EVIL~! alkeiper

The "Kiss My Ass" club started with William Regal as a way to earn his job back. I think it was to get rid of the deadweight belts, and add some prestige to the new World Heavyweight Championship at the same time.

I am not in the habit of closing threads. This amounted to nothing however, so there's no point in keeping it open any longer.

It will work better when we have pre-announced events like Pay Per Views and other live chats. I'm going to host a Baseball chat sometime in the upcoming week, I'm sure that will be fun.

I'm not going to quote Bauer's post in its entirety. I think some of those fall under the category of blunders rather than what ifs. Many franchises make moves that affect their team's success. It's easy to look at the best and worst in hindsight, but of course GMs and managers don't have that information handy when they make the decision. -Bringing in Hideki Matsui was probably a great move due to the increase in the Japanese market. The Yankees are enjoying similar rewards thanks to Chin-Ming Wang in Taiwan, and now they are looking at the chinese market as well. -If there is one key mistake in that whole list, it was taking Gary Sheffield over Vladimir Guerrero.

Having five guys in hoods come out and choke a wrestler with a piano wire. I didn't watch WWE for 18 months after that.

Pretty self-explanatory. AL MVP: Magglio Ordonez, Det Alex Rodriguez holds a slight lead in OPS. Ordonez however holds a 33 point lead in On Base Percentage, a key statistic. I don't think Rodriguez's defense covers the difference. NL MVP: Chase Utley, Phi Utley currently leads the National League in runs created. He is fourth in OPS and when you consider he plays a key up-the-middle position, I think it is an obvious choice. Barry Bonds has the rate statistics covered but is hurt by missing 10% of his games. AL Cy Young: Dan Haren, Oak I'm not entirely convinced (he looked shaky when I saw him pitch live), but you can't argue with results. Haren holds a 10-3 record and leads the AL in ERA. NL Cy Young: Jake Peavy, SD A close race between Peavy, Brad Penny and now Chris Young has pitched his way into the discussion. I give the edge to Peavy thanks to his league-leading strikeout total. AL Rookie of the Year: Jeremy Guthrie, Bal Surprise pitcher is second in ERA in the American League. Absolutely pathetic run support has hurt his win/loss record. As good as Guthrie is, his ERA strictly as a starter is a mere 2.16. NL Rookie of the Year: Hunter Pence, Hou It's not even close right now. AL Manager of the Year: Jim Leyland, Det A team many felt was a one-year wonder now sports a BETTER winning percentage than they did last season. NL Manager of the Year: Bobby Cox, Atl Atlanta is back in contention with another young core.

I don't think WWE was stale at all in 1993. Remember that Monday Night Raw debuted in January. Wrestling fans today take weekly, live televised wrestling for granted. In 1992 I honestly think WWE ran four live shows in total, those being the pay-per-views. Monday Night Raw was a fresh show at the time, and offered a couple great matches like Jannetty/Michaels and Flair/Hennig, as well as the memorable Razor/Kid angle.

Any valid simulation of the 1994 postseason is going to run into one of two conclusions. 1. The Montreal Expos defeat the Chicago White Sox in the World Series. This happens if you base your simulation off 1994 statistics only, and those teams had the best pythagorean records in their respective leagues. 2. The Atlanta Braves defeat the Cleveland Indians in the World Series. Basing a simulation on career statistics, a team of quality over several seasons stands out. If you just simulate 5-7-7 games, the results are so random that they are of no use. You have to run several hundred trials to get an answer, and if you do that you are just going to come back to the win/loss records anyway. Just to add a relevant list I used to come up with number two. 1992-1996 WINNING PERCENTAGE PCT 1 Braves .613 2 Indians .562 3 Nationals .550 4 Yankees .545 5 White Sox .538 6 Orioles .534 7 Reds .531 8 Astros .523 9 Rangers .509 10 Red Sox .507

It's not a matter of being bulked up, it's about natural size. Look at NWA in the 80s for example. You've got Outlaw Ron Bass, Arn Anderson, Tully Blanchard, Magnum T.A., etc., none of whom looked tremendously bulked up. In the last ten years, the typical indy wrestler has gotten much smaller. What that does to the wrestling industry as a whole can be debated. One problem is that most wrestlers tended to be big guys with legitimate amateur sports backgrounds. Now those amateur sports lead to better opportunities and you're hard pressed to get a good athlete who is naturally big.

I honestly think WWE has a better record when it comes to their ex-wrestlers than other promotions like World Class, WCW, ECW that have more substantial lists of dead wrestlers. That comes back to what Dibiase claims in that much of the problem stems from problems with illicit drugs that wrestling had in the 80s and 90s.

The Blue Jays still win. Four Phillies relievers in that series had double digit ERAs. The Phils had used three relievers in that game, leaving Williams, Bobby Thigpen and Ben Rivera as options. Rivera gave up four runs in an inning and a third in his prior appearance. Thigpen had a 5.83 ERA during the regular season. There's no second-guessing Fregosi here. He made the best move given the personnel he had. If the Phils force game seven, they still have to conquer the same bullpen issues and then beat Pat Hentgen. When the game seven starters met in game three, the Blue Jays won big. I never viewed the '93 Phillies as a heartbreak. They were a team that got much farther than they should have. The Blue Jays were better. If the Phils made the playoffs, they probably would have lost to the Cardinals in the first round.

Tony LaRussa made a major mistake tonight. He started Albert Pujols. Now if the Cardinals score nine runs and send this to extra innings, they're screwed.

Well hopefully he'll win at GAB but I have a feeling MVP will take that one. Someone had brought up the issue of Matt's lack of meaningful singles wins before and MVP touched on it at ringside. I wanna know how the hell Matt hasn't won at least one U.S. or I.C. title yet, especially considering the fact that seemingly everyone has had at least one title reign. He held the cruiserweight title for a time.

With Smackdown tonight, I'm going to hold court in TSM's new chatroom. Stop by and check it out!

When you absolutely have to avoid your 10,000th loss, call up Kip Wells.

If I were going I'd bring some prosthetics or something with that written on them, and leave them around the park. If they say something just mention that it wouldn't hurt to have extras in case of emergency.

I would watch soccer more if Philadelphia had a team.

Already discussed in CS.

Joe Posnanski pontificates. http://thesoulofbaseball.blogspot.com/2007...vs-closers.html

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/spor...ebichiro10.html Not yet official. This is a fairly big piece if news though. It keeps Ichiro in Seattle and away from the free agent market. He's a marketing force so whoever has Ichiro has the Japanese market on baseball. With that in mind, the price is not so outlandish. Ichiro's a unique player. He should age well given his athletic ability. I like this deal for the Mariners.

i know what your saying, but we have seen his list enough times, its beaten into our heads everytime he appears on TV Most people don't watch every show, they see one or two. It has to be repeated ad nauseum or otherwise it doesn't come through.

Seems the first show without Cena dragged RAW down and the hour with his segment @ Larry King drew much better rating. Larry King's ratings dropped too... From Raw or from King's normal rating?

I wouldn't sweat it. Just write your name on your feet beforehand in case you lose them.

The A's finished 19.5 back of the Senators in 1933 when all they had sold off was Al Simmons and Jimmie Dykes (who was 35). The team slipped before Mack sold off his stars.

Not on mine either, so likely a cable company gaffe.