Hall of Fame Oddities

For a change of pace, I am going to stop arguing that Pete Rose, Mark McGwire, and other evildoers belong in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Instead, I am going to make a brief and convincing argument for the player who was my favorite player when I started following baseball.

Take a look at the these two players:

Player A (OF)
7244 AB, 1071 R, 2304 H, 207 HR, 1085 RBI, .318 BA, .360 OBP, 1 Batting Title, 2 W.S. Rings.
Player B (1B)
7003 AB, 1007 R, 2153 H, 222 HR, 1099 RBI, .307 BA, .358 OBP, 1 Batting Title, 1 MVP Award.

Player A and Player B have virtually identically statistics in a lot of the major categories, and they played during the same time period. Both were All-Stars many times and won many Gold Gloves at their respective positions. Both had their careers cut short, but would be considered borderline Hall-Of-Famers based on statistics alone. If one made it into the Hall, it would seem that the other would follow. And if one did not make into the Hall, the other probably would not either. In reality, both of these players were superstars whose names were bigger than their statistics show. Here's the real shocker: Player A was a first ballot Hall-of-Famer. Player B has been on the ballot for about a decade and doesn't have anywhere near the percentage of votes needed to punch his ticket to Cooperstown. If you haven't figured it out already, Player A is Kirby Puckett, and Player B is Don Mattingly.
Simply baffling. Donnie Baseball (I believe it was Puckett who gave him that nickname) belongs in Cooperstown.

GET OVER IT!

Welcome to the first edition of GET OVER IT! Here are three things that people need to get over and shut up about.

- Michael Phelps smoked pot. Was it wrong? Yes. Did he deserve the three-month suspension? Yes. But seriously, whoever took that picture of him deserves a punishment too. Douche. I'm not exactly a huge Phelps fan, but it's time for the media and anyone who is "outraged" over this to let it go. Phelps accomplished some amazing things. Considering that marijuana is not exactly a performance-enhancing drug, this does not take away from those accomplishments at all. And, while not condoning reefer, I've been to college. People smoking pot is not the end of the world (unless you're my college roommate, who was convinced he could get high from the smell of pot seeping in from outside the room, unless the windows were wide open. in the middle of winter). I can tolerate it if people are smoking pot. I can even come up with some good reasons why it should be legal (much longer post if I get into detail there). But the minute I see someone pull out some cocaine, I have the sudden urge to go far, far away. So, Phelps smoked pot, like an alarmingly high percentage of people his age have. He never claimed to be a perfect role model. He made a mistake. GET OVER IT!

- Alex Rodriguez did steroids. So did a lot of other baseball superstars over the last few decades. That doesn't make it right, but, sadly, that is the culture. Should that invalidate A-Rod's entire career and disqualify him from the Hall of Fame? Hell no! Maybe he would have had a few less home runs, but the overreaction to this is ridiculous. Crazed fans, Yankee haters, A-Rod haters, and even fellow MLB stars need to stop treating steroid use as if it were rejection of Christ. Why is this suddenly the unpardonable sin? Maybe A-Rod used it for three years. There's not evidence to the contrary. But to say all his stats should be gone? That anything he's done or will do in baseball is meaningless? Come on! Keep testing him for steroids, and if he keeps testing negative, this is a non-story. He will have proven that he can be the greatest in the game without steroids. He made a mistake. So did A LOT of other ballplayers. And I'm not even talking about football here. GET OVER IT!

- The stimulus is anti-Republican. It could have been better, but at least it's something. And really, it's not all that bad. And, at this point, we really needed this thing to get approved. There are times in history when we need to have more liberal economic views (a lot of what FDR and company did was necessary, for example, not socialism). I don't know how well this will work, but let's be honest here, it would be hard for it to work less than the failed policies of the last eight years. Sorry for sounding like an Obama PR machine, but come on... There's your number one reason why the Democrats have such large majorities right now. Or country is in the worst financial crisis since the great depression, and, so far, what Obama has done does not qualify as socialism, so GET OVER IT!

LOST!

If you're not watching LOST, then you're missing the best show on TV. Ever. But don't start watching it now unless you watch all previous episodes first. Otherwise you'll be really lost, even more lost than the show's regular viewers. Hurry up and catch up though, because this is the second-to-last season. All will be revealed soon.
So, for fans of the show, I will present a few of my very own LOST theories, which may or may not be accurate.
1.) Jack's Dad - I predicted part of this one way back in the episode where Jack saw his dad on the island. Of course, then it just seemed like it was just his imagination and his dad was still dead. But not to me. Jack's father's coffin was on the airplane that crash-landed on the island, and Jack found the coffin on the island later on, empty. And then he sees his dad. So my prediction was that his Dad was alive, and in a position of power on the island. This prediction proved accurate. My prediction now: The island brought Jack's dad back to life. He had been there before. Now he's back there, guiding people on the island. He will eventually be reunited with his son (as he already reunited with his daughter), when Jack gets back to the island, but his position in the show is much more important than that. I mean, come on, all you have to do is look at his name. CHRISTIAN SHEPHARD. [Read: Shepherd]
2.) The feud between Benjamin Linus and Charles Whidmore - This appears to be an old feud over the island. Both characters have aspects of evil in them. Ben is manipulating, not to be trusted, and clearly out for himself. But the island surely would have killed him already if he was not alive for a reason... Also, there's a good chance he killed Sayid's girl in order to recruit Sayid to kill Whidmore's people for him. Hopefully Ben will prove to have some redeeming qualities. If not, he would most likely be killed by Desmond since he wants to kill Penny as revenge against Whidmore.
3.) John Locke - I said from the very beginning that Locke would be the JC figure here (Thanks, 10th grade English). Locke will die in order to save others. That much has now been revealed, by Richard and by Christian Shephard. But I also predict that the island will bring him back to life when he returns.
4.) Jacob - His identity remains a mystery, but he is supposedly the one in charge of the island. Perhaps he is a person, and perhaps a spirit. We do know that Christian Shephard speaks for him. Biblical allusions abound here. I predict more of these. I also predict that we will see Mr. Eko again.
5.) What will become of the island - I could be way off with the prediction or right on. But, again, this is something I've been saying from early on. The island presents a lot of unique medical opportunities. People can be healed, brought back to life, made to walk again, etc. It now seems that Richard even gained the ability to not age. This is in addition to the unique scientific properties of the island (in or out of space and time...). So my prediction here is that Christian Shephard (and, by association, Jacob too, and Locke will be instrumental in this, as will Jack eventually) is one who wants the island to be used to help people all over the world, especially those who are sick. Ben and Whidmore seem to want the island for themselves- to control, exploit, make profit perhaps. There are dark, evil forces at work on the island too. But in the end, Jacob will triumph, and the island will be used for the good of many people, rather than for only a select few, or for evil or personal gain.

Leave the Steroids Era in the Past

How many people are surprised that Alex Rodriguez took steroids? Anyone? In a scientific study conducted by me, 100% of participants responded that they had just assumed that A-Rod probably took steroids* (*participants consisted of me and the two friends I first talked to about this. study was not actually scientific). But now that the game's highest-paid and perhaps best player has admitted to taking steroids for three years, everyone is talking about steroids in baseball again. I'm just repeating what I've been saying all along: Let's move on.
The steroids era is in the past. Major League Baseball has instituted more testing and stricter consequences for using steroids. Less players are using now. How widespread was it? We will never really know for sure, but what turned into a witch hunt ended as a fulfillment of Jose Canseco's prophecies (apparently steroids enhance prophetic ability too). Some would say that it took a lot of balls for Canseco to come forward. I would say it took a lot of greed and backstabbing, and after all those steroids, his balls are pretty tiny. I am not defending those players who took steroids. It was wrong. It was very wrong. But it happened. Chewing tobacco was wrong. Not having a World Series in 1994 was wrong (especially for the Montreal Expos and for Don Mattingly) Not allowing black players in Major League Baseball was BEYOND wrong. But all these things happened. We're not putting asterisks next to stats of players who played less games in a season, faced pitchers on a mound of different heights, never had to play against black players, pitched no-hitters on LSD, or any number of other things. The stats need to stand. Baseball is a game of stats, and we can't speculate about what the stats would have been or should have been. Besides, DO WE REALLY KNOW WHO USED PERFORMANCE-ENHANCING DRUGS AND WHO DIDN'T?
Many names have been named, and there's a good chance that most, if not all, of these players are guilty. But which other players used PEDs and got away with it? My bet is that Canseco is right, and only a small percentage of players using PEDs have been caught. And, perhaps more importantly, which players (especially star players) truly never used PEDs? Two players of the era come to mind that I would be extremely surprised and disappointed to find out that they did steroids: Cal Ripken, Jr. and Derek Jeter (Also, I doubt that few, if any, Asian players used PEDs). But did Manny Ramirez use? David Ortiz? Jim Thome? Vlad Guerrero? Frank Thomas? Albert Pujols? Ken Griffey, Jr.? I don't know. I hope not. But I don't know.
We're all pretty sure that Roger Clemens used PEDs. And Barry Bonds, whose head now literally has it's own zip code, as well as figuratively. And Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa (see ya, 1998! sad.). And Rafael Palmeiro. And others. I WOULD VOTE FOR ALL FIVE OF THESE GUYS FOR THE HALL OF FAME. What they did was wrong (and so was Pete Rose, but he should be in the Hall too), but they had Hall-of-Fame numbers even without PEDs. Clemens was still one of the best ever. Bonds would have still been 500/500 (maybe even 600/600 if the steroids didn't slow him down?). McGwire and Sosa have clear HOF numbers. Palmeiro's the only one that's even arguable. So maybe 500 isn't the magic number anymore, but statistics should be the most important thing in determining whether or not a player is eligible for the hall (certainly, championships and character are also part of the formula).
My point is that we don't really know who did what. It was a dark and shameful era for Major League Baseball, but it's time to move on. The players who never used are commendable, and the players who got away with using PEDs without ending up on any lists should still be ashamed, but with all the lies, no one will ever really know who did or didn't for certain. This whole situation has gotten out of hand. Let's put it in the past where it belongs. And move on. A new season is about to begin.

Good vs. Evil

I just wanted to share a passage from Galatians where "fruits", if you will, are contrasted. Hopefully most Christians you have come across clearly bring forth fruits of the spirit, rather than the rotten fruits of the sinful nature. This is not to say that Christians don't ever struggle with sin or are never lacking in one or more of the fruits of the spirit (against such things there is no law! Amen!), but it is through the fruits of the spirit that those of us who are Christians show the world that we are Christians.
All of the traits listed in the passage below as fruits of the spirit are important, but LOVE is listed first for a reason. The world will know we are Christians by our LOVE. LOVE is the reason that Christ died on the cross for us. We should show His LOVE to others- believers, non-believers, the rich, the poor, Democrats, Republicans, and even Red Sox fans... Sadly, too many people I've met, notably during my time at Wesleyan, think that Christians are not loving, but hateful- hating homosexuals, liberals, non-believers, science, whatever... I pray that more of these people discover groups of Christians (like the Wesleyan Christian Fellowship- not affiliated with Wesleyan doctrine) that shatter their negative views of Christians through demonstrating Christ's love. And I apologize for any who call themselves Christians who perpetuate the negative stereotypes by their hateful actions and words.

Galatians 5:16-26

16So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. 17For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. 18But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law.

19The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; 20idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions 21and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

22But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. 24Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. 25Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. 26Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.

They almost pulled it off!

The Arizona Cardinals- The NFL's answer to the Los Angeles Clippers (as close as it gets anyway) nearly pulled off the upset win over the Pittsburgh Steelers, but fell just short, 27-23. The Steelers were just inches away from defeat though, as two pivotal plays went the Steelers' way by narrow margins- James Harrison's 100-yard interception return for a touchdown at time expired in the first half (just barely got into the end zone) and Santonio Holmes' game-winning touchdown reception on the Steelers' final drive (just barely got both feet down in bounds while controlling the ball). At least it was a good game. And the Cardinals' offense is fun to watch- Kurt Warner is one of the top 10 QBs of all-time, and Larry Fitzgerald and Anquan Boldin are unbelievable receivers. Fitzgerald has been ridiculous lately. I'm still not sure how I ended up with all three of those guys on my Fantasy Football team this season. Anyway, here's to an exciting Super Bowl XLIII!