A Gen-X View of the Universe.
"The Issue Isn't Pussy, It's Monkey" - from The Right Stuff
Film, Cinema, Movies, TV, Music, Rock
This is the Coelacanth version of 'Astronaughty'.
Video Killed The Radio Star is my offering of the week.Saturday night's victory was not just a victory for the Labor Party; it was also a victory for those Liberals like Malcolm Fraser, Petro Georgiou and Judi Moylan, who stood against the pernicious erosion of decent standards in our public affairs.Eleven-and-a-Half Years is a lo-o-ong time. You tell them Paul, and you can come in from the cold now. :)
The Liberal Party of John Howard, Philip Ruddock, Alexander Downer and Peter Costello is now a party of privilege and punishments. One that lacks that most basic of wellsprings: charity.
The French philosophers had it pretty right with the Enlightenment catchcry of liberty, fraternity and equality. There was not much liberty for the boat people, or fraternity for the Aborigines or the Muslims, or equality for the unionists who believed in nothing more revolutionary than the right to collectively bargain.
Believe you me, one of the greatest talents to ever walk the earth was Pete Sampras. Okay, so he never won on clay at the French, but he had everything going for him. Speed, power, accuracy, tactics, the serve and volley, the instinct, the endurance, the mental toughness. If you ever were going to create a perfect player, Pete Sampras at his prime was a good template with which to start. Of course his greatness is about to be eclipsed sometime soon by Roger Federer when he accumulates 3 more Grand Slaam titles. Federer actually is a very similar type of player who just happens to come to the net a little less. There is very little difference between the two men in terms of their command of the game.Sampras never faced a break point and converted one of two against his opponent as he handed Federer a 7-6 (8), 6-4 defeat at the Venetian Macao arena, wrapping up a three-match Asian exhibition series between the two tennis greats.Play enough games between 2 great players and you would get such results, but Sampras has been retired 5 years. He obviously was short on match practice in the first game, but by the third, he must have had his form back. It doesn't prove *anything*, but it gives us a glimpse and reminder of just how good Sampras was at his prime. Nice to see you in action at the top of your game one more time, Pete.
Sampras downplayed his victory, noting Federer was coming off a long season and that he was helped by his big serve and the fast indoor carpet surface. He had only aimed to win one set during the three-match series.
"Let's not get carried away," he said at a news conference.
Sampras ruled out a comeback from retirement, telling the audience after the match, "I had my time in the 90s."
Federer tried to put on a positive spin on the loss, saying he wasn't embarrassed to lose to his idol, but still showed some disappointment.
"It's been tough beating my idol the last two times. I'm happy that he got me at least once," he said, but adding, "I hope we can do it again in the future. I'd like to get him back."
The two players have won a combined 26 Grand Slam titles, but Sampras, 36, retired five years ago after winning the U.S. Open in 2002. Twenty six-year-old Federer is fresh from another stellar season as he won three Slams and last week's Masters Cup in Shanghai in compiling a 68-9 winning record.
"I'm sort of surprised. This guy can play tennis, you know," the Swiss player said after his loss Saturday.
At the trade deadline in 2006, the Yankees traded for Bobby Abreu AND Corey Lidle, taking on their contracts from the Phillies. In exchange, they sent 2005 No.1 pick for the Yankees, C.J. Henry to th Phillies. This is what I wrote back then. At least the Phillies are not geting Philip Hughes or Jose Tabata.In other words, I wondered out aloud, what the point of signing C.J. Henry as a No.1 Pick, only to throw him out at the first trade opportunity. It turns out the Yankees really still like C.J. Henry, because now that the Phillies have released him, they've signed him to a minor league contract.
I would have thought Eric Duncan was the name that would surface in all of this but either the Phillies didn't want him or the Yankees didn't want to part with him. C.J. Henry's been dissappointing so far, but you have to figure this trade isn't too bad if you consdier that C. J. Henry only came to the Yankees because they let Jon Lieber walk to the Phillies.
I'm a little uncomfortable with this when you consider that the Yankees have already flipped another middle infield minor leaguer Hector Made for Sal Fasano only days ago.
Maybe Made was going to be another Erick Almonte, but it seems if they throw out C.J. Henry to boot, you'd have to start asking what's wrong with these MIF guys and why were they in the organisation to start with. As in, why draft C.J. Henry as a first rounder in the first place?
"He came to us," scouting head Damon Oppenheimer, the man who drafted the 21-year-old Henry, who batted .184 for Lakewood (Single-A) this past summer. "He told us he wanted to play for us and asked would we want him back? We made sure he wanted to play baseball and we found out the last month of the season he was fitted for contacts and hit .300."How the hell did the Phillies let him go? They must've disliked intensely what they saw in him, and were so discouraged, they didn't even bother trying to trade him.
Henry, who had a basketball offer from Kansas out of high school, was drafted as a shortstop and moved to the outfield.
"He will play the outfield in the [Single A] Florida State League," said Oppenheimer, who wasn't sure where in Tampa's outfield the speedy Henry would play.
Though Henry hasn't hit in three minor league seasons, Oppenheimer said he believes the 6-foot-3, 205-pounder will benefit from being around people he knows.
"People have a feeling for him," Oppenheimer said. "We all have a stake in this one. He means more to us than if he was with another team as a released player."
One of the guys Bernstein tracks down in 'All The President's Men' is a guy who is a professional campaign hack. Stuffing ballot boxes and running innuendo are his thing. He calls it "Rat-Fucking". The obnoxious little term encapsulates the very pettiness, the mean-ness, and the rudeness of the activity. After all, how could fucking a rat even be so pleasurable or worthwhile unless one's member was suitably small?Bogus flyers from a fake organisation called the Islamic Australia Federation were distributed through the letterboxes of voters in a marginal seat, claiming the Labor opposition sympathised with Islamic terrorists.Then, they tried to pretend it was a Chaser's Style Prank. Spin us another one!
The leaflets referred to the men imprisoned for the 2002 nightclub bomb attacks in Bali, which left more than 200 people dead. The flyers also claimed Labor support for the building of new mosques in the area.
Speaking on ABC radio this morning, Ms Kelly said she did not approve of the pamphlet, but labelled it a "Chaser-style of prank", a reference to ABC TV comedy team The Chaser.Skylarking after a few beers she says? Right. I see. Have a few beers, get little tipsy and one Liberal Party honcho says to another, "I know, let's go Rat-Fucking!!!!"
"I think its intent is to be a send-up but obviously it hasn't worked," she said.
"I think if you read it you'd be laughing. Most people who have read it have said 'That's a Chaser-style of prank'."
Ms Kelly said the "prank" was "really immature stuff" that would not influence any voters.
Ms Kelly described her husband's actions as "skylarking" after a few beers.
"I'm a bit upset with him, but no, look I love him," she told Southern Cross Broadcasting.
"He hates the unions with a passion and after weeks and weeks of letterboxing, what gets to be boring material, of a repetitive message that we get them to letterbox all the time, they come up with their own skylarking over a few beers and think that something's funny," Ms Kelly said.
The Chaser's executive producer Julian Morrow has now invited Ms Kelly, who will retire after the election, to join the comedy team.Good to see such shenanigans being brought to light. I heard reports from BD that this stuff was going on in his electorate during the 2004 elections. It's sort of funny how it comes up in this election and not the last. As fr as I can tell, rat-fucking is as old as Democracy.
"Jackie will obviously be looking for a job," Morrow said.
"One of the criticisms of The Chaser is that we don't have any women on our team.
"Bronwyn Bishop has got the inside running, but Jackie is welcome to make an application."
Morrow questioned whether the Liberal party "prank" had truly been in the spirit of The Chaser.
"If this was really a Chaser stunt, where were the big props, where was the Osama Bin Laden costume," he asked.
"The only real similarity [with a Chaser gag] is that the Liberals in Lindsay got caught and may be facing charges.
"It's a bit of a worry when the best argument you have to defend your ethical practices is that you were doing what The Chaser does.
"We are hoping this will lead to a profitable political consultancy for The Chaser in the future."
The principal reason the public should take the opportunity to kill off the Howard Government has less to do with broken promises on interest rates or even its draconian Work Choices industrial laws, and everything to do with restoring a moral basis to our public life.Certainly not Bob Collins. There are two explicit points that need to be made.
Without this, the nation has no standard to rely upon, no claim that can be believed, not even when the grave step of going to war is being considered. When truth is up for grabs, everything is up for grabs.
Cynicism and deceitfulness have been the defining characteristics of John Howard and his Government. They were even brazen enough to oversee the corruption of a United Nations welfare program. And when they were found out, not one of them accepted ministerial responsibility. Not Alexander Downer, not Mark Vaile and certainly not Howard. What they were doing was letting the cockies get their wheat sold through the AWB, while turning a blind eye to the AWB's unscrupulous behaviour - illegally funding a regime Howard was arguing was so bad it had to be changed by force.
Howard took us into the disastrous Gulf War on the back of two lies. One, that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, capable of threatening the Middle East and Western Europe; the other, that Howard was judiciously weighing whether to commit Australian forces against an evolving situation. We now know he had committed our forces to the Americans all along.
If the Prime Minister cannot be believed, who in the political system is to be believed?
The Auger Collaboration - a team of 370 scientists from 17 nations including Australia - reported overnight in the journal Science that they had pinpointed the source of 25 cosmic rays, rare particles that travel across the universe at close to the speed of light.Oi, oi, oi.
“They almost certainly come from 'active galactic nuclei' or the centre of very active galaxies, powered by black holes,” said Auger member Roger Clay, a high-energy astrophysicist with the University of Adelaide.
“We're now debating if they're produced near the black hole or by energy coming from the black hole.”
According to his Auger colleague Alan Watson of Britain's University of Leeds, the finding opens a “new window” on the universe and is the start of a new form of astronomy - cosmic-ray astronomy.
Along with Adelaide University colleague Bruce Dawson, Professor Watson and other overseas scientists such as University of Chicago Nobel laureate James Cronin, Professor Clay was a founding member of the collaboration.
They pulled together $US50 million to build the world's largest cosmic-ray observatory.
Named after the French physicist who first observed the cosmic rays, the Pierre Auger Observatory comprises an array of 1500 detectors, spread across 3000 sq km in Argentina.
Although many low-energy cosmic rays, like those from the Sun, hit the observatory, only high-energy cosmic rays are not deflected by magnetic fields on their journey from source to earth.
Having detected these cosmic rays, Auger scientists hope to use them to probe magnetic fields, especially those between galaxies, something now not possible.
“We're desperate to know about magnetic fields because they fill the whole of the universe and they have energy,” said Professor Clay.
Not only do magnetic fields work with gravity to shape galaxies, but they may also be one of the most important forms of energy in the universe.
“We want to know where all the energy of the universe is,” Professor Clay said. “We want to have a list of it all.”
Here's something that purports to explain the series of events from A-Rod's perspective. Interesting reading."He read all the criticism online from home," one person who spoke to Rodriguez said. "And when he was out of the country, he was calling people every day to find out what was being said about him. I think it got to the point where he truly was in a state of depression."So this dovetails with the Kevin Long/Brian Cashman conversation that was reported yesterday. Interesting line about the merchandising demand. When he opted out, I looked at my A-Rod signature Louisville Slugger and thought, what do I do with this now? ("try actually using it" says my partner "instead of worshiping it"). Typical A-Rod - Weird, weird, weird.
More than anything, it apparently was the very public and seemingly ironclad dismissal by Hank Steinbrenner after the opt-out that made A-Rod begin to re-think his willingness to let Boras once again dictate the direction his career would take.
"That's why he called me, to ask if Hank was serious about closing the door on him," a second person said yesterday. "From what I gathered, Boras had been telling him not to worry about what Brian Cashman was saying about the opt-out, partly because they knew they had George on their side.
"But then Alex saw the shift in power, with the Steinbrenner sons taking over, and here was Hank saying 'Goodbye, we don't want you if you don't want to be a Yankee.' Those words really messed with his mind because he really did want to be a Yankee."
Yes, there are indications that Boras had convinced Rodriguez that all of the talk about an opt-out ultimatum from Cashman was merely negotiating rhetoric, regularly reminding him George Steinbrenner was on his side.
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People who should know say that while Rodriguez had given Boras the go-ahead to opt out, he had no idea the agent would leak the news in a way that would upstage the World Series.
"He was blind-sided by the timing," was the way one person put it. "He was (ticked) and he got more (ticked) as time went on and he saw the hit his reputation was taking. The demand for his (merchandising products) dried up almost immediately.
"He was so angry at Boras that at one point he told friends he was thinking of suing him. Then there was a series of steps that led him to take control of the situation. The Lowell talks (with the Yankees) pushed him over the edge. He didn't want any part of going to Boston. So he made his move without Boras.
"I think their relationship will survive - there's too much history there. But I don't think it will ever be the same."
New York state tax officials want Jeter to fork over what could be hundreds of thousands — even millions of dollars— in back taxes and interest for the years 2001 to 2003, when the baseball shortstop claimed residency in Florida, despite his high-profile presence in New York’s sports and gossip pages during that time.Pay your taxes properly, Jetes!
Lawyers for Jeter, who has an off-season home in Tampa, Fla., dispute the claims that Jeter “immersed himself in the New York community” and made “numerous statements professing his love for New York" during the disputed period, according to documents published this week on a state Web site monitored by FOXNews.com.
A-Rod has released a statement. After spending time with Cynthia and my family over these last few weeks, it became clear to me that I needed to make an attempt to engage the Yankees regarding my future with the organization.This is a really interesting development.
Prior to entering into serious negotiations with other clubs, I wanted the opportunity to share my thoughts directly with Yankees' ownership. We know there are other opportunities for us, but Cynthia and I have a foundation with the club that has brought us comfort, stability and happiness.
As a result, I reached out to the Yankees through mutual friends and conveyed that message. I also understand that I had to respond to certain Yankees concerns, and I was receptive and understanding of that situation.
Cynthia and I have since spoken directly with the Steinbrenner family. During these healthy discussions, both sides were able to share honest feelings and hopes with one another, and we expect to continue this dialogue with the Yankees over the next few days.
A high-ranking Yankees source told the Daily News that the team is willing to bring Rodriguez back on a below-market contract, one that would make up for the $21 million subsidy from the Rangers that the Yanks lost when A-Rod opted out of the final three years of his contract.So the trial separation ends up in more excess? Absence makes he heart fonder? Funny that.
In addition, the Yankees don't want to deal with Boras, who has been Rodriguez's agent since the slugger was 16 years old.
"We will not negotiate with Scott Boras," a Yankees source said. "He cannot be in the room."
The Yankees are also aware that Boras could convince Rodriguez to stop the talks. "We realize it could be a trap to get us back in the negotiations," said one Yankee official. "But we don't think that's the case."
Rodriguez apparently approached the Yankees through a third-party intermediary. "He went to them," said the source.
As the Daily News reported today, A-Rod will have to have person-to-person talks with the Steinbrenner brothers -- Hank and Hal -- before a deal can be sealed.
According to the first source, the Yankees are waiting for Mariano Rivera to sign a new contract before finalizing any plans with Rodriguez, who is expected to take a 10-year deal worth roughly $275 million. That would be about $75 million less than Boras has been looking for, though most industry insiders believe there was never going to be a $350 million offer out there for Rodriguez.
"Alex is going to be back with the Yankees," the source said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the deal had not been made public. "The Yankees don't have a choice. How are they going to compete without Alex? They need him back."
I don't get it either, Brian. Why would A-Rod opt out before hearing what the Yankees had to say, if he really wanted to stay a Yankee?The Yankees, however, have known for a while that A-Rod still hoped to be in pinstripes. Hitting coach Kevin Long, who is tight with Rodriguez, said Wednesday night that he told general manager Brian Cashman during his own contract negotiations two weeks ago that Rodriguez wanted to return.Here's how the conversation went, according to Long:
Cashman: "Kev, we made our offer and they shut us down."
Long: "I still think Alex would love to be a Yankee."
Cashman: "I don't get it."
Long: "Well, I just know how much he wants to be a Yankee and I know how much that you have expressed that you want him back. If that's the case, then certainly you should both still be talking about it."
Cashman didn't return a message Wednesday.
As you would expect, Jorge Posada signed with the Yankees for 4 years $52.1m.Jorge Posada, the 36-year-old free agent catcher, will remain a Yankee, sources familiar with the negotiations told the Daily News Monday night.This is excellent news as he is still one of the best hitting catchers in the game.
After being schmoozed by Mets general manager Omar Minaya Monday afternoon during a lengthy lunch at Le Cirque, Posada and his agents finally received the offer from the Yankees they had been hoping for all along.
The Yankees offered Posada a four-year, $52 million contract - the same deal they gave both Johnny Damon and Hideki Matsui two years ago - to remain in pinstripes. The deal will become official pending a physicial and final contract language being ironed out.
Carl Pavano is about to get the boot off the 40-man roster. In case you forgot, this is the guy the Yanks signed, along with Jaret Wright tat brought about the fateful 2005 season - yeah, you remember, the one with Aaron Small and Shawn Chacon bailing out the crapped-out rotation...Pavano had Tommy John surgery in the first week of July. A quick healer might make it back to the mound in a year. But Pavano is not a quick healer. There probably is a slim chance that since they have invested so much in the right-hander that the Yanks will keep him on the roster, hope he recuperates and then try to trade him late in the season. Nevertheless, as one AL executive said, "Who would trade for a guy like that who basically hasn't pitched in three years?"Why indeed!.
In addition, the Yanks would have to eat just about Pavano's entire salary anyway, even if there were a trade to be made. Pavano is due $11 million in 2008 and has a 2009 team option for $13 million with a $1.95 million buyout. The Yanks likely will see it as a sunk cost and value protecting their prospects over some pipedream of getting any value out of the indifferent Pavano. The Yanks already have a complicated 40-man roster situation because to sign Juan Miranda and Andrew Brackman, they had to give them major league contracts and, thus, 40-man-roster slots years before they would have been eligible for them.
If Pavano is not released this month, he probably will be before spring training as the Yanks' 40-man roster refills with either their own signed free agents such as Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera and Andy Pettitte, or their replacements.
So for a four-year, $39.95 million contract, the Yanks would have received 19 starts and a load of headaches and heartaches from the brittle Pavano. He went 5-6 as a Yankee with a 4.77 ERA. He had as many wins in four years as a Yankee as reliever Luis Vizcaino did in the four weeks from to June 22-July 21 last year.
The Globe says there is no deal for Mike Lowell with Boston. Not yet anyway. He wants four years.Yeah. Tough choice. Will Lowell fall off the face of the Earth or will he retain his value? Reasonably speaking, he's at the point you'd only want to give 3 years and no more. He wants four. Four years means he would be at best a DH or bench guy at the end, probably blocking the next 3B coming through the system.
Now he’s on the market and a certain team in the Boogie Down needs a third baseman. But the Yankees should be careful of Lowell.
Home in 2007: .373/.418/.575
Away in 2007: .276/.339/.428
Career at Yankee Stadium: .278/.330/.456 (90 ABs)
This is guy is one of the finest people in all of baseball. I’ve known him for 11 years and he’s a great guy. But this is also a guy who went .236/.298/.360 for Florida in 2005. Playing at Fenway Park in that lineup revitalized him.
The Yankees need a third baseman and taking him would weaken Boston. But a four-year deal for him would be a reach.
The normal format for my reviews are 'What's Good', 'What's Bad', and 'What's Interesting'. I'm chucking it out for this film. This is because this film is by far the most important film in my youth, if not my life. I love it to death, I will love it unto death and like a long lost lover, I can claim it ruined my life. :)
Way back when in the early 1990s when the 10th year 'Director's Cut' came out, I wrote a review for the Nub's Rejectamenta calling for Ridley Scott to go back to the cutting room once more to finish a job half-done. At the time it felt ludicrous to even suggest it, given that the director himself had said the 1992 version was his cut. Of course projects of any kind being what they are, they are never finished - clearly he felt he had to go back to it, which does not surprise us at all.
In the original novel, Voight Kampf test was used to test Empathy. As in, the androids were incapable of empathy and therefore susceptible to being found out. Androids couldn't care abut anything - except Dick was able to delineate a distinction for that lack of care. The Voight-Kampf test machine was Philip K. Dick's way of saying there were psychopaths in our midsts, but science could diagnose them. A very 1960's take on psychopathy. Of course at the end of the book, we get to the point where Rick Deckard faces off against Roy Batey/Batty and simply guns him down.
One of the things that popped into my head as I watched this film for the thirty-something-th time in parts and first time in others, it occurred to me that one of the subtexts of the film is about fetishism. Nary has there been a film that lavishly brings to light the texture of objects. And the objects are so manifestly inviting to the touch; or we recoil at the quality of objects. The entire film is loaded and layered with *things* - books, leather, plastic, steel, textured concrete blocks on the wall, hair, skin tones, make-up, glass, sequins, scales on the fingertip, haze in the air.
Yeah, you know I miss the old ALP Warhorse. Here's his latest serving in the Herald.Work Choices happened only because the unexpected control of the Senate gave Howard his lifetime chance to break the back of trade unions. The same trade unions which, by 2005, had given him nine years of moderate wage outcomes consistent with an inflation rate of 2.5 per cent.
But not good enough for him. He attacked anything that was decent around him to push down further the interests of lower-paid people. As if the profit share in the economy, and the sharemarket with it, wasn't high enough, going from one record to another.
And to oversee his wilful system, he put in Kevin Andrews and Joe Hockey, both in political short pants when I had comprehensively deregulated the system in 1993. Hockey was not even in the Parliament. I could name a thousand people who have forgotten more about the wages system than either of them knows.
But now all of us have to put up with Hockey's infantile claims, while that refugee from the Dollar Sweets case, Costello, looks forward as prime minister to putting the boot into working people even further.
This is the reality of the industrial relations system in Australia today.
Only 5 per cent of employees are covered by the Goebbelsian-titled Work Choices legislation. The other 95 per cent live every day of their working lives under the Keating Labor government's industrial laws.
Howard's and Costello's vicious assault on Kevin Rudd's and Julia Gillard's industrial relations proposals, claiming that they will see a return to centralised wage fixing, is based on nothing more than a lie. What Rudd and Gillard are proposing is the maintenance of the existing enterprise bargaining-cum-safety net model set up by Labor in 1993, with modifications to take account of the continuing and evolving needs of the economy and its workplaces.
You get the gist.
That's our old Paul letting it rip. I worry about him coming out of the woodwork now, but I guess he's feeling confident about the polls.
Joe Hockey is spewing chips.Workplace Relations Minister Joe Hockey says he's upset about the attention given to a joke he made about his wife's pregnancy.
Mr Hockey was last night named as a contender at the annual Ernie awards for sexist remarks.
"Well, it's exhausting for me, her being pregnant," Mr Hockey told the Seven Network earlier this year.
"I don't know why, during the birth process, they only focus on the women."
Mr Hockey said today he had been targeted by 'deceitful, left-wing groups'.
"You know why I'm upset about that?" Mr Hockey told Southern Cross Broadcasting today.
"Because I said that on (the Seven Network's) Sunrise with absolute irony.
"We were talking about - are you going to be at the birth of your second child - and I was joking.
"We were all laughing, including Kevin Rudd, we were all laughing about it and I said, 'oh yeah I don't know why, you know, it's going to be tormenting for me, torturous for me to be at the birth'.
"And we were joking about it.
"This deceitful, left-wing, bloody feminist groups have completely taken it out of context and tried to make me out to be a misogynist pig, and I really hate that sort of thing."
You reap what you sow, Joe; and what Socrates said is indeed true.
He took his hemlock, you can take your Ernie nomination on the chin. ...but it is a little rough. :)
The Test Cricket season has started and the Australians got off to a flying start stomping all over a divided Sri Lankan team, for the first couple of days only to encounter some resistance. Finally given his moment, Stuart McGill delivered."A milestone like 200 [wickets] is the pinnacle of my career so far, and I'm starting to become a member of a smaller and smaller club," MacGill said. "Things like that are nice for your kids and family. There's not going to be anybody else in my kid's class with a dad with 200 Test wickets. I hope. Because otherwise I'm going to have to find something else that's cool. I'm pleased I've given them something to be proud of."Goodness! He's 36 now? I'm deeply shocked.
Not since Clarrie Grimmett 82 years ago has a spinner taken 200 wickets in fewer matches. Indeed, only two other bowlers of any persuasion have bettered MacGill's effort of 41 Tests to reach the 200-mark - Dennis Lillee and Waqar Younis - and none had to contend with the kind of staccato career the veteran leg spinner has endured since making his debut against a South African team that featured the likes of Hansie Cronje, Pat Symcox and Gary Kirsten. Australia have contested 110 Tests since then, and for 69 of those MacGill has been confined to the sidelines.
For a bowler who has scraped and clawed for every opportunity at Test level, it seemed somehow fitting that MacGill would be forced to toil for his 200th yesterday. A determined opponent, a placid pitch, a slippery ball, and a dicky knee were all conspiring against the 36-year-old, and though economical in his earlier spells, MacGill was somewhere short of penetrative.
Sydney just isn't what it used to be. If you thought I was the only one, here's an article. Amazingly, I found this sentence:The City of Sydney lacked a permanent town planner for years, to little outcry.The rest is history, as they say.
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You have to admire the chutzpah of a guy who brazenly asks for this much money for a 32 year old player. Yeah, he's historically great with a good chance of retaining most of his value, but that sum is insane.Before Alex Rodriguez opted out of his contract with the Yankees earlier this week, the team was told that it would not be able to meet with the third baseman unless it presented an offer of at least $350 million, sources say.This A-Rod thing is already getting pretty stinky, like a fish corpse in the sun.
The Yankees had hoped to meet with Rodriguez this week, and would have presented him with an extension offer close to five years and $150 million, to begin at the conclusion of his 2008-2010 contract, through which he would have earned $81 million. Through the Yankees' proposal, then, Rodriguez would have made about $230 million over eight years, and during the last five years of the contract, sources say, he would have earned the highest annual salary in Major League Baseball history.
But team executives were told, sources say, that in order to arrange a meeting with Rodriguez, they would have to be prepared to make an extension offer that would take the third baseman's deal up to a total value of $350 million. That means that the offer the Yankees intended to propose would have been more than $100 million short.
That, tells me far more than I ever needed to know. A-Rod would be a shit of a guy to share a dugout with if everything he does or says is couched by him talking about his salary and then cries uncle when beat writers roast him for not living up to his own billing.
Some people want to believe Boras has some sort of hypnotic hold on his clients and the poor player is a somehow a pawn. But these are adults. If A-Rod is capable of living to the age of 32, getting married and having a child, he is capable of telling his agent what he wants.
In the two seasons I have been around the Yankees, only one player has talked about his salary time after time after time. About how being the highest paid player in “pretty cool”, about the pressure of being the highest paid player and about the responsibility of being the highest paid player.
One guess who that is.
Scott Boras wasn’t above him manipulating any strings. If you want to be angry about Alex Rodriguez turning his back on the Yankees, be angry at Alex Rodriguez.
Blame Boras? That’s just what they want you to do.
This is sort of 'the sane choice'. Choose the guy who played in the organization in a World Series winning team, who has managed and won a manager of the year award, who is an ex-catcher who understands the nuances of things, who has an engineering degree so is not a complete stranger to say, basic statistics which is what is used in sabermetric analysis.New manager Joe Girardi is believed to have taken part in the meeting, which took place at Legends Field - not long after Girardi formally agreed to his own three-year contract.There you go.
Brian Cashman flew in from New York for the meeting with Rivera and his agent.
Rivera's presence is certainly a positive, especially considering he emphatically stated in spring training that he planned to enter the free-agent market and view the Yankees as just another team.
But that's obviously not the case right now, as Rivera and the Yankees are taking advantage of their 15-day exclusive negotiating window. Other teams can start to negotiate beginning Nov. 12.
Asked if he was optimistic that a deal could be reached by that date, Cuza said: "It really depends on them, and that's a question I can't answer. We just wanted to see what each side had to say."