I always laugh when I read about how the Yankees have mismanaged their farm system so terribly. It seems to me that a farm system is meant to help the major league club. It makes no difference whether the Columbus Clippers or the Trenton Thunder win or lose. As long as they help the big boys in the Bronx, all is good.

Now, the classic way in which to help the major league club is to develop player skills and bring them up to majors a la Jeter, Posada, Williams, Cano, Cabrera, and Mariano Rivera -- players who have either helped win the not-so-recent-anymore championships or who may be big parts of the future.

However, it is just as valid -- and arguably smarter if you've got the means -- to use the farm system to trade away prospects for proven players. Moneyball Schmoneyball. There are at least 10 teams in the majors with the financial clout to use their farm systems effectively to create a winning team, yet it seems that the Red Sox and the Yankees are the only two that consistently do.

Finally, for all those who deride the way the Yankees use their farm system, would they trade every minor leaguer they had to have a 10 year playoff run? Of course they would, even if it meant the next ten or fifteen in the wilderness.

(Harvard does the same thing with professors. Other universities hire young, untested, new PhDs cheaply and get the first 10-15 years out of them at low salaries in hopes that they will develop into major scholars (even though few do). Harvard basically hires established super stars or temporary lecturers to fill the gaps for a few years (the Andy Phillips's of academia). Where's all the weeping and moaning about this by those Harvard people who so longingly embrace the poetic Red Sox?)

The idea behind Wikipedia is that the great mass of people reading it will correct its errors. This relies on a large number of people reading the entry. If the same size is too small, then the system doesn't work.

(Just like any fool knows that looking at a single post seasons series and announcing that the player is or is not clutch is moronic because the sample size is too small).

So King baby, give us the facts so we can correct Wikipedia and if -- God forbid -- you ever come to a premature end in a bizarre gardening accident, your obit won't be wrong because some lazy ass journalist couldn't be bothered to do more than google you and read your Wikipedia entry.

When, exactly, did you adopt the nom de guerre "King"? Is narcissism or irony?

Does this have any relationship to your unnatural fixation with Elvis Presley?

Is your wife very tall or are you not so tall? (See picture: http://www.indiebride.com/essays/king/index.html)

How does one not remember where the pick up a pair of USAF dress pants? Do you buy this sort of thing all the time?

How did you end up in St Louis?

Having lived in Oakland, do you believe that there is a 'there' there?

... but she still seemed really tall to me. The shoes, by the way, are really and truly fabulous.

I tried to add to wikipedia something about King's greatest idea ever: naked supermodel flamethrower fighting, but it got almost instantly deleted. I couldn't figure out how to add a link, but I thought it was as legitimate as any of the the other odds and ends in there.

(http://www.salon.com/sports/col/kaufman/2006/02/16/thursday/print.html)

J writes: The problem with A Rod is that he's paid twice as much, give or take, than any other player in the league and he's NOT TWICE AS GOOD.

Actually, that's not true. Here are the top ten 2006 salaries:

1 Rodriguez, Alex $ 21,680,727 New York Yankees

2 Jeter, Derek $ 20,600,000 New York Yankees

3 Giambi, Jason $ 20,428,571 New York Yankees

4 Bagwell, Jeff $ 19,369,019 Houston Astros

5 Bonds, Barry $ 19,331,470 San Francisco Giants

6 Mussina, Mike $ 19,000,000 New York Yankees

7 Ramirez, Manny $ 18,279,238 Boston Red Sox

8 Helton, Todd $ 16,600,000 Colorado Rockies

9 Pettitte, Andy $ 16,428,416 Houston Astros

10 Ordonez, Magglio $ 16,200,000 Detroit Tigers

One reader writes: That might have something to do with why he never seems to meet caring, conversational, men with social graces who happen to be straight. I would guess he might like guys like my brothers; they're straight, family-oriented fellows, but they're both urbanites in helping professions (education and social work), which doesn't leave much time for huntin', fishin' and fightin'. Maybe all LW needs is to pick his friends from a different pool.

Why is it that it is always okay for liberals/elites/academics/urbanites -- pick whatever incorrect lumping term you like -- to assume that if a person (man or woman) hunts and / or fishes s/he must be a neanderthal?

I hunt. I am also a card carrying member of the ACLU, a history professor, a progressive libertarian and hope that I may be considered caring, conversational and possess a social grace or two. I'm also an urbanite in a helping profession and I manage to go hunting without dropping my g's at the end of the word.

Hunters are as diverse a group of people as professors, even though both groups tend to think of the other as a monolithic block of stereotypes. I know plenty of hunters who are erudite people who are as likely to discuss their feelings as any academics I know, but you would never know that if you insist on making them all out to be unthinking, primitives motivate but bloodlust.