Cubs Decade in Review: 2000 Season

Hendry made the team significantly weaker last off season. Without making some big changes this offseason expect the same kind of season in '10.

Kicking Miles out the door was a good first step in reversing the '08-09 offseason shitfest, but, and I'm sorry to say this, but the bullpen needs a serious overhaul before the team will do much.

Relievers lost at least 8 winnable games in the first half of the season, maybe more. I would even go as far as to say a good bullpen would have put the Cubs in the playoffs this year. With even a small lead at the all-star break and Ramirez back off the DL, I'm not certain the Cards would have been such aggresive buyers at the trade deadline.

It's like when the odometer flips to 100,000.0 even though you bought the car at 000,002.8.

There are two issues of note here:
First, sometimes people have a hard time counting because they do basic subtraction and forget to count the first or last item in the sequence. The end of the first year will start as year zero and finish at the beginning of year 1. So we are 1 year into the decade on January, 1, xx01, We are 10 years into the decade on January 1, xx10. you can't substract 1 from 1000 because that equals 999. Mind blowing stuff. When the new decade/millennium starts depends on when you start counting.

Second, the who millennium debate traces back to the initial western calendar. The king/president of England/Europe (it was actually a roman) instructed a monk named Doinysius Exiguus to make a calendar and assign a number year to it based on when the Anno Domini started. He did so and numbered year 1 to be the first complete year following the birth of Jesus. In doing so, year zero would be considered to be the complete year in which Jesus was born, but is often referred to as 1BC. So 1 BC and 1AD start and finish exactly one year apart, meaning there is no actual year zero. Or to be more precise, we started counting at the beginning of year number 1, not year number zero.

Because of this second point, the end of the first year AD, should have been January 1, 0002. This is convenient because it allows us to count simply (see point 1), but we're losing a year when we do so. If you count up to year 10, you'll have ten fingers up, but in actuality you're counting to the beginning of the tenth year. The end of the tenth year is January 1, 0011.

So while convention logic is to say that the new millenium began on January 1, 2000, anyone who cares to view it precisely realizes that January 1, 2000 is the beginning of the 1000th year AD. All the people who celebrated on this night were in fact a year early. The true millennium started on January 1, 2001.

I got drunk both years celebrating, but I find it an interesting story to share.

I'm not being facetious when I say this: You're a smart motherfucker.

I'd never intentionally choose to associate with you or someone like you in my real life, but if you're looking for a pat on the back for being smart, consider this your pat.

Yay TRN.

So to my knowledge, there is no right or wrong in this. But I'll try to make my case for the decade ending and starting at zero.

Of course when we count things, we start with 1. But not when considering aspects of time. When you are born, you are zero. Once you've been around for a year, you are 1. Start a stopwatch? 1 will show up after a second, minute, or hour has passed.

Maybe think of a car around a race track. If counting laps, you would not say 1 until the lap is complete.

So my best logic goes against what sir Neal states. Perhaps I'm the rebel of the given domain, though.

Thank you. But I'd rather have speed first-to-third which will never happen...

Roy Oswalt, John Smoltz, Jeff Kent, Mark Buehrle, Travis Hafner, Mike Lowell, Jason Bay ... all 20th round or later.

It's old man Joe's money.

According to Levine, November was the first time Tom Ricketts ever set foot in Arizona.

http://espn.go.com/chicago/columns/blog/_/pos...

I may because I have a retired elder to visit down there, but other than that, I vastly prefer Phoenix. You can see two games in a day quite easily down there.

If you have the info handy TRN, how many saves did he blow as a Cub?