Cup of Coffee

May 10, 2013: Paranoid

90 Comments

Yesterday I got checked out because I thought I might be having a thing with my heart. I woke up with crushing chest pains and I didn't want to be one of the many folks I've heard about who died despite being given clear signals. I'm fine, but I imagine things only get scarier with age.

90 thoughts on “May 10, 2013: Paranoid”

  1. future All Star?

    Mike Berardino ‏@MikeBerardino
    Oswaldo Arcia is the first Twin even to homer and triple on his birthday, FWIW.

    Only other Twin with a homer and triple within same game inside first 18 MLB games: broadcaster Ron Coomer on 8-19-95 at Detroit

    1. Ron Coomer bothers me. It really isn't his fault. It bothers me that he is lumped in with the Twins' all time greats. He was a borderline ML starter on a AAA quality team. I would rather just forget those mid to late 90s teams.

      2. I didn't like baseball when I was a kid. But I knew that my favorite player on the Twins was Ron Coomer. I find that difficult to resolve knowing what I know now.

        1. As a friend of mine likes to say, "You can't go to the Preference Store."

          He was excusing his irrational appreciation for Budweiser, which, of course, is a wrong preference. But still, he has a point. The heart wants what the heart will.

          Me, I had an irrational appreciation for Mickey Hatcher for a stretch.

          1. Jacque Jones...

            ::hangs head in shame::

            Also this girl I dated in high school...

            1. On the spectrum of players to like, there's no shame in liking Jacque Jones. Good range in the field and above average power. Would have had better overall numbers if platooned later in his career. 13.0 career fWAR even including his final -0.9 fWAR season with the Tigers and Marlins. (Compare to Coomer's career 2.1 fWAR.) Jones had a 5.1 fWAR career year in 2002. There's this game, too, which is a tasty memory.

              I would even argue that quality isn't all that relevant in a favorite player. I loved having Carlos Gomez on the team just because it was fun to watch him run around center field and he was completely insane. Adrian Beltre is really good, but even in a slump, it's fun to watch all of his idiosyncrasies.

              1. Well sure... but this doesn't help me explain what I was doing in high school.

                    7. Okay, since you need an explanation: At one point, you were young and dumb. Then, you wised up.

                    9. "Wised up" == fled the scene of your original transgressions, so that you could act like you'd never done those things, and get away with the ruse.

      3. I think its nice having Coomer around. Its a reminder to future Twins fans that might have missed the late 90s wasteland that he was the best representative for 'All Star' status. The team may stink, but its not late 90s stink.

        I do find Coomer a fresh voice in the announcers booth. He seems to know something about hitting and its nice to break out the ol Telestrater and break down a Joe Mauer swing, something you dont get out of Bert.

  2. I went through quite a bit of chest pains when I was in law school. Got checked out multiple times. Nothing doing. Anxiety.

    1. I mentioned to the doc that if anxiety was a possibility, the pieces would fit. She drew no clear conclusion in the end but said that it was probable, given the stresses of work and finding out that a good friend had died less than a week later.

      1. I went through a battery of tests and the situation got worse and worse and I began to really worry. When the tests came back all negative, I felt better that day than I had in months and months. The relief made me feel so much better.

        1. Yeah, I had little things on and off so I figured I needed to get some answers on the whole thing. The anxiety over the thing that turned out to be anxiety (probably) was just making the whole thing worse.

    1. great story. Greater reminder why checking should not be allowed in youth hockey.

        2. somewhat more seriously, Lindros's advocacy for the return of the red line and widening of the ice seem like very modest, reasonable changes. USA Hockey seems to have actually put some thought into their recent rules change on checking.

          I'd also venture to suggest that the women's collegiate game is pretty exciting even without checking.

          1. Injuries will undoubtedly increase in checking v. non-checking leagues, no one would expect otherwise. I guess I'm wondering (without having studied the issue at all) whether letting inexperienced checkers get faster and bigger before checking is introduced changes the likelihood of injuries. USA Hockey has concluded that it doesn't, so I'll defer to that since they've done the research.

            1. my evidence-free speculative response is that younger players have poorer body control and neck strength and judgment, so that the collisions are more likely to lead to injuries than with older, stronger, faster players. Also, the variance in development declines with age, so there should be fewer bad collisions, despite the increased potential for forceful ones.

            2. USA Hockey isn't exactly a nonbiased third party. The NFL says football is perfectly safe.

              1. sure, but in this case, wasn't USA Hockey advocating for banning checking for younger players?

                  1. I'm not sure what he meant, but what he wrote implies the opposite of what you inferred. He wondered if it would be more dangerous to introduce checking later when players are bigger and faster, then he said USA Hockey has concluded that it's not more dangerous.

          2. Watching college hockey, I always thought the game was better on Olympic-size ice than on NHL-size ice. More space for passing meant teams didn't dump and chase as much.

  4. Sir Alex was appointed manager at ManU on Nov 6, 1986. I was just over 4 months old. Thinking of his tenure that way is a little mind boggling.

    1. I have a coworker that's been with the company longer than I've been alive. It's all the more incredible when the company has been bought twice and gone through numerous layoffs.

      1. My agency had a woman who worked for us for sixty-one years. Our HR chief explained to her near the end that if she had retired, her income would go up by ~38 percent (her pension would have been ~138 percent of her highest salary). Her response was "to retire is to die."

        she died anyway....

        1. If she was still able to do the job, I admire her. I intend to continue in my job as long as I can and they'll let me.

          1. I can see that being true in a "I do it because I love it" sort of position, like yours. In her job, I can't imagine it, though that's because I just don't belong in that arena, I suppose.

            1. In her case, she was relatively low on the pay scale and mostly paged and shelved books. Apparently, after her shift was over, she frequently went to the local public library and put several more hours in doing the same thing (as a volunteer, presumably).

              I don't know if that is love or what. But commitment, for sure.

              2. maybe a troubled home life, maybe OCD, maybe she just liked to be alone with her thoughts in the stacks. I dunno.

              3. We all love doing different things, and the things some people love sometimes seem very strange to the rest of us. In both the cases spooky and bS mentioned, it's entirely possible that the people involved did love what they were doing, even if most of us wouldn't. See "the heart wants what the heart will" above.

        2. I seem to remember that the Dayton's department store in downtown MPLS not that long ago had a woman working there who was (a) over 100 years old and (b) an employee for over 80 years. My details might be a little off, but not by much, I don't think.

            1. I've been with my employer for nine years. That feels long sometimes, too.

              Even if I were to live to 111 to match her, I don't think any "modern technology" company is likely to last that long, even with our stock way up lately.

            1. First byline: 1945. A mere 68 years (more than that, actually, he worked for the strib for a while before his first byline).

      2. When I first started at my current employer fresh out of college, I couldn't turn around without running into someone who had been with the company longer than I'd been alive. We have lots and lots of people with 35-40 years of experience right now.

    1. My "recap"...I'm disappointed but onboard with what you said.
      .
      The addition of both star and role players, combined with limited practice and preseason time due to the strike didn't help.
      Having the late trade deadline was nice to make sure that the team was on pace to make the playoffs before making a big move, but didn't give Pominville much time to gel with the squad.
      Injuries to Heatley, Cullen and Pominville hurt the team down the stretch.
      Backing into the playoffs to secure a series against the best team in the league hurt too. Then you lose your starting goal tender and go with a guy who saw limited action due to his own health issues. And then he gets hurt and you have a rookie in net.
      Lots of guys with no playoff experience logging big minutes was a challenge. Finally, your top lines go stone cold for a team that was already offensively challenged and you can't find the net once during a Power Play...in 5 games!?
      I'm not sure what to think of the "Fire Yeo/Fletcher" crowd, but I'll be interested to see what moves are made.

      1. I can't see firing Yeo. If the team slides next year and misses the playoffs, sure. But I thought the team did as well as could be expected given all the injuries.

        I expect PMB to be gone. I loved watching him when he was on, but he's been on so rarely since his concussions.

        I'm mostly nervous about goaltender. Harding is solid but what if his MS flares up? Kuemper has good numbers in the minors, I think, but do you trust him yet? And Backstrom might cost a lot of money to keep. I also wouldn't mind finding another center.

        I'm excited to see how Granlund, Coyle, Zucker, and Brodin improve.

        1. Good points all.

          I wonder if Koivu was injured...he just seemed "off" the past few weeks.

          Goalie will be an interesting topic.

          I have the same excitement about watching the second year for these guys and the next crop of potential rookies. In particular Phillips & Bulmer, maybe even Dumba.

        2. There was a pretty fine line between making the playoffs and missing the playoffs here. If Columbus had gotten one more point, you would change your opinion on whether the coach should have been fired?

          1. Tangent to this line of questioning, I'm going to mention that if the standings were ordered to my liking, the Wild would have finished 6th in the West (with 26 wins, losing tiebreaking criteria to Vancouver--I don't really care about rewarding the division winners), though ranking teams first by wins and breaking ties with OT and whatnot would have produced the same overall playoff field in the West.

    2. Published in 1936. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

      Spoiler SelectShow

    3. Thank you. I've been having many similar thoughts lately about the practice more generally, and reading this was good for my soul.

      1. this Commentary is in response to some feeling from within

        Heh. Quality stuff. We should all get paid so well as law school faculty to write such stuff.

  9. The Onion with a listing of LBJ's career highlights, including:

    July 8, 2010: Orchestrates “The Decision,” a wicked satire of the sports media’s penchant for manufactured drama and inane commentary
    July 9, 2010: Quietly relocates to Miami

    2. !!!!!

      Unfortunately, Cole has been a little distracted lately, but I'm sure he will get back to blogging soon.

    3. I seem to remember that he was on the coaching track and they called him up because they needed someone to backup.
      Maybe I've got this wrong.

      Also, he shaved and still got demoted, bummer.

    1. Good article. I was amused that Parmelee was sent in as a "defensive replacement" for Arcia yesterday. It reminded me of the times Pedro Munoz would be sent in as a "defensive replacement" for Gene Larkin in the outfield.

      1. Yeah, but I do have to say that Parmelee has looked much better in the outfield than I thought he would. He's not exactly fast, but he's played the RF wall at Target Field very well.

  14. Josh Willingham has an amazing slash line right now: .215/.392/.452/.843
    23 walks ranks him 2nd in the AL. Of his 20 hits, 12 are for extra bases.

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