Since I get little feedback from those who read the articles, I am soliciting some thoughts from the Forum.

For those who read these articles on the Neighbourhood play and the rebuttles, what are your thoughts? I am more interested in your take on my thoughts about ignoring the foot and concentrating on the catch/transfer/throw. Is this helpful? Am I full of s***?

Finally, I hope you enjoyed the banter and that I was able to make Rollie's article make sense....which can be hard!!

LOL

Blaine

Who's Rollie and where are the articles you refer to?

I heard of an umpire named Rollie,
When writing would mutter "my golly,"
"The readers, they know
Just how bad I blow,
But I fooled Carl again, oh jolly!"


[Edited by GarthB on Dec 17th, 2005 at 08:35 PM]

that is the best poem i have ever read in my life

First off, you could have been a little more creative for the grabber if you didn't use the standard Rollie form which reads "Roland talked and talked and talked about [insert topic]. The problem is that despite all his talk, he didn't really say anything."

I mean which one of Rollie's articles could that not be said about?

On to the articles. First off, Rollie's article is the standard Rollie where he rambles on about nothing the entire time. He did try to sound like a big shot by dropping lines such as: "working national tournaments", "Internet Charley", "Jim Evans" and "Mr. Childress".

Your reply - Nice job pointing out that Rollie didn't say anything the whole article. I also liked when you pointed out that Rollie gave a list of things to think about while judging the play, but gave no insctuctions on what to do when one observes these things happen. The easy 4-6-3 where R1 is out by plenty shows why Rollies advice about just looking in the general direction of the play and focusing on nothing doesn't work.

Rollie comes back and again says to just look at the area of the play, referencing the 4-6-3 play from Blaine's article. Even though you set it up by saying R1 was out by plenty, Rollie wants us to stare in the general direction of second base so we don't miss an interference call. That's right, R1 is out by 12 feet, but we better watch and see if he interferes with F6's catch. Also, Rollie again drops phrases in the hope of making himself sound cool. This time he wrote "Hot Stove League" and "Jim Evans...personally told me".

Once again just more of the standard crap Rollie puts out.

The topic of this thread is puzzling - "Butting heads with Roland." Roland's articles are like Thomas White's posts - they don't make sense and not worth reading. My advice is there is nothing to butt your head against. Don't read his stuff - it's a waste of time.

Sal,

Blaine could have been clearer.

This time it was his assignment to butt heads with Rollie. He and Rollie wrote a "point-counterpoint" series at the paid portion of this site. Both wrote articles about the phantom tag and then each wrote rebuttals to the other's article.

When I read Rollie's first piece, I had to read it again just like you reported. In fact, I felt like I could have written your first response. Rollie likes colorful metaphors, but in this series, he put too much emphasis on trying to impress us by being a good 'ol boy from Texas, and not enough on umpiring.

Besides not explaining when to call the neighborhood play (as promised), he made recerences to differences in the way baseball is called in the North and in the South. Opinions aside, I'd like to see the reasoning and hear some support for those kind of statements.

Mike