Sunday, January 29, 2006 |
Pickoff Moves
Historian John Thorn On The Angels Naming Fiasco
Baseball historian John Thorn, who was recently asked to testify before the Superior Court in the Angels' naming case, had a bunch to say in today's Times:The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim appeared to be a new species of naming, not inadvertently redundant: the packing of a term with so much information that editors could be counted on to trim, with the cut coming from the end.He may be in the right geographically, but monetarily and in terms of promotion, it's a fifth leg.I ran through my whole list of rhetorical devices, from alliteration to zeugma, and could find nothing that quite fit the Moreno Stratagem. Oxymoron came close, but a subterranean level of common sense or humor is discernible in "jumbo shrimp" or "adult male" that is not evident in "Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim."
And then I found it. Anesis: a figure of addition that occurs when a concluding sentence, clause or phrase is added to a statement that purposely diminishes the effect of what has been previously stated. A neat example of the device is the 1925 Rodgers and Hart lyric, "We'll have Manhattan … the Bronx and Staten Island too."
Does attaching a new city to a ball club that hasn't moved out of its old one confer a new reality upon it? Abraham Lincoln once was asked, "If we called a dog's tail a leg, how many legs would a dog have?" His reply: "Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg."
A's Sign Mark Ellis To Two Year, $6M Deal
The Oakland A's have signed second baseman Mark Ellis to a two-year, $6M deal. (MLB.com reports it having a third year club option.) Reaction at Athletics Nation seems to be positive.Ken Rosenthal On Aybar And Callaspo
In his recent column:A pair of switch-hitting middle-infield prospects — the Angels' Erick Aybar and Mets' Anderson Hernandez — made a strong impression while playing for Licey, champion of the Dominican winter league."They're both live-bodied guys," one scout says. "The more you watch them play, the more you see all the things they can do. Both have a chance to be pretty good big-league players."
Aybar, however, could be traded; the Angels are even higher on shortstop Brandon Wood and second baseman Howie Kendrick. ...
: 1/29/2006 03:35:00 PMDepth is good. Trade 'em if the deal is there to make the team better now and in the future. Otherwise, let nature take its course.
: 1/29/2006 05:16:00 PMMac was much better on D last year than most people expected, and is going to have to stay in the field post-Erstad if he has any value.
Huh? I thought he was the 3B of the future. Is that now Brandon Wood's job to lose?
: 1/30/2006 08:54:00 AM : 1/30/2006 09:13:00 AMNewer› ‹Older
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