FALLING:  Should the Captain of Good Ship NATSTOWN be fired?

This thread is actually a two-page squabble in which folks parse posts about Manny Acta in a way that is normally tiresome (I can't even summarize it for you, something about whether Acta is actually incompetent or if the Natinales are so awful that Blessed Julian Tavarez himself would not succeed there).  Anyway, the reason this thread has some charm is that the real debate centers on the towering achievement of assembling a professional baseball team so bad that its badness warps out ability to judge its constituent parts.  That's NATZTOWNE!

Key Line:  "This team has no front office, the worst player development system in MLB (probably set up to be incompetent where as not to notice 40 year old latino men posing as teenagers), no fan base, players that don't give a shit, and no clear direction pretty much top to bottom and you want to blame the manager?"  --TomRicardo

RISING:  Twins Radio Announcer

Now that we have the internets, we are able to hear any announcing team we want.  That's why it is fun to learn that in Minnesota the Twins radio team idolizes Kent Hrbek, and that leads to a mini-debate about Hrbek vs. Keith Hernandez.  But the real pleasure of this thread is a post by Ken Tremendous, who uses the word "sic" (correctly) a SoSH-record five times in one sentence.

Key Line:  "I've also listened to radio broadcasts where the commentators will openly moralize about how the Twins 'should' beat a large-payroll, station-to-station-type team like the Sox because they play a more virtuous, scrappy style of baseball."  --m0ckduck

Wiki O The Day:  Lastings Milledge (credit to Czaralexander and Pierre Charles L'Enfant).

This Day In SoSHtory:  Ortiz Extension (done deal)

Well, not strictly this day, but today as I was rereading the Ortiz thread I got to thinking about this April 2006 thread wherein the slugger surely maximized his value.  Here's some selected quote to make us all feel smarter:

"In other ways it might be the riskiest contract this ownership group has handed out as David did have an injury history before coming to Boston. And guys with his size haven't traditionally aged very well. "  --BigMike

 "I'm a little skeptical about signing him for 2010. An extension to 2009 would be great in my opinion. It insulates you from risk since Ortiz is a big man, a body type that tends not to age as well as others. If he's still raking over 2008, sign him to another extension. We're the Red Sox, we can do it." --Spacemans Bong

And some...not so much:

"I'm pretty skeptical of those PECOTA projections that show a significant dropoff after the 2007 season."  --BosoxBob