Wild Card/Tuesday — 12.14.10

19 comments on this post so far. Add yours!

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  Stickman on December 14 at 10:28 a.m.

  Enjoy your Christmas break DFO and congrats on the record setting year. May next year even be better.

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  brentandrews on December 14 at 12:48 p.m.

  I predict Dave will retire next year, and Internet traffic will sag. Before retirement I hope he will come out as a socialist, after so many years of enjoying the benefit of the socialist workplace. Two weeks on, two weeks paid vacation - that’s what we all should have, in a properly ordered world. If only all our Red State corporations could be run by benevolent Blue Staters.

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  Smacky on December 14 at 1:36 p.m.

  GOP won’t help the 911 first responders until the billionaires are helped. Did anyone really believe that they ever cared about these guys or that date for anything other than self promotion?

  http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-december-13-2010/lame-as-f—k-congress

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  Frum Helen Back on December 14 at 3:59 p.m.

  Don’t get a big head Dave, but you’re the reason this blog is such a success. I hope you don’t retire next year.

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  JohnA on December 14 at 6:30 p.m.

  For any baseball fans out there, part-time CDA Lake resident Derrek Lee signed with the San Diego Padres this week. He wanted to go to a contender and be on the west coast near his Malibu home and the Padres fit the bill. He turned down offers from Baltimore and the White Sox to return to the team he came up with, sort of completing the circle for his career.

  He will be the everyday first basemen, replacing Adrian Gonzales, who is now with the Red Sox.

  He knows it will be a good fit because the Padres have a great organization and just missed the playoffs last year, edged for the NL West title by eventual champs San Francisco.

  So it looks like I just became a Padres fan.

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  jdanmike on December 14 at 7:02 p.m.

  join the club johnA—wish Adrian would have taken the hometown deal—ahh but you got to love america! hope Derrek recovers from his thumb injury to give us a few good years. Derrek will be a great clubhouse influence. GO PADS!

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  JohnA on December 14 at 9:09 p.m.

  Jdan, yeah it would be great to see Derrek stay for more than just this one-year deal. He opted not to go for the Pads’ multi-year offer because he wants to see if the old DLee comes back next year. He is too proud to settle for 20 homer, 80 RBI years like he had in 2010. He won’t stick around to take any team’s money if he isn’t the pre-injury player that hit 46 dingers and 50 doubles on the way to the batting title in ‘05.

  That’s a rare thing in today’s athlete, one who’s willing to walk away from $10 mil a year if he’s not producing to his standards. But, that’s the kind of guy he is.

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  Mr_Bloggy on December 14 at 10:28 p.m.

  Congrats on the mega-hittage.

  Mr_B remains fascinated and somewhat awestruck at how you managed to make this so successful when, in many ways, you were diametrically opposed to the web journalist’s success profile in terms of your age, arc and velocity of your career, your curmudgeonly predilection towards right wing politics, and a certain North Idaho parochialism. Yet you managed to turn most of it into strengths and more importantly, you blew the top off the typical demographic of the web-based journalist - young highly wired geeksters blazing away with their rapid fire fingertips spewing hollow-pointed uber-dry and ultimately tedious and vacuous irony. Nope you’re of the old school and you kick their asses at their own game which is quite amusing and reinforcing to those of us on the downward trajectory of our careers and forced to smack many ankle-biters out of the way.

  But the real success narrative for HBO is quite simple: LOCAL LOCAL LOCAL. You bring your community into these pages, in terms of straight up news, gossip, rivalries, politics, outrages, casts of nearly caricatured local characters - plenty in black hats and plenty in the white ones and endless cavalcade of Souzas, Harts, Gray Wolves, Brannons, Spencers, Kennedys, Sgt Cupcakes, Hagadones, etc’s.

  Most importantly, you have a loyal and stable set of regulars (in terms of consistency and predictability of comments - the mental health mileage may vary) and despite your earlier efforts to keep somewhat of a professional journalist’s distance from your rag tag army, they’ve become more than just a cyber-proxy group of pseudonyms, they’ve become quite real in their scrolling, relentless parade of opinions, jokes, nonsequitors, rare but brilliant flashes of logic and reason, arguments, logical fallacies, small talk, big talk, talk to hear oneself talk, and talk to keep the shadows of their hearts in the light and even a little of the loneliness at bay.

  Quite the joint. Less a circus than a noisy, colorful bar with a mustachioed barkeep pouring the beers, whines, gossip, straight shots, opinions, local news, firemen calendars, politics, and once in a blue moon - muscling some loudmouth lout out of the bar and ass over teakettle into the street.

  Best compliment Mr_B ever heard a coworker give another upon the latter’s retirement - “you made it look easy, even though we all know it wasn’t.”

  Keep kicking some ass as long as you can. But not Mr_Bs, please ;-)

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  hmoffsuite on December 15 at 5:30 a.m.

  Bloggy. Great post.

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  Arpie on December 15 at 7:02 a.m.

  ditto.

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  moscow_minidoka on December 15 at 7:39 a.m.

  Great post, Bloggy. What a wonderful description of HBO.

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  eagleeye on December 15 at 7:57 a.m.

  John A ,
  I wish Derrek would have become a Seattle Mariner. Can you get that handled for next year ? Instead we get an Oakland A castoff Jack Cust to bat third. Jack Cust ?!!! I have a feeling it is going to be another long season for Mariner fans !

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  MikeK on December 15 at 8:18 a.m.

  EE there was a time that Jack Cust was completely full of promise. He has talent. He could be Josh Hamilton in a rebirth, you know. He also could be Pete Incaviglia. I’m rooting for the Hamilton version. Hopefully Cust can deliver.

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  MikeK on December 15 at 8:19 a.m.

  Ditto on the HBO post, Mr_B.

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  eagleeye on December 15 at 10:19 a.m.

  Mike, I hope you are right about Cust and that he is the next Josh Hamilton. But I think there is a big difference between the two. Josh Hamilton couldnt hit for the longest time because he was stoned. Once he quit that he could actually see the ball and hit it. Jack Cust cant hit the ball because he isnt any good !
  I am so tired of the Mariners taking players off the scrap heap and rolling them out there. The Mariners shop at Goodwill for their players. The Yankees and the Red Sox shop at Nordstroms ! The Mariners have 50% of their payroll wrapped up in Ichiro, Felix, and Milton Bradley. The other 22 players wouldnt make most clubs!

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  MikeK on December 15 at 10:25 a.m.

  EE sadly I have to agree with you. I bought tickets for the Spokane Indians again this coming summer and they are great entertainment for baseball fans. That’s how I cope with mediocre baseball at the pro level.

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  DFO on December 15 at 10:34 a.m.

  @ Brent Andrews re: “I predict Dave will retire next year, and Internet traffic will sag.”

  Seriously? Any retirement next year will be forced retirement b/c I’m not planning to pull the plug any time soon. God willing, I’ll be dragged out of here kicking and screaming in a minimum of 4 years or possibly 5. As long as I enjoy what I’m doing and the paper considers it to be a worthwhile project, I’ll keep plugging away at Hucks Online. After the first of the year, my Huckleberries print column will be moving into the main paper on one of the days of the weekend. I’m looking forward to that.

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  DFO on December 15 at 10:39 a.m.

  @ Eagle Eye re: “I am so tired of the Mariners taking players off the scrap heap and rolling them out there. The Mariners shop at Goodwill for their players. The Yankees and the Red Sox shop at Nordstroms !”

  If I might offer some encouragement … my team, the S.F. Giants, also shop at Goodwill — and are caught paying a bunch for a coupla players who didn’t offer that much. They picked up one Goodwill special after another last year (Aubrey Huff, Juan Uribe, Pat Burrell) & won the World Series. If you deduct the $30 million they’re paying Barry Zito & Aaron Rowand, they won the World Series with a players who earned about $70 million. Which is a pittance when compared to the Red Sox & Yankees. It can be done. But you have to have very sharp management. I believe the M’s have a sharp GM who was knocked sideways by players having bad years last year. Remember the M’s predicted for good things before 2010 began. We’ll see if the new manager is up to prodding his team for a better year in 2011. Only way to go is up…

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  moscow_minidoka on December 15 at 10:39 a.m.

  “After the first of the year, my Huckleberries print column will be moving into the main paper on one of the days of the weekend. I’m looking forward to that.”

  Maybe I’ll have to reconsider resubscribing to the SR, then, since we’ve been robbed of your column down here in Moscow since they killed the “Idaho” Spokesman-Review…

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