I think pundits never take into account how much a toss up new players coming into the league are compared to known quantities.

The Bobcats have a lot of youth, what they need is some experience. In my mind Jordan's sending the uknown quanitiy/ raw Wright to Golden State for the experienced but not old Jason Richardson is a good move, for both teams.

People always seem to discount how much of a lottery the draft-lottery is. (Looking back at any previous lottery easily proves this point.) Who's to say Wright, or Green, or Brewer will be any good. There's no telling really.

Also, I'll take your bet about McRoberts and Fazekas being better than Alondo Tucker. I think he's a gamer, and a potential Finley/ Michael Redd. But what do I know? It's all a crapshoot.

Didn't watch much of the LLWS, but as a former resident of Japan, I can tell you that by far the biggest sporting event of the year there is the National High School baseball tournament (called Koshien). While high schoolers crying (and boy do they) might be more stomache-able than 9-10 year olds, the real beauty of the tournament is that it airs on Japan's equivalent to PBS, called NHK. No commercials, no melo-drama, just young athletes playing the ir hearts out at the game they love.

The downside- no restrictions on the pitchers, most teams have one ace, that pitches all 9 innings, and then all 9 innings of the game the next day, and the next day, etc...

Matzuzaka became a star in Japan for his performance at this event, moreso than anything he did in the Japanese pro-ranks.

(The second most popular event is probably the company-team New year's day marathon relay. Which is notable in that these Japanese companies all seem to employ a couple ethiopian/Kenyan ringers in there mail rooms.)

You can't give half-stars in your netflix rating. (I don't know how blockbuster works) There are so many movies that don't deserve four stars, but aren't so middle of the pack that they should get 3 either.

The scoring system is way too ham-fisted for my sophisticated critiquing needs.

Why not 0-10? I have a huge number of movies I rated with 4 stars, some of which I really think are much better than others within the same grouping. Give me half-stars!

What will the reaction be when the next coach in an awesome display of cunning calls the last second time-out, but the field goal misses! Then on the second go the field goal is true!

Won't that be a terrific display of gamesmanship by the coach.

That's all it will take to stop coaches from doing this.

At first, reading Harrison's argument that there is simply no advantage because both AL and NL get to play by their own rules at home, I thought man this guy couldn't be more wrong. The comparative advantage of a great DH Al teams budget for over the mediocre advantage of having a pitcher who's had a few more at bats is not comparable. Most pitcher's are bad hitter's no matter how often they swing.

But then I reread his letter, realized he's probably smarter than me, and rethought it. In the theoretical situation where every team has the same amount of money to spend, any money a NL club wasn't spending on a big-name DH would be redistributed among all the the other players, meaning they could spend a little more on every other position. In effect, in the world series, both teams would have the same amount of money on the field at AL parks, and the NL club probably a little more at home because the high-salary DH would be sitting out (a simplified model I know).

But no salary-cap= no meaning. When the Red-sox and Yankees have payrolls 3x their NL competitors, isn't arguiing about the possible slight advantage from the DH rule a bit silly?

Sorry, Harrington, nor Harrison. I do that almost everytime I post. I need to take crib notes before I go to the post screen.

I still hold that this entire conversation is way too theoretical to be taken seriously in a world where some teams salary is 4 or 5 times larger than others. While it might be interesting to theorize on whether the bloody Red Sox had an advantage in the fall classic due to the DH, I contend that the fact that their salary could afford two of every player from the rockies makes such parsing moot. The big salary teams spend all the money to get the hitters, but they also spend all the money on the pitchers. If they were capped, they'd be making a trade-off with a top dollar DH with the rest of their roster

(And don't give me the crap about the good farm systems the Yanks and Sox have, because the low-salary teams have to trade the decent prospects they might have to compete in the short term, or can't afford to keep them once they get too good because of the top dollar offers coming from the big spenders. It's bullying.) It's great if you're a fan of one of those teams, but sucks if you're a fan of baseball. All we have left is entertaining but essentially meaningless discussions about whether the DH gives any advantage in a vacuum of salary competitiveness.