVP voters think otherwise? And when did the big contracts go to the saber-darlings as opposed to the guys with the gaudy traditional stats?

Mike from Metuchen Gil Meche $55Million/5 Years, Ted Lilly $40/4, Drew $70/14, Lugo $36/4, Pierre $45/5

One of these things is not like the others ...

And he was reportedly hitting 98 on the gun last year. If he's healthy, and stays healthy, he may become the pitcher Seattle thought he was going to be several years ago. Big if, of course.

Still crazy money, but everybody's getting crazy money.

Seattle's not as much of a pitcher's park for RHP as it is for LHP. Still a pitcher's park, I think, but not extreme.

Whoa! I was with you right up till there.

Don B You know, the other day I was looking over my investments, and I said "3 million dollars? Peanuts!"

Probably not, but If you were a multi-hundred-million-dollar business, you probably wouldn't let $3 million stand in the way of something you thought was necessary.

Seriously, $3 million is less than the going rate for middle relievers this winter. The Red Sox aren't going to say, "We can afford $8M a year for the guy we expect to be our ace, but not $11M." Keep in mind that five years from now, $3M will probably buy you a middle reliever through the All-Star break.

Sure, at some point, you run in to the budget max, whatever it is for the Sox. But they're not going to run into it on the No. 1 player they want. They can save $3M elsewhere if they really have to, which they probably don't. And anyway, $3M is only the difference. They'll meet in the middle, so if they told Matsuzaka to take a walk, it'd be over probably less than $2M.

In the context of MLB salaries in 2006-07, $3 million really is peanuts. Sorry about that. Count me as one of those people who can't figure out why it's an insult to Western civilization if one of the 350 or so best pitchers in the world -- even if we think of him as "just a crappy middle reliever" -- makes a ton of money, but doesn't seem to be an insult if some singer or actor or comedian makes five times that much for being a B-list celebrity, and the top movie stars make 8 or 10 times that much every time they make a movie.

And let's not even talk about CEO's, many of whom make more than the Yankees payroll, and do Mike and Mike in the Morning say peep about it?

Ben Buster for San Fran? Seriously? Everything I'm reading is that the line is 10 pts. for Seattle and he's flipping the coin?

Looks like Buster had it right, eh?

He uses Danny Sheridan's odds at USA Today, and the line was 3.5.

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/gaming/sheridan.htm

That's about what the line was on Seattle-Arizona last week. I wondered about it in the column, saying I thought my kid was getting hosed for having to go to the coin on that game. He did, picked Arizona, and that's why he's in first place and I'm down near the bottom.

timbuktom Okay with you if I pass your analysis along to the guy at the Free Press who came up with the original lightly-analysed stat? He will not be mad. He will like it.

Even if he won't be mad it's OK. This is a public conversation!

tbrandel "Too much player movement and churning of rosters may tend to diminish fan interest."

I remember reading a study a few years ago saying that rosters churn about the same now (or then) as ever. It just seems like they churn more because there isn't those two or three guys who stay with one team forever. Stars change teams more.

Also, I don't know that roster churn turns fans off. Maybe it does, but the interest in the hot-stove league, which is hotter than ever, tells me it doesn't. An awful lot of fans follow the game for fantasy purposes anyway. The only rosters they care about are their own. Also, an awful lot more fans follow the NFL, where rosters churn away like crazy. Also also, baseball is setting attendance records.

I just find that statement dubious. I do think it's just your own interest waning for your own reasons -- which are of course perfectly valid for you!

kingkhan Seriously, you had to know somebody at Salon.com to get this gig.

Nope. They threw a dart at the phonebook and hit my name.

timbuk, Agreed the minors are a great thing. The question I was asked was: "What is right and wrong with the MLB today?"