Tears streamed down the face of Beth Page, smearing her carefully applied makeup.  She stood by the side of her husband’s grave, the very picture of the grieving widow (although perhaps her black dress was a wee bit too low-cut for the occasion). It was no surprise that she was convincing in her grief.  After [...]

The Mind of Bill James: How a Complete Outsider Changed Baseball by Scott Gray A few chapters into this book, I noticed that I was a bit disappointed. I quickly realized the problem – as a big fan of Bill James, I had simply built up too much internal hype. Additionally, I probably had more [...]

I have a bunch of topics that I want to discuss today, but none of them really warrants an entire article, so I’ll bounce around a bit.  The segues are going to be rough, so hang on for the ride. First of all, Kosmo is growing a goatee!  Why?  Not because I think it looks [...]

This weekend marks the toughest challenge in professional golf. The 109th United States Open Championship. The United States Golf Association is always known to set up the US Open venue brutally difficult, and this year is sure to be no exception. Bethpage Black – located in Bethpage Park in New York will host the event [...]

Digital Transition The digital TV era officially began at midnight Friday/Saturday, as analog TV signals ended.  The FCC received 300,000 calls on Friday.  I can fully understand any confusion about the transition, since it came upon us suddenly, with very little information from to the government.  Perhaps the government could have delayed the transition, forced [...]

We take you back to math class in today’s edition of The Soap Boxers, as we discuss probability. First of all, if someone tells you that you have a million to one odds of winning a lottery, they are wrong.  Your odds are actually a million to one AGAINST you winning.  Another way to phrase [...]

This article is about plugins for the WordPress blogging platform.  If you aren’t a blogger, this article may not be very interesting to you – you might wish to browse the archives instead (there is a link to the archives in the blue bar toward the top of the screen). When I began blogging, I [...]

This is a bit different from my other stories, lacking the “edge” that I typically try to include. Of all the benefits offered by his company, Andrew found that he valued one benefit much more than any other – the presence of his co-worker, the lovely Charisse.  Not only was Charisse a very attractive girl, [...]

There are a couple of non-fiction subjects that I study in great detail.  One of them, not surprisingly, is baseball.  The other is true crime and forensics.  This might seem like an odd combination, but the great baseball historian and analyst Bill James also has a fascination with crime.  Today, I’ll begin a multi-part series [...]

No. There has been speculation that Raul’s dream season at age 37 is due to performance enhancing drugs.  This really makes no sense at all.  If Ibanez was going to do steroids, wouldn’t he have done them last year, since he was a free agent last off-season?  This would have maximized the money he could [...]