I think I can partly see Stone's point of view in this situation, but I can also understand the point of the opposition. This, however, is based upon my view of "private" associations with large public exposure. For example, Stone mentioned the Boy Scouts. The Boy Scouts are considered a private organization, yet every time there's a major holiday or some sort of cause you see them out in public begging you to buy candy bars or to take your Christmas tree away. Pretty much anyone you run into will know that the Boy Scouts organization teaches kids basic survival skills in the wilderness, teamwork, and public service along with other useful skills and virtues. The problem with the Boy Scouts is that they are using stupid "evidence" as an excuse to disallow an entire type of person from joining. They depict all homosexuals as predators, out to have sex with young boys, so they won't let them be Scoutmasters. This opinion is based on an assumption that all gay men are also pedophiles - something you would joke about with your friends in a house just to be funny. They also cite religious reasons, passages from the Bible (a book made up by men). It's actually kind of ironic; in researching the topic for a paper in a sociology class back at Southern I found zero cases where a homosexual Scoutmaster made even an advance at a Scout, yet what's all over the news? Priests molesting altar boys. Regardless, though, the Boy Scouts use outdated reasoning, laughably antiquated excuses like, "Man, gay people have no morals or family values!"

But that's off the topic of golf and Augusta National, though. Right now, from what I understand, women essentially just want to play the course. Obviously, if you give them free run of the course, they'll eventually want into the Masters. They televise the Masters tournament, but do they send a camera crew out every time some golf pro plays the course regularly? No, they don't. The club has a right to not let women play the course since Fox isn't there night and day to film Joe Person's -6 game. It's a constitutional right, and if the members don't want women playing, then too bad. Open your own course and exclude men from playing.

My question, though, is why? I can't, for the life of me, think of any reason to disavow female golfers from playing the Augusta National course. Like, denying a black man membership in the KKK I can understand. Not letting a hardline conservative Jew into the Aryan Brotherhood I can also understand. Tossing a tree-hugging hippie who rides a regular bicycle everywhere out of the Hell's Angels is yet another foreseeable conclusion. And I pretty much disagree with all of those organizations. But what, exactly, are women going to do if they play the course? Are the members of the Augusta club afraid they're going to go play the front nine one morning and find tampons and a stack of burned bras on the grass? What? I see Stone's reasoning behind this - I can't stand watching golf on TV (I'm so bad that I can't even stand watching myself play sometimes), but I think it'd be really crappy to have them take the Masters off of television over this topic. I just don't understand exactly why women are being excluded from the private course. Maybe I need some more enlightenment on the subject, I dunno.

Oh yeah, and if you're a private organization, stop fucking pushing Kit Kat bars on me when I walk out of the goddamned grocery store, shitheads.

Knaa'mean?

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/18/opinion/18MON3.html

(use 'nyinsult', 'insult' as password)

Good fucking God. Do any of the people reading this site support this sort of bullshit? As far as I can understand, Augusta National is a golfing FRATERNITY. The point of the damn thing is for men to be able to hang out and play golf with each other, or with women, if they invite them.

The Supreme Court allows for freedom of association (and non-association) as a right, came up in National Association for the Advancement of Colored People v. Alabama, which was a 1958 case, I think. Discrimination as an illegal practice comes into play when freedom of association begins to do an unreasonable amount of damage to a society. And, understand that what qualifies as an 'unreasonable' amount of damage is pretty high - the Boy Scouts are a huge, national, important organization, and they're still legally allowed to disinclude gay scoutmasters.

Obviously, not allowing women into Augusta is not going to do an unreasonable amount of damage to society. Neither will not allowing women into some college Frat, or not allowing men into the National Order of Women or what have you.

This whole thing really doesn't make a difference - it'd be hardly worth talking about, if not for three issues: 1.) the frame of mind necessary to think that this sort of blackmail is a constructive or positive way of getting things done could very well do an unreasonable amount of damage to society, 2.) feminism has done positive things - and a movement wasting its time on this sort of stuff will end up invalidating itself as a whole.

3rd, if people keep paying attention to Martha Burk, this organization, then what's going to happen in the end is that the Masters is going to be taken off of television, and Augusta National will just close up and continue doing its own thing. The Masters is one of the purest, and one of the best sports tournaments on television, and I'm not looking forward to having it taken off the air because of this bullshit.

Anyways, if anyone actually agrees with what Burk is doing, please respond - I hardly even know how to argue about it, given how foreign, alien the other viewpoint seems to be to me.

Stone

Think about it, too - all four of the underdogs are progressing.  Pretty great.  I'm not that excited about the Giants-Cardinals series, but, man, is the Angels-Twins series going to be excellent or what?  The teams match up well, good skills across the board, good hitting, good fielding, fun players, excellent bullpens, so on. 

I feel kind of bad for the Braves when they lose.  Both Maddux and Glavine tend to take on a sort of scared, deer-in-the-headlights look when things aren't going well for them (not all that often), and it's almost kind of pitiful.  I wish I could find some photos to illustrate this- Maddux had this face on while in the bullpen last night, 9th inning, as Smoltz pitched.

Things are going well, I think.  In a good mood today.

Stun

Ahh, man, such a pleasing site. I may dislike the Yankees enough to think (much to FlyingTim's dismay) that they should pass the torch to another team, but damn... I HATES ME SOME BRAVES! Woo! Way to go, San Fran! Let's have a party, no Braves in the NLCS! Yeah! And here's the man who screwed it up for those Braves, their star player, the guy everybody loves to hate... Chipper Jones! Leaving the clubhouse in shame, aw yeah.

I think I care too much about the damn game. Heh.

Knaa'mean?

I guess I'm a graceful Yankee fan...but I'm not happy that they lost. I mean, they're my team...and therefore I want them to win. I've heard some people say that they're glad that the Yanks are out to give another team another chance. Fuck that...the fact that the Yankees have won so many World Series lately is only a reflection of how well they have played the game; and perhaps how poorly (Boston) many other teams have played. Baseball goes in cycles...if you've been watching it for any length of time you would know that. The talent on the Yankees have played well together for some time now. It just lined up that way. The way it did for the Braves in the early nineties, the way it did for the Athletic's in the eighties and the way it did for the Yankees in the late nineties. Sometimes you get a team like that. They don't have a monopoly on baseball. The last two years should serve as a pretty good example for that. So lets end the anti-Yankee crap, shall we?

I don't know about you, but when Raul Mondesi got on base, I thought the Yankees were going to come back. Didn't seem totally improbable - Nick Johnson, then Ventura comes up. That last inning, man, it was like a zombie movie - the Yankees had been riddled full of bullets, everyone thinks the game's over, and then you hear the Yankees growl "zzzzzzuuuugggggggghhhhnnnnn...braaaaaainnnnns" and get back up.

What do you think Steinbrenner's going to do? Spend twice as much, $200 million next year? I say he decides to cut payroll by 75% and goes 'small-market'.

It makes sense that the Yankees lost, and all- the stuff that killed them is what should've killed them. Old, old pitching, errors, strikeouts, an overreliance on home runs, being nothing like the Yankees teams that got them all those championships, but, nonetheless, it's still weird to see them actually lose (and to the Angels!)

Stone

I've had it with all this ant-Yankee rhetoric bullshit.  You bad mouth a team when they suck, right? So they win and play well and do well, and you still bad mouth them.  You people who harbor such hatred for the Yankees must lead the most miserable lives.  I can understand rooting against the Yankees, I can understand not liking them for one reason or another, but I just don't get why you all hate them so much.

People unjustly slander the Yankees because "They buy all their talent."  Or even, "They the best players from other teams."  This is ludicrous...the Yankees have so much home-grown talent on their team that they would be nothing without.  Let me drop a few names and you tell me if they sound familiar.  Bernie Williams, Derek Jeter, Alfonso Soriano, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada, Juan Rivera...these are all players that came up through the minor leagues in the Yankees farm system and were not purchased from another team.  However, there are a few players that were purchased from other teams and became who they are today because of the Yankees, such as Paul O'Neill, David Wells, Scott Brosius and Mariano Rivera, to name just a few.  The Yankees have one of the best coaching staffs in baseball right now, and it's not because of the amount of money they paid for them.  You put all this together, and you combine an owner like George Steinbrenner who isn't afraid to spend money on real talent, and you get a winning team.  It's true that in the past Steinbrenner has made mistakes, but you can't fault the guy for wanting to win.

In closing, I'd like you all to shut the fuck up with all this Yankee hating.  I want them to get to the World Series.  I want them to win the World Series.  Do you know why?  Because I'm a Yankee fan, and that's what I do.  I root for my team to beat other teams.  It doesn't matter that they're won it a lot before, and that some of you whiners think that "Its someone else's turn" to win the series.  That's a bunch of bullshit.  You root for your team even though it's doing shitty, so why when it's doing well would you give up on it and say that it's someone else's turn?  You wouldn't.  So go fuck yourselves, and Go Yanks.

Bottom of the fifth, one out, bases loaded, Cincinnati Reds outfielder Austin Kearns hits a pop fly to the wall in left center field. If it's caught, the man on third scores on the sacrifice fly. If not, it's either a grand slam home run or a tie game with a possible go-ahead run.

Kearns' ball indeed hits the wall. It's fielded by New York Mets left fielder Timoniel Perez.

At the same time, the man on first overruns the man who was on second. The man on first is out.

But what's this?

The umpires say that Timo caught the ball! He wings the ball in to the cutoff man who flips it to the player covering second base in time to get a force on the runner from second. End of the inning, end of the scoring threat. But wait, that's four outs, that last one wasn't necessary.

Actually, it's really only two outs! The ball DID hit the wall. It then slid right into Timo's glove. That, of course, is not an out, right? Well Timo slammed against the wall and came down with the ball. He then put his glove hand up to indicate that he'd caught it when he actually hadn't - AND FOOLED THE UMPIRES! So really, there's only the two outs from that one guy overrunning the other.

The ball then comes in to second base. The runner slides into the base after the ball arrives, but no tag is applied. There has to be a tag because there's nobody on third to force the out. But somehow, the umpires decide that that is an out. What happened?

The runner from second didn't have to tag up because the ball wasn't really caught. The ball wasn't caught, so that wasn't an out. The only real out was the overrunning.

I'm still confused as to what the hell the umps were doing there. But the key thing is that Timo's fake-out worked and the Mets went on to win the game. But what a hell of a play!

Knaa'mean?

So, the All-Star Game ended in a tie last night. Makes sense to me, if you're going to try to get every player into the game in 9 innings, then you're going to run out of pitchers at some point. It seems like they should've expected it.

Now, it's the All-Star game, so it doesn't really matter, but nonetheless, this sort of thing shouldn't ever happen again. It's been suggested that perhaps they solve any future ties with a Home Run Derby playoff, the baseball equivalent of that thing they do at the end of hockey games. They could just maintain a reserve of pitchers, and tell players that they might not actually get into the game unless the game goes into extra innings. All well and good.

Spodaddy, though, last night, had the best idea - have the winning side of the All Star Game get home advantage for their league in the World Series. It'd be awesome, the game would mean something, most players would still have a personal stake in the game, stuff like that. It'd keep the Baseball All-Star game the only major one worth considering, and it might inspire other sports to institute rules that made their All-Star Games important too.

Stone

Monday, Bob Watson, Vice President of On-Field Operations for Major League Baseball, confirmed Red Sox pitcher Frank Castillo's suspicions by doling out a five-game suspension for the hurler's contact with third base umpire Bill Welke in Wednesday's game against San Diego. Castillo was also fined an undisclosed amount as part of the discipline. With a runner on first and one out in the seventh inning and the game tied, 1-1, Welke called a balk on Castillo, allowing the Padres' Tom Lampkin to move into scoring position. Following a run-scoring double by Julios Matos, Castillo charged Welke, stepping on the umpire's left foot.

Today, the umpire is being made obsolete. With all of the technology out there nowadays, it seems that all they are good for is ejecting people when they make lousy calls. It's bullshit. But this isn't a rant, actually. I just wanted to preface what I was going to say with that.

I think baseball should be played more like this. There needs to be a lot more boasting and emotional displays like Castillo's. Yeah, if he hadn't given up the hit to Lampkin, there wouldn't have been a balk called, but balks are bullshit calls anyway. They don't allow enough subterfuge in baseball. There has to be a clear pause before you throw home or to a base, so if you try to pick a runner off without pausing a balk is called. You don't even have to throw the ball to get the balk! You can make a fake to keep the baserunner in line. Because of this rule, it is so insanely hard to pick a runner off that it's really pointless to even try. The only reason to do it is to keep the runner on the bag when you're trying to turn a double play or something so you can get the force out.

So you should just be able to throw directly after lining up. It's still hard to pick someone off because the baseman has to tag the runner, it just makes it a lot easier to do so and eliminates the balk, which is bullshit anyway.

And boasting. After a game, players are always like, "Yeah, we went out there and we tried to play our best. We did," "We got lucky on a few pitches," "You just have to go out there and play the game and that's what we did, you can't focus on individual performance," "The other team just got the better of us." Bah. Baseball players need to be more full of insults and witty comments. Stuff like, "Well, sometimes you're on your game. Tonight, their pitcher wasn't. He sucked. A lot," "You make that many errors, the other team's eventually going to capitalize on one. We got 'em all tonight," "I went oh for four because the ump made some really crappy calls," "We sucked balls tonight. There's no other explanation."

Fights should be more commonplace, too. Bench-clearing fights are the best. Like, with that whole Clemens-Piazza thing a week or so ago, instead of all that pussy shit, "Oh, let's throw at Clemens!" Clemens should have just taken an ass-whuppin'. The whole Mets bench should have cleared and pounded the Yankees bench. Injuries galore. Yeah.

In any event, Boston fans have it all wrong. The Yankees and Derek Jeter, unfortunately, don't suck...

BUT THEY SHOULD!

Knaa'mean?