November 15, 2004
Changes
I was going to quote Tupac Shakur here, just because I'm a big fan of his and I like his song "Changes." In fact, I even went to Google and looked up the lyrics. But then I thought, "What the hell does that have to do with today's entry?" The answer, of course, is absolutely nothing, so you don't get a lyrical introduction. Anyway, for the small percentage of you who aren't completely bored by the day-to-day minutiae of this blog, I have a couple changes to announce.
One is that I'm tightening up my linking policy. For a long time I've basically added a link to a site whenever someone asked me to, as long as the site was an active one and had something to do with sports. As this blog has grown more popular though, that has become difficult. Of late I have gotten multiple link requests nearly every day, which is simply not doable. Plus, what meaning do my links have if there are hundreds of them? It's like someone asking you for the name of a good restaurant and you handing them the phone book.
I deleted a whole slew of links and the ones that remain are sites I visit on a somewhat regular basis. For those of you whose sites I have deleted, I apologize, but I just couldn't justify linking to some sites I don't visit when I'm getting requests to do so for other sites every day. If you have a new site and you want to get some attention for it, odds are that I won't add your link unless you somehow become a part of my far-too-long list of daily reads. Instead, I would suggest placing an ad on this blog, which you can do for as little as $20. Plus, that will get you far more attention then a regular link would. For more information on advertising, click here.
The second change I'm making is in my e-mail answering habits. To be honest, the amount of e-mails I get is pretty out of control at this point, but I really want to make an effort to get better about answering them. And yes, I know I've said this before. What happens, inevitably, is that I start out strong and am good about answering e-mails, and then one day I get behind and it starts to snowball until I'm sitting on 150 old e-mails that I should have responded to and it's just too much for me to handle.
Over the weekend I either answered all of my old e-mails or simply deleted them, so that I now have a clean slate. That should allow me to answer them as they come in, at least until something causes me to get behind again, at which point we'll repeat this whole process. I really do feel bad about not being able to answer all the e-mails I get, and I know from experience that not receiving a reply from me sometimes makes you guys angry, which is about as far from what I want to do as possible. Keep those e-mails coming and I'll (once again) try to do a better job answering them.
Other stuff ...
Being the incredible dork that I am, I paused the movie during this scene, headed over to Baseball-Reference.com, and did a little fact-checking. Turns out, Koufax was never in "big f---ing trouble," as he started two games in the series, completed both of them, and allowed a total of three runs while striking out 23 batters in 18 innings. There was, however, quite a bit of truth to the line from the movie that "Koufax's curveball is snapping off like a f---ing firecracker!"
Anyone know which movie I'm talking about? (If you do, you realize how ridiculous it is that I fact-checked it.) Answer at the bottom.
I know the celebrities aren't claiming to be poker experts, but if you're going to go on national television to play poker and you're going to do so in an attempt to win money for charity, shouldn't you at least learn the rules enough to know something as elementary as checking, betting and folding? As far as I could tell, the only celeb on the show who knew what they were doing was Proctor, who in addition to having a completely adorable southern accent, actually seemed like a pretty good player. She of course came in third place when Phifer called her all-in bet with absolutely nothing and then hit a miracle king on the river.
Today at The Hardball Times:
- The Meat Market: Starting Pitchers (by Aaron Gleeman)
