simonzelotes

That's good,mstar...Maybe Barry Bonds' plaque could have some mysterious cream spread all over it.too... I have to agree with you about the steroids era playing itself out...We can have the asterisk in our minds,and until all the full stories come out,as if they ever will,there still is that innocent until proven guilty thing.... We say often here that baseball emulates life...That is why I am all for the Hall in presenting those famous players that contributed to,and made baseball what it is,warts and all...I don't know much about the basic credos for acceptance in the HOF,other than it is the highest honor a ballplayer/manager/announcer/owner/batboy can achieve...There's plenty of awards and recognitions for baseball participants who are great humanitarians and so forth...But those whose acclomplishments on the field,in the dugout and behind the front desk excelled well above their peers,should be recognized and honored for their baseball deeds and what they brought to the game of baseball...warts and all...I don't particularly care for a Hall that is akin to those Military Press Releases that Rocky sorta frowns on in the political threads ... It's been said,..even here as a matter of fact,that baseball is the perfect religion....That doesn't mean I expect any kind of holiness or piety from it's players...Heck,Ty Cobb was a devilishly mean sumbitch...He reportedly went into the stands during one game and beat up a crippled heckler... Being banned from ever participating in a Major League Baseball game in any way,shape or form should NOT include eligibility into the Hall Of Fame...IMO,it's as simple as that...Maybe if we dig deep enough we could find enough dirt or improprieties among current inductees to have them kicked out of the HOF....Does that make sense?....Especially when trying to apply today's social and 'good character' standards to the eras in which some of the inductees played...How many oldtimers were blatant out-and-out racists?....Cap Anson comes to mind...He refused to let his team take the field against a team of Negro ballplayers...In fact,were it not for Anson and others like him,Jackie Robinson wouldn't have needed to be the one to break baseball's color barrier in the first place...And,yes Cap anson is in the Hall... So....................................................yes,......Shoeless Joe and Charlie Hustle should be in the Hall of Fame...While both of those guys violated a sacred baseball code and perhaps rightly so,were banned for life,their baseball accomplishments were in no wise related to their sins...I'd like to see them in the Hall,warts and all....

No...but still,it might be plagiarized...It would probably be best not to say that,though,just in case VPW stole it from somebody else,like Rosalind Rinker,and they come back to haunt you and say 'Hey! That's my line!'...And you know how we shouldn't settle for "good" when "best" is available...So,a best night to all of you,...I'm gonna tune in my cd player and listen to 'Best Day,Sunshine' by the Beatles and 'Best Golly Miss Molly' by Little Richard,then get a best night's sleep so I can wake up to that wholesome bestness of Kellogg's Corn Flakes....

Yeah,the Hall can be quite a controversial topic...My initial feeling about Blyleven was that he shouldn't be in...He was a little better than a nediocre pitcher that played a long time...Koufax was a mediocre pitcher until he had those four consecutive seasons as the most dominant pitcher in baseball,if not baseball history....Maris should be in....Even if only based on that one season('61)... In our lifetime,Maris' chase on the Babe's hr record was the most famous,if not the most intriguing season anybody ever had...I don't know if they have a special section in the hall for one-time events,like Bobby Thompson's homer,or Don Larsen's perfect game,but even on the basis of that one season alone,if we're talking about the 'Hall of Fame' and not the 'Hall of Lifetime Achievements',not too many players were more famous than Maris because of what he acclompished that one season...Hell,I'd even give special consideration to Mark "the Bird" Fydrich ... My haunting indecision about the 'steroids era' players is that I don't know if we'll ever be fully informed as to how much it trickled down to every player....I never liked the "well,everybody else is doing it" excuse,but if they(steroids) were in fact not illegal,and everybody from all the superstars to the hanging-on-by-their-toenails journeyman relievers were using them just to stay competitive,then maybe the entire era is to be condemned,and not just a few individual players...Of course,you kinda wish somebody would have come clean before the sacred records of Maris,Aaron and Ruth were challenged...

Happiest of birthdays,Rock...May the Good Guard lock and keep you... I hope this cellulitus goes away,like pronto boomps quick,Nika...You deserve to be dancin' in the moonlight...

Right back atcha Jardi...It's actually Easter----and if you'd like,I'll send you the recipe...or maybe post it in the new kitchen forum... Ok,in the twilight-zone-this-is-getting-wierd-department:...My good friend Eddie just got himself a new girlfriend last week....He even called me from his car on their first date,asking me "hey,I got her in my car,what do I do next"...I told him if nothing else,at least pretend to be listening to her and none of this ...He's been on cloud nine ever since they've been dating,even threatening to go to Vegas to the Weekirk 'Oer the Heather drive thru wedding chapel and tie the not... Well guess what I just found out this morning?...Eddies new gal just completed "some Bible class" with a group called "The way international research center,or something like that" :blink: :blink: :blink: This could turn out to be fun...

Happy Thanksgiving pilgrims...Let the games(and the stuffing)begin....

Mstar O Mstar...Wouldn't it be nice to be a sportswriter?...Get paid to watch baseball all day,then combine some meaningful and meaningless stats,meld them together into a somewhat meaningful or perhaps an even more meaningless perspective,or opinion,that may or may not be right,or even close to how things actually are or were,knowing all the while that the fate of those we love and love to hate,multi-million dollar salaries and all,lies in one's little fingertips as one casts one's MVP vote.... I think with four teams making the playoffs in each league,it only complicates matters even more when trying to pick a league MVP...Now,you're going to have the best player on four different teams to take a closer look at,as well as the inevitable candidate with triple crown-like numbers playing for some chump team...Face it,once the Bosox got swept by the Yanks in that 5-game series,Ortiz may have still been hoofing it,but he was no longer on the dance floor...You know baseball....what have you done for me lately?...It's really impossible for a sportswriter to be well-aware of what each player is providing their ball club among all 32 teams...Sometimes one series down a stretch run can push one player over the top...Frank Thomas practically single handedly knocked his old Chisox out of the playoffs and in doing so,gave Oakland the division title in the AL West...In doing so,I'm sure that one series in Chicago down the stretch run moved Thomas from 10th to about third in the MVP voting... If Ortiz gets a couple of game-winning RBI's in that NY series,keeping Boston in the hunt for maybe another month or two,who knows,maybe the MVP trophy falls to him...With all the talk at the end of the year about Jeter winning the MVP,I'm a little surprised the trophy went to Morneau...I'll have to look at the voting and the individuals' stats a little closer to see who I would have picked...Meantime...Happy Thanksgiving!

If he's from somewhere around the Dominican Republic,he's probably really 35...Those guys always lie about their age.....I was surprised the Cubs were able to hang on to their version of a Ramirez....I know the Angels were after him...He had a very good second half,but the Cubbies were well out of contention by then...I wouldn't doubt if they put Soriano back at 2nd---Todd Walker's replacement didn't fare to well....

Cool video,Mstar...I loved the batters' reactions....And listening to the Japanese play-by-play....

You just go ahead and laugh... What the heck do they use Geritol for,anyway?...I thought they quit making that stuff when Lawrence Welk died... The old guy that lives next door to me confided in me the other day that it seems to take him a little longer to get,ummm,aroused to have intimate relations with his little woman..."When did you first start noticing",I asked him..."Oh,...twice last night and once this morning",he said...

Thanks,Tom...I thought maybe I heard it on The Arthur Godfrey Show...

Congrats to Brandon Webb of the D-backs on winning the NL Cy Young award...I think he was deserving...He went through a bit of a rocky road when the snakes went on a 2-16 run,but bounced back and outlasted Trevor Hoffman and Chris Carpenter....It was the lowest victory total(16-8) for a Cy Young winner that was a starter in a non-strike season,but I think that's a more telling statement of how starting pitchers are used these days,especially in the NL...

Well mebbe I jumped to conclusions here,but this post kinda gave me that idea...Oh,and forget about chess...You'll kick my foot(I actually typed 'foot' to see if it would come out 'as s') any day of the week....I do play a mean game of Chinese Checkers,though...

Pain-in-the-keister goes without saying,Garth,but then I knew that going into this thread Ok,even though I threw in the thing about Father O'Flanagan,my point is not to make a case for there being good and bad in everybody...Besides,you're the one who invoked Godfrey's law or whoever it is that says you can't mention Hitler or any of those bad guys in an internet discussion... I mean,face it,we're not mutton-chomping bearded monarchs that have it in our power to say "let's feed him to the lions"...All we can do is discuss and maybe try and figure out what it was that happened to LCM,why we paid him any heed at all,whether we stayed loyal to the way ministry because of him or in spite of him,etc.,etc. ....If he was nothing more than an evil,mean foot-kissing s.o.b. with a lousy sense of humor,then we would have really been quite the chumps if we followed the ministry in spite of those stellar qualities... When Craig was made the choice to be the new president,I thought at the time he was the natural best choice...Granted,I didn't know all the behind-the-scenes shenanigans going on,but as a tough,dynamic leader,I thought he was head and shoulders above everybody else...I wasn't too put off by his ranting and raving when he addressed the way corpse because I expected that sort of thing when I volunteered to join...However,when he started popping off at the way followers in general and dictating more demands from Joe believer,things seemed to quickly start going haywire...Maybe the presidency all went to his head... So now let me ask you something,Garth,and then I can say 'your move'...Drawing a similarity between Martindale and Hitler and Stalin,is that a conclusion you've reached when you were a follower of the way ministry,or perhaps some time later,maybe even after joining Greasespot...If Greasespot had anything to do with it,shouldn't we be telling both sides of the story as well as "the other side of the story"?

Well,I don't think it's a very popular thing around here to have too much good to say...I don't thing the man would have held the position he did without having something going for him...When people speak of LCM now,many years after being under his leadership,if nothing else,I would think at least some sort of curiousity would be aroused as to 'what happened to the guy?'...No different than if you ran into an old highschool chum pushing a shopping cart down the street or going to jail for embezzlement... I knew him when I was a teenager and he was a 'lightbearer' in my hometown...He took me out witnessing about 3-4 times,and while I stared in awe,he witnessed to everything that moved...At the front door of the Jack-In-The -Box,the bowling alley,to my parents---it didn't matter,he was there to get a job done....In those days four corps members were sent out to get a film class of 20 people together in two weeks(called lightbearers)...They got their class together,and when I knew LCM in later years,I always thought that if nothing else,the man paid his dues... I always thought Craig kept sort of a distant eye out for me,since he knew me when I was such a punk....He treated me well and I have no personal quarrel with him...I thought his ministry policies were getting way too over the top as he continued in his presidency...That,and some local "I am of Paul,I am of Cephas,I am of Christ" type of schisms were what pointed me toward the exit door...The sex stuff I found out about much later... But,geez,Even Father Flanagan said "There are no bad boys"...I think there definitely was a point where he got too full of himself and maybe his M.O. went from being energized by youthful zeal to being consumed with his own power and having a sense of entitlement....Who knows?...I still think it's an interesting topic...

That sounds like something demons would say...Which reminds,me,where did some of these names for devil spirits come from,anyway?...Like Mr. Velerker?...I even looked in the phonebook once and there are no Velerkers...Or Mr. Fletcher?...I knew a few Fletchers,but they weren't particularly any more devilish than anybody else...Of course,there was also Fletcher's Castoria a product that cured acid indegestion or something in those days...And who was Miss Jonassis?...None of those in the phonebook,either...It must have been some sort of combo of JackieO nassis..I do remember where Chief Manyfeathers came from...Sort of an invisible friend of one of those advanced class mediums...In fact,"Manyfeathers" became a dear,pet name for own beloved fellowshipper for a while... Oh,I forgot to mention something,for you advanced class fans...If you cast out devils from somebody,and they say "we're all gone now",you know that demon is lying,and probably is in fact a lying spirit,for if he really were cast out,he wouldn't be in there any longer possessing the person to tell you "we're all gone now"...So after successfully operating the manifestation of workings of miracles,it's a good idea to ask "how many are left in there",and if you get no response,then you know that they're all gone now,...unless the person is deaf or something...

The point would be that this is a discussion forum...

Yeah,..well you try comin' up with some new material after 300 pages... ********** Yes,Rocky,I voted...first thing this morning...As a matter of fact,I feel more patriotic and warm and fuzzy over election day than any of our national holidays,like Independence day,Veterans Day,Memorial Day,etc. ...I love going to my polling place,...the church down the street...The poll workers are mostly retirees,all courteous,with smiles on their faces,greeting all voters the same,regardless of race,color or creed---we all count...No matter how we voted,today we're on the same side...the American side,and we're going to make a difference,one vote at a time...It seems to be the one day that we Americans are truly equals...From the president on down we U. S. citizens count for ONE vote---no more,no less... If you voted today,you did one of the most American things you could ever do...If you didn't,thank your lucky stars that you live in a country that has made possible a comfortable enough life that allows for indifference...I hope fellowshipper is enjoying the same privileges in the land down under...

Yeah,lifted,this is definitely my favorite table here at the cafe....And thanks to all of you poets and wordsmiths for your kind birthday words...Believe me,this gettin' old thing was really starting to get to me... I even went to see an analyst...He asked me "how do you feel?"..."Old",I said..."I'm fifty years old,for gosh sakes"... "Well just tell people you're 50 years young,...and remember,you're only as old as you feel" he says..."Oh,baloney",I says.."Only old people say that...Ever heard a teenager say 'I'm 18 years young',or ,I feel old enough to drink,so gimme a shot o' whiskey,barkeep'?"... "Hmmmm,..well how does that make you feel?",he says...'Well,kinda wierd,Doc"..."I woke up,when I was still 49,feeling like a wigwam...The next day,when I turned 50,I woke up feeling like a tepee"... "Well there's your problem",he says..."Your two tents"...

Jardi,thank you my dear...It's always a pleasure when you come here and visit...And go ahead and say it---fifty....Who knows,maybe one day soon my number of years on this earth will exceed the Cubs victory total for a that particular year...Thank you too,Bill...Haven't gotten any free tix yet,but I do know he's pursuing a Cubs player that I'd just as soon they'd get rid of...Don't know Ron Washington...Was he a player in the '80's?....Or am I thinking of Claudell Washington?...

Hey,Lifted,...thanks for the birthday wishes...Get ye down to the baseball thread and put in thine two cents...And thanks also to you,Tonto,Tom,Belle and dMiller...The truck is the only thing I got that's older than me,Miller,(by two years)but I think that sweet Chev in Belle's pic more accurately describe's what condition my condition is in ....

Gotta share my lunchtime experience from today....A couple friends and I went to the Tepee,a local family owned Mexican bar and grill...On page three of this thread is a photograph of George W.Boosh,then D-backs owner Jerry Colangelo and the back of Arte Moreno,owner of the LA Angels...I had spoken earlier how Arte and I coached and umped our kids together through little league,back before I knew just how influencial he was... Anyway,Arte and his fam arrived at the same time we did,we shook hands and he gave me a hug(you know,one of those guys sports hugs) and we chatted awhile....about our kids,our houses,the Cardinals...the Angels(sorry,Rocky,he didn't mention the D-backs)....We talked about Jeff Weaver,Vlad,...a few others...It seemed almost strange to me that we were talking baseball like we would on this thread,...only this guy actually DOES make the decisions and writes the checks...It was a pleasant lunchtime surprise,my friends were impressed,and he seemed to know practically everyone in the place..I'll probably always be a fan of Arte,the most personable guy you could ever meet....Now,if he were to run for President,like another old baseball team owner.....

You know what?...You guys are all my heroes...Thanks for softening the blow...You're all fun to hang out with...In fact,I'd rather be here with you than with the finest people on earth...

All right,all right all right...Have a little respect for an old altar boy...I just wanted to offend a few people...get banned and maybe alleviate myself from being subject to the same recipricol,justly due wrath I exacted on my fellow,aging comrades when they,themselves crossed the threshold into the golden years....Be that as it may,I must therefore take my lot like a man... "Old man look at my life...I'm a lot like you were..."

Well,this is as good a time as any to get myself banned...I'd ask Rocky how he managed to pull it off but I like to be original...Let's see if I can post some things here that'll get me kicked off the site...Here goes... Doctor Wierwille is the way the truth and the life... Greasespotcafe is about as healing to my life as living next door to a nuclear waste dump... Pawtucket is just like Craig Martindale w/o the leotards... All the people who post in 'About the way' at GSC are just jealous because they didn't found their own cult first... The moderaters here don't have real jobs because they can't pass a pi ss test... The 'Politics and 'Tacs' section here is to political debate what mud wrestling is to pro sports... Greasespot Radio is about as entertaining as listening to the Lutheran Hour... If the posters here had real friends,this place would be emptier than a Mogen David bottle at a soup kitchen... The only reason the 9th corpse post here so much is so they don't open their minds up to devil spirits... Ok,somebody press the yellow triangle thingie