FLAME WARS, BANISHMENTS, ANTI-FREEPERS. YOUR CALLS, YOUR OPINIONS THIS WEEK ON RADIO FREE REPUBLIC

Radio FreeRepublic and the Free Republic Network ^ | August 13, 2002 | Luis Gonzalez

[Luis Gonzalez]

Radio Free Republic Presents

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The Banana Republican Radio Hour

With your host Luis Gonzalez

This week's topic:

WHY DO CONSERVATIVES EAT THEIR OWN?

Thursday, August 15th., 9 PM, EST.

Are we our own worst enemies?

Are the divisions so evident in FreeRepublic indicative of the future of the conservative movement?

Can we stand united, or will be fall divided?

Call in and tell us what's on your mind!!!

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[F16Fighter]

"I was trying to be nice about things, but it appears that I also forgot that trying to be nice about things - or trying to get a laugh about things - is useless with some people."

Especially to those people who imagine themselves THE High Priestess of Protocol. My advice? Leave them and their obnoxiousness to their empty sniffer of brandy my friend...

Now here's a couple of questions for you: 1) Will Bonds break Aaron's record?? 2) Had Bonds been hitting against the likes of Koufax, Marichal, Gibson, etal., and without the benefit of the use of steroids, smaller ballparks, and tighter baseballs, in your opinion how many HRs would Bonds have hit in...say... 1964-68?

[gunnedah]

Look let me tell you something BOZO,I am a retired COP! I dont advocate that! But also I dont advocate the damn government making accusations and not allowing its citizens to defend themselves either. I served this damn country for 36 years to have my rights violated and then the Damn South Carolina Supreme Court sided with the Government to keep my ass quite and not allow me the damn rights I fought for-so dont get on my case.This Damn Government is corrupt and people like you as long as it doent happen to you and its someone else it os ok. You dont want on my case- I have seen the enemy and its US!

[Texasforever]

You dont want on my case- I have seen the enemy and its US!

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[BluesDuke]

We have always been civil to one another. We have even managed to have a good time together, or so I assumed, discussing other topics !

You assume correctly. :)

If I have read something , other than your intent, into your last post, then I apologise. I am not GOD, either, and never have imagined that you, nor I was.

I think we may both have misread some signals here. An occupational hazard, alas, among we mere humans. But perhaps it says something for each of the two of us that we are at least able to acknowledge it. You have seen as much of what happens around here when people cannot so acknowledge as I have seen, I suspect. And when it does happen, it turns what begins as mad fun into just plain madness.

Perfection, is quite out of our realm.

There is something to be said for that, actually. Except for passing it along to the next person and bringing him (or her) up there to join me, I don't think I know what else I would do if, by some unforeseen stroke of divine intervention, I should ever attain perfection in anything I do. I only wish I had been wise enough to think that way some twenty years ago.

[gunnedah]

You are like the people I deal with,you hide behind the system and you would e the first mother to turn and run under fire.Your kind is brave in a crowd!

[DaughterOfAnIwoJimaVet]

Hitting nerves again, are you? LOL

[F16Fighter]

Gulp...gulp...gulp...gurgle...gurgle...burp...

[nopardons]

I knew that you were just projecting ! LOL

[nopardons]

I'm a perfectionist, I fear. LOL

Perfection CAN be accomplished, in doing many things ; however, not in one's self.

I am glad, REALLY glad, that we have managed to put the nastiness and vituperations and misunderstandings to bed. Now, we can, once again, ebjoy each other's company and discourse; as we always have done, previously. :-)

[ArneFufkin]

I love it when guys like this are "former"s.

It's those "current" goblins like our self-identified INS agents, Marine officers and Maryland State Prosecutors that alarm me.

[nopardons]

It's far too easy , for people to tell baldfaced lies, on the net. I suspect that that happens her, all the time !

[BluesDuke]

1) Will Bonds break Aaron's record??

It is entirely up to him and, more pertinently, his health, since he has had a few problems with a particularly nagging hamstring of late. I have heard him say he isn't much certain of playing beyond two more seasons, so it may yet be an open question. I could make a guess and say that if he plays next season and goes out of the yard maybe 40-50 times and feels healthy enough, then does the same thing again the following season, he might go one more for the record. If the legs continue to give him trouble, though, I'm not willing to guess he would linger for the record. Barry Bonds can be an impudent jerk only too often, but give the man his props enough: he won't hang around if he thinks it will hinder his team or leave himself looking foolish on the field.

2) Had Bonds been hitting against the likes of Koufax, Marichal, Gibson, etal., and without the benefit of the use of steroids, smaller ballparks, and tighter baseballs, in your opinion how many HRs would Bonds have hit in...say... 1964-68?

First - show me the hard and real evidence of steroid use in him before we even think about going there. Now: In the primes of Koufax, Marichal, and Gibson, he might yet have hit 50 homers in a given season and maybe a couple of seasons. Even in the prime of those pitchers there were power hitters putting up fatted enough numbers - like Barry's godpoppa, for one. Koufax and Marichal were right at their peaks and Gibson was just climbing up to his own when, in 1965, Willie Mays hit his 500th career home run and swatted 52 jacks on the season. Bonds, elementally, has almost the same tools as Mays had (Bonds is a better fielder than he seems given the larger-than-life image of his offence, but Mays was certainly the superior fielder of the two), and combining that to the intelligence (don't laugh, folks) he shows when he works at the plate, I can see little reason why he wouldn't flourish even with Koufax, Marichal and Gibson in the league.

All three pitchers could be and were reached often enough for home runs. Juan Marichal surrendered 320 home runs in his career; Bob Gibson, 257; Sandy Koufax, 204. Each of these men in their peak seasons seems to have averaged about 20-24 home runs surrendered in a season. Bonds could well enough have put up some fat home run seasons even with them in the league against him, though he would have to approach each man differently, of course. Against Sandy Koufax, he would have had to wait for a mistake coming in low - Koufax's was a fastball that when it was thrown right, at full power, tended to "explode" up on a hitter when the hitter thought he had it lined up to drive off the belt. Against Juan Marichal, he would have had to be a reader of a sort: Marichal had about six variations on his delivery for any one of his pitches, even with that famouse Rockette-high leg kick, but an intelligent hitter could wait, watch, and drive one if he just went with the pitch. Against Gibson, it was a question of catching up to the pitch and watching the ball through that flying-wing motion of Gibson's, as long as you expected the fact that Gibson's ball came in looking smaller and faster than it actually was against the busy-ness of that motion and, especially, the whip motion of his throwing arm making it look like the ball might either tail away or rise up and in. Of the three, you probably had to train yourself hardest to watch the ball itself on Gibson.

But great hitters keep their performance papers active and current enough against the great pitchers, and in Bonds's case it almost doesn't matter what park he hits in. Though if he were playing in Candlestick as his home park, he would have to take his godpoppa's advice and just go with the pitch, don't expect to be able to pull it every day. That was how Willie Mays, contrary to the popular infamies about Candlestick, actually didn't lose much in the way of home run and other slugging numbers in that park and actually hit about the way you would have expected him to hit in spite of it.

[BluesDuke]

I'm a perfectionist, I fear. LOL

So, alas, was I, for too many years.

Perfection CAN be accomplished, in doing many things ; however, not in one's self.

In self, no. In doing and in things, I suspect it can be attained, paradoxically enough, when you quit trying for it every time you begin something and just make that beginning to whatever something it is. In a strange but intriguing way, it is when you think nothing of perfection in what you do that you just might end up attaining it there. Think of it like a pitcher who actually achieves a perfect game - unless he's an android, he is a fool who goes to the mound expecting to get 27 men up and 27 men down no muss, no fuss. He doesn't even think of the possibility until he is within six or less outs from nailing it. And even then...

(Which causes me to wonder about the one perfect game in my lifetime which actually came thisclose to being a no-hitter for both the man who pitched the perfect game and his opponent! It really did happen - had it not been for a double by outfielder Lou Johnson, who was left on base without scoring, while his mates scored the only run in the game on a walk, a steal, a sacrifice, and an error in another inning, Chicago Cubs pitcher Bob Hendley would have pitched a plain old no-hitter on the back of Sandy Koufax's perfect game in 1965. That would have been even more mythical in the telling than the game already was, since Koufax had pitched a no-hitter in each of the previous three seasons, and one wag put the 1965 game as "proving that practice makes perfect.")

[BluesDuke]

I am glad, REALLY glad, that we have managed to put the nastiness and vituperations and misunderstandings to bed.

So am I. But beware: Nastiness kicks, Vituperations is a blanket hog, and Misunderstandings keeps knocking the pillows onto the floor, and sometimes you just have to shackle the little brats in to keep them still... ;)

[nopardons]

All to true , re the baseball analogy. Yet, with embroidery, knitting, and so many other such activities, one can tear out/ unstich / and redue, until the thing IS perfect. Perfection, in other things, is a hit and miss thing. :-)

We all , at least you and I, or so it would seem, just do as best we can. :-)

I read your other post ( about Bonds ), BTW, and I must tell you, that, IMHO , Mays was a far better, all around ball player, than Bonds is. The " Say Hey Kid " , was a childhood favorite of mine. :-)

[Sandy]

Interesting how most of the forum's worst offenders are right here on this thread.

[Sandy]

Come on guys. It's common courtesy to ping the person that you're talking about.

[F16Fighter]

Thanks for your in-depth analysis -- You are a tremendous vault of knowledge for the game of baseball ...

I've seen Bonds dragging that leg out in the field -- that hammy ain't gonna make it if the Giants get into the playoffs, though it hasn't seemed to affect his hitting too much. With the physical rehabilitative therapies available to modern athletes, big Barry ought to recoup enough to surpass Aaaron -- once he exceeds 700, IMO he's gonna ride it out no matter how foolish he might look in the field...then there's always the DH, isn't there?

Nope, no "hard evidence" that Barry Bond uses steroids. Only the circumstantial evidence of drilling 80 dingers a country mile last year. Some have said steroid use can also alter the cranium and head size. Bond's head does appear to be...shall we say -- HUGE?

Ok, if we assume Bonds hasn't used any supplimental enhancements and played in the 60s you think he'd still be as prodigious a homer-hitter? Yep, I know Mays did bop 52 in '65, had 49 in '64 and fell off the 37 in '66, but barely anybody was hitting 40 HRs between '64-'68; don't believe Aaron did; Killebrew, McCovey, Frank Howard, Yaz -- who else? Anyway, funny how you so aptly described Gibson, Koufax, and Marichal -- would have been fun watching those match-ups. Don't think Bonds would have had such an easy time especially with Koufax. The superior pitching overall aided by the higher mound back then became killer -- now in my opinion, Bonds would have been in that 35-45 range, but that's what makes baseball so great -- ANYTHING is debatable and nothing provable...