My Morning in Exile

by
November 6, 2009

For reasons that aren’t important, I took out a supplemental disability insurance policy a few years ago. I can’t remember the terms and don’t have the policy handy, so I got on the phone with my broker this morning and asked him if the fact that I’m not going to be a lawyer anymore makes a difference for my coverage. I won’t bore you with the details, but the conversation ended with “well, you’re still basically going to be sitting in front of a computer and typing all day, so it’s not like anything new is happening . . .” Nothin’ like that kind of ego boost to power you through your day!

  • The Indians name the Pride of Mt. Gilead, Ohio their new pitching coach. Why they want the late Tom Poston as their pitching coach is beyond me, but given what he has to work with there, being alive wouldn’t make much of a difference.
  • Your offseason calendar. It’s kind of like your work calendar: filled with pointless meetings.
  • Joe Girardi may change his number to 28. Hold firm, Shelly Duncan! I mean, c’mon, what are they gonna do if you don’t give it up? Release you? Wait, don’t answer that question . . .
  • Seventy nine players filed for free agency yesterday. The rush to sign Eric Milton to a multi-year deal begins.
  • You’ll be shocked to hear that Curt Schilling has an opinion about Pedro Martinez.
  • Finally, at least a Dairy Queen has Dilly Bars. What’s Houston got?

    • It may be quiet this afternoon. I have all manner of administrative hooey I need to deal with. I’ve been leaving jobs at a fairly regular clip for 20 years now, and the paperwork just gets more arduous.


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    Jason @ IIATMS
    14 years ago

    Mr. Misty brainfreeze races RULE

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    YankeesfanLen
    14 years ago

    If anyone wants to believe that Yankees “bought” the WS, fine, I give up.  “There’s no salary cap in baseball”, “It’s a bigger than big market”, “They have incredible revenue streams” and so on.
    Well, look, and NOW I’ll compare baseball to other sports. The Giants have incredible resouces for a football team and won two years ago.  Pittsburgh has more finite ability and does better.  We have THREE hockey teams, only one of which does a little consistant winning, and they’re in Newark.  The Dolans get $160 of my money every nonth and the Knicks suck. And from my limited basketball indifference indicates, they go after big players.
    Then there’s that baseball team across the river who have the management acumen of laid off clowns from Barnum & Bailey.
    I do not consider myself an arrogant Yankees fan, my neighborhood Mets fans tease me about every loss while I offer sympathy for their year.
    Don’t “small-market” teams WANT to have franchise players and keep them?  Tell your owners about it, not meGeorge and I are in complete agreement about the use of his checkbook.
    I’m going to take a nap now.  If the money’s on the table, I know I have a partner.

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    John_Michael
    14 years ago

    Len- I’m with you.  Let’s aruge with numbers:

    Applying a Society of Baseball Research metric, the Yankees were actually more efficient with their payroll this past season than were the hapless cross-town Mets, Cleveland Indians and basement-dwelling Washington…

    By those calculations, the Yankees paid $3.2 million per “marginal victory.” That’s nearly twice as efficient as the Mets, who only won 70 games despite their $149 million payroll and paid $5.8 million per marginal victory.

    http://money.cnn.com/2009/11/05/news/economy/yankees_world_series/index.htm?postversion=2009110511

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    Rob²
    14 years ago

    I’m not in favor of a salary cap for various reasons, but if Len is going to suggest that baseball is better without it because the leagues that have them all have terrible teams in NYC… I think he might be convincing me to support one.

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    Aarcraft
    14 years ago

    Craig, I think you are missing a crucial part of the Dairy Queen v. Houston comparison. Houston has multiple Dairy Queens. Therefore, at the very least, Houston and Dairy Queen are tied. Any added utility of Houston neccesarily puts it ahead.

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    Andrew in Rochester
    14 years ago

    I think what really needs to just be put on the table is that it is an undeniable fact that the Yankees clearly have a distinct advantage in terms of revenue over many (if not all) of the other teams in the game. Does it mean parity doesn’t exist? No. Does it mean parity does exist? No.

    Does the Yankees winning a championship, or their 15 years of massive success correlate directly to spending? Um, we don’t know. We don’t have enough information. But com’on – you can’t deny that their finances give them a large advantage over everybody else (or nearly everybody else) even before you consider what percentage of revenues are being spent around the league.

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    Tony A
    14 years ago

    I’m one of a smallish number of fans that believes the owners are the greedy pricks, not the players, and I oppose a salary cap.  But, like Rob, Len has me wondering…

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    Jason B
    14 years ago

    Aarcraft: you rightly noted that “Any added utility of Houston neccesarily puts it ahead.”  Having spent some time in Houston, however, I think there is enough disutility to drop it safely behind DQ.

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    G2
    14 years ago

    As a disappointed Phillies fan, I don’t give a crap about the Yankees edge in salary.  Maybe I’d feel different if I was a fan of a small-market team.  And maybe I’d be even less indifferent if the yankees’ fans didn’t just try to push the salary argument aside like it was less important than the all-star game deciding home-field advantage.

    The extra salary is the yankees edge.  You have to do something to beat it.  Complaining about it is like complaining about Mariano Rivera’s effectiveness.  (Maybe he should play for each team for 5 days a year). 

    In four years, when Jeter and Rivera are gone and CC and AJ and Tex’s contracts are albatrosses and the steinbrenner family has to sell the team to a guy who’s more interested in profit than winning, The rest of MLB will enjoy beating the Yankees.  But for now, I’m sick of all the excuse-making by fans of the 31 other teams.  If I got a chance to play Tiger Woods tomorrow, I wouldn’t complain that he had better, more expensive clubs than me when he beat me by 20 strokes

    But when you beat the team with all the inherent advantages, it feels so effin nice.

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    jwb
    14 years ago

    No more steroid leaks until mid-February? Darn. I was hoping for some during the slow news days around the holiday season.

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