basicmike

Shooting at the walls of heartache Bang, bang I am the warrior Well I am the warrior And heart to heart you'll win If you survive the warrior, the warrior

He shouldn't need drugs for that

Fuck you Mike Timlin

The point is that Ortiz has won more games the Sox than Rodriguez has for the yanks, thus he is more valuable, not what if he had to play defense. I just thought it was interesting, not 100% correct.

From sonsofsamhorn Like many here, I've always had a general sense that, while Alex Rodriguez is always able to put up huge numbers for the Yankees, it seems like most of his actual prodcution happens in the 19-8 blowouts (3-5, 5 R, 3 RBI) and not in the tough close extra inning games (1-9, 1 R, 2 RBI). Ortiz obviously has the exact opposite feeling. The question isn't just "which one is more clutch?" or "who would you want up with the game on the line?" although those are both relevant questions and I can't imagine any Yankee fan would honestly say Rodriguez to either. The question is, "how many games did Rodriguez actually help the Yankees win this year?" and the same for Ortiz. For that, it seems to me, is the real meaning of the word valuable. So I went through all pulled out all the games in which the player was the difference maker for his team. That is to say, all the games in which the player's team won, but if you took away the runs produced by the player, the game would be a tie or a defeat [any game in which the players team won and R+RBI-HR>= Run differential]. I then looked closer at those games, to see how many times the player produced a key run (a tying or winning run) and how many times the player produced a key run late in the game. For Rodriguez, the answer is 23. That is, there have been 23 games that the Yankees have won this year by a number less than or equal to the number of runs produced by ARod. Of those, removing ARod's production would result in a loss in 7 games, and a tie in the remaining 16. Ortiz, meanwhile, has been the difference maker in 27 Red Sox victories. Of those, 12 would have been losses without Ortiz' run production, and 15 would have been ties. Thus, assuming a .580 winning percentage for both teams in all the 'tie' games (generous given the shape of the Sox bullpen), the standings without the offense of Rodriguez and Ortiz looks something like this: Yankees 72-77 Red Sox 69-81 3.5 GB (of course, this is replacing the two superstars not with a league average player, but rather with a player who never drives in or scores any runs at all, so the dramatic difference in records is unsurprising) So on one level, the answer to the question 'how much is Ortiz' offense worth relative to Rodriguez' is approximately four games; the difference between a half game lead and a three and half game deficit. Another look through the numbers makes it look even greater, however. In the games where Rodriguez' production has been a difference maker for the Yankees, ARod has produced the tying or winning run in 13 of those games, and has produced the tying or winning run late in 6 games. Here, the difference with Ortiz is massive. Ortiz has produced a tying or winning run in 22 of the 27 games in which he has been a difference maker. In more than half of those games, the tying or winning run was produced late in the game (13 times, which doesn't count the fact that on August 16, he hit both the home run to tie the game and the hr to win the game, both late). I would never use something like this as a measure of calculating an individual player's ability, since it so obviously is dependant on a wide variety of team factors, and I'm sure that over the course of a million iterations the difference would even out. But the MVP award is about performance, not ability. Be it random chance, a mythical clutch hitting ability, or some other factor, it seems obvious to me that Ortiz' offense has won significantly more games for the Sox than Rodriguez has. It seems difficult to imagine that Rodriguez' defense has been a difference maker in four Yankee wins (and his advantage in basestealing is either already counted in his runs scored, or not worth counting). As a result, and with this extremely narrow focus, I would have to say that Ortiz has been the more valuable player.

Kid is on Fiya... back 2 back!

Pitchers have won the MVP in the American League and they are "one dimensional". But I agree that Ortiz would have to be far and away the better hitter to be a favorite for the award.

Good point. I think Ortiz has better numbers with RISP and in more pressure situations. Plus he is a million times more likable.

naw just really biased... Whose your MVP?

Done, Over, Fini. Too tired, too hurt, too many people slumping. Starting pitching has gone from great to shit in a week. Bullpen is shit. Save Hansen and Papelbon's arms for next year. Can't complain because of last year though. It's time to focus on Sunday at Pittsburgh. Still think Ortiz is MVP.

http://www.big-boys.com/articles/cheneyfbomb.html He's gettin owned by some hecklers.

Omar Vizquel

Mark Lemke

You can def. count me in for 5000 if you are hot...

http://www.sportsline.com/nfl/story/8661451 Probably the right call, but fuck this hurts us. I guess 90% isn't good enough. http://www.boston.com/sports/football/patriots/articles/2005/07/20/report_bruschi_to_play_in_05/

whatever...you're still a Pats fan right?

We're on the same team

Tonight 7:05 PM ET - Fenway Park New York (46-40) Mussina (9.0-5.0, 3.97 ERA) Boston (49-38) Arroyo (7-5, 4.02 ERA) Friday, July 15 @ 7:05 David Wells (Red Sox) vs. Chien-Ming Wang (Yankees) Saturday, July 16 @ 1:15 Matt Clement (Red Sox) vs. Randy Johnson (Yankees) Sunday, July 17 @ 6:05 Tim Wakefield (Red Sox) vs. TBD (Yankees)

NO WAY MAN....AM Rules...Don't bring your beef in this hizouse Holla!!!

So what's the deal Fred, you in or not?

The Great Ground Zero Heist By DEBRA BURLINGAME June 7, 2005; Page A14 On Memorial Day weekend, three Marines from the 24th Expeditionary Unit who had been wounded in Iraq were joined by 300 other service members for a wreath-laying ceremony at the empty pit of Ground Zero. The broken pieces of the Twin Towers have long ago been cleared away. There are no faded flags or hand-painted signs of national unity, no simple tokens of remembrance. So why do they come? What do they hope to see? The World Trade Center Memorial will break ground this year. When those Marines return in 2010, the year it is scheduled to open, no doubt they will expect to see the artifacts that bring those memories to life. They'll want a vantage point that allows them to take in the sheer scope of the destruction, to see the footage and the photographs and hear the personal stories of unbearable heartbreak and unimaginable courage. They will want the memorial to take them back to who they were on that brutal September morning. Instead, they will get a memorial that stubbornly refuses to acknowledge the yearning to return to that day. Rather than a respectful tribute to our individual and collective loss, they will get a slanted history lesson, a didactic lecture on the meaning of liberty in a post-9/11 world. They will be served up a heaping foreign policy discussion over the greater meaning of Abu Ghraib and what it portends for the country and the rest of the world. * * * The World Trade Center Memorial Cultural Complex will be an imposing edifice wedged in the place where the Twin Towers once stood. It will serve as the primary "gateway" to the underground area where the names of the lost are chiseled into concrete. The organizers of its principal tenant, the International Freedom Center (IFC), have stated that they intend to take us on "a journey through the history of freedom" -- but do not be fooled into thinking that their idea of freedom is the same as that of those Marines. To the IFC's organizers, it is not only history's triumphs that illuminate, but also its failures. The public will have come to see 9/11 but will be given a high-tech, multimedia tutorial about man's inhumanity to man, from Native American genocide to the lynchings and cross-burnings of the Jim Crow South, from the Third Reich's Final Solution to the Soviet gulags and beyond. This is a history all should know and learn, but dispensing it over the ashes of Ground Zero is like creating a Museum of Tolerance over the sunken graves of the USS Arizona. The public will be confused at first, and then feel hoodwinked and betrayed. Where, they will ask, do we go to see the September 11 Memorial? The World Trade Center Memorial Foundation will have erected a building whose only connection to September 11 is a strained, intellectual one. While the IFC is getting 300,000 square feet of space to teach us how to think about liberty, the actual Memorial Center on the opposite corner of the site will get a meager 50,000 square feet to exhibit its 9/11 artifacts, all out of sight and underground. Most of the cherished objects which were salvaged from Ground Zero in those first traumatic months will never return to the site. There is simply no room. But the International Freedom Center will have ample space to present us with exhibits about Chinese dissidents and Chilean refugees. These are important subjects, but for somewhere -- anywhere -- else, not the site of the worst attack on American soil in the history of the republic. More disturbing, the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. is handing over millions of federal dollars and the keys to that building to some of the very same people who consider the post-9/11 provisions of the Patriot Act more dangerous than the terrorists that they were enacted to apprehend -- people whose inflammatory claims of a deliberate torture policy at Guantanamo Bay are undermining this country's efforts to foster freedom elsewhere in the world. * * * The driving force behind the IFC is Tom Bernstein, the dynamic co-founder of the Chelsea Piers Sports and Entertainment Complex who made a fortune financing Hollywood movies. But his capital ventures appear to have funded his true calling, the pro bono work he has done his entire adult life -- as an activist lawyer in the human rights movement. He has been a proud member of Human Rights First since it was founded -- as the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights -- 27 years ago, and has served as its president for the last 12. The public has a right to know that it was Mr. Bernstein's organization, joined by the American Civil Liberties Union, that filed a lawsuit three months ago against Donald Rumsfeld on behalf of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was Human Rights First that filed an amicus brief on behalf of alleged "dirty bomber" Jose Padilla, an American citizen who the Justice Department believes is an al Qaeda recruit. It was Human Rights First that has called for a 9/11-style commission to investigate the alleged torture of detainees, complete with budget authority, subpoena power and the ability to demand that witnesses testify under oath. In fact, the IFC's list of those who are shaping or influencing the content and programming for their Ground Zero exhibit includes a Who's Who of the human rights, Guantanamo-obsessed world: • Michael Posner, executive director at Human Rights First who is leading the world-wide "Stop Torture Now" campaign focused entirely on the U.S. military. He has stated that Mr. Rumsfeld's refusal to resign in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal is "irresponsible and dishonorable." • Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU, who is pushing IFC organizers for exhibits that showcase how civil liberties in this country have been curtailed since September 11. • Eric Foner, radical-left history professor at Columbia University who, even as the bodies were being pulled out of a smoldering Ground Zero, wrote, "I'm not sure which is more frightening: the horror that engulfed New York City or the apocalyptic rhetoric emanating daily from the White House." This is the same man who participated in a "teach-in" at Columbia to protest the Iraq war, during which a colleague exhorted students with, "The only true heroes are those who find ways to defeat the U.S. military," and called for "a million Mogadishus." The IFC website has posted Mr. Foner's statement warning that future discussions should not be "overwhelmed" by the IFC's location at the World Trade Center site itself. • George Soros, billionaire founder of Open Society Institute, the nonprofit foundation that helps fund Human Rights First and is an early contributor to the IFC. Mr. Soros has stated that the pictures of Abu Ghraib "hit us the same way as the terrorist attack itself." While Gov. George Pataki, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and LMDC are focusing their attention on the economic revival of lower Manhattan, there has been no meaningful oversight with respect to the "cash cow of Ground Zero." Meanwhile, the Freedom Center's organizers are quickly lining up individuals, institutions and university provosts with this arrogant appeal: "The memorial to the victims will be the heart of the site, the IFC will be the brain." Indeed, they have declared the World Trade Center Memorial the perfect "magnet" for the world's "great leaders, thinkers and activists" to participate in lectures and symposiums that examine the "foundations of free and open societies." Put less grandly, these activists and academics are salivating at the prospect of holding forth on the "perfect platform" where the domestic and foreign policy they despise was born. Less welcome to the Freedom Center are the actual beneficiaries of that policy. According to the New York Times, early renderings of the center's exhibit area created by its Norwegian architectural firm depicted a large mural of an Iraqi voter. That image was replaced by a photograph of Martin Luther King and Lyndon Johnson when the designs were made public. What does it mean that the "story of humankind's quest for freedom" doesn't include the kind that is fought for with the blood and tears of patriots? It means, I fear, that this is a freedom center which will not use the word "patriot" the way our Founding Fathers did. * * * The so-called lessons of September 11 should not be force-fed by ideologues hoping to use the memorial site as nothing more than a powerful visual aid to promote their agenda. Instead of exhibits and symposiums about Internationalism and Global Policy we should hear the story of the courageous young firefighter whose body, cut in half, was found with his legs entwined around the body of a woman. Recovery personnel concluded that because of their positions, the young firefighter was carrying her. The people who visit Ground Zero in five years will come because they want to pay their respects at the place where heroes died. They will come because they want to remember what they saw that day, because they want a personal connection, to touch the place that touched them, the place that rallied the nation and changed their lives forever. I would wager that, if given a choice, they would rather walk through that dusty hanger at JFK Airport where 1,000 World Trade Center artifacts are stored than be herded through the International Freedom Center's multi-million dollar insult. Ground Zero has been stolen, right from under our noses. How do we get it back? Ms. Burlingame is a member of the board of directors of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation and the sister of Charles F. "Chic" Burlingame III, pilot of American Airlines fight 77, which was crashed at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.

"One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line." - President Clinton, Feb. 4, 1998 "If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program." - President Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998 "Iraq is a long way from [here], but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face." - Madeline Albright, Feb 18, 1998 "He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983." S - Sandy Berger, Clinton National Security Adviser, Feb, 18, 1998 "[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs." - Letter to President Clinton, signed by Sens. Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, John Kerry, and others Oct. 9, 1998 "Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process." - Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), Dec. 16, 1998 "Hussein has ... chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction and palaces for his cronies." - Madeline Albright, Clinton Secretary of State, Nov. 10, 1999 "There is no doubt that ... Saddam Hussein has invigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf War status. In addition, Saddam continues to redefine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop longer-range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies." - Letter to President Bush, Signed by Sen. Bob Graham (D, FL,) and others, December 5, 2001 "We begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandated of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them." - Sen. Carl Levin (D, MI), Sept. 19, 2002 "We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country." - Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002 "Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power." - Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002 "We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction." - Sen. Ted Kennedy (D, MA), Sept. 27, 2002 "The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capabilities. Intelligence reports indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons..." - Sen. Robert Byrd (D, WV), Oct. 3, 2002 "I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force-- if necessary-- to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security." - Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Oct. 9, 2002 "There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years . We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction." - Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D, WV), Oct 10, 2002 "He has systematically violated, over the course of the past 11 years, every significant UN resolution that has demanded that he disarm and destroy his chemical and biological weapons, and any nuclear capacity. This he has refused to do" Rep. - Henry Waxman (D, CA), Oct. 10, 2002 "In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weap ons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members .. It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons." - Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, NY), Oct 10, 2002 "We are in possession of what I think to be compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein has, and has had for a number of years, a developing capacity for the production and storage of weapons of mass destruction." - Sen. Bob Graham (D, FL), Dec. 8, 2002 "Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime ... He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation ... And now he is miscalculating America's response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction ... So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real ..." - Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Jan. 23. 2003

Piss!!!