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one_eyed_jack

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Everything posted by one_eyed_jack

  1. one_eyed_jack
    I didn't expect the Twins to win over 100 games and break the home run record. I had more fun watching Twins baseball this year than I have in years. But man, another loss tomorrow, particularly if it's another loss of the non-competitive variety, and it will be hard to look back on it positively. At least initially, when it's still raw and emotions are running high. I'm sure I'll feel differently as the off-season progresses and the conversation shifts to talking about 2020. I agree that a win tomorrow would be huge, even if that's all we win. I just don't see beating the Yankees 3 straight. But for the love of God, rise up and win one effing game. Give the home fans something to cheer about. End the historic postseason losing streak so we don't have that hanging over us next time we play October baseball. And show the world we at least belong on the same field as the Yankees, cuz we sure didn't look like it this weekend. Severino is a beatable pitcher. Odo is capable of throwing a good game. Get it done.
  2. one_eyed_jack
    These 2 losses have been painful, much more so than years past. At least last decade, you expected it. The Yankees top-to-bottom simply had much better teams - especially in terms of starting pitching and offensive depth. Still, the Twins were competitive in most games, and were often in position to win until foiled by a bad bounce, a bad call or a bad pitch. But there isn't that same talent disparity this time around. To watch this Twins lineup flail against utterly hittable Yankee pitching is maddening. 14K's? Blech. Let's see what happens on Monday, Severino is another hittable pitcher. But as good as this team has been, if Monday's game is a repeat of today's, the fans will be well within their rights to boo the hometown team off the field.
  3. one_eyed_jack
    The "it'll be different this time!" sentiment was correct in one sense - we went from competitive, heartbreaking losses to the Yankees to one-sided, humiliating losses to the Yankees.
  4. one_eyed_jack
    Talk about soul crushing defeats. Blowing a 6-run lead.A 1-run lead turned into a 1-run deficit in an inning that should have been over but for a blatant missed callOne strike away from victory - closer on the mound with 1-2 with 2 outs, and he walks himContinued, historic futility with the bases loadedA former Twin saves the day at the plate and in the fieldMissed opportunity to pull another game ahead of Cleveland, who blew a late lead in Toronto And, of course, it's against the bleepin' Yankees. I don't know what savage pleasure the baseball gods get out of torturing the Twins against them, but I wish they would find something else to amuse themselves with. Good night all. May tomorrow bring a better result.
  5. one_eyed_jack
    It wasn't meant as an attack on anyone, and it wasn't a reference to anyone here. I'm just sharing my observations of behaviors I've seen that I think are counterproductive and off-putting. Certainly having different views doesn't one smug or self-satisfied. I'm talking about the people who are so rabidly insistent on ideological purity that they take to lecturing and scolding people who agree with them on 95% of issues about the other 5%. And I respectfully disagree that is "distracts from the discussion". We're talking about the 2020 election. If it's something that may influence voters, that is the discussion.
  6. one_eyed_jack
    Anecdotally, I actually know a few traditionally Democratic voters who were all in on Bernie that either stayed home or voted for Stein on election night. I even know of one Bernie supporter who voted for Trump, though I don't know this person well enough to know if they typically voted Dem or were one of the newer voters you mentioned. I'm not saying these folks are the only or even the main reason Hillary lost, but I think they were a factor. In any case, I don't think Bernie is the answer for 2020, and I suspect you're right that Biden isn't either.
  7. one_eyed_jack
    I think Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Virginia and Florida will decide it. Trump won all of those but Virginia last time around. If the economy stays strong, it's going to be an uphill battle for the Dems to flip enough of the others to win.
  8. one_eyed_jack
    Yeah Dems can get hurt in elections because some lefties get overly concerned with their own smug self-satisfaction. Adherence to principles is a fine thing, but like many other good things, it can become a bad thing when taken too far. One of the big reasons that Trump won in 2016 is that many disappointed Bernie lovers just couldn't bring themselves to vote for "Crooked Hillary", so they either stayed home or voted for Jill Stein.
  9. one_eyed_jack
    I'm getting increasingly concerned that the Dems are blowing this and we're going to get 4 more years of this noxious clown show. Obama was right when he warned of the dangers of a circular firing squad. It feels like every day I read about someone announcing that they are running. At this rate it will soon be easier to name the Dems in the Senate who aren't running. Forget by who, but I saw the point made recently that the last 2 successful Democratic presidential candidates, both of whom also won re-election bids, were both seen as challenges to the status quo and appealing to more centrist voters. I thought it was a good observation, but nobody in the current field jumps out at me as fitting that description. The other important point not to lose sight of is this: this is not really a national election. It will come down the results in a small number of battleground states, maybe 5 or 6. You already know which way the other 40+ are going to go. Don't worry about those. Sadly, having lost 3 very winnable presidential elections in the last 5, it's hard to have faith that the Dems will get this one right.
  10. one_eyed_jack
    That must have been something. Wish I could have seen a game at the Met. Jim Kaat's career was really something. Not many pitchers who can say they faced both Ted Williams and Darryl Strawberry during their major league tenure.
  11. one_eyed_jack
    I understand the idea of a HOF, and don't disagree with reserving the highest honor for the very best of the best, but it does leave a lot of players who contributed a lot to the game out. I've wondered whether the binary HOFer/non-HOFer distinction is too simplistic, and maybe there should be other categories that can be used to honor guys who aren't worthy of induction to the HOF, but are still worthy of recognition. The defensive wizards. The super sluggers. The scrappy, speedy lead-off hitters. The guys who excelled for short stretches and were on HOF trajectories until injuries derailed their careers. The iron men who had productive 20+ year careers. The current HOF process results in these guys getting critiqued and put down for everything they weren't. Wouldn't it be better if there were some way to celebrate and honor what they were?
  12. one_eyed_jack
    I've long wondered whether TK, Puck and Hrbek made a deal with the Devil back in the day: 2 World Series crowns for a lifetime of sports suffering. "You shall twice celebrate as world champions", Satan said, "but for the next 2 generations, should any of your local teams appear poised to win a third, it shall not happen. They may get close, but to a man, they shall fail spectacularly in the biggest of moments." And so when Satan came to enforce this unholy bargain on the Lynx, Maya Moore said to him, "Aha, but we are not men" as she calmly drained a 3 in his face.
  13. one_eyed_jack
    Yes it's hard to understate the importance of this. Cousins is getting a lot of flack for this but it's not like he had much of a chance to do anything. No QB looks good when they are under siege all night because the OL is getting worked over. Look at Super Bowl 42.
  14. one_eyed_jack
    A thousand times this. With the amount of talent on this team, 8 wins is simply not an acceptable result. Too often looked not ready to play. This team was supposed to contend for a Super Bowl and got smacked around on their home turf by the Buffalo Bills, who had only 1 other road win all season, and looked completely unprepared in a must-win game at home today. For having a dynamic receiving duo in Diggs/Thielen, a back in Cook who can make things happen and a credible QB in Cousins, they struggled to move the ball way too often. The defense played well for much of the season, but couldn't make plays when they were needed most. I'm generally not one of those knee-jerk "FIRE THE COACH!!!!" guys, I think that's done too often in sports in general not because it's the smart move, but because its the easy move. But here it seems to me that the players have grown tired to Zimmer's schtick, and it's time to stop looking at the orchestra and start looking at the conductor.
  15. one_eyed_jack
    Indeed. I guess the argument for Baines over Murphy or Mattingly would be that the latters' peaks were not long enough. (it's a weak argument to me because as you say, Baines' peak wasn't all that high to begin with.) And I'm with you on Evans. Seems to me that the case for Dwight Evans is similar to but clearly stronger than the one for Baines. If you're into longevity, I don't see a serious argument for Baines over Evans. Evans had a higher peak, better overall offensive numbers, and 8 Gold Gloves.
  16. one_eyed_jack
    Yeah no disrespect to Harold Baines, a respected guy who had an impressive career, but putting him in seems to noticeably lower the bar. If he gets in, so should a number of other guys whose careers peaked around the same time, and were every bit as good as Baines if not better; Don Mattingly, Dwight Evans, Lou Whitaker, and Dale Murphy are few that jump to mind, I'm sure there are others.
  17. one_eyed_jack
    Sad day but probably the right decision for Joe. Amazing career that could have been a lot more amazing without the concussions. I'll miss watching him play.
  18. one_eyed_jack
    I mostly lurk on this great site, don't post a whole lot, but I can't not chime in on Mauer. Great guy, great player. It's a shame that he and Morneau both had their careers so limited by injuries. In '06 I thought those 2 would be terrorizing opposing pitching for the next decade plus. I never understood the venomous hatred of Mauer spewed from the darkest corners of the Twins fan base, or why certain members of the local sports media (Barreiro and Souhan in particular) not only felt compelled to pour gasoline on that fire by spreading vicious rumors and bizarre theories about him, but take a certain savage pleasure in doing so. Who knows, maybe he's not done. Maybe a few months or even a year from now, he'll decide he's still got some baseball left in him. But in any case, it was a nice swan song today, and it left me sadder than I thought it would that I'll probably never hear him introduced at Target Field again.
  19. one_eyed_jack
    I oppose the death penalty for a number of reasons, but most significantly: 1) The number of DNA exonerations has proven that there are far, far more innocent people convicted of crimes that most folks are aware of, or at least willing to acknowledge. The risk of an innocent person getting killed by the state is too high. 2) It doesn't work. One of the main arguments in favor of the death penalties is deterrence. Death penalty convictions are pretty concentrated in a relatively small number of jurisdictions. If the death penalty were a deterrent, those jurisdictions would have consistently lower crime rates that comparable ones that do not have capital punishment. But it's not the case.
  20. one_eyed_jack
    Indeed. It doesn't appear that there are any limits to what will trigger the wrath of the outrage mob. And if you refuse to grab your pitchfork and join, they view you as defending and supporting the nonsense that the target tweeted 10 years ago. If we want people to abandon hateful prejudices and stop staying offensive things, we should let them move on with their lives after they've apologized and done so. I don't see what's to be gained by continuing to beat them up over decades-old transgressions. Branding them for life is counterproductive. Especially when we're talking about what someone did as a kid. And can't the mob prioritize at all? There are people currently in power making statements and implementing policies that are disgustingly offensive every day. But sure, let's focus on what a relief pitcher tweeted to his few dozen followers 8 years ago when he was in high school.
  21. one_eyed_jack
    His tweets were disgusting, but as best I can tell many of the worst ones were quotes from rap lyrics. (Odd that it's perfectly OK with most folks if you make a bunch of money selling music with said lyrics, but if they discover you quoted them in a tweet in your youth they want to burn you at the stake.) And he was 17. Legally a minor. Before you grab your virtual torches and pitchforks and join the Twitter mob against him, pause to consider whether punishing adults for bad things they said as kids is really a good direction to go. Thanks to modern technology, many adolescent thoughts are published and preserved forever. But that doesn't mean that you should be forever judged by them.
  22. one_eyed_jack
    But it's not like the victim's testimony is the first and last thing that happens at a rape trial and jurors are required to assess it in a vacuum. Plenty of other types of evidence are introduced: eyewitnesses who saw either the accuser or the defendant after the alleged incident, witnesses who knew both parties to describe their relationship, alibi witnesses for the defendant if the defendant is claiming it wasn't him, surveillance video if they were together in a public police before it happened, credit card receipts, medical records, expert testimony, social media posts, text messages, and phone records for starters (Even in this incident, which happened 2 years ago and was not reported to anyone at the time, the MLB found 20 witnesses to interview.) It may well be that none of the other evidence corroborates the accuser's account, making it hard to get a conviction, but that's why the constitutional presumption of innocence exists - so that the state can't rip you from your home and lock you in a cage without proof you did anything wrong; it's a feature, not a bug.
  23. one_eyed_jack
    The problem with law enforcement's approach to sex crimes is one of perverse incentives. Thanks to a flow of federal money and asset forfeiture laws that allow local police departments to enrich themselves with what they seize from drug investigation, they tend to put most of their resources into drug enforcement. They'll send out teams of guys to raid pot dealers while rape kits sit untested for months, even years, if they are ever tested at all. They don't get any money for solving rapes, but they do for going after drug dealers. As far as defense attorneys go, they should not be shamed for "victim blaming" because they raise a consent defense on behalf of their client when there is evidence to support it. Everyone charged with a crime is entitled to a vigorous defense. (I see this narrative about defense attorneys raised frequently, I swear they must teach kids in school these days that Atticus Finch was the bad guy in To Kill a Mockingbird because he questioned a rape accuser.)
  24. one_eyed_jack
    Sufficient evidence for what - a conviction? Yes, if the jury believes it, the victim's testimony alone could be enough. But that doesn't really mean much because the alleged victim's testimony is not the only evidence presented at a trial. Whether the jury believes the victim will often hinge on how well it matches the other evidence presented. In this case, given that there was no independent evidence to substantiate the allegations, and possibly evidence to contradict them, it would be pretty tough to sell a jury on proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
  25. one_eyed_jack
    It's not going to satisfy everyone, but based on the evidence this strikes me as the correct result. At the end of the day, what you had was a Twitter accusation that Sano committed a serious crime in a public place 2 years ago. The MLB investigated and found no evidence to corroborate it, and apparently, perhaps some evidence to contradict it. I have a hard time seeing how punishing Sano would be fair in this situation. Maybe there's temptation to do so to show support for #metoo, but I think we also need to be mindful of the fact that this country also has a history of punishing black men for allegations of sexual misconduct against a white woman based on flimsy evidence. It's interesting to me that so many seem to be so quick to assume that Sano is guilty here - would the reaction be the same if a black woman made the same accusation 2 years later, giving a reason for waiting that is demonstrably false, against Mauer or Dozier?
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