Secrets of the City

Barry Bonds is a mouthy African-American. Too much for a lot of people to handle. But he’s about to make history.

They treated Aaron the same way. Maybe worse. Supposedly he got death threats. Didn’t want him breaking The Babe’s record.

I bet a good portion of this country thinks Ruth is still the Home Run King.

Not a big deal to The Rat. Home runs are vulgar. He likes the Small Ball.

Aaron was treated bad by the ignorant in some ways, but he wasn’t treated ‘ the same’. He did get death threats.

There is no portion of the country that believes Ruth is the HR King.

Bonds is completely unnappealing, and a talented hitter the likes of which have been seldom seen.

Aaron was completely appealing, and a talented hitter the likes of which have been seldom seen

HRs are vulgar and small ball is king? What, are you Mario Cuomo’s brother or something? Having talented hitters on your outfit who dont have to bunt all the time is an important quality to have in your lineup…

I think enough time has elapsed that Babe Ruth is no longer the home run king. Very few baseball fans alive today have even seen him play. I remember watching Hank Aaron break the record. He was a total class guy.

That is not to say the Barry Bonds is not a class guy, but he is different. He probably doesn’t know it too much personally, but he hung around ball players who witnessed open and rampant discrimination. (Ball players like Willy Mays and quite frankly Bobby Bonds.) These experiences likely color his view as a black ball player. His view of the media and the fans. He knows how Jackie Robinson was treated. He knows how Hank Aaron was treated. Thus, he insulates himself from that treatment. It makes him cold. It makes him stand-offish. It makes him distrustful of the media.

It makes him take steroids.

“Performance enhancing drugs”

I think enough time has elapsed that Babe Ruth is no longer the home run king.

This is not subject to interpretation, or the elapse of time. Ruth is not the HR king.

Tell that to Bill Jenkinson:

http://www.jfitzagency.com/titles/history/baberuth.shtml

Seems to me baseball chat is 3-to1 Ruth over Aaron.

Sometimes it seems Aaron is the Home Run King in numbers only.

I don’t mean to come down too hard on anyone. Its just that one of my missions in life is to disabuse casual baseball fans from passing on bad mythology about the game. The obvious and literal truths about this great game are right there for everybody to embrace.

HR king = Henry Aaron. He hit more than anyone else.

Greatest hitter = Henry Aaron, followed by Ted Williams.

One more sports link:

Pohlad Family Trying To Buy Land Near New Ballpark.

108, I’m gonna put Williams ahead of Aaron. Basically gave up five of the best years of his career to the service in WWII and Korea. Add his average production to his lifetime stats for the missed years, see what you get.

I like the Pohlad can’t afford to build a stadium, but he can afford to gobble up land around it for the eventual rise in value caused by the stadium he’s ripping the county off for. The rich get richer, and they do it on the backs of you and me!

Boo hoo. Get a better job already.

Mature.

Wayne, Pohlad wasn’t born rich. He did it to himself. He didn’t wait around for someone else to make his move.

Didn’t Pohlad make all of his money foreclosing on farmers during the depression?

His business career started with a twenty-five cent deal. At an early age, young Pohlad developed a relationship with a local farmer, convincing him to hire a group of school-aged children to work in the fields. The group charged 25 cents an hour; Carl earned five cents an hour for organizing and record keeping. It was the beginning of a half-century of entrepreneurial leadership.

Apparently he organized child labor also.

agreeing with tom on Teddy Ballgame being slightly better than Aaron…Aaron simply played longer and played against weaker pitching as a result of expansion teams.

And to compare Bonds to Aaron in any sense is blasphemous. Aaron is/was one of the great gentlemen of the game and has always exuded class and decency, whereas Bonds embodies all that is wrong with modern atheletes…self-serving arrogant drug-using cheater.

I can’t wait for the 3 game San Fran – BoSox series in Fenway the weekend after next…for some unknown reason, NL pitchers won’t back Bonds off the plate. You can bet your ass that Curt Schilling will.

Well, a rags-to-riches story makes it ok for him to rape the people by making them pay for his new stadium! He was one of us once! Now it’s ok to walk all over us! He got where he is today by stepping on little people, and we should learn how to do it too!

Now I’m thinking of that scene in Napoleon Dynamite where he works on the chicken farm.

“Seven dollars? That’s like a dollar an hour!”

Last I checked, the stadium will not belong to Carl Pohlad. It will belong to the city of Minneapolis; i.e. the people that are paying for it. And Wayne, are you naive enough to think that the stadium has no benefit to the citizens of Minneapolis (small business owners, baseball lovers, property owners, etc.)? Just because you hate everything fun, doesn’t mean some people may not enjoy/pay for a little outdoor baseball.

If you are a true baseball traditionalist, these guys must be seen.

Who the fuck gets the lion’s share of the benefit from it? The city with its pittance in fees it will collect for the use (some of which are capped and can never exceed a certain amount like the rent on the parking lot air rights) or the guy who’s going to sell a zillion tickets and concessions?

It’s basically an investment for the county, but the problem is that most of the returns are going to Pohlad and not coming back to the county. We’re paying into an investment for him to collect on. How the fuck does that make sense?

I don’t hate fun, but I do hate having the government run around itself and pass special exemptions to a law just to keep the people from voting on the issue (because they were pretty sure the people wouldn’t pass it). People can have their outdoor fun, but I’m pretty pissed my sales tax money is going to such a pisspoor public investment. I figure if we can piss away so much goddamned money on stadiums all over town, why the fuck can’t this backwards ass metro spend any money to get some real public transit or hire more cops or fix the mess that is the MPS, &etc. &etc.

Fucking priorities, people. I’m sure you love your escapism fun in the sun watching ridiculously-overpaid steroid junkies hit balls, but there are more pressing issues that keep getting ignored in favour of this stupid shit.

Buses and LRT aren’t considered “real public transit?”

I don’t really have any issues with the stadium. I’m just disappointed the proposal to distribute the tax base for the stadium a little farther afield and solve a good percentage of our transportation budget issues didn’t pass.

I’m sure you love your escapism fun in the sun watching ridiculously-overpaid steroid junkies hit balls, but there are more pressing issues that keep getting ignored in favour of this stupid shit.

Like paying for Wayne’s transportation needs, people!!

dear stop whining,

The new stadium isn’t creating new wealth and income, it’s just shifting it from one area to another. Folks are going to spend or not spend those disposable dollars regardless of whether we build a new stadium or not. Also, they will stop coming once the novelty wears off if the team is not winning (Camden Yards ring a bell? there’s about a 2.5 year grace period for losing teams in new stadiums) Whatever is gained by business & property owners on the West end of Downtown will simply be lost by those currently on the East end of Downtown. It’s a shell game, dude.

I go to the dome, and I’ll go to the new stadium…no change in revenue for the county on my account.

and you wouldn’t need to hire more cops if the public transit wasn’t so infected with criminals. Maybe less public transit would mean less crime, requiring fewer cops.

King James!!!

Remarkable game last night, but Lebron wouldn’t have gone off like that if Larry Brown was still alive….in the name of keeping this local, Mike Brown is the only thing standing between Flip Saunders and the title of “Worst NBA Playoff Coach Ever”. Gopher fans should thank their lucky stars that they signed Tubby before Flipper became available. He would have made Monson look like Dean Smith.

The whole stadium issue gives me a rash…

Get ready for round two come football season…

Like paying for Wayne’s transportation needs, people!!

I ride my bike, thanks. But good public transit is critical to having any kind of vibrant city that attracts and keeps skilled people from all over. Plus I’m sure you’ll have a great time sitting in traffic in 10 years when nothing gets built and traffic keeps piling up from the new exurbs 50 miles out of the city center.

Buses and LRT aren’t considered “real public transit?”

Sorry, not quite what I meant. But the transit here is decidedly dismal compared to plenty of other places. Nothing like waiting half an hour in the middle of the winter here for a bus when you live in a very urban neighbourhood! And good luck getting to anything in the burbs after 7! Best wishes getting home from a bar after 12:30 too, especially on a snowy night when the cab companies tell you it’ll be an hour wait, or to just give up altogether.

I’m not even going to get into the bottlenecks downtown and how it’s faster to walk down nicollet than take the bus anytime around rush hour.

Get ready for round two come football season…

Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

I don’t think anything Flip did last night could have stopped LBJ, unless he has access to some sort of magical power that he has yet to display. I am glad that we got Tubby instead of him, though.

Wayne, don’t be bitter. Be better.

“Its just that one of my missions in life is to disabuse casual baseball fans from passing on bad mythology about the game.“

Do you find there’s much call for that sort of thing? I would think you’d need quite a few missions like that in order to stay busy.

“ . . . most of the returns are going to Pohlad and not coming back to the county. We’re paying into an investment for him to collect on. How the fuck does that make sense?“

Makes a ton of sense, to Carl Pohlad. With nary an armed threat, a blackmail scheme, or a whiny tantrum, he persuaded us to voluntarily spend money – lots of it – on a new stadium. Which we’ll rent to him. Cheaply.

It’s all about that “living, vibrant downtown” you keep going on about. It’s interesting to watch your stadium vitriol – you disagree about the strategy for getting there, but you’re fighting for the exact same goal as the pro-stadium people. You rarely complain that light rail makes no money per paying passenger, and yet your complaints about the stadium center on ROI.

Somebody needs to quash rumor like the one about Sandy Koufax actually being a Tree Spirit, or Dryad. This is important work.

I don’t think anything Flip did last night could have stopped LBJ

1) Make him play defense on every posession.
2) Try taking a charge once or twice.
3) Check him with Lindsay Hunter out high to take away the dribble.
4) Double team him once he crosses the mid-court and deny, deny deny him the ball
5) If all else fails, foul him…hard…and make him hit free throws. I kept looking for Bill Laimbeer on those drives. Instead I got Tayshaun, flailing sheed & 4 spectators.

buh bye, flip.

“This is important work.“

Oh, no doubt, but I’m just thinking that such a life’s mission probably leaves plenty of spare time for quilting or food-shelf volunteering or, maybe, philately, and this realization is suddenly giving me a whole new respect for philatelists, now that I can see they’re out there protecting the reputations of Tree Spirits and stuff.

I don’t think you chalk this one up to Flip, it was the best defense in the NBA trying to stop 1 man. Anyone who isnt a believer in James after last night better start watching mens cycling with Wayne..

bobby, a stadium is not a piece of public infrastructure. it also only really brings people into the area for brief periods a certain number of times per year. they already come into town to go to the dome, there’s nothing new there other than shifting it across town. It won’t do anything to make downtown any livlier, save when games get out and the drunk sports fans spill out to go home again. That already happens.

I’m sorry, but I think ‘getting around’ is more important to invest in than ‘entertainment venues.’ I guess I’m just a backwards coaster or something.

I think ‘getting around’ is more important to invest in than ‘entertainment venues.’

They don’t have to be mutually exclusive. How about investing in entertainment venues that get around? Like that $50 I gave your mom when she came over. Oh no I din’t.

The old zero sum game. Money for the stadium is money that has been stolen from public transportation or the homeless, or schools or whatever.

If you want to play that game, isn’t feeding starving children, and “doing something” about Darfur more important than “getting around.”

that’s funny, grote, because your mom had a hard time getting around when I finished with her!

she walked a little bow-legged.

Boys! Boys! Please! Both your mothers are here with me, and they are exceedingly vexed by your disrespectful attitudes.

We were enjoying some good conversation over a nice pot of tea and some cucumber sandwiches, and now… this.

Wayne, you need to be happy that the Pohlads are putting money into the area around the stadium.

In this down market, sellers get a sweet deal. They’re out before property tax climbs like hell, and they can get something close to its peak value for the next decade or two in a down market.

With the Pohlads investing in the area, they will have a vested interest in keeping the Twins successful, sound the alarm when they try to flip their assets, or at the very least, pay back some of their extortion fee in property tax on overvalued, underperforming property.

And by the way, LBJ is just a shadow of the man that the NBA still hasn’t gotten over — he even wears Jordan’s number! I know “The Truth”® has gotten thrown around a lot after Jordan retired for the second time, but LeBron is it.