Shouldn’t you go back to wondering what it’s like to see your team win a World Series and pretending the guy carrying your team isn’t pumped full of more chemicals than a DuPont processing plant?
Now, look. You know as well as I that the Bums are going to fall apart in the playoffs. At least let me have the pleasure of seeing them get there for a change.
(I loves me them Dodgers, but I swear over the past 15 years they’ve got to have the worst dollars spent to postseason wins ratio ever.)
yankees suck. rah rah. yay.
::burp::
Wait a second. You expect a Giants fan to let up on a Dodgers fan for even a second? What sort of crazy dreamworld do you live in?
I hope Gagne’s fucking arms fall off.
Um, not really. I don’t know why everyone is so sure he’s juiced. It’s obviously possible to hit 700 home runs, since two people have done it before.
As for the WS, well, of COURSE I’d like to see them win. Duh. It would make my CENTURY.
Touche’! 
Well, to be fair, I’m not sure he’s juiced, I just have a strong suspicion. The difference between the two guys who did it and Bonds is that the other two didn’t have a suspiciously strong surge of power at the end of their career pushing them into it. Out of 23 seasons, Aaron only had 8 below 30 HRs. Ruth was, well, Ruth. Bonds was a guy who had never so much as hit 50 HR, had only hit as many as 40 HR 4 times in 15 seasons before suddenly exploding for 73? That’s not suspicious to anyone in San Francisco? Plus all the BALCO connections? Come on.
Why, me, of course. 
Although I have to admit that even as a former Red Sox fan, the only thing interesting me this season is whether Ichiro will break the hitting record.
Ichiro is the man. I read an article the other day though that the present record holder had less at bats though, so maybe Ichiro will need an asterisk.
Baby, baby
Stick your head in gravy
Regards, CBCD, 4th Generation Yankee Fan
That “less at bats” thing is crap. Ichiro can’t help it if his team is good enough to get him more at-bats per season.
The guy just makes contact and he plays hard. I’m rooting for him.
I’m sorry, but the words “good enough” should never be used in conjunction with the 2004 Seattle Mariners, unless the word “not” is preceding them.
The thing is that Ichiro is getting 8 more games to collect his hits than Sisler had. To be a true challenge, he should have had to get his 257th to tie and 258th to break on Sunday at the latest. He didn’t, and he should get the 162 game hit record while Sisler keeps his 154 game hit record, just like what happened with Maris.
But it won’t, because nobody cares about that sort of integrity any longer. The media and baseball is too eager for the record to be broken with no strings attached.
Thanks Neurotik, you bring the science a lot better then I do.
I’m not sure I buy that. The entire game has changed over the past century and a half. Hell, it’s changed a lot over the past quarter century. Do we hand out asterisks for everything?
Kyla: :mad: If Gagne were to lose both arms, he could still outpitch three quarters of the NL. And with both legs gone, he’ll bite Barry’s kneecaps off. Oh, wait, that’s already happened. How is Gimpy doing this morning, I wonder . . . ? 
First off, it’s not an asterisk. It’s two different records, until unified by someone like McGwire. There was no asterisk next to Maris’s record, there just wasn’t a record called the single season home run record as there was before Maris and after McGwire. There was a 154 game record and a 162 game record. It’s a distinction I think is important (asterisk vs. two seperate records), but YMMV.
Anyway, I think that’s fair. There’s a difference between records falling because of changes to stadium dimensions, how pitchers are handled, changing balls more often, better training, new pitches, etc. and records falling because one guy had more time to do it in than the last guy.
Oh, get off the high horse. This isn’t about “integrity,” it’s about the fact that having two records is petty and uninteresting.
If Suzuki breaks the record he will in fact have more hits in a regular season than any other player. It doesn’t prove he’s better than George Sisler. It doesn’t prove he’s better than all the guys who had higher batting averages but fewer hits because they walked more or didn’t bat leadoff. It just means he had more hits. It’s cool that someone might be able to do this. If you’re a sourpuss who can’t enjoy, it, just turn off ESPN.
More to the point, Aaron had three of those seasons at the end of his career and still managed 200+ homers after age 35. Another three of those were the first three of his career; excluding those six years, you’re looking at a man who averaged 38 homers a year for 17 years, and in almost half of those years had 40 or more.
It looks to me, and this is after maybe five minutes’ examination, that as Barry’s homers have increased, his stolen bases have decreased; this is also a function of him not being the svelte young guy he was once. His stolen bases have fairly steadily declined from 40 in 1996 to 7 last year, and you have to go back to 1997 to look at his past 100 stolen bases. Meanwhile his home run average has increased from an average of about 35 a year from 1990 to 1995, including the strike year, to almost 50 a year from 1999 to 2003 (he has 45 this year, a number that will probably go up a few but I doubt will hit 50).
I’d say, and this could be as much personal bias as anything, that he’s a different player from the sort he was when he broke in. His first four years in the league, he stole a base 1.4 times as often as he homered (117/84); his stolen base total from the last FIVE years is higher by one than his homers for this year.
Count me out re: asterisks, btw, but then I’m the sort who likes to see a list of five or so of the best individual achievements when I look at records.
Y’know, it seems to me that if the more time argument was valid, the record would have fallen long before now. 257 has been the mark for most hits during more 162-game seasons than 154-game seasons, hasn’t it?
That doesn’t make any sense. It’s still a valid argument, and, in fact, shows just how impressive Sisler’s record is. According to this article, the extra 8 games increased Ichiro’s chances of breaking the record by 901% - of course, I’m not sure of the methodology there, so take it as you will.
There’s no question he’s a different player. The question is why he’s so different.