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Monday, January 31, 2005 |
Since snay quickly
responded to my initial inadvertent post today, i thought it would be
rude to not update my shopping regimen as promised in Friday's
post.
- I have not bought the sofa yet, as I have not gone out to the "Land of the Swedes."
- I have not bought the PowerShot A95. I missed my window on
Friday. Apparently, Dell had a deal which would have gotten me
the camera shipped for $275. So, time to wait for a similar deal
to arise on the Internets again.
- I have not bought my pots and pans. I still need to pick
out what set I will purchase. As a commentator made clear,
stainless steel is the way to go.
- I did spend a bunch of money on clothes. Updated the jeans
and a couple of shirts. I now feel cool and trendy.
- I put beer in my refrigerator. Good beer. I think I
might get the ingredients to make Maker's Mark Manhattans this
week.
I spoke to a friend who used to work for a big software company last
night. He surprisingly IM'd me, and we talked for a couple of
hours. It was good to hear from him and hear that he was taking
the news of a layoff quite well. The phone call had me up late,
so I am dragging today.
12:21:53 PM  
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My original post was going to be about some of the stuff I did this
weekend. I was so incensed by some news in local sports, I had to
get on my soapbox. Apologies in advance for this lengthy
post.
After this weekend's news concerning the Baltimore Orioles' acquisition
of Sammy Sosa, I have finally decided to act on my long-threatened
promise: I am officially no longer a fan of this once-proud
franchise. The ownership of Peter Angelos has taken from me the
one sport I grew up with. With this act of desperation, the
Orioles have decided that the baseball city that was Baltimore would
not notice that the acquisition of Sosa would be a move to merely fill
the seats at the increasingly empty Camden Yards.
I will admit that they get Sosa at a bargain price, with the Cubs
picking up $12 million of his salary for 2005. Nonetheless, when
a team trades a player and agrees to pick up a large part of his
salary, the message they are sending is quite clear. "Please take
this declining player; we will gladly pay any price we must to be free
of him."
One thing has become abundantly clear: the perception of this
organization and its ownership inside and outside of baseball is
laughable at best, and pathetic at worst. Originally, co-GM's Jim
Beattie and Mike Flanagan identified pitching as their off-season
need. Money was being freed as a result of the lapsing of
contracts to David Segui, Marty Cordova, and others. Team
officials complained that the sudden inflation of free-agent pitchers
took management by surprise, and as a result they were unable to land
any decent pitchers.
While I agree that this inflation was somewhat unexpected in October
and November, it should not have been to difficult to draw out the fact
that it would occur. When the pitcher that draws the most
attention in the free-agent bidding has a career record below .500, the
market is obviously going to be inflated. Add to that, of course,
the paucity of decent pitching in the major leagues, the salaries of a
Number 2 through Number 4 pitcher was bound to increase. And
increase it did--observe the deals for Kris Benson, Jaret Wright, and
Russ Ortiz.
Nonetheless, I am still asking why Sosa? If the Orioles were
willing to effectively trade for a player for one year, with the player
possibly exercising their option to become a free agent at the end of
2005, why did they not trade for Mark Mulder or Tim Hudson? I
would say the benefit of acquiring either one of these pitcher just for
one year would far outweigh the costs. Either one of these
pitchers is a significant upgrade to a young staff lacking an
ace. Nonetheless, Beattie and Flanagan are unable to acquire
anything in the way of starting pitching--albeit they did acquire James
Baldwin. What a salve for the open wound that is no starting
pitching.
I could go on and on about this team. The lack of willingness to
spend money--consistently whining about being a small market--is
foolishness, pure and simple. The team can certainly support a
payroll in the $70 to $80 million range. They need to do so to be
competitive in this division with the likes of the Yankees and Red
Sox. Instead, the team and its management seems content to whine
about the cost of free agents and continue to look to the
Commissioner's Office for redress of the financial impact of the
Nationals in Washington DC.
The bottom line is I am through with being a Baltimore Orioles
fan. In less than a decade, the Baltimore Ravens have shown
themselves to have a much better management team and better ownership
than the Orioles have shown in the last two decades. I am
officially a Free-Agent fan. Barring the emergence of someone
with massive amounts of cash to buy the Orioles from Mr. Angelos, I can
no longer in conscience attend a game in support of the Orioles.
Admittedly, I will wind up going to games. Nonetheless, I refuse
to cheer on the Birds.
The question is what team do I root for now?
10:09:05 AM  
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© Copyright 2005 Jason J. Thomas.
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AIM: jjtaim MSN: jasonjthomas@hotmail.com Yahoo! Messenger: jasonjthomasumd
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