Cleveland Sports Forum

No game on Thursday. I predict some heads will roll.....most likely Manny's.

I dunno who Al Dante is but I'm sure I'd like his pasta. I love Italian food.

rusty2 wrote:
Once again you jump to conclusions without any actual posts. I am just tired of you being a weeny and talking about his education. You have no idea how Shapiro would do with a 100 million dollar payroll. There are many teams that would be willing to find out if he leaves the Indians.

Rusty, when posting here I always think of you being bright, perceptive and intuitive.

So I guess I wasn't clear on my prior references over the years of Mark Shapiro being an Ivy League Boy gifted his job with The Cleveland Indians due to his father's sports agent connections, less than two years after Mark Shapiro graduated Princeton.

I have respect for all who have the academic fortitude to be accepted and make it through an Ivy League school. I went to a state school in Ohio that was not Ohio State to get my B.A. ticket punched, and though I do not live in a glass house, I rarely throw stones.

I've just never thought of Ivy League schools as a place to go get athletes at the top levels for pro sports. I can name Ed Marinaro and Lou Gehrig in days of yore with big time Ivy League connections. I'm sure there are more. I know Mark Shapiro managed to find at least two Ivy League guys to play for us.

I guess if I wanted to assemble a crew team, I'd head to Mark Shapiro's birthplace of Cambridge MA.

I also never think of Ivy League schools as a place to go get guys to build a baseball team. And yes, that is a stereotype.

I truly believe that Mark Shapiro was gifted his first Indians job....and yes, I am envious....and then was named General Manager when John Hart left largely because he had been hanging around the organization dabbling in the farm system for ten years....(in which you would have thought he might have learned something about drafting).....and John Hart wanted to leave in good order by naming a successor....who would not show him up.

As to Shapiro's alma mater of Princeton specifically, I just have personal experiences as my measure. I worked in Lawrenceville NJ, just south of Princeton, and Philadelphia often over the years. I've just met some folks that I learned along the way were Princeton grads that I did not think were really that much of "that cut above" in terms of talent or thinking.

My read, only from personal observation, is that Princeton is the weakest link of Ivy League entrance. And for crying out loud, it's essentially in a cow field in ugly western New Jersey and an inconvenient drive to Philadelphia or New York City.

The hallmark dining place of Princeton along US 1 in New Jersey chooses to celebrate Brooke Shields as their preferred alum who dined there, at least when I was last in the area. Mark Shapiro had been with The Cleveland Indians for about 10 seasons on that visit.


Regardless of all the above, this season of Cleveland Indians Baseball is a huge disappointment and if anyone here has a positive view of the future of The Cleveland Indians under Mark Shapiro, please share.

I'm a willing listener and hoping to be able to change my mind.

I read something on another site that was good and I reproduce it here.

The Tribe Front Office plays Lucy to our Charlie Brown.

"My read, only from personal observation, is that Princeton is the weakest link of Ivy League entrance. "

I don't think this is likely, even at the undergrad level, but in any case it depends very much on how you measure it. It could be spun any way you like. But the peculiarities of what happens in admissions offices, esp. at the most elite places, make it difficult to come up with a comprehensive measure of "difficulty of entrance" that would be more than superficially useful.

On the other hand, your experiences (and here I paraphrase) about the impressiveness or lack thereof of some Princeton grads, particularly if you are talking about academics, are not surprising. One should not assume that a diploma and degree from an elite academic institution is a reflection of elite academic performance. It's not even part of the plan of these institutions that all students be academic standouts. If you meet enough grads from ANY Ivy league school you would likely get the same disappointing impression. Some of the students are admitted expressly for the purpose of providing competitive sports teams. Many others are admitted largely because they come from wealthy and/or prominent families. Love it or hate it, that is how it works.

(I type this as I hear on NPR Obama's very silly words about his ideas concerning well-trained work forces and access to higher education ... In this area, no doubt, he's as much a part of the problem as W was.)

Here is my input on Ivy League schools:

I was accepted at Harvard Grad School. It required working knowledge of 2 foreign languages and lots of money with the non-refundable or applicable application fee. They did not offer me a scholarship as other schools did so I could not afford to go.

A Groucho Marx quote is appropriate here.

Well at least the Indians are not quitting.

According to Tony Rizzo, ESPN 850, the word is that Acta wants to get fired.

Lillibridge needs to go.

What is the cardinal rule on a suicide squeeze? You have to put the bat on the ball even if you have to throw the bat! The man on third was a dead duck.

I had a classmate named randy lerner-new him before he was dumb as a rock then-nuff said about Ivy league admissions policies. I will say that having served on a regional alumni admission commitee it took 5 years of interviewing prospectives until they picked one of mine.

Rusty - I approve Manny's demise.

Seattle takes 1-0 lead after one inning on a HR. We had a lately typical first inning 2 men on one out........cant score.

Second inning sees 2 more runners for us but no scoring. Still 1-0 Seattle.

Smash basehit by Kotchman plates the tying run.

Hey, isn't that something like Charlie Manuel wanting to get fired a decade ago? Keeps his salary if he does. That's why it's a chicken---- move.

Same tired old script. Stay close until the late innings, then give up some runs, and don't score any more.
Double scores 2 for SEA, making it 3-1, bottom of 8th.