redsox666666

From: mr_stickball
To: redsox666666

Subject:  Interview 

1. What is your favorite beverage? Explain.

 I am a whiskey drinker, and in particular I love a good old fashioned. Not the kind that most bars make, with fruit and things covering up the flavor. 1 sugar cube, bitters, a splash of water and Bourbon. Preferably Eagle Rare. Yum.

--Stick's Note: http://www.bourbonenthusiast.com/forum/DBvd.php?id=62&task=displaybottling



2. Is baseball your favorite sport? Explain.

Baseball is definitely my favorite sport. I love that every pitch potentially matters. In basketball 2 points is pretty irrelevant to the final score, unless it's close and at the end of the game. In football drives that start at the 2 yard line almost never matter. In baseball, you never have a situation where the batter can't make a significant impact on the game. They can always hit a home run, and a run always matters.

3. Did your father like baseball?

My father was a baseball fanatic, but oddly enough I wasn't until I was a teen. I remember hating going to ball games when I was younger, but he always tried to take me. He was a Twins fan, my mom was an Indians fan and everyone where I grew up (Michigan) was a Tigers fan. The only lesson I consistently heard was that the Yankees sucked. And in 2003, watching the Yanks win the ALCS I fell in love with the Red Sox. 

4. Have you been on a baseball team? A softball team? If so, which position are you best suited for?

Ever since I failed to make contact with the ball in tee ball I have stayed away from competitive baseball. I always wanted to learn to pitch though. As a tall slow skinny guy it's really my only option if I wanted to play baseball competitively.

5. Who is your greatest rival in Stickball World? Give an historical example detailing what a challenge he can be.

It's hard to have rivals when you're as unsuccessful as I have been during my rebuild. I suppose if it would be anyone it would probably be Ripkin. Obviously he's a far superior owner to me, but I feel like every year we spend weeks haggling over a trade that doesn't end up getting made because we disagree about the value of prospects. If that's not a rivalry, I don't know what is.

6. Who is your favorite player in Stickball World? Give us some stats and/or historical examples that illustrate why he's such a cool player.

As an owner who hasn't been around for many years I obviously don't have a ton of attachment to many players. Except my prospects, but no one wants to hear a rant about how good my 1st rounder from 2 seasons ago is. I always loved Paul Cooper however. He was on the team when I arrived and was with me through some terrible years. Why do I love him? Because Seattle's franchise has a history of having terrible starting pitchers or trading the ones that aren't terrible. So even though Cooper isn't THAT good he set a number of all time records for the club, and that kept me interested during some serious rebuilding years. 

7. What is more important in HBD: Starting Pitching, Power Hitting, Team Speed, Good Defense, or What? Does your home ballpark make much of s difference?

 I really think balance is important. You can win with only one category, but it's easier to win with all of them. I originally intended to build a pitching and defense team, but with draft picks working out the way they did it looks like in a few years I'll have a squad full of sluggers. Shows what I know...

8. If you could change one thing about HBD, what would it be?

I personally think that scouting is a little broken. I realize that there has to be some sort of punishment for completely focusing in active player salary, but I feel like there should be a lot more mid level players and scouting should give you a look at diamonds in the rough. Not the watered down "never make the majors" diamonds in the rough either, but the real thing where players that no one expect become dominant aces. I realize that introduces a bit more randomness into the game, but I also think that if I invest 20 million in domestic scouting and someone else invests 2, my reward shouldn't just be a sure thing first rounder, it should also be that my 8th rounder could be ML material and the other guy's won't.


9. Who is the hottest actress/musician/whatever on the planet?

 I'm maybe revealing just how young I am with my answer to this question, but Taylor Swift. 

10. Note that I had to throw booze and women into this ... that;s because sometimes I'm a chauvinistic pig. I'm not always the most politically correct person, although I do try to generally follow the "Golden Rule" in most anonymous situations. That being said, give us an original thought so we can get a better sense of who you are.

My original thought (which lets you know how much of an economics nerd I am) is that I would love for this to be a world where we shared some data. While obviously no one is going to divulge things like their projections (nor should they) I have always wanted to do some big data work to see how this game really works. I have always been intimidated by the thought of scraping player pages, but if people would be willing to copy and paste the contents of their player ratings on the GM page at the start of each year I think I could find out some interesting things about what ratings influence what stats in a much more specific way than has been done in the past. I'd even share what I found.