Letters to the Editor
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if this is supposed
to be some kind of back handed, it has always been thus, justification of that monster barry bonds; then you should stick to politics. are you desperate to curry favor with joan? sad.
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oh dear
Someone woke up all grumpy this morning!
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Did you know
That more than 2/3rds of all MLB players who have been suspended for performance enhancing drugs were pitchers?
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Unpopular Sports
If only they'd bring back immigrant childfighting. Now there was a sport.
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Dissent does not equal grumpiness
Why is it that LWs like cloudberry always default to "Uh oh, someone woke up grumpy" whenever another writer makes a strong stance against an article or comic?
"Someone woke up grumpy" is as meaningless a psuedo argument-winner as "Why, that sounds like something Hitler would say!"
It also reminds me of right-wing talk-show hosts after the 2004 election, who smugly dismissed liberal disappointment in the Bush victory with, "C'mon libs, don't be sore grumpy losers!"
*******
By the way: I'm not the first letter writer.
And my morning is going fine so far.
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Lonewolfy...
There is a difference between reasonable dissent and mean-spirited grumpiness. The first post to which cloudberry was responding started with a completely twisted and confusing attack on the silly comic, suggested that Ruben Bolling "stick to politics," and then supposed that Bolling is, for an unstated reason, trying to "curry favor with joan."
This was not a "strong stance"-- it was a barely coherent, grumpy, hamfisted swipe at the comic and the author with no meaningful reasoning or logic displayed. I think cloudberry was charitable in assuming that the first post was made by someone perhaps grumpy, groggy and just waking up, rather than just being a jerk.
There was nothing backhanded (What has always been thus?!) about this. It was noting like a "justification" of Barry Bonds. It was a SATIRICAL criticism of Bonds and, more broadly, a sport (or all sports) obsessed with meaningless records of accomplishments that will just be broken again next year or next week.
Glad to hear your morning is going well, and I hope your afternoon keeps you in similar high spirits. Personally, I am grumpy, which is probably why I took exception to your characterization of cloudberry.
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Cartoon
By god, if you aren't grumpy today you have not been paying attention!
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Pud Reilly's been around a while
If you check the online archives, not just the Salon archives, you can find Dancing Bug strips featuring ol' Pud dating back to the late 1990s. This is a recurring character.
Whatever happened to Sam Roland, the Detective Who Dies?
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i wrote
the first reply to TTDB, did it at 11 pm cdt last night-- wakeful, contented, sober, all my peeps accounted for, after a day of significant accomplishment.
barry bonds is barry bonds. cheats and then lies about it (or, some have observed has never denied his cheating but has made a mockery of the process of inquiry)-- very similar morally to pete rose. i do not write in fury about barry bonds or in hope of changing him.
this matter of not assisting the process of inquiry is crucial; and i do write in fury with the bonds apologists and in the hope of embarrassing and changing them. so when ruben and joan justify this grotesque moral insult to baseball, they are justifying our ignorance and rationalizing our inability to understand and reach appropriate judgments.
this is the white male way. get people to make terrible decisions, often far overly generous evaluations with regard to the status quo, based on their ignorance. no matter how precise your inferences, you will seldom accomplish good reason with incomplete or faulty premises. it is pretty much the enlightenment project to stand against this conservative paternalism of the patriarchs and for transparency with the people.
i'm appalled, joan is tearing down the reputation of salon by voicing the argument for ignorance. you should be too.
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I'm grumpy.
But only because people still give a damn about the overpaid chowderheads who play corporate sports.
Stop watching commercial-soaked events played by multimillionaires. Get some friends together and play a game yourself.
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I don't get it
It's not clear whether this comic is intended to make fun of sports records and how meaningless sports are in essence (as he does with his rather unfunny celebrity fake factoid pieces), or an attempt to be moral relativistic about Bonds. It doesn't appear that Bolling is a baseball fan, as even a non-fan like myself recognizes that slowballs do not result in homeruns, so we can guess the point of the joke is the former. This should be a funnier subject matter, the jokes need to be punched up a bit.
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moral insult to baseball
Dear lord. A moral insult to baseball. P-lease. Can we leave measures of morality out of the world of sports? Baseball = a game (perhaps even, an unkind person might point out, a game designed to keep the mobile vulgus distracted and goofy, rather than engaged in issues of life/death significance). While the baseball may be something enjoyable to discuss over brewskies with my buddies, I leave questions of morality and immorality to the pandemic AIDS crisis, the refugee emergencies ignored in the press, and the "best war ever."
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Appropos of Nothing
Okay, you can tell it's kind of a slow day at work when I start looking up stuff like this on the web.
The all-time HR leader before Babe Ruth was a guy by the name of Roger Connor, who played for an assortment of teams from 1880-1897, including the NY Giants, Philadelphia Phillies, and the St. Louis Browns. Connor's mark of 138 career dingers stood until 1921, when he was surpassed by The Babe. Prior to Connor, the HR king was a guy named Harry Stovey, who spent most of his playing career (1880-1893) with the Philadelphia Athletics. Connor surpassed Stovey's mark in 1895.
The single-season HR leader before The Babe was Ned Williamson. Williamson cracked 27 homers in 1884, as a member of the Chicago White Stockings. That mark was eclipsed by Babe Ruth in 1919, who hit 29 dingers while playing as a pitcher/outfielder for the Red Sox. He blew away that mark by hitting 54 HR the very next season, 1920, his first with the Yankees. The Babe beat his own single-season HR mark with 59 HR's in 1921, and then again in 1927, with 60 HR.
All of these stats are courtesy of baseball-reference.com.