Bottom line: Lane made some brilliant moves very early in his career—most notably, he picked up Billy Pierce, Nellie Fox and Minnie Minoso for almost nothing—but otherwise he was just making trades for the sake of making trades.

in a 5 day period in April 1960, he traded away Norm Cash for Steve Demeter and traded Colavito for Kuenn

I'll never forgive the sumbitch for that

Next year Neyer should do ESPN proud and pull a Gary Miller.

Chris J., is there a book on the way?

[/unintentional rhyme]

Among the stuff I wrote down: “Zimmer!” (in a bad way)

Zimmer was last or next to last in the league in offensive platoon advantage every year of his career except once (when he was 10th of 14 with Texas).

and “Gaston #1 positional CG,” which means, as I recall, that nobody did less than Cito Gaston.

Yup. He's bottom-rung for mid-game replacements for his starting position players.

Pops.

Yup. I briefly say the basics of it at the About the [me] thing at THT.

I'm planning on it being 9 chapters long (the presentation was Chapter 2; the old articles I wrote here at BTF 2 years ago* are chapter 1). The manuscript is due in on 4/1/09. I'm writing the ROUGH draft now. I've finished 6 chapters & want to be finished with Chapter 7 on Friday.

If you (or anyone else) wants to read over the ROUGH drafts & give me feedback, send me an e-mail & I'll send you Chapter 1. I'm always looking for advance feedback.

* They're no longer here. In order to get the book deal, McFarland wanted them taken down & Jim Furtado was gracious enough to agree.

I read the title as "rapping the SABR convention" and couldn't wait to see what kind of rhymes Ozzie had cooked up for us nerds.

I don’t know if Giacalone actually tied everything together in his 20 minutes. But he put on one hell of a good show.

You should catch his after hours show on the Le Beltran Cruise Lines!

pull a Gary Miller.

Good lord -- yet another euphemism for Option J.

You should catch his after hours show on the Le Beltran Cruise Lines!

The creation of that drink -- the Adrian Beltre -- and playing whiffle ball under the lights in front of Terminal Tower were the best parts of that weekend.

Steve Treder—yet another, and our last Primate—talked about longtime GM Frank Lane, who was nicknamed both “Frantic” and (more famously) “Trader.”

As I was still trying to make sense of the Harden trade last night, I wondered about whether Billy Beane was channeling "Trader" Frank Lane or not. Maybe Beane is a trade junkie.

May I assume that even if one does not spend his spare time inventing new measures or researching dead-ball archives but loves baseball, the SABR meeting is a lot of fun anyway? If it's in Washington next year, I might Amtrak it down.

Sure, Edmundo. Not everyone there is a researcher.

Frank Lane was everything Jim Bowden wishes he could be.

Sure, Edmundo. Not everyone there is a researcher.

Yes...I believe age 14 is the new cut-off point for researchers.

I must have missed the recap of the Rosie Bonds-Kreidler presentation at SABR