EVIL~! alkeiper

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.

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

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.

It did in a way. One of the reasons the scandal blew up the way it did was because of the animosity between league president Ban Johnson and White Sox owner Charles Comiskey. Comiskey was part of an anti-Johnson sect of owners that included Harry Frazee and the Yankees' owner, I believe Col. Ruppert. Consequently when Frazee made a trade, he had two options (inter-league trading was extremely rare). The Yankees would have dominated the decade regardless. The A's were competitive beginning in 1925. The St. Louis Browns oddly were competitive in the early '20s, and came this close to winning the pennant in 1922. When it comes to the White Sox, it is hard to imagine seven players making up 36.5 games. Looking at win shares though to compare the Black Sox to their 1921 counterparts, losing Jackson cost them 8-9 games. Losing Buck Weaver cost them six wins. Happy Felsch cost them another six wins. Losing Lefty Williams and Eddie Cicotte cost them 10 more wins. That is 30-32 wins total lost from the Black Sox leaving. If the Sox don't win in 1921 however, I'm not sure if they do again.

Lashley was all over Raw during the McMahon feud. Would a world title match involving him really spiral the ratings? I doubt it.

Baseball-Reference.com's database is down so I can't access his MVP votes. His stats say no. There's nothing there. Game of the night is likely Detroit-Seattle. That's at 10pm ET, so you can easily catch A's/Twins at 8pm.

1. Joe Jackson does not come close to the hit record. He had 1,774 career hits. Cobb had 2,361 at the age of 30, nearly a 600 hit lead. Jackson however would absolutely have made the Hall of Fame. 2. Babe Ruth retains his status as the game's great slugger. Remember he hit 54 home runs in 1920 before the news of the Black Sox scandal broke, and it was August 1921 before Landis banned the eight players. The cat is out of the bag at that point. The Yankees attendance doubled in 1920. Owners would have taken note of that, even absent a crisis. 3. The big one here is that gambling remains a HUGE problem in baseball. The real issue wasn't the Black Sox scandal. It was that similar whispers were running rampant throughout the decade, and it was only a matter of time before something exploded. If it doesn't happen in 1919, maybe it happens in 1923. Maybe Ruth throws the World Series and gets tossed from the game. Landis was harsh in banning the players, but that STOPPED the rumors of thrown games, and that was more important to saving the game than any other factor. To me the big "what ifs" involve Landis. Does the power struggle between Ban Johnson and the Comiskey sect of owners come to a head? If Landis does not assume power, what becomes of the organized minor leagues? Does a different commissioner oppose Rickey as strongly?

That's about right. I think Soriano is going to age well, a good bet to still be a good player in his late 30s. I think Andre Dawson is a good comparison there. As for Rowand, he's a good player, not great. His defense is praised but as a Phillies fan, I really don't see it. Rowand gets to a lot of balls but then will fail to make the catch. Shane Victorino is honestly a better defensive outfielder. At the plate can produce here and there, but he's a career .283 hitter. An average hitter who can play center field, which is certainly valuable. Not Albert Pujols. And is he a winning player? The Phillies have a worse winning percentage since they acquired him.

Call me crazy, but I like the Soriano deal better.