Call me a cynic, but the Tulowitzki-Cal Ripken comparisons are premature.

Hey Ripken, you stop kissing his ass too.

Needed 3 weeks of white hot, after a lackluster 5 months, to pull the wild card out of the hat in the much lesser league (large thanks to a Padre fold in Milwaukee). Now all of a sudden they are all Gods.

Now THAT is funny......Were all his other post season masterpieces 10 percent too?

Lost to the Cubs on Sunday October 1, 2006........After a 129 day layoff they shellacked the White Sox on February 28, 2007, with 10 runs after 4 innings.

I insist they be made, in their entirety, right up front. If, for the sake of argument, the Red Sox rape the Rockies in 4 straight, is the whole thing attributed to the lay-off?

The Indians just lost two routs in Fenway, both teams with a one day lay-off and Beckett pitching neither one........What was Clevelnad's excuse?

I have to give you credit for that letter to the editor. I said up front. You had your excuses in order 7 days in advance.

Are you even watching the games? And if so why?

When are you dumbasses gonna trade Dunn?

If the Rockies win tonight, but then lose the next 3, can the layoff still be blamed........Like a flashback acid trip or something. A layoff flashback when they go back home.

Okay Rockies you won 21 of 22 in the National League. You want a medal or a chest to pin it on?

It's so obvious now. Everyone facing the Patriots is on a week layoff.

Your team star is going to be Adam Dunn for the next 8 years.

Good luck.

The Reds after an 8 day layoff? I guess going by the general theory of layoffs, they'd finally start winning.

The basis explanation for it all. We have a guy in our possession and we KNOW that he KNOWS about some imminent attack. And we must get that information. How do we know that he knows? Besides that, if we are to the point where we have been able to comfiscate the guy himself, we should know whatever the plan is.

Other than that ridiculous and tortured proposition it is torturing people who may know something.

Of all the slippery slopes, that one might well be the slippiest.

We torture the guy for a few hours. He finally spits out that such and such a building is being fire-bombed at noon on Saturday. So all the swat teams are sent in and the trap is set. Nothing happens.

Now what? Go back and start torturing him again?

Any layoff before the 120 straight?

Are you saying the very first Reds travelling team won 120 straight? I can see it now. Pulling into a city, rounding up some goobers, and explaining the game to them as you played.

On the other end of torture. I'm betting on a heart attack before things commence.

To get my second guesses in beforehand.

Francona should sit Ortiz in the first non-DH game. It could come down to a tie game late or the Sox behind but with runners on, maybe 2 out. Then you have Ortiz to insert as a pinch-hitter in the situation of your choice if a tater would really help.

Won 5 of 6, scoring 51 runs up to July 8th for an average of almost 9 a game........They next played on July 13th and scored 10 runs.

So much for the layoff theory.

McCarver's predicting of what pitch is coming. I'm getting suspicious of his calling of a pitch after it's thrown. He confuses sliders and curves sometimes for sure.

Or did they play scrabble for 8 days?

A.)Not at all. Pronounced rust that really impacts performance is a negative exponential function of performance ratio p and time t in days. Assorted tests disclose once t = 6 days (or more) the p-factor really discloses layoff effects that are substantial. For example, on base averages of 0.400 before the layoff will plummet to less than 50% of their value. ERAs meanwhile will be less affected for certain pitchers, but explode for others (as we saw for Francis).

By this paradigm a five day layoff, while seemingly large, is in fact not insuperable. Particularly as performance indices during the regular season are not as critical as in post-season. Hence, it isn't remarkable the Rockies had five day layoff and came back. But comparing that to 6 days (as for the Tigers last year) or 8 days (Rockies this year) in the post season, is like comparing chalk and cheese.

or

B.) Beckett and Schilling just repeated what they have done a bunch of times to a bunch of teams in their post season careers.

"I wonder if it would be possible for Not to take eight days of rest - after a thousand posts in six months, the servers could use the break. Of course I have no doubt he would come out of the gate firing bullets at the end of the week."

And thus by demonstration, disproving the layoff excuse.

Be careful of droogoy. He may be an imposter. He's really thought the layoff excuse has been dung all along.

If it's not sarcasm, we have a real problem on our hands.

Okay. We have you down solid in the layoff excuse camp.

By the way this all ties in with your previous mention of my common critique of the fans. They are ingenius and relentless in their excuse making for others, as mere observers. Can you just imagine the load of crap we'd be getting if they were actually competing.

If you strip away the fans excuse making after their team loses there is almost nothing left. Other than when their team wins the other teams fans excuses are totally bogus.