What in the name of Lars Andersen is this thread about?  Lowrie might be an .800 ops player, unless he isn't.  George Kottaras sucks unless he doesn't, and we should trade the players we don't value for players we do.  This thread started on the Main Board, was demoted to the Minor League forum when it seemed to be about trading our prospects and now is about to be DFA-ed  Along the way, we learned that Internet Explorer has a spell-check feature.  Remember that book/movie "Flowers for Algernon" when Charlie gets stupider and stupider toward the end?  That's this thread.  Charlie.

Key Line:  "I have no idea what the hell you're saying."  --Shelterdog

RISING:  In Search of Giulio Glorioso-European Baseball

If you want to rinse the stupid from your mouth from the thread above, head on over to this developing discussion, which takes us into the world of European baseball, where MLB -sponsored academies and homegrown leagues are starting to spit out actual prospects.  In what other thread could you meet a poster called "Inoffensiv Philosophy," or learn that Sox prospect Jennel Hudson, now playing in the Gulf Coast League, formerly played for a team in Germany?   This thread bears watching.

Key Line:  "I have wondered when MLB was going to make a push for this since the first WBC."  --GradyWilliams

Posts From Behind the Wall

The Fin exists for all-even lurkers-to read and enjoy; basically the Fin reads all of SoSH in case you don't have time to.  Because of that we try to focus on the publically-viewable boards.  Yet sometimes it is in the password-protected forums that you get the human-interest stuff.  So while the Fin won't tease you with links to threads you can't read, it wouldn't hurt to let you in on some recent posts that would have made the Fin take notice back in the day.  In fact, they're even more interesting when taken out of context:

1. "There are all sorts of traditions in which gods or god-like creatures have to eat and can be killed. There are probably even more in which they are subject to some sort of rules. The Olympians ate ambrosia. The Norse Aesir ate golden apples to stay young, but not immortal. Gods and Goddess ate constantly at feasts. Hodr killed Baldr (well, everyone in the Aesir probably ends up killing or being killed). Set killed Osiris. The Aesir had to pay a weregeld of a husband to Skadi in exchange for killing her father. Persephone had to remain in Hades for a month for every pomegranate seed she sucked the juice from."  --Myt1 (with a flip of the Fin to Hairps)

2. "If you really dig this lady, be her friend, find someone else to make sweet love to, make sure she knows about it and..... wait, probably a long time, perhaps forever. She has to A. respect you and your skills B. be willing to you up the friend ladder a few rungs over into the "dude she sleeps with" column. I think time, and lots of it, is the only advantage you can build."  --Gunfighter 09

3. "But I'm the oldest of five who grew up in a poor household with demanding parents who kept their lawn short, the floors immaculate, and everything polished, and who made us work. I and my sister looked after our three younger siblings as latch-key surogate parents, changing diapers, making dinner, enforcing homework, and so on, while Mom rode her bike to a waitress job, covered in trash bags if it was raining. My younger sister is now a jet-set venture capitalist and polo player who splits her time between London, Argentina, and Tuscany. My next younger brother is a punk-rock entreprenuer who at 25, owns a legit design company and a bike-rickshaw business with maybe a dozen employees. The brother after that is an army veteran and a recent college graduate with a criminal-justice major in spite of *severe* learning disabilities. The youngest sister, at 18, is to early to call. (i've done pretty well myself, incidentally)."  --yep

4. "It's a tough question as the role of the monarch changed significantly before and after John, then before and after Anne. I would say either Elizabeth I or Alfred the Great, each of whom saved the country (or maintained its sovereignty, depending on how you look at it) from invaders at times when monarchs still more or less ran things."  -Maalox

5. "One of the things you, as a consumer, can do to improve your credit score is to go to your bank and open a CD secured loan. Obviously, this requires that you have a significant sum of money (typically, $1000.00 is the minimum to open a CD) and it will take time. But - it works. You open the CD and earn the interest (currently, somewhere in the 2-3% range). You then get a loan, using the CD as collateral. Then you make regular payments over the term of the CD (most banks require a 12 month CD, but ask for shorter) to repay the loan. The payment history on the loan is reported, boosting your credit score."  --soxfan121