Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Washington Post: Tom Boswell: Yankees Are Monuments To Baseball Success
(www.washingtonpost.com)
posted 9 hours ago by The Yankee Clapper to aging, great baseball players, injuries, pennant race, veteran leadership, yankees
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7 comment(s)
Boz pays homage to the gritty, gutsy, scrappy, first place 2013 underdog Yankees:
Read More...Perhaps for the first time in their history, the Yankees now epitomize exactly the kind of team that always used to try to beat them: a group of inspired-by-adversity, too-old-or-too-young, one-last-chance players who band together to prove that baseball is a team game, not just an aggregation of talent and fat contracts.
Put a few all-star seasons, such as Cano’s 31 RBI, Kiroda’s 1.99 ERA and Rivera’s 16 ...
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1 2 3 >Hey, maybe that's what Foster really said. But it's ridiculous to assume that he'd tell Hirschbeck the truth if he actually said what Jeter said he said.
The NFL had a ruckus over their 2nd book last year, when the comm called a team out for cheating, but turned out the infraction was under the admin section, specifying stuff like the opp locker room grade of Charmin has to be 2 or more..wasn't cheating at all.
EDIT: Coke to Moshe.
ZIP codes consist of a set of points and lines, NOT a polygonal area. One is not "in" a ZIP code, one's postal delivery point has a ZIP code.
Jeter heard: "ball beat you, and he didn't have to tag you.”
Foster said: "ball beat you, and I had him tag you.”
Seems perfectly reasonable to me, but I'm not a Yankee fan.
It may even be in the interests of the league to wire their umps on gameday, so that disputes like this don't become a he said - he said affair.
Not sure it was worth it to him to air the dirty laundry, from a strategic standpoint.
A rookie Kerry Kittles once scored about 15 first-quarter points on Michael Jordan, who spent the next 3 quarters not only dominating him on both ends, but apparently telling Kittles all sorts of uncharitable things about various women in his extended family, so to speak.
Yet after the game, Kittles blankly claimed he didn't hear anything - he had been told by the vets on his team that that was how he should handle it.
Jeter appears to have burned a source, generally speaking, not sure it was worth it unless he thought he could get the guy fired. Even then, not sure it pays off in the long run.
Jeter heard: "ball beat you, and he didn't have to tag you.”
Foster said: "ball beat you, and I had him tag you.”
Seems perfectly reasonable to me, but I'm not a Yankee fan.
Or Girardi is backing his player.
Seems to me that either of these explanations is possible.
And that's the main point. What's done is done, but the idea that "he beat you to the bag" is an acceptable alternative to actually tagging a runner is something that should be stepped on with an iron boot.
I would be terribly surprised if Girardi hadn't gone out to argue a call *arguing* "the ball beat him", and now, is saying that's not right.
People can squawk about what's right and whatnot, but there are certainly the way things are and the way things ought to be, but the way things are is the way things are, not the way things ought to be, because if the way things are were the way things ought to be, then there wouldn't be a the way things ought to be, just a the way things are.
So, I find either scenario about as likely as the other at this point, and it's preposterous to suggest somehow the Yanks have been robbed and insulted when they have certainly gotten and desired the same outcome for their team.
Basically, everyone above has good points. No way for us to know. You can only say that if Jeter misheard and carped to the press, that isn't cool. If Foster really said what Jeter says he said, he needs to be disciplined. We can know what we think should be done if one of the scenarios above is true, but we're not going to figure out which scenario actually is true.
I could be wrong, but I believe that anecdote was said regarding Ted Williams.
Separately, this one is going to quietly die out. None of the parties involved can benefit from continuing the issue.
Actually, no. ZIP codes do not consist of a set of points and lines. ZIP codes consist of numeric digits. The digits are then used to reference a postal delivery zone.
If you're gonna give a guy a hard time for no apparent reason you might as well get it right.
But that's like saying Derek Jeter isn't the shortstop for the Yankees, a Human Being NAMED Derek Jeter is. It's true, in so much as the set of letters that make up the name "Derek Jeter" is not the shortstop for the Yankees, while the hunk of flesh and bone assigned that name is the shortstop. But that's just being as ass. My point was that using ZIP codes to describe a geographic region is a terrible idea, full of problems and inconsistencies.
1) Jeter said that he heard it.
2) Jeter reacted as if he had heard it.
3) Girardi's comments are consistent with Jeter's version.
4) Girardi's spontaneous reaction at the time is consistent with Jeter's version.
5) Hirschbeck agreed that it "used to be" that way.
6) It took Hirschbeck and Foster a day to come out with Foster's version.
7) The Foster version doesn't make sense:
"The ball beat you and I had him tagging you." But why would Foster even bother to say "the ball beat you"? Whether Jeter was tagged is the relevant issue. The first part is extraneous information.
"Sometimes when tempers flare, you don't hear everything that's said," Hirschbeck said. But Jeter is not claiming that he "didn't hear" what was said; to the contrary, he's claiming that he DID hear. So Jeter would have to have MISheard, not NOT heard. But "You don't have to be tagged to be out" is very different from "I had him tagging you."
Why is Foster not speaking himself?
Actually, no. Numeric digits are simply visual references of mathematical constructs, and those visual representations are made of out of a set of points and lines. A ZIP code does not consist of digits, it consists of that set of points and lines.
Neither am I.
But since we're doing silly things like inferring that someone who gives an opinion on this meaningless issue is letting bias affect judgment: you're a Mets fan.
Not really, no. There are plenty of places in the country where surrounding the set of delivery points that have a certain ZIP code with a polygon is impossible without also surrounding other delivery points with different ZIPs. Further, there are vast swaths of the midwest with no reasonable "ZIP code" assigned to them...massive fields with no postal delivery, and thus no ZIP. Using a ZIP to describe a geographic boundary is bound to #### up your statistics, almost no matter what you're trying to do with the data.
This article starts to make the case against ZIP codes as polygons, but it really doesn't quite go far enough. It does do a good job of illustrating the problem, though.
I can understand employing the ball beat him rule if a guy is sliding straight into the bag. But if a player makes a specific movement to elude a tag, as I believe Jeter did here and Swisher did in the same game, then I think the umpire shouldn't fall back on that principle.
Seems like little difference in using congressional districts, school districts, or for that matter, neighborhoods, as in East Village being distinct from West Village or Lower East Side (for Manhattan downtowners). There is probably a lot of overlap, and not real clear borders. But as with ZIP codes, it's probably clear enough to be around the area.
But, I don't think this is the case. It seems to me that umpires in general are good about trying to call the real result of the play, and not falling back on "the ball beat him." If Foster really uses that as his standard, he is out of step with his colleagues and of course is flouting the rule book.
No. Look at a ZIP code. Those are numeric digits you're looking at. You are interpreting those digits as mathematical constructs, but that doesn't invalidate the fact that they are what they are: digits. Furthermore, your interpretation is imprecise. If you really want to go there, a ZIP code actually references a finite list of addresses, i.e. points. There are no lines in a ZIP code.
If you want to take the literal approach to its extreme, you could go so far as to say that the digits (as digitally represented or in print) are themselves constructed of points and lines, but it wouldn't invalidate the fact that ZIP codes consist of numeric digits.
Delivery routes are assigned a ZIP code. There are lines in a ZIP code.
It doesn't come as a shock to me at all; it just supports my point that we shouldn't assume that people are taking positions here out of "bias."
Also Ray, YOU hadn't made a post when I said that. Only DMN above had (He's an O's fan).
Who gives a ####. The real question is do you care about ZIP codes?
Especially in the pre-replay days, about all the crowd and people in the dugouts could tell was whether the ball beat a runner (if that). I suspect umpires learned that they avoided more arguments by saying the runner was tagged in those circumstances. Even when replay started, they didn't use it nearly as much as today, so it seems plausible that umpires were slow to change their approach. It's also a hard call, especially when the runner ends up getting tagged on a part of the body that isn't the 1st part of his body to touch the base. There are a lot of calls that I'm unsure of unless they show the replay in slow motion from a good angle.
Three things: First, 10030?
Second, you can't argue that ZIP codes are valid geographic polygons by showing a map of the most regular ZIP codes in the country, particularly when they don't even apply to the area under discussion.
Third, I don't deny that some people can make inaccurate maps that claim to show ZIP codes as geographic areas. I'm saying that these maps are inaccurate. For example, every PO Box in the Island of Manhattan is neglected on that map. Or, at least, most of them.
Those look like geographical regions to me.
Again, BOTH maps are inaccurate. There are numerous overlapping, inconsistent, and just plain wrong places on both maps, and neither of them is capable of showing the nuance of the situation through polygons.
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