Spring 1997 The following requires some explanation. A) Hans, a founding sad sacker, made copies of former Cub manager Lee Elia's famous tirade when he was once asked a stupid question by a media type. The following essay copies Mr. Elia's style. B) Tom and Gabes, another founding sad sacker, paid for and set up an on-line stat service for the rest of the league. One benefit of this service is it allows weekly head to head wagers amongst the teams. The following essay is Gabes reaction to some owners declining to partake in this action. Note that this reasoned argument did manage to convince at least two of the reluctant owners, Fox and Al, to join the wager. C) As editor of these pages I felt I had to cleanup the language of the essay. I made about 50 small changes in word selection. I hope that this does not detract from the eloquence of the piece. Fox ***************************************************************** Hans, After reading several responses to our proposal for weekly head to head team competition, I'd like to stuff our stat service up them three or four bleepin' owners who show up on the service every bleepin' day but refuse to participate in our weekly games. They're really, really behind you around here, my bleepin' ass! What the bleep am I supposed to do? Do you expect me to be quiet about it so that the bleepin' nickel and dime owners can continue to log onto the bleepin' service and boo every bleepin' proposal that we make? Some of the motherbleepers don't even work! Guys like Al and Fox ought to go out and get a bleepin' job and find out what it's like to go out and earn a bleepin' living. Eighty five percent of the bleepin' world is workin'. The other fifteen percent log on to services like ours. It's a bleepin' playground for the bleepbleepers! You and I bust our ass to give these guys a great service and them bleepin' guys boo our proposals. And they're the CyberZahm roto owners? MY bleepIN' ASS! They talk about the great bleepin' support that you get in CyberZahm. I haven't seen it this bleepin' year! Everybody associated with setting up the Gabes/Hans stat service have been winners their whole bleeping life, EVERYBODY! And the bleeping credit is not given in that respect. The bleepbleepers make a big bleepin' deal about a bleepin' weekly dollar or five dollar wager. There are only twenty two bleepin' weeks left in the bleepin' baseball season. Even if you lost every bleepin' week, which is highly bleepin' unlikely, you'd lose only $22 or $110. Money ain't the bleepin' reason behind doing it anyway. The bleeping idea was to stimulate weekly bleepin' ball busting by using a standard weekly wager format. bleepin' guys like Al don't want to participate in any standard wager but MIGHT consider special weekly side wagers. I'm not going to answer questions about bleepin' special weekly side bets. I won't answer them! The name of the game is say you're in on the weekly round robin, agree to a standard weekly wager, and then let your bleepin' players get the bleepin' job done! Every time we propose a standard wager, guys like Al magnify every bleepin' possibility with questions like "What if my pitchers don't get enough starts during the week, or what if Larry Walker pops up rather than hitting homers, or what if Strawberry holds his bleep rather than a bat?" That's gambling, buddy! That's gonna happen! That's the difference between winning and losing. That's how the bleepin' balance goes cockeyed! Bottom bleepin' line, I say we change the bleepin' password and only let those who participate in the bleepin' weekly action to get in to the bleepin' service. Why should we let guys like Al peruse daily updated stats as he sips his bleepin' morning coffee and bleeps his bleepin' little pepperoni while thumbing his bleepin' nose at our proposals. The bleeping service was set up to allow for bleepin' weekly round robins. If Al, Fox and McGee don't want to participate they can kiss my bleepin' ass right downtown, AND PRINT IT! Gabes