One: 75% is the total you have to reach before induction? No one can get named if they don’t get a proper percentage of votes? This is dumber and even less productive than the Electoral College, don’t you think? Am I missing something? Didn’t we have two people inducted last summer?

Two: Roger Maris isn’t in the Hall of Fame? Just…what? Whether you buy into the “asterisk” or not, this is just the lamest thing I’ve ever read. He broke one of the greatest records in sports (if not necessarily the most important, IMO). After all the news lately about steroids, they’re going to have to invent new punctuation after the names of McGwire and Bonds in the record books. Will Maris ever make the Hall, and do you think he should?

Signed,

Do They Make Steroids for Deskjockeys?

One: Yes, I believe that’s how it works. I don’t think it’s a perfect system either; Bill James proposes a fairer one in The Politics of Glory which lets eeeeeeeveryone vote — baseball writers and historians, sabremetricians, players and managers, fans, your mama.

Seventy-five percent does seem high, and could probably stand to drop to seventy or something, but I suspect that that number is designed to do a couple of things, one of which is to keep players who have just come on the ballot from dominating the voting merely because the writers remember them more clearly. This is not going to be a flawless example because I’m a little sleepy this morning, but if I’m presented with a ballot that contains Paul O’Neill, Dave Parker, and…I don’t know, let’s say “Wahoo” Sam Crawford, how will I rank those three? Well, it depends on whether I research their numbers first, which I don’t know if all the writers are conscientious about doing, but the salient point is that I saw Paulie play every day, for years. I saw enough of Parker to have formed an opinion because my childhood team played against his teams many times. I never saw Crawford, obviously; he played with Ty Cobb.

So, that number is designed to work against memory bias, I think, and it’s also designed to work against metro bias. Certain teams get more national press than others, and have bigger local press corps than others, and you want to make sure that New York players don’t dominate on name recognition, basically.

I believe it’s also a weighted ballot and the writers vote for a slate, not just for one person, so it’s actually not as rigorous as if each writer only got one vote for one player, but still. The 75% figure tends to leave deserving people out, and players like Richie Ashburn wash out of the ballot and have to wait for the Veterans’ Committee to elect them, and the Veterans’ Committee tends to let in too many people vs. too few. So, the system could use some work, but at least as far as the writers’ ballot, the players they do elect make sense.

With that said, two: They declined to elect Maris. I’ve never had a problem with this, particularly. Maris is probably somewhat underrated, historically, but what happens with a Maris (or an Ashburn, or what happened to Rizzuto) is something like: he came on the ballot at the same time as contemporary players from his era; those players were considered much better than he, so he didn’t get many votes; those players got elected and cleared the way, but then other players came on the ballot who were considered much better than he; this kept happening; his eligibility expired. This is my problem with the voting, honestly, that players have a limited time on the ballot, but anyway, Maris was evidently up against better players the entire time and was not getting votes.

…Or Maris didn’t get elected because the writers didn’t want him in the Hall. Yes, he broke the record, but this was not necessarily viewed as a good thing at the time. He was threatening a record set by the great Babe, and he was beating out Mantle at doing it. He was shy, and didn’t deal with the insane press attention very well. He was not popular; his achievement was not popular. The voting process tries to work against bias for certain players, but bias against them, it isn’t as good at weeding out.

I don’t know if that’s what happened. According to Bill James, Maris drew strong support while he was on the ballot, but he only meets 24 percent of James’s Hall of Fame standards. This puts him behind Mattingly. A candidate becomes viable in James’s accounting at 35 percent.

Anyway, after all this rambling…I don’t think Maris necessarily belongs in the Hall. Yes, he broke that one record; he had that one monster season and a couple of other very good seasons, but he didn’t have a very long career, and evidently he was very good player but not a great one. Will he get in eventually? I think he will. I think the Veterans’ Committee will probably put him in because he’s important to the game historically. I wouldn’t have a problem with that, either.

Saaaaaaaaaaaaars,

*Sob*

Okay, so now I’m shaving my legs more than once a week in the warmer weather.

So, typically, I get in the shower, do all my other showery things, then shave the same way I assume everyone else does…lathering up the leg with shaving gel, and dragging the razor all over it (against the grain). Then I feel my leg all over to make sure I haven’t missed any spots, and it feels nice and smooth.

So, I get out of the shower, dry off, and put on some moisturizer. As I am applying it, the same thing always happens: I discover a fine little mohawk of leg hairs extending the entire length of my leg. It’s usually on my shin, or the back of my calf.

I’ve tried several different razors. I’m using the Mach III currently, and change the blades frequently.

And the knees, my God, the KNEES! How the FUCK do you get the hairs off there without a million little razor slices?? No matter how many times I scrape that damn blade across, there. are. always. a. couple. hairs. left.

I have been shaving for over a decade now and it’s absurd to me that I haven’t discovered the secret of actually REMOVING THE HAIR! I’m not even gonna get into the shit on the back of my thighs…How am I supposed to reach back there in that teeny shower?!

Am I the only woman with this problem? Luckily, I have fine blonde hair, so it’s not a huge deal if I miss a few, but if I waste all that time in the shower I want some fucking results. God.

I know this isn’t that pressing, but I had to get it out. Thanks for reading.

I can never get Nair to work either…

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Dear Nair,

I don’t shave my legs in the shower, never have. I hoist a leg up into the sink and use shaving cream to mark where I’ve shaved; it’s the only way I can really see what I’m doing. So, you might try that method instead, but I still have the little mohawks too. And since you’re blessed with the same fine blonde leg hair I am, I’d just…let it go. Nobody can see them; nobody cares; women all have the same issues you do with the stragglers, and men don’t really notice, so, make a command decision to stop caring about it.

[8/5/05]

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Tags:   etiquette   health and beauty