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Moldy Old Teuton?
His buddy Pettitte is there.
He's 34 years old, and trying to fill a void, with no great expectations from the fans and no big new ballyhooed contract.
Why would he get all dizzy from the bright lights at this point?
Seems like Pearlman's political bent is intervening here......
Andy's an evangelical Texan; Rocket's a dumber-than-dirt Texan. I can't recall them falling apart.
besides, Berkman survived Rice. That's part of the Commie Higher Ed Establishment.
I don't think he's suggesting he can't perform in New York (actually, he says he's an excellent addition), just that Berkman isn't a New York City kind of guy.
And now, having sort of, kind of defended Pearlman, I must shower.
Yeah, but Pearlman doesn't give any evidence on this point, other than that Berkman is a Conservative Texan. Either Pearlman is saying that Southern country guys with conservative views cannot become "New York guys"--which is contrasted by the whole history of professional baseball in this city, or he's got some unspecified reason that's not in the article.
Bad writing, in other words. Which is probably what we should expect of a never-has-been like Pearlman.
I was going to say the same - but is that worth a blog post? Does it jibe with:
I don't think it's wrong to read an implication here that he is worried about Berkman's performance. The last sentence seems obviously fearful of the possibility that it does not go well, and I'm guessing this isn't a reference to Berkman feeling kinda homesick and just sort of staying in his hotel room and watching replays of the Bassmasters Tournament instead of getting out there and enjoying the liberal coastal cultural offerings.
and he is indeed visiting liberal city for 2 months
but pearlman is downright offensive - even more than usual. ahm TAHRD of all us-n bein callt hix what cain't deal with no new yawk cultcher.
in fact, pearlman has turned into rocker - only it is ok to insult/offend non newyawkers - as HE sees it
Except Rocker isn't even this bitter. And the condescension. Oh the condescension.
I'm sure many players -- from big cities and small -- have failed in NY after succeeding elsewhere. But there are just as many who succeeded in NY but then failed in KC or Milwaukee. That really proves nothing about small town boys not being able to hack it in NY. In fact, Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle were small town country boys who did just fine as Yankees. I wouldn't doubt outside Berkman-the-gentile there are a number of current Yanks who hail from small towns in the middle of nowhere and they are fine in NY.
I feel the same way, Berkman may or may not perform in New York, but it's clearly not the environment he wants to play in long term or be associated with. I don't get why people think this is a hard concept. Given a choice for job locations I would personally assume St Louis, San Diego, most of California(avoid Northern Cali, even though I'm a liberal) etc... but I really would not actively choose to get a job in anything resembling the east coast.... Why would I be any different than a ballplayer? they have their preferences also.
agreeed... I think the point is more about Berkmans personality, even though the article really doesn't do a good job of pointing that out. Berkman has shown a consistency of staying in the middle states, trade rumors pop up and when he has control, it's to the Chicago, Cincy and St Louis teams over the other teams, as it's fairly apparent he doesn't want to go east or west coast. It has zero to do with his political bent, other than the fact that he relates well to the areas he has chosen.
why should this matter anyway, I don't know of anyone that would personally want to take a job in New York other than to bolster their career, the cost of living is ridiculous, the annoyance factor of everything is out there(from parking---geezus I've heard of people in New York who are full fledged adults who don't have a drivers license---- to the 3X's cost of apparments, to the lack of the ability to control your own destiny---can't drive anywhere--- that can to some people override the greatness of New York which has everything and anything(including Aids infected whores---j/k)
This stuff is all relative. Living in the country full-time would bore the pants off of me.
agreed. Not saying one or the other is better, I love St Louis, I absolutely loved living in San Diego, I could never live in an area in which I could see a cow within 20 minutes of driving distance, I hated every single minute I've ever spent in Chicago, and appararently Washington DC and Florida are equally as bad of drivers(I've seen 5 car accidents in my live, three of them happened in one weekend in Chicago) It's what you like, and it has value to a player, person or employee. To think that a person is just going to be happy with a job just because it's a successful, profitable opportunity is silly. Berkman basically required that the Yankees pay him less money to get his services(his option is way more than he will make probably over the next two years, yet he guaranteed that they wouldn't pick it up)
I remember those years. So talented, they didn't even need a third outfielder . . . .
Yeah, I know the culture is radically different, but the whole "country bumpkins can't make it in the big city" stuff gets way overplayed.
But the biggest category of those people would just be the ones who don't earn enough to stay ahead. When you have a modern ballplayer's salary, it's ridiculously easy to adapt to New York in any one of a million ways, either by living in a luxury condo and taking taxis anywhere, or by buying a big house in Jersey or Connecticut and getting a friend to drive you to work. The only problem with New York is being able to afford the sort of amenities (like owning a car or finding a big enough place to spread out) that you can take for granted nearly anywhere else. It's amazing how much "adaptation" most people are capable of as long as they don't have to worry about keeping the wolf away---hell, even John Rocker wound up with a black girlfriend.
Only because she didn't have purple hair.
That's a feature, not a bug.
I guess Ohio isn't northeastern, is it?
Ohio is Midwestern.
In contrast to my handle here, I am left of center politically, and it never bothered me that Lance is a conservative (I assume that's the case--it's not like he talks about it a lot publicly). If I let politics control my fandom, I wouldn't have many players to root for, since most professional baseball players tend to be conservative. That part of Pearlman's commentary perplexes me. I have never thought of Berkman as particularly unusual; he doesn't seem to try to be the loud mouth type who pushes his views on everybody else. Berkman is vocal on his religion, but so what?
So are half the counties in northern New York.
Javier Vazquez?
I've lived that way in Toronto, Regina and soon to be Nottingham, I don't think it's New York exclusive. (Though to be fair Regina was college days, so "full fledged adult" probably doesn't apply there.)
No dispute here. Buffalo is the easternmost Midwestern city.
Southeastern Ohio is Appalachia. Cleveland is like Pittsburgh or Detroit. Columbus and points west/NW are like Indianapolis or Des Moines or any other Midwestern city. Cincinnati is the capital of Kentucky.
Players generally aren't allowed to fail in NY for "a number of years".
That said, Ed Whitson and Kenny Rogers.
I've lived that way in Toronto, Regina and soon to be Nottingham, I don't think it's New York exclusive.
Put it this way---it's a lot easier to live "normally" without a car in Manhattan and the inner boroughs than it is in any other United States city.** You can't really compare the U.S. to foreign cities that usually have far better public transportation than we do.
**It's not impossible in Boston, Washington or Chicago, but in those places you're operating under a big time handicap if you want to go outside the central cocoon. Most residential areas outside the inner core of those cities are far removed from any subway or trolley stop, and bus service is....inconsistent.
I'm not sure how to interpret this.
there ARE no zoning laws in houston except for the rules about what kind of bidness can be near a skool (which is why you can see a ho-house next to a church. yall know about the famous sign - there is a strip club called "heartbreakers" and right next to it is a church with a huge sign - "jesus heals the brokenhearted")
houston is a HUGE city - i keep telling people that the narrowest diameter is 60 MILES
i am g*dd*mm tard of people talking about us like this is some sort of lil town in the middle of nowheres
and berkman doesn't push his religion on anyone. just because you might could PREFER to live in houston doesn't mean that you can't HANDLE living and working in da cultcher center of da woild.
berkman is honest and intelligent and speaks his mind to reporters and THAT might not go over real too good Up There.
as for rocker,
he is MARRIED to a Black woman (no purple hair and she does speak english - hahahaha)
and all i can say is - if i had to choose between having rocker or pearlman at our dinner table, it would be rocker in a landslide
It's true that Houston is the only major American city without a proper zoning ordinance, but the idea that it is "unplanned" and some sort of pure free-market city is largely a myth. There was a pretty good debate over this last year, but there are plenty of laws that govern development in Houston that, while not "zoning" per se, produce low-density neighborhoods: link
I dunno, Lisa, it feels like both to me a lot of the time.
Berkman is going to spend what, 40 days in New York City as a Yankee? He will not move out of his hotel.
Yes, he was not very good in 1985, his first year in New York. He had an ERA+ of 83. But was that inexplicable based on what Ed Whitson had done before? No. In 1983 for the Padres his ERA+ was 82. In 1981, as a 26-year-old for the Giants, his ERA+ was 85. In 1979, in 158 innings for the Giants + Pirates, Whitson's ERA+ was 90.
So the bottom line is that the pitcher the Yankees got in 1985 just was not that great before he arrived. He was fully capable of putting up a stinker of a season. I suspect because New Yorkers wrongly assumed that anyone the (faultless) Yankees brought in as a free agent had to be a great player, that when Ed Whitson turned out to be Ed Whitson they concluded "he's too much of a p*ssy to make it in New York." It likely had nothing to do with New York.
In 1986, Whitson was worse for the Yankees. After only 4 starts he was put in the bullpen and stunk there. After just 37 innings pitched, Whitson was traded to San Diego in 1986. And guess what--he stunk for the Padres that year, too. He was, after all, Ed Whitson.
The evidence that Whitson stunk on the Yankees because "he could not handle New York" seems rather weak. The evidence seems stronger that Whitson stunk in New York because he pitched like Ed Whitson.
At age 32 and 33 for the Padres in the two years after leaving the Yankees, Whitson put up numbers similar to what he had as a 30-year-old on the Yankees--below league average ERA+.
Then, inexplicably -- steroids? -- Whitson had two brilliant seasons at age 34 in 1989 and age 35 in 1990 in San Diego. (These were the years when steroids were beginning to be rampantly used in baseball, according to some accounts. It was also easy for a player in San Diego to drive down to a pharmacy in Tijuana and pick up whatever he wanted.) At age 36, Whitson was suddenly lousy and done (and I presume hurt).
I live in San Francisco, not New York, but why in the world would I want to own a car?
They're terrible for the environment, a burden on our cities, drive tons of poor decisions, alienate our communities and tether people to a commute.
Why should anyone want to own a car? I might want better public transportation, but I never, ever, ever want to be tied down to your death boxes.
His Winnebago, you mean.
Because the beach, wine country, Tahoe, Yosemite, Big Sur, redwood forests, Point Reyes, the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the Jelly Belly factory are all within half a day's drive. It would drive me crazy not to have a car here - you are denying yourself of the San Fran's single best quality, its proximity to so much wonderfulness.
Then do what a lot of NYers do when they want to get out of the city for the day -- they rent a car for the day.
I can rent a car any time I like without any of the parking hassle or environmental impact. What is the benefit to owning a car?
You asked whether there was a good example of a "white American country boy" who excelled for years for a small market team, went to NY and failed for a number of years, and then returned to a team in a smaller city and played well again. I don't know whether he was a "country boy", but otherwise Whitson absolutely meets those criteria. Don't ask the question if you're just going to crab when somebody answers it.
Nope. Those people probably don't move here in the first place. And there are plenty of people who manage to get by in NY.
I worked for a big law firm, and I saw a lot people who would be making good money, but just could not handle New York -- the size, the speed of life, the noise, the whole environment just was not right for them. Just like I saw people who moved out here, and could not handle the remoteness and cultural difference of Hawaii.
I see that you're a fundamentalist on this issue, so I'll stop arguing with you.
No, because most of the moral hazard w/r/t car ownership comes from things like demanding that gasoline be cheap, commuting in your car and using it for driving under a mile all the time just because you have a car.
Renting a car for a weekend exposes me to none of those. I buy a tank of gasoline once, I drive to where I'm going directly, and I use it for trips that I can't make reasonably in public transit or by my own two feet.
The problem with cars come from sitting in one all day long. If everyone only used cars for weekend trips, they'd be great.
It is a good point with regard to tshipman's moral superiority - one might ahve a much smaller ecological footprint living outside of a city, but the further you get the more necessary a car becomes. I wonder if the average carless city dweller causes more damage than a rural man that needs to drive everywhere. (Not that I really care or would let such a calculation affect my living choices)
It turns into posts on BBTF
link
No way. Economies of scale. While I'm sure Bernal is an excellent locavore, all kinds of food that he eats gets trucked in from far off places. Shipping out to the country causes a lot of fuel use. Shipping to cities does as well, obviously, but that cost is spread out more.
As an aside--I always felt that example from Freakonomics was misleading. Who ranched all those cattle? We did. We didn't ranch so much cattle before efficient refrigerated shipping. Increased cattle ranching is an effect of increased transportation.
I grew up in a town of less than a thousand people, my first job was shoveling horseshit for a ranch, and I can still post a trot for around 5 miles before my legs give out.
Edit: and my beef isn't with people who live in the country. It's suburbia that causes the moral hazard. I'd prefer the country to be focused around cities and country living, with much less in the way of suburbia.
Technically that's true because of the way MSA lines are drawn, but under any reasonable definition the DC/Baltimore area is significantly bigger.
The cities of DC and Baltimore and just the counties directly adjacent and between the cities have a total population greater than the entire Houston MSA in a land area that's 70% smaller. The CSA that includes the outlying counties of the DC area has 40% more people than the Houston MSA.
Great example, except that as has been pointed out, he never excelled. Never before coming to NY did he put together back-to-back years of ERA+ > 100. He was a full-time starter for only three years before he came to NY in in 1985. His combined ERA+ fr those years, including starting and relieving, was a whopping 101.
You saying that being league average is "excelling"? Really?
What do you think happens to all the manure?
It turns into posts on BBTF
- teh awesome!!!!!
i don't know any of all yall noo yawkers in real life, but the ones i met who have come here are pushy, loud and RUDE - and that would bother me lots more than living in a downtown with no malls/kroger etc
and i have lived in apartments and i don't see how that beats your own house
on the other hand, i have driven to see relatives in rural texas and unlike bernal i wouldn't want to live there neither
I have no real beef with country life. I just wanted to live someplace with good food and girls. If I were older and married (especially with kids), it'd be a lot more appealing to me than it is now.
I don't find working with my hands boring either. Also, I don't recall saying anything bad about country living, just that I don't like cars.
See, why don't you just say you wanted to live in the city? When you say stuff like this, you just look stupid. Good food and girls are not limited to the big city, not by any stretch of the imagination.
As a husband and father of three, I prefer my suburban existence to the semi-rural life I had for 12 years, and I most definitely wouldn't want to live in the city.
I'm pretty sure there's no right answer.
He went to HS in Southington, CT:
Southington originally was a small, rural farming community. In the early 1900s, Southington developed as a manufacturing center, but still maintained a very small population of a few thousand residents. Some of the products invented there include the first cement that was able to harden under water, the first carriage bolt cutting machine, the break-neck rat trap, and a new tinware process.
Nope. Those people probably don't move here in the first place. And there are plenty of people who manage to get by in NY.
I worked for a big law firm, and I saw a lot people who would be making good money, but just could not handle New York -- the size, the speed of life, the noise, the whole environment just was not right for them. Just like I saw people who moved out here, and could not handle the remoteness and cultural difference of Hawaii.
I don't doubt that, but I also don't doubt that a lot of the stress has to do with the level of expectations they bring to the table, each of which requires a sizeable cash outlay. Of course there are always people who just aren't cut out for big city life, but I'd bet a fair amount that there are more people who would move to New York in a minute if they knew in advance that they could take the same amenities for granted that they could back where they came from. Remove that anxiety (which takes a big chunk of income) and things become a lot less stressful.
Put it this way: If you took a million middle class outlanders (so to speak) and gave them sufficient income to live in the same degree of comfort and mobility in Manhattan (same size house, same quality of education for their kids, same number of cars with a garage, etc.) as they do in their home towns, and then took a million middle class Manhattanites and reversed the direction, there'd be a lot more misery found in those newly minted main streeters than there'd be in those newly arrived Manhattanites.
All that said, this theory would probably apply more to younger people than to older people, and to make it a true test you'd probably have to exclude the sort of people whose world revolves around their political identities and having to be surrounded by like-minded people. Obviously that's a phenomenon that's not restricted to one particular part of the political spectrum.
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