Monday, January 31, 2005

Off the List 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    comment []  trackback []

Filing for Fan Free-Agency 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    comment []  trackback []