Absolutely not. He was commenting on the NUMBERS. If 5% of Muslims are extremists, then it’s small comfort to know that 95% of Muslims aren’t, when that 5% still means there’s about 75 million Muslim extremists in the world. Just like knowing that 93% of WWII-era Germans were peace-loving, inoffensive Oktoberfesters did not prevent that numerically significant 7% from causing the Holocaust.
He in no way said that Muslims are like Nazis. At worst, what he said could be interpreted that Muslim EXTREMISTS are like Nazis (and that the non-extremists are akin to non-Nazi Germans), but he didn’t even say that.
Schilling, whatever his intent, came off as suggesting that Muslims are like Nazi-era Germans, standing around while the extremists commit violent acts.
Equating behavior you don’t like with Nazism has long been seen (and justifiably so) as diminishing the significance of the Nazi era and insulting its victims.
Schilling really needs to stay the hell off Twitter.
It’s a fine medium for those whose thoughts can be fully expressed in 140 characters.
Schilling was one of the greats - at his best when the stakes were highest. I credit him as much as anyone, perhaps more, with giving the Red Sox the grit they needed to get over their mental block about winning the Series, and that would be the case even without the bloody sock. I want to remember him that way.
It’s supposed to be OK to love the player yet hate the man (source: my ass). I love Bloody Sock as much as any Sox fan but between the 38 Studios debacle and chronic, uncurable, public, foot-in-mouth disease he is just a embarrassment now.
Three months ago, the A’s hired former coach and former MLB manager Ron Washington as a special infield coach. Washington was their former third base coach, but Mike Gallego has been their third base coach for seven years now. But not any more. Gallego has been summarily dismissed. No real explanation, other than having both Washington and Gallego in the same coaching staff was “awkward”.
At the time Gallego was replaced, the A’s were tied with the Tigers for the most runners thrown out at the plate, with 19 each. The game before he was let go, Gallego made a very bad mistake in waving Steven Vogt home on a ball hit to shallow center field. Vogt was out by about ten feet. I was at the game, and started yelling “No! No!” as soon as I saw Gallego start waving his arm (neither Gallego nor Vogt listened to me). It was that obvious - I don’t know what Gallego was thinking. Gallego almost got someone else thrown out later in the game by putting up a stop sign too late. Gallego’s judgment at third base has been pretty poor for a while now - my season ticket buddy and I talked about it on the way home from the game.
A two game lead in August doesn’t mean a great deal, but it’s certainly more enjoyable than where they usually are in late August,.
Toronto’s offense continues a rampage of historic proportions. They have scored 26% more runs than the average AL team, which is the highest difference a team has acheived in a long, long time, certainly since 2000. I know the 1976 Reds were ridiculously high, something like 35% (the '76 Reds were probably the greatest offense in the history of the major leagues) - I don’t know if anyone else has done better since, but it’s a rare thing indeed. To put it somewhat in perspective, the second-best offense in the AL, New York, has scored 45 runs more than the average AL team (589 to 544.) Toronto has scored 99 runs more than New York. It is certainly the best offense in the history of the franchise - they’ve scored more runs in a season than they will this year but that was back when everyone scored more runs. Toronto has never led the league in runs scored in franchise history, not even when they had their glory years.
It seems very unlikely they can keep this pace up, though I’ve been saying that all year and they keep piling them up. Still, while they have the AL’s best overall numbers in terms of stuff like OPS and whatnot, that level of dominance is in part because the Blue Jays have been on fire with runners on scoring position; they’re batting .293 with RISP. That’s probably more a product of fluke than anything else.
What has turned them around of course isn’t the hitting, it’s the pitching. The hitting was great when they were 50-51 but the pitching was awful. The pitching has largely been sorted out, so they’re winning because the hitting is still great.
Kike Hernandez got a “fun” broken bat double yesterday, when his broken bat almost nailed the shortstop, forcing him to leap away from the ball and allowing Hernandez to motor on to second.
You gotta give Kyle Schwarber some credit for running that play out…there are a lot of ballplayers who would have been thrown out at first on that play, still standing in the batter’s box (or worse yet, halfway back to the dugout).
