inessential by Brent Simmons

2/10/2000

***Griffey traded

It's official: Griffey traded to Reds.

We're not getting Jim Edmonds from the Angels -- I'm very glad of that. We're getting center fielder Mike Cameron, pitcher Brett Tomko, and two prospects from the Reds. I wouldn't be surprised if we turn around and deal some of the players to other teams, though I suspect we'll keep Mike Cameron, as we need a center fielder.

I'm sad, of course. But I also feel sorry for the people of Cleveland. Griffey's a superstar, the Michael Jackson of baseball. He was a child star, a star before he even turned 20. He was raised in the major leagues -- Ken Griffey, Sr. played baseball, and is now the bench coach of the Reds. Griffey has never had anything like a normal life; there's no way he can identify with any fans. He likes children, and children only, refusing to sign autographs for adults. His nicknames: Junior, the Kid.

Two things will happen:

1) Griffey will become disgruntled again. It's what prima donnas excel at, being unhappy. People don't love them enough. Having a disgruntled superstar is a special brand of hell I wouldn't wish on anybody. But when that day comes, I will indulge in a little Schadenfreude, and I will laugh.

2) Griffey's deficiences will become apparent. He does not hit home runs in the 9th inning to win ball games. I believe he's done that just once in his entire career. In late innings he strikes out or, at best, walks. He's only so-so at small ball: every time he slides (which is rare) he looks like he's going to break his legs. He can do some things very, very well, better than just about anybody -- but he's not magic, he's got some serious flaws you might not know about unless you've seen him as often as Mariners fans have.

I've had enough of superstars in baseball: I'd rather field a team of above-average players with heart and respect and a will to win. Superstars suck all the oxygen out of the air.

***Other news

O'Reilly: Who Runs Linux on the Mac? I'd like to convert all my old Mac servers to Linux machines.

carpe diem: My Manila Experience.

LinuxNewbies: Command line text editors. Me, I'm slowly getting comfortable with emacs.

My mom used to use treemacs, which, according to this page, is "GNU Emacs extended to allow the direct editing of tree structures." When I told her how cool it was to edit code in Frontier's outliner, she told me she used to use treemacs to work on code.

Karl Martino uses emacs on Windows and points to a couple emacs modules.

***Griffey (posted last night)

KING 5 reported on the news at 11 (Wednesday night) that a Griffey deal may be imminent. A three-team deal involving the Reds and the Angels. Seattle would get Jim Edmonds.

See Sheila's web site for more extensive coverage.

CNNSI: Done deal?

Excite: Griffey or no Griffey, Gillick has Mariners in good shape.

Howard's Musings: "I attended the last game Griffey played in Seattle. He made one great catch in center. He didn't hit any home runs. I, and thousands of others, paid special attention when he came up to the plate in the eighth for his final at bat."

Howard, a fellow Seattle-ite, recently installed Linux and wrote about it.

***CNN fonts

I got a reply from CNN. Here it is:

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Well, forget it, I'm not going to change my browser prefs whenever I want to go to CNN. So I won't go there anymore.