The Old Blog

Read children’s fake letters to the “President” here.

After Montreal Canadiens fans booed the US National Anthem before a game last night, I wonder how long it will be before we start seeing “Liberty Bacon.” Mmmm…liberty bacon…

Steve Nash of the Dallas Mavericks is standing strong on his opposition to war. And while I applaud his outspokenness, WHY THE SWEET HELL IS IT AN ISSUE WHAT SOME BASKETBALL-PLAYING CANADIAN WITH BAD HAIR THINKS ABOUT THE WAR? Why is this news? On the list of people who I’m glad are not making policy decisions, athletes come right before entertainers. So what if one of the Dixie Chicks isn’t thrilled with Bush? WHO GIVES A RAT’S ASS? Why do the opinions of celebrities mean so much right now? Why are these opinions only turned into news when they are not perfectly in line with what our President thinks? We rarely hear from celebrities who are pro-war. And why the hell do people (I’m looking at you, idiots who destroyed their Dixie Chicks CDs) feel the need to judge others solely on the basis of their feelings about the war with Iraq–or about their political leanings in general? In case nobody remembers the election of 2000, Bush received less than 50% of the vote; shouldn’t we expect a good chunk of people to disagree with his administration’s decisions?
If we’re really going to do the asinine thing and boycott everyone who disagrees with us (either way) about the war, we may as well just divide the country up now. I call the North for the Doves.

Dr. Pepper’s plan to advertise its new product Raging Cow via blog is turning disastrous. After paying off some young, hip, popular bloggers (and their parents) to advertise the new drink on blogs, the company no doubt felt it could sit back and watch the genesis of an underground cult following. Unfortunately, they forgot that people–especially the super-media-savvy young’ns who compose their target audience–don’t like being lied to, and the backlash has been fierce. Normally I would say that any publicity is good publicity, but I think Dr. Pepper really wanted to avoid boycotts of a product that hasn’t even hit the shelves.

Newsweek became the first major national news magazine to report on the value of OPS. For those of you who are not sabermetrically inclined, OPS is a statistic invented by the great Bill James that purports to be a quick-and-dirty way to measure a player’s worth by adding his On-base and Slugging percentages. (On-base Plus Slugging=O.P.S., get it?) And while the article is excruciatingly simple and appears eight years after I first started using the stat (thanks to Rob Neyer), it is nice to see a non-sports source finally bringing this useful tool into the mainstream.

Bud “Screw the Small-Market, But Not My Small-Market” Selig claims that the Chicago Cubs will lose Wrigley Field if they succeed in their struggle to get it approved as a landmark, claiming, ”Every change to Wrigley Field impacts…the ability of the Cubs to field a winning team.” Considering they last won the World Series in 1908, I don’t think getting the building deemed a historical landmark is going to affect matters that much. Of course, this is the man who believes that two dozen Major League teams lost money last year and that 8 teams should be contracted–as long as his last-place Brewers escape unscathed.

Since it took me so long to find, I have decided to save other people the trouble by posting the 2003 Men’s NCAA Basketball NIT Tournament Bracket here.

And if hockey’s more your sport, perhaps you’d like to view the Women’s 2003 Frozen Four Bracket (go Minnesota!) The men’s pairings will be announced on ESPN at 5:30pm Sunday–here’s a schedule.

I have been in Costa Rica for the past week, so that is why there have been no updates (apologies to my six loyal readers). Regular posts will resume on Wednesday the 19th. Happy St. Patrick’s Day, everyone, and let’s hope we can keep the peace.

George Herbert Walker Bush, the man who led us into Iraq the first time, has gone on record as being apprehensive about starting a war without the full international support he had 12 years ago. I know these comments will either be retracted by Bush Sr. or spun to make him look more hawkish by the media, but it’s nice to see that even Dubya’s own family shows a little dissent towards his actions.

Thanks to m4dd4wg for the link.

Eric Neel writes that while KG should be the MVP (just look at the Timberwolves’ lineup without him), he should also decline it, a la Peter O’Toole, in order to scare his opponents. An interesting argument, but I don’t think he’ll win the award until the Woofies win a play-off series–something that isn’t exactly a sure bet, despite yesterday’s triumph over Dallas.