If that were the case, it wouldn't have omitted California. Also, no one is forcing anyone to pay 5x the face value of tickets; its what the market will bear.

I guess it is far too much to expect that top-level athletes have some general understanding of the world and its history, but I find it strange that all of the athletes mentioned in this article are of at least partial non-Caucasian parentage. I'm not thinking that neither the Nazi's nor the National Front would be…

Yes, I think its primarily a extreme minimization of the event. "Sure, some Nazis committed some heinous acts, and individual Jews were probably targets of those individual Nazis. But there is no evidence of a nationwide, government-led conspiracy against Jews. Whatever evidence you have is just part of a much…

JAWS is fairly good way of reconciling career accomplishment with peak dominance in that it combines career WAR with (I think) a players top 5 or 7 seasons. JAWS has Mussina as the no. 28 pitcher of all-time and Morris as the 159th.

I'm not as confident in either of these scenarios as you appear to be. On Kluwe's side, if there are witnesses, I'm guessing they are not particularly interested in throwing away their careers by publicly supporting a former player (and given the generally homophobic perspective prevalent in the NFL, they may not…

"We should round up all the gays, send them to an island, and then nuke it until it glows." Great; now we all have radioactive AIDS. Thanks Vikings!

I'm sure that in the minds of the Texas players, no racial animus was on display during the 1960 Cotton Bowl. That was just how you talked to "those people".

I work out throughout the year. My local Y generally has sufficient aerobic machines to accommodate everyone, although you may have to wait a bit in January and February. What kills me, however, are the people who monopolize the weights or weight-machines for extended periods of time for stupid reasons. These…

The derivation of "soccer" comes from Britain. Sometime in the late 19th Century, rugby was called "rugger" as slang. Soccer/football fans wanted to copy this, but "footer" was a term associated with both sports: their "official" names are "rugby football" and "association football". So association football fans…

ERA+ is a park-adjusted, era-adjusted calculation of how much better or worse a pitcher did relative to the average pitcher that year (i.e., an ERA+ of 109 means the pitcher was 9% "better" than the average pitcher, while 88 represents one who was 12% "worse" than average). Koufax's career was divided into two…

The Babe apparently really loved hitting homers, even during BP.

I blame Sepp Blatter.

Oops; spoke to soon. Now with the Beltran signing, their CF will be paid $65 million just next year.

I blame Sepp Blatter.

The anti-Title IX arguments shown here drive me crazy. As reedjmiller has pointed out a couple of times, any Division I football program creates a huge imbalance for any school, in that the number of scholarships required for the football program exceeds the number for most schools' basketball, baseball, hockey, and…

The Yankees will be just fine. Hell, their centerfielder is worth $50 million for next season alone.

I think you are being dishonest with your self. If you ignore PEDs, Sosa is in the HOF. If you think PED users should be punished, he doesn't. Sosa, McGwire, Bonds, Palmeiro, and Clemens are all easy if you take a black-or-white view of PEDs. Assuming the BBWAA continues ignoring PEDs users, they have a lot of…

In order to restore some Holiday spirit (although I would totally back blackmambasux up on his experience), we were lucky enough to have the perfect Santa at our local mall in Palo Alto for many years. Dude was about 6'4", 300 lbs. with the real beard. He was kind and patient to every kid. My girls gave him a hand…

So he's relevant in Grand Rapids? That's kind of sad for both McLain and Grand Rapids.

I was in Kindergarten in Michigan the year McLain won 31 games, so I always had a kind of skewed vision of McLain as a great pitcher. But the guy literally had 3 good years and only one more that was MLB-quality. He didn't even have the Mark Fidrych tragic arm injury end to his career: he just became a fat, gambling…