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November 22, 2009
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Baseball. Blogging. Whenever.Tuesday, March 10, 2009The whiffSomeone has placed a camera in my head and has recorded my every memory of Jeff Francoeur. (thanks to Crowhop for the link) Diagnosing MannyI hadn't heard about this, but there's a new Manny Ramirez biography coming out today. It's called "Becoming Manny," and its co-author is a clinical psychologist named Jean Rhodes. Rhodes is interviewed today in the Boston Globe: Q. If you had to diagnose him, what would you say? I think I like "Manny's flow state transcends the known world" better than "Manny being Manny." What happens when we assumeThe Marlins' stadium plan depends greatly on certain assumptions regarding hotel tax revenue. Assumptions which may have been far more reasonable before Depression v.2.0: The financing plan for the proposed Florida Marlins stadium took a potentially severe hit in January, with a 22 percent plunge in the hotel taxes counted on to cover most of Miami-Dade's portion of the new $639 million ballpark. The decline was double December's loss and shows that the hotel market deteriorated even after the arrival of South Florida's prime vacation season. The numbers are the worst since the fallout from 9/11 . . . Suporters note in the article that the financing for the stadium is over 40 years, and that revenues will inevitably bounce back, but even if that's true, that still leaves some pretty major deficits early in the life of the stadium. As it stands, the primary stadium supporter quoted in the article -- County Manager George Burgess -- is calling the plan that was delivered and was supposed to have been voted on less than a month ago a "hypotehtical" plan. As I said yesterday, everyone in this story -- the Miami Herald included -- has an agenda they're pushing, so everybody's spin on these sorts of developments should probably be met with some skepticism. There can be no denying, however, that the project, as it currently stands, is a mess. EvidenceLast month, investigators leaked the fact that Clemens' DNA was found on the syringes Brian McNamee had kept under his couch or wherever. Now they're saying that PEDs are on them too: Federal authorities investigating Roger Clemens on perjury charges have found performance-enhancing substances on the drug paraphernalia that his former trainer said he used to inject Clemens, according to people briefed on the case. Sure, it would be better for Clemens if PEDs weren't found on those syringes, but this doesn't necessarily bury him. Why? Chain of custody. Rusty Hardin or, if Clemens is wise, some actually competent lawyer, will be able to attack the reliability of such evidence on the basis that it wasn't preserved properly and was always at risk of contamination. Brian McNamee had access to PEDs. Brian McNamee had access to Clemens blood via the vitamin shots or whatever Clemens says McNamee gave him. Brian McNamee is a demonstrated liar. Brian McNamee's apartment is no lab and, if I had to guess, probably looks like the kind of place in which you used to wake up still drunk and covered in beer cans and pizza boxes when you were in college. In other words, any presumption that the syringe evidence is pure and true would be pretty hard to take. This is especially true in a world where half of the potential jurors watch CSI three times a week and thus have elevated expectations as to the quality of forensic evidence. UPDATE: Pinto is all over this too. Big Unit Operating SmoothlyYou can only look so far into spring training statistics, but one gets the sense that Randy Johnson is about to put up a big season: Randy Johnson wasn't as overpowering as in his previous start (seven strikeouts, three innings), but he was just as effective in 31/3 scoreless innings in a 10-1 victory over the A's. His ERA through three outings is 1.08, and that might be by design. Everyone seemed to be sleeping on Johnson this winter. I have this feeling everyone except the Giants are going to regret it. Today at THTYou know, for all of the hassle unemployment caused me recently, I am still very happy to have said good riddance to law firm life (or, more accurately, having it say goodbye to me). Why? Read this article. Not the stuff about lawyers being laid off, really. It's about time more of that has happened (and I was saying that even before it happened to me). No, read about the waste and bloat and ugliness inherent to the system. $40 billion on document review? Paying $150K for inexperienced lawyers and expecting clients to do the same? 60-85 hour weeks just to tread water? Thought for the day: if law firms do so poorly valuing things like that, why did I ever expect them to value me or what's important to me in anything approaching a reasonable way? God love all of you at firms who are making it work, but I just couldn't anymore, and the farther I get away from that life, the more grateful I am that I am away. Sorry to dwell on yesterday, but I'm still in the process of assessing what I've been doing with my life for the last decade. Now on to today: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
