I live in a small town where the rule is if you want to speak at the annual meeting, you have to identify yourself. As far as I can tell, that has not been happening at these Congressional "town meetings."

So we end up letting a radical minority, hiding behind their anonymity, and in some cases their guns, hijack and intimidate public sentiment. And as usual, the corporate media toadies play along.

And what few see - certainly not the pawns spewing their garbage at representatives and Senators - is that this is all part of a calculated effort to grab back power in 2010 by weakening Obama.

The thread on the the Allan Barra interview closed before I could add yet another piece of remarkable information about Yogi. It's at:

http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/ber0int-3

King: Good luck with the new direction / responsibilites / adventure. You've been the main reason I visit Salon. Don't stop thinking about and writing about baseball, when you can. You do a great job.

the Republicans want to put a big ol' closet case Pharisee at the head of their show, then that is just fine with me.

Sox - Yanks '78 AL East playoff

Twins - Braves '91 WS 7th game

Maybe they didn't change history - or maybe they did - but they were great games, nonetheless.

moronic.

The Rem Dog, despite his cult status in so-called Red Sox Nation, is as good as it gets on the air today. A former big-leaguer, he knows and appreciates the game as it's played at that level. He has credibility without being arrogant, probably because of how hard he had to work to get to the bigs and remain there. He does his homework about the team and the American League. His self-deprecating humor is genuine, and his appreciation of the absurd has a distinctly local tinge to it, in a guy-who-has-been-a-ball-player kind of way. He's really funny, in other words, in ways that resonate with locals who have played a lot of baseball. A New Englander, he gets the insanity of Red Sox Nation, and comes across as a guy who realizes every day how lucky he is to be where he is. Not sure how well this would translate on a national level, though he has done fine on the Saturday games he has covered.

And don't stop.

Thanks for writing about baseball so much lately. Keep it up.

I've enjoyed the furious keyboarding that has resulted, whether I agree with it or not, or, as usually has been the case, it goes way over my head.

It's a great game. Whether you're a Sabermetrician or a traditionalist, there's room for everyone.

Had VORP and WARP and Win Shares, etc. been available all along to voters, who are the HOF players who would never been elected in the first place? Probably several if not many.

So, if Ralph Kiner and Rabbit Maranville are in, so should be the following guys, in addition to Henderson: Rice, Dawson, Raines, Morris, Blyleven, Kaat, John, Smith, Santo, Al Oliver, Steve Garvey, Kirk Gibson and Gil Hodges.

Bet that will get some pants bunched up this morning.

Absolutely a major difference in the game.

Why? They work on it.

How? Setting the pitching machine for pitches on the corner at 90 plus mph - your perfect two-strike pitch, in other words - and working at tipping it foul. That's why you see so many at bats saved.

Related, but not really. Next time you want to win a beer when you're watching a game with a buddy, bet that the first pitch after the count is full will be fouled off. It's amazing how often this happens.

When they eventually play the Sox - Yankees playoff from Oct. 1978, check out the physical condition of the players.

That was a game - perhaps the greatest ever, under the circumstances - in which each lineup had a large percentage of Hall of Fame and near Hall of Fame players.

Only Reggie Jackson and Jim Rice, who were also notable football players in their youth, stand out as "muscled up" (and Jackson more so than Rice).

So the game wasn't that different, condtioning-wise, in the late 1970s, from the days of Larsen's no-hitter.

A game from ten years later would definitely reveal vastly different physiques on most players, Hall of Famers or not.

What we're seeing on the field today is the result of almost thirty years of focus on year round conditioning and nutrition, the effects of which were exaggerated by the pervasiveness of steroids and other supplements.

Additionally, starting in the 1980s, there began a revolution in hitting instruction, aided in large part by the use of the video camera. Hitters had the opportunity to examine their swings and at bats in ways that previous generations did not.

Also there in the last two decades there has been an explosion in training methods and devices - pitching machines, soft-toss devices, sophisticated tees - that have helped even moderately talented players take their performace to another level.

As a result of all this training you see more uniformity in technique today than you did in the 1970s and early 1980s.

It has only been recently that emphasis and instruction for pitchers has begun to catch up.

until I stumbled on the Fiesta thing while channel surfing.

Whether it's continuing the BCS or creating a playoff (4 teams? 8 teams? 16 teams?), just have it culminate on New Year's Day, please.

New Year's Day used to be the best day in sports, before the BCS.

Some years, there'd be as many as three or four bowl games affecting the national championship, and sometimes we might even get a split decision!

Whining about subjectivity aside, the flawed old bowl system gave us a day full of meaningful games. Today they are precisely as you describe them - watered down exhibitions.

There's no incentive, aside from parochial rooting interest, to really pay attention any more.