Muskat: Cubs poised to name Rick Renteria next manager

In News And Rumors by dmick8960 Comments

From Muskat:

Theo Epstein hired Dale Sveum to help establish the Cubs Way, and now he's picked Rick Renteria to take the team to the next level.

On Thursday, the Cubs will introduce Renteria as their 53rd manager and fourth in the last five years, according to a Major League source.

There will be no news conference at Wrigley Field for Renteria, who will turn 52 on Christmas Day. The former bench coach of the Padres had hip surgery after the regular season ended and is unable to travel.

"It's a tough day for the Padres to lose someone with the knowledge and the energy Ricky brings," San Diego catcher Nick Hundley said. "The city of Chicago is getting a great baseball guy, someone who comes to work each day with the kind of passion and energy that's tough to match.

"When you're dealing with someone on a daily basis, six months during the season, two months in Spring Training, you want to know your boss is going to be consistent and is going to have your back. We have that here with Buddy [Black] and the Cubs will have that with Ricky."

A great baseball guy! Reminds me to post a link to this article I read this morning. 

If “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” makes one insane, then the Seattle Mariners are undies-on-their-head lunatics.

Since 2003, the team has hired five managers. Each was a former professional player with major league coaching experience. None lasted more than three seasons. Each finished in last place at least once. None finished in first. Now the Mariners have hired a manager again. And the man they picked is—I think you can guess—a former professional player with major league coaching experience.

The reported finalists for the job included Ex-Mariner Joey Cora, “a great baseball man,” according to former boss Ozzie Guillen. Also Rick Renteria, an ex-MLB infielder and “tremendous baseball man,” according to former Astros manager Brad Mills. The man who won the job is Lloyd McClendon, a former MLB outfielder and manager. McClendon says of himself: “I’m a baseball man.”

What, you may wonder, is a “baseball man”? It means someone who has a long affiliation with the game and respect for its culture and is a staunch defender of Playing the Game the Right Way™. In other words, an absolute conformist.

The Mariners’ prerequisites weren’t unique. Most baseball managers are “baseball men.”

Yep.

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  1. Author
    dmick89

    RC, I’ve been meaning to go through our Cubs Blogs links on the sidebar for awhile and I know you guys are with Chicago Now. However, I check out your other one fairly regularly and it’s being updated too. What link should I use?

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  2. Edwin

    For some reason, when I hear the “He’s a baseball man” line, all I can think of is Daniel Day-Lewis’s speech in There Will Be Blood about “I’m an oil man”.

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  3. Omar Little

    I think the two best football games of this week/weekend are on tonight.

    Oregon/Stanford is going to be so much fun. Brilliant offensive scheme vs. brilliant defenders.

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  4. Berselius

    Omar Little wrote:

    I think the two best football games of this week/weekend are on tonight.
    Oregon/Stanford is going to be so much fun. Brilliant offensive scheme vs. brilliant defenders.

    You’ll have a tough time flipping back and forth between that and the equally exciting Washington-Minnesota game.

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  5. sitrick

    Heard on MPR this morning that the Vikings are breaking ground on the new stadium this week even though they have yet to agree on a cost ceiling for the project. And the electronic pull-tab gaming system that was supposed to provide a sizable portion of the funds for the new stadium is pulling in something like a quarter of the revenue they expected. Oh, and we’ll be paying for Target Field forever. I presume this will have no impact on the cost of living in my city whatsoever.

    /rant

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  6. Omar Little

    Berselius wrote:

    You’ll have a tough time flipping back and forth between that and the equally exciting Washington-Minnesota game.

    Those teams are tough, in a Johnathan Martin kind of way.

    AHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA…wait…

    WAS is breaking out. They struggled to score points despite moving the ball early in the season, which might cost them the playoffs.

    MIN drafted really well considering they were picking where the good teams pick. That team has been a QB away since Favre (the first year). They should take a QB every year until they hit.

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  7. Jason

    sitrick wrote:

    Heard on MPR this morning that the Vikings are breaking ground on the new stadium this week even though they have yet to agree on a cost ceiling for the project.

    You’ve really got to stop listening to that off-brand public radio. Just pay the money and get the real NPR. You’ll thank yourself.

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  8. Author
    dmick89

    David Ortiz wasn’t on the ballot on Tuesday — only two men were: Marty Walsh and John Connolly — but the Red Sox’ DH got the most write-in votes out of anyone, so that technically made him the third place finisher.

    Not that it was particularly close. There were only 560 write-in votes, of which Ortiz got the most. The winner got over 72,000 votes. But it’s a pretty good showing for a guy who doesn’t play any defense. http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/11/07/david-ortiz-came-in-third-in-the-boston-mayor-race/

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  9. sitrick

    Jason wrote:

    You’ve really got to stop listening to that off-brand public radio. Just pay the money and get the real NPR. You’ll thank yourself.

    This Bulgarian Life is a really underappreciated program.

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  10. Suburban kid

    Garza has never experienced any prior arm injuries, according to Quade.

    “He had a great side session two days ago,” Quade said. “In fact, they cut it short, because they loved it. He felt a little tenderness yesterday and it was a little tight today. Done. We are not taking a chance.”

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  11. sitrick

    John Manuel just said on the AFL broadcast on MLBN he’d have Baez ranked higher than Lindor, which is the first time I’ve heard anyone say that.

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  12. Suburban kid

    dmick89 wrote:

    @ Suburban kid:
    That’s just as awesome today as it was then.

    “I think it is all a matter of love; the more you love a memory the stronger and stranger it becomes”
    ― Vladimir Nabokov

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  13. Suburban kid

    SVB wrote:

    SK has a helluva news aggregator

    “Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information on it.”
    ― Samuel Johnson

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  14. Suburban kid

    Rice Cube wrote:

    @ Suburban kid:
    Hooray for SK.

    WaLi wrote:

    @ Suburban kid:
    (Dying laughing) thanks for finding that

    “Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”
    ― Marcel Proust

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  15. Myles

    Suburban kid wrote:

    Rice Cube wrote:
    @ Suburban kid:
    Hooray for SK.

    WaLi wrote:
    @ Suburban kid:
    (Dying laughing) thanks for finding that

    “Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”
    ― Marcel Proust

    “I feel like I’m too busy writing history to read it.”
    -Kanye West

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  16. Berselius

    Myles wrote:

    Suburban kid wrote:
    Rice Cube wrote:
    @ Suburban kid:
    Hooray for SK.

    WaLi wrote:
    @ Suburban kid:
    (Dying laughing) thanks for finding that

    “Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”
    ― Marcel Proust

    “I feel like I’m too busy writing history to read it.”
    -Kanye West

    “Last November I put up this post about FanPosts and FanShots, to try to explain the difference between them, and give some hints about what makes for a good post of each type, and what they are for. Recently, though, I’ve noticed a spate of duplicate posts (last night, we had the third post about Nomar Garciaparra in the last three weeks), and so I thought it was time for a longer post giving much more detail about this site, how to post here, what constitutes good formatting, etc., especially with the first spring training game tomorrow, which will once again ramp up participation here. Thanks to my colleagues at South Side Sox, Lookout Landing and Red Reporter, from whose outstanding guides I have borrowed much of what you see here and adapted to our community and what have become the norms here. Many of you have been around since BCB was created in February 2005 and went through The Great Migration to the new platform last March. For those of you who are new, or still not quite acclimated to the system, this post is meant to be a guide to new members and a refresher course for power users. First, for new BCB’ers, take a look at the basic SB*Nation Welcome Guide. After that, read below for a more in-depth guide and specific expectations for Bleed Cubbie Blue. BCB is NOT a message board. It isn’t a talk radio call-in show. The headline at the top of the page reads “A Chicago Cubs Fan Community Since February 9, 2005″, and that’s the most concise way I can describe this site. BCB itself is a blog, one which has built a community feel to it over the last 4 years. And unlike some blogs that talk at you, BCB offers FanPosts and FanShots where you can drive the conversation. Follow me after the jump for an extended guide into FanPosts, FanShots and commenting. Star-divide FanShots FanShots are quick posts, links, images or videos from around the internet — it’s not just for photos, as at least one person here mentioned to me; there are several different types of things you can put in a FanShot. When Should You Post a FanShot? * Whenever you find a link, a quote, a video, a photo, around the internet that you think your fellow BCB’ers will enjoy. * When you don’t have any commentary to add other than your link, video, photo or quote. * When you can’t meet the 75 word minimum for a FanPost How Do You Post a FanShot? 1. Click “New FanShot” — Seems simple, right? While logged in, visit any page of BCB and click the handy “New FanShot” button. Enter the link or pic URL in the proper place. 2. Use the FanShot Bookmarklet — Clicking and dragging the “Share on SB*Nation” button (which you can find here at the top of the FanShot section, right underneath the top ad bar; just click “FANSHOTS” on the front page to get there) to your bookmarks bar (the area under your address bar in your browser) will allow you to post to BCB quickly and easily while browsing the internet. Once you have a “Share on SB*Nation” button in your browser, you have one-click posting of FanShots at your fingertips. Clicking the button will bring up a dialog box that looks like this: FanShot dialogue box Just select the type of FanShot you wish to post, apply the proper tags (more later) and hit publish (that “Front Page” check box is for me as the site admin, to put it on the front page if I choose — you’ve seen the blue box posts on the front page; those are FanShots that I’ve posted). FanPosts FanPosts are just like front page stories, except they’re written by you, the BCB reader. You can help keep the best FanPosts on the list longer by recommending them using the “Rec” link at the bottom of the post. Four recommendations puts a FanPost on the rec list. What makes a good FanPost? * Make It Substantial. When I say “substantial”, I don’t mean it has to be a dissertation or manifesto. But if you see the dreaded 75 word warning, it’s either time to put some more thought into your FanPost or start over. If your post contains something like this: words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words … then it’s probably better as a FanShot. * Make It Relevant. Your FanPost should relate to the Cubs or baseball in some way. If you want to talk about the Bulls or the Bears or the Blackhawks there are sites on SB*Nation for that. If you want to do nothing more than post a link to your site, you’re probably a spammer, and should expect your FanPost to be swiftly removed. If all you want to do is post a link to a news story or other online article or page, try a FanShot. I don’t want to completely discourage Off-Topic FanPosting, particularly during the offseason when many of us are thinking football or hockey. But if you’re new and if you haven’t made a FanPost before, your FanPost on tennis probably isn’t going to be received very well. If you do make an Off-Topic post (meaning, specifically, that it is not related to the Cubs or baseball), please put OT: in front of your post. Off-topic conversations happen all the time at BCB. In some threads, half the comments wind up being off-topic. Some other SB*Nation sites have a Daily Link Dump FanPost or some other form of daily off-topic conversation. I’m not against starting something like that on BCB, but nobody has taken the lead. If anyone would like to do that — it would involve finding 10 or 15 relevant links each morning and making a FanPost — feel free to do so. * Make It Timely. This is something I feel very strongly about. If the link you’re posting is a day or two old, chances are it’s been posted once or twice before either in the comments or FanShots (more later). Check to see if it’s been posted before. Please use the search function (located at the upper right of the front page) to see if your topic has been covered in the last few days. If it has, your thoughts on that topic can and should be posted as a comment on the original post. If you do have some breaking news, post away. Even though I try, there’s no way I can be the first to hear/read/see every piece of breaking Cubs news. That’s where you can help. See above, though; if there’s a Cubs trade or signing and you think that you are absolutely, positively the first one to hear about it, please take a look at the post list first; someone else may have beat you to it. * Make It Coherent. You are much more likely to get someone to read your post if you follow some very simple rules: • Use proper spelling. You’re not sending a text message. There’s no need 4 U 2 use “time saving” abbreviations which only lessen the value of your post. It’s like writing a position paper in crayon. • Use punctuation. You wouldn’t stand up and attempt to give a speech in one breath, and you shouldn’t try to make your FanPost one big sentence that never ends. • Use multiple paragraphs. There is something about reading text on the internet that makes reading a large block of text unpleasant and occasionally difficult. The ENTER key can be your friend in comments. In posts, use the “P” button to make paragraphs; highlight the text you want in a paragraph and hit “P”; it will put the proper opening and closing tags there. • Use proper formatting. You’d be amazed how much better your piece will be received if it’s formatted properly. If I’m greeted by a wall of text in your FanPost, I’m probably not going to make it all the way through. Break it up. Make it more than one paragraph. Use the ‘B’ and ‘I’ buttons for bold and italic text, respectively. The tech team at SB*Nation has built a powerful WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor, which I can’t tell you much about because I usually use the HTML editor (which is the default box you get if you’re making a FanPost). However, if you know how to format using Microsoft Word, you can make a perfectly formatted FanPost here at BCB. • Start by opening Word. • Write your post completely in Word, making all your formatting adjustments there. • Highlight and Copy your work. • Click New
    FanPost • Click the “Paste From Word” icon (upper right icon in the WYSIWYG editor) • Paste your content into the dialog box. Give it a Descriptive Headline — “Question” may, in fact, be what you are posting, a question you want us to consider; but that doesn’t exactly inform us what the topic is about. Your headline should be informative, above all else, with bonus points for creativity. Examples: Poor Headline: Orlando Hudson (this is an actual FanPost headline from last weekend) Good Headline: Should The Cubs Have Gone After Orlando Hudson? Poor Headline: Nomar Garciaparra (this is an actual FanPost headline from yesterday) Good Headline: Bringing Nomar Back: Pros & Cons Poor Headline: What Do You Guys Make of This? (this is an actual FanPost headline from last week) Good Headline: Brian Roberts And Jake Peavy: I Want ‘Em. Do You? Stylistically, I have chosen to have all my headlines begin each word with a capital letter. You don’t have to do that, but if you do, you’ll match the site style and — well, it’d make me happier. Tagging Tagging dialogue box To the right of the text area in both FanPosts and FanShots you’ll find the area for tagging your posts, as shown in the illustration above. Tagging is important because it helps your content show up in searches and in dynamically-rendered content areas, such as on a player page or in the new “More from Bleed Cubbie Blue” box at the bottom of each post. It helps increase your post’s exposure. Tagging is simple. Just type the topics of your post into the area cleverly labeled “tags.” Use commas to separate tags, as shown above. If you type a tag that’s already been used at BCB, it’ll begin to autocomplete. Players and Teams have their own dedicated area, which will help link your posts to the proper Player and Team Pages. These fields also auto complete, just begin typing the player’s name and it should fill in, as shown above; I typed “carlos marm” and Carlos Marmol’s name appeared. When this happens, just click on the name and it’ll stick with the post. If you want to have a poll with your post — click “Attach Poll”. The options that come up are self-explanatory; just remember to save your poll when you’re done. The “Attach Event” option allows you to tie your post to a specific game. Clicking the “Attach Event” button will bring up a box that lists the Cubs’ past and future games — click the drop-down box to select “completed”, “upcoming” or “in progress”. Clicking the Add button will make sure you post appears on the page for that specific game. Commenting The basic layout of BCB is pretty simple: three colums, with links to various items on the left and and right sides and the primary site content down the middle. In the middle will be news items, Game Threads, game recaps, and other fun stuff like, well, this post. One thing you may find in an article on the front page is a link that says “Continue reading this post” at the end. Be sure to click that to get to the remainder of the post (as you did with this one). If that link is not there, just click the “Comments” link to start reading the comments. Navigating Comments Right before the actual comments, you’ll see this: Comment options Display lets you change the view of the comments from Expanded (subjects and text) to Collapsed (just subjects are visible). Checking the Auto-refresh box will toggle on and off the auto-refresh feature in the comments section. When checked on, new comments added to the thread will magically appear with a little note popping up in the corner with the name of the poster who made the latest comment. Below those two boxes you’ll see keyboard commands for navigating a thread. They work as follows: * c – using the c key will take you to the first unread comment in the thread. This key does not mark a comment as read. Unread comments show up highlighted in light yellow. * x – using the x key will mark the current comment with focus as read. This is how I typically navigate the comments, using c and x in tandem. * z – the z key will combine the actions of c and x. One note of caution: often, if a new comment is added above the comment currently with focus (the one you’re on), using z or x will actually mark that comment as read before you’ve read it. I suggest that whenever you see a new comment box pop up in the corner, pushing the c-button before hitting z or x to make sure you don’t mark comments above your current point as read. * r – to reply to the current comment with focus, simply press the r key and a reply box will appear. Please try to use the r key (or click “reply”) when you are responding to a specific comment; this helps keep a conversation properly threaded. Reading Comments When you get into the comments section, you’ll see: The subject line – the bolded area is the subject line. Clicking the subject will collapse the text below it down; click a second time to bring the text back. Username/avatar – you can click the commenter’s username or their avatar on the far right of the screen and it will take you to that person’s SB*Nation profile page. Date/time – after the username is the date/time of the comment. This is also where you will find a link for that specific comment. If you want to refer to a comment in another place, copy the link from the date of the comment and use that URL for your reference. up – the up link only appears for comments that are a reply to another comment. Clicking up will take you to the “parent” comment to which the current comment is a reply. This is particularly useful in a long thread with many replies to a single comment. reply – use this link to reply to that comment. Your response will be indented one level and put below the comment you reply to in order based on when responses happened. actions – this is a special link that allows you to recommend or flag a post. When you click actions, two more links should become visible, labeled Flag and Rec: The Flag link should be used if you find something offensive or if the commenter is being a troll or posting spam. I hope it won’t be necessary to use this button too much. If you Flag a comment, nothing will be visible to you or others, but I will see it in red. The Rec link allows you to recognize a post that you find particularly informative, useful or that you think others would like to see. At the end of the commenter’s line, you’ll see a rec count (e.g. 2 Recs). If a comment gets three recommendations, it will turn green and get a big asterisk (not steroid-induced) in front of it. Posting Comments When it comes time for you to finally say something within a thread, you can do so via the comment box. This box is the bottom of every thread, or if you’d like to respond to a specific comment, it will magically appear when you click the reply link. As noted above, it would really help if you’d click the “reply” link if you are replying to a specific comment; this will help organize the comments in each post by thread and show each “conversation” as it develops. Posting Images, Videos And Links In Threads If you want to post a link in a thread, don’t just copy/paste the link into the posting box. Instead, first highlight the text you want to be linkable, and then click the icon at the top of the box that looks like a link. Doing that will call up a dialogue box that looks like this: Put links here! Then, copy/paste the URL into the box. If, say, you have highlighted text that says “Click here to go to cubs.com”, and then enter “http://www.cubs.com” into the dialogue box, you will get a clickable link that looks like this (don’t put the quote marks in the box or your highlighted text): Click here to go to cubs.com NOTE! Please check the “Open in new window” check box, so that your links don’t navigate away from your post. For videos, if you find a YouTube video that you want to post in a thread or post (as opposed to a FanShot, where you can post it directly, using the Video tab), find the EMBED code on the YouTube page. It should look something like this: Paste the above code into your post and you’ll get the following video: About posting images, I know that many of you already post images in posts and ga
    me threads. Some of these are baseball-related, of players, and some aren’t. Images can greatly enhance your post and add to the information and/or enjoyment that others get. I ask only that you follow a few simple rules: • Keep images small. When I say “small” I don’t necessarily mean the physical size of the image (although smaller is generally better); I mean the file size of the image you are posting. Large file size images can slow down threads, especially game threads. I ask for people to keep images in game threads to a minimum. • Keep images clean. They need to be SFW. Just as I don’t want profanity on BCB, I don’t want images that you wouldn’t want to be seen viewing at work, or around your kids. Thanks for reading this long and detailed post. If you can put some of these suggestions into your own posts and comments, they’ll look better and you’re more likely to get many more people reading them. Now let’s play ball! While we await the start of the biggest series between the Cubs and a NL Central rival in five years, I wanted to say a few words about posting here; there are a lot of new BCB members and I think a few reminders are in order, just so we all get along and this site continues to be a great place for Cubs fans to congregate. First, here are the words you all agreed to when you signed up for your BCB account: When posting at this blog, please follow this one simple rule: Before hitting “post” to post your remarks, ask yourself: “Would I be embarrassed to say this in front of strangers who were physically present in the room with me and could respond to my face?” If the answer is “yes,” then don’t post. BCB encourages and welcomes all opinions, no matter how strong; however, personal attacks, vulgarity, and other uncivilized forms of expression are not welcome. Thanks. I don’t think this is too much to ask and virtually everyone here goes along. But I’ve been getting too many emails lately from concerned people who have been worried about the increasing amount of profanity and personal attacks. Let me make it clear: those things are not acceptable. I can understand a bit of profanity in a game thread — sometimes the heat of the moment makes all of us do that — but let’s try to keep it to a minimum. On the personal attacks: the acceptable level of those is zero. If you disagree with someone, say so. But saying “You’re an idiot”, or language like that, is just plain wrong. I refer everyone again to the quote box above. Every single post here is written by a real person with real feelings. You may disagree with that person’s opinion. But that does not give you the right to call that person names. Thanks for understanding. On a similar but related topic, I have also received a number of emails regarding the fast pace with which the FanPost list gets filled up. This is a double-edged sword. BCB is an active site and so, it’s going to get more posts than others with less traffic. And I don’t want to discourage anyone from participating. One simple thing that everyone can do is check the recent post list or do a site search to see if your topic has been covered within, say, the last couple of days. If it has, post your thoughts in a comment in the original post, or in the game recap — I will always have a recap up quickly, usually within an hour or two after the end of day games and by 9 am CT on the morning following night games. That will avoid things such as having three or four FanPosts about Jeff Samardzija within a few hours. One thing that also might help is more use of the FanShot section. Perhaps I haven’t done a good enough job of explaining what FanShots can be used for. Most of you have used them primarily for photos and/or video, which is fine — but you can and should also use them for quick links or quotes or lists or things that you don’t really have anything more to write about than to say, “Hey, here’s a link I found, it’s interesting.” In that regard, please check out this FanShot Tutorial posted last week on the SBN Padres site Gaslamp Ball, which explains in more detail how it’s supposed to work. Finally, there have been a number of people who have signed up for an account here for, apparently, the express purpose of making a post to promote their site selling merchandise. Such spam posts will be deleted without notice. Thanks for reading this — as this pennant race heats up in August and September, I’d expect even more people to stop by and check out BCB, and I’d like it to be a welcoming place for every Cubs fan as our team goes runnin’ down a dream. Now let’s go get those Brewers tonight. Go Cubs! A FEW MORE WORDS ABOUT POSTING Since the SB Nation/Yahoo partnership was announced in February and BCB posts began to appear on the Cubs’ Yahoo page, we have had quite a number of new members sign up for the site through that page. I want all of the new people to feel welcome here; also, there are a few things I want to remind previous users about, so that this site, which is among the largest SB Nation sites, can have both active and meaningful discussion about the Cubs. That’s why we’re all here, right? First, a reminder: BCB is not a message board. While you can post comments like a message board, that does not mean that every thought that pops into your head should suddenly become a new post in the FanPost section. FanPosts should require some thought, some organization, and some formatting on your part — they’re supposed to be a “blog within the blog”. FanPosts have to be a minimum of 75 words. Really, that’s not that much of a requirement; there are more than 75 words in this paragraph up to the end of this sentence. If your FanPost contains something like this: 75 Words 75 Words 75 Words 75 Words 75 Words 75 Words 75 Words 75 Words 75 Words 75 Words 75 Words 75 Words 75 Words … as one recent FanPost did, then it’s not really a FanPost — it should be a FanShot. FanShots are for short little bites of Cubs baseball or related topics (if you do post off-topic things, please headline them with OT for off-topic). They can be written by you, or be links, photos or videos. What FanShots should not be are several posts in a row pimping your own site, no matter what it is. If your post is simply to say, “Hey, I’ll be at Thursday’s game!”, maybe your post would be better off as a comment under the previous day’s game thread or recap. And if you are looking for tickets or have extras, please post them in the appropriate post in the BCB Ticket Exchange section; you can find a link to the entire section on the left sidebar, and the latest posts in this section on the right sidebar. There’s one post for the entire season and there will be separate ones for each homestand. Individual ticket request posts will be deleted without notice. Reminder, face value only for ticket sales on this site. Thanks. The next thing I’d like to mention about both FanPosts and FanShots is that, since this site is so active, I’d like to reduce the amount of duplication in posts. If you think you’re going to be the first one to post a major baseball or Cubs related news story (such as yesterday’s passing of Harry Kalas and Mark Fidrych), please check BOTH the FanPost and FanShot lists before you post. Or, search the site using the search function, which is located at the top of the right sidebar. Once you go into the search function, you can power search by phrases, words, user name, or date, or all of the above. If your topic has been covered in the last couple of days, your post might be better as a comment under the previous post. You can set the number of FanShots and FanPosts to show on the sidebar in your user settings. Next, I’d like to address the various parody/satire posts that have appeared here in the last week. Parody or satire done well is funny. The first couple of these posts were funny. Parody or satire overdone or repetitive is annoying. I think the current run of such posts has run its course; let’s back off for a while on these. And while this is true, I also don’t need overdoing on the “fanpost police” posts. While I understand you are just trying to help, some people take offense at this. That’s one reaso
    n I made this post this morning, to clarify a number of things that perhaps weren’t clear. Thanks for understanding. Finally, for old and new posters, checking out the following posts regarding formatting and content wouldn’t hurt, either if you’re new, or as a refresher course: * A Few Words About FanPosts And FanShots (posted last November) * BCB 101: An Overview Of Posting And Commenting (posted in February) These posts and other useful information about this site can be found on the right sidebar under “BCB Specials And Site Info”. One final note, which is from the BCB Community Guidelines and which each new member agrees to when he or she signs up for this site: When posting at this blog, please follow this one simple rule: Before hitting “post” to post your remarks, ask yourself: “Would I be embarrassed to say this in front of strangers who were physically present in the room with me and could respond to my face?” If the answer is “yes,” then don’t post. BCB encourages and welcomes all opinions, no matter how strong; however, personal attacks, vulgarity, and other uncivilized forms of expression are not welcome. Also, to avoid trolling and spam posts, there is a 48-hour waiting period before you can make your first post after signing up. Thanks for understanding. All of this is so that we can, old and new members, get along better and everyone’s on the same page. If you’re new, one suggestion: read posts and comments for a few days before diving in; you’ll get a better idea of what this community is about if you do. WELCOME YAHOO USERS It’s been about two weeks since the SBN/Yahoo partnership was announced, and I know there have been some new users here who have signed up through the Yahoo portal. To make new readers feel comfortable here and in the hope that many will join in the discussion, I thought I’d make this post this morning which has links to various features which will explain to people who are new here what BCB is all about. Start with BCB’s Community Guidelines. Please read them over carefully (even longtime readers might want to check them out, as I have made changes within the last few months), but particularly this paragraph, which everyone who signs up has to agree to when first creating a username: When posting at this blog, please follow this one simple rule: Before hitting “post” to post your remarks, ask yourself: “Would I be embarrassed to say this in front of strangers who were physically present in the room with me and could respond to my face?” If the answer is “yes,” then don’t post. BCB encourages and welcomes all opinions, no matter how strong; however, personal attacks, vulgarity, and other uncivilized forms of expression are not welcome. Also, to avoid trolling and spam posts, there is a 48-hour waiting period before you can make your first post after signing up. Thanks for understanding. Basically, just be nice to each other. We can have different opinions without being nasty. That’s all I ask. As noted in the quote box above, there is a 48-hour waiting period before your first post or comment if you are a new reader — that’s to give you a chance to check out the site, see how things are done, etc. before you dive in. Now, on to a bit of “how to”. A couple of weeks ago — just before the Yahoo deal was announced — I posted this summary of how to post comments, FanPosts and FanShots. That’s also worth a review even if you’ve been here a while. Another thing about posting that I’d like to remind everyone about: it is a copyright violation to copy/paste the entire text of an article from another site here. You are, of course, welcome and encouraged to post links to relevant articles from other sites — it’s how we get information to discuss here. But please don’t post more than a couple of the most important sentences or paragraphs from another site. You can do that by highlighting the text you want to copy and hitting the quote mark at the top of the posting box. Thanks. Finally, for new people, there are some things sometimes expressed in shorthand or by acronyms here that you might not understand. Some BCB readers have helpfully created a “BCB Dictionary” — you can find the two parts of that here and here. These can be found under “BCB Specials” on the right sidebar, along with “Why Are We Here?”, a post where people tell their stories about how they became a Cubs fan; “What Do You Do For A Living”, self-explanatory, and BCB Reader Guides to Arizona spring training and being a tourist in Chicago. I have reopened comments on all of these posts for 21 days — so anyone who’d like to add their thoughts to any of them, feel free. Anyway, welcome, whether you’re new here or have been around for a while. Today’s game preview/thread will be posted at 1 pm CDT — remember, spring day game times are now 3 pm CDT.”

    -Alvin Yellon

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  17. Mitt Romney

    Omar Little wrote:

    “Let us be grateful to the people who…are…gardeners.”

    My gardeners are so grateful that I don’t report them to INS that they work for next to nothing!

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  18. sitrick

    Myles wrote:

    One of these days I hope to go to the Cubs Convention and get chewed out personally by Al.

    My biggest regret from my CubsCon experience. That and that during the “pick a random line to wait in and get a ball signed by a player!” portion I ended up in the MIlt Pappas line.

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  19. Omar Little

    Berselius wrote:

    “Last November I put up this post about…Nomar Garciaparra. Thanks to my colleagues at South Side Sox, Lookout Landing and Red Reporter, from whose outstanding guides I have borrowed…words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words. This is something I feel very strongly about. Would I be embarrassed to say this in front of strangers who were physically present in the room with me and could respond to my face?” If the answer is “yes,” then…BCB encourages and welcomes all opinions, personal attacks, vulgarity, and other uncivilized forms of expression. Let me make it clear: let’s try…saying “You’re an idiot”, or language like that. Thanks for understanding. On a similar but related topic, I have also received…personal attacks, vulgarity, and other uncivilized forms of expression.

    “Why Are We Here?” “What Do You Do For A Living”
    -Alvin Yellon

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  20. Suburban kid

    sitrick wrote:

    Myles wrote:
    One of these days I hope to go to the Cubs Convention and get chewed out personally by Al.

    My biggest regret from my CubsCon experience. That and that during the “pick a random line to wait in and get a ball signed by a player!” portion I ended up in the MIlt Pappas line.

    You should have pointed Alvin out to him and said “he’s the Cubs writer who thought Bruce Froemming got it right.”

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  21. Omar Little

    If you watched Stanford and Oregon last night, you can see the way to stop the Chip Kelly offense: Gap discipline, assignment football and it helps a little when you’re setting the LOS 2 yards into the backfield most plays.

    People stopped talking about Kelly’s offense, but only GB and DEN average more yards per play than PHI right now. And it’s only going to get better.

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  22. GBTS

    If the Cubs win a World Series in 2017 behind Bryant, Baez, and Almora, he will be the first guy to say it was all worth it.

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