busblog yahoo fantasy baseball league #4

League ID#: 279139
Password: blogger
Season Type: Full
Draft Type: Live Draft
Draft Time: Sat Apr 5 Noon PDT
Max Teams: 18
Scoring Type: Head-to-Head

USC QB and now Phoenix Cardinal phenom Matt Leinart and his backyard underage pool and hot tub party – and photos in The Dirty

why is it the biggest story?

because our readers are emailing it to their friends.

and because some think that until Lienart or Leinert or however you spell it actually starts winning he shouldnt be having any fun with 19 yr old girls doing beer bongs and Nick Lachey

i also think the girl on the far right looks like a cuban girl i know, but whatevers

i voted for ramiele. because she was great and i love dolly parton, who made her nervous.

speaking of Idol, right now for the next hour, we at the Times are doing a live chat with Richard Rushfield who writes about Idol. he goes to all of the tapings and if hes not writing a book about the show he damn well should cuz hes a wealth of knowledge and very funny.

so go here and chat it up with bro. now!

update: the chat is over and man it was so fun. so since its over tell me who is your Idol for this season. or tell me something interesting. or just lurk, who cares really.

you mighta seen him on 60 minutes on sunday.

my buddy matt welch has the hots for him. or maybe he just has the hots for his mind. who knows and who am i to judge?

anyways the libertarian news cycle must be outta control because im the one who has to let people know that mr sabermetrics answered a shitton of questions over on the freakanomics blog at the NYT.

here were some of my favorite questions and answers. voici:

Q: Are there any baseball rules either in the game itself or for the leagues that you think ought to be changed, removed, or added to increase the entertainment value of the sport?

A: Many, actually. My pet project is a rule to limit pitching changes in the late innings. My rule, specifically, would be this:

1) Each team is entitled to one unrestricted pitching change per game.

2) With the exception of that one unrestricted change, no pitcher may be removed from the game in mid-inning unless he has been charged with allowing a run in that inning. With an exception for injuries, of course.

When you propose a rules change like that, people say, “Oh, you’re changing the way the game has always been.” That’s nonsense. In 1970 major league teams used 1.75 relievers per game. In 1990 they used 2.02 relievers per game, and in 2007 they used 2.97 per game — and the rate of increase in this area is still accelerating.

I’m not trying to change the game with this rule; I’m trying to stop a change in the game that is running amok. There are actually many rule changes like that which I would favor — rules designed to control changes in the game that are occurring, uncontrolled, at a breakneck pace.

Q: Can you tell us a time when you did an analysis and expected one thing, but the numbers told you something radically different?

A: Well, it happens every day. My “debunking” of the importance of stolen bases came from extended efforts to prove the importance of stolen bases, all of which failed. I remember I used to think that players from California were over-scouted and over-drafted, because the amateurs out there play baseball year around and mature early. It’s not true; the state fully justifies — and more than justifies — the draft picks invested out there.

Q: Will we see a woman player in the majors in my lifetime? (I’m in my 30’s. And when I say woman player I’m thinking regular contributor as opposed to a one-time gimmick.)

A: Well, there is nothing happening now at lower levels that would tend to cause that as a higher-level outcome. You will certainly see many women General Managers in baseball (and basketball) within a few decades, because there are large numbers of capable women filling lower-level baseball operations positions. You will see women scouts and probably umpires.

But colleges don’t have women’s baseball teams, and high schools don’t. Ninety-nine percent of girls who like to play baseball have been driven to other sports by age 12. It’s hard to see how a woman can wind up in the major leagues under those conditions.

Q: How important are good-hitting pitchers to the success of an offense in the N.L.?

A: Exactly as important as good-fitting underwear on a long drive.

Q: Has looking at the numbers prevented you from actually just enjoying a summer day at the ballpark? Have we all forgotten the randomness of human ballplayers? By reducing players to just their numbers can we lose sight of the intangibles such as teamwork, friendships, and desire.

A: Does looking at pretty women prevent one from experiencing love? Life is complicated. Your efforts to compartmentalize it are lame and useless.

Q: Why can’t the Chicago Cubs get into the World Series? Is it the small park? Low salaries? The curse of the billy goat? Does sabermetrics provide any insights?

A: Talking about the origins of it — the Cubs fell into a trench in history in the late 1930’s, when almost all baseball teams built farm systems, but the Cubs for several years refused to do so. This put them behind the curve, crippled them for the 1950’s, and really the organization did not fully overcome that until about 1980.

Since 1980 they have had several teams that could have wandered into a World Series, with better luck. They haven’t had any one overpowering team — like the 1984 Tigers, or the 1992 Blue Jays, or the 1998 Yankees — that was so good that it demanded a seat at the Last Banquet of Fall. And, unless you have a team that good, you’re at the mercy of the fates.

Q: Is clutch hitting a repeatable/retain-able skill?

A: I don’t know.

and not so hard days seem impossible

i have the pleasure of sharing an office with a wonderful, beautiful, highly intelligent young lady. tragically for her, shes cursed sharing an office with me.

even though she has no ambition to replace me if something horrible happens to me, several times a week i will spin my chair around and say, “if i ever get eaten by sharks or smacked in the head by a falling safe, you really should probably know how to do this…” and i will try to teach her part of my job.

usually she will look up from whatever document im pointing at and say, “why dont you just stay out of the ocean or away from safes because i never want to have to do what youre about to do.”

told you she was highly intelligent.

most nights i leave the office around 8 or 9 o’clock and i go to the subway and i ride home. on that ride i think about my day so that i wont have to run through the day when i eat my dinner.

tonight on my walk i was pretty happy until i got to the subway and started going over the day and i was all, damn dude, that was sorta a really hard day. and it made me think if someone had put acid in my cheerios this morning because none of how hard the day was sank in. i just kept going from meeting to meeting, answered email after email, and did whatever task was ahead of me.

sometimes when i see the picture of the dude standing in front of that tank in china i think, that dude just really wanted to get to his next task. that tank just happened to get in the way,

poor tank.

on one hand we were usually breaking records, so that was great, and it was right to celebrate. on the other hand i was usually like, omg how are we gonna do *better* than that.

and because of that fear i was reluctant to post our numbers on the busblog… cuz what would happen if the next month we didnt continue to grow…

now that i no longer work for LAist im happy to post their numbers as they are unreal. and i promise you this is no april fools joke. but for the month of march, 2008, LAist did over 2.2 million pageviews, about 6 times better than what we did just a year ago.

basically LAist had more pageviews than pretty much all of their so-called competition combined.

i am very proud of them, i am very happy for them, and most of all – as a fan – i cant wait to see what they are able to do with momentum.

momentum means so much. it doesnt matter if youre talking about a sporting event, or a relationship, or traffic on a blog – when you are rocking you continue to rock and magic shit happens. when youre floundering and continue to floundering horrible shit happens.

LAist has been on a bit of a roll for a while now as the chart shows. could they be able to get 12 million pageviews a year from now?

as someone who was deep inside that magical beast, and is now removed from it i can honestly say this – anything is possible with LAist. anything. it is free of so many things that slow down corporate sites and blogs, and it has the ability to shift on a dime. meanwhile it has the momentum and the staff and the street cred to do things that solo blogs would never be able to do.

this weekend i stopped by the LAist monthly bbq to congratulate them and have some of their mojo rub off on me. it was very nice and i wish them the best.

and puts puppies on the home page.

wrigley field, youre next

a day i really hate since my life is built on trust

but today is also Just a Girl’s birthday, a girl i heart.

last summer she flew to canada to meet me. its ok that she doesnt know that i live in america. apparently in holland they think that all of north america is america which is fine cuz we think that all of europe is england.

in real life JaG is taller and prettier and hotter than in any of her pictures. her boyfriend is also jealouser. especially in regards to hanging out with tony pierce for a week. in canada. in the summertime.

dont ask me why.

fine ask me why.

probably because in real life tony + jag = something really special and if i was a bf id be ascared too and maybe i would have txt messaged her a gazillion times day and night asking “did he steal yr heart yet?” “are you still mine, still?” “has he hypnotized you with that busblog mojo yet?”

she picked me up at the airport in vancouver. we took a cab to my hotel. by the time we got there the chemistry was already flowing and i found it all particularly interesting because at my age i didnt think that such things were still possible. but alas…

best thing about her? her profession. probably the best thing a smart person with courage could do for money. something we all should be doing if we werent at the xbi. and for that it proves how good a soul she is. and for that i heart her even more.

JaG probably picked up on the magnetism and good vibes between us, which clearly werent a fluke from when we first met a year before in amsterdam, because she hid out with her lesbian friends for most of the week and left me to hang out with foxxy, the hells angels, half of vancouver, lowercase carmen, and maxim girl keira-anne.

and fireworks.

and sushi.

and beer with the kids.

and etc.

so it was cool.

in another time in another place im pretty sure that JaG and i would probably be married, if you can believe it. shes pretty much the perfect girl. she likes all the right things, shes sweet, shes curious about most things, shes open minded, and she has the cutest accent.

i hope today she has a great birthday in her favorite spots in town. so why not go over to our little dutch girls blog and tell her happy birthday in european.

throwing out the first pitch. ask yourself, will he get booed or cheered?

imagine if everywhere you went, this is what the reaction was?

personally i couldnt give two craps what people think of me, but still, opening day is one of the happiest days in any baseball fan’s year – especially if they have tickets to the home opener. so to be greeted thusly sorta means something.

today the LA Times sports section had a sweet lil Q&A with every girl’s dreamboat, John Krasinski, who stars in “The Office”. LAT’s Jerry Crowe asked him some questions about sports because Krasinski is in George Clooney’s new football movie “Leatherheads”. Bro says that he used to play football in middle school, played basketball in high school and even ran cross country.

But when it came to talking about pro sports, the Newton Mass prettyboy (who now lives in LA) showed that when it comes down to knowing where Kobe’s office is, he doesn’t know jack.

Do you go to Lakers games?

I actually don’t. I think I made a promise to a bunch of Boston fans that I would try not to be caught dead in Lakers Stadium.

Go back to The Celtics Dome, ya bum.