Also the phrase you are looking for is “collective ostrich preserve, but instead of sticking their heads in holes in the ground, they are up their asses.”

A grammer is one who gramms.

You seem to be willfully ignoring the fact that the Rockies have a unique situation regarding the game balls… no other team has (or needs) a humidifier.

The fact of the matter is, though, that baseballs in Coors are treated differently than baseballs anywhere else. There is no humidor in any other stadium such that I’m aware. Look, this is an easy fix. If the Rockies really aren’t doing anything, they should have no problems with simply allowing some form of neutral oversight of the baseballs. Simply for the sake of eliminating suspicion, this is an easy, easy thing to fix. No reason why it shouldn’t be.

I agree with this for the most part, but given some of the comments below I would say some people have a rather extreme view of what those accusing the Rockies of wrongdoing need to prove, exactly.

Frankly, I think there’s enough circumstantial evidence out there right now indicating some kind of shenanigans could be going on that I would think necessitate a formal inquiry.

this is a situation where the Rockies, essentially, control the evidence (i.e. the baseballs). there needs to be some way of compelling them to at least let umpires look at them if these are credible accusations.

Key point here, people. We’re not talking about punishment for wrongdoing, we’re talking about a minor rule change (call it “The Colorado Rule” or “The Humidor Rule”) to simply ensure that a team isn’t even tempted to cheat. Maybe the Rockies aren’t doing anything right now. But at some point, the organization is bound to hire an unscrupulous manager who WOULD. I mean that’s just the nature of humanity. We saw it during the steroids scandal— leave people an easy way to cheat and not get caught and a lot of them will. Why not just say that at all ballparks present and future where a humidor is used, an umpire or major league official must keep track of the balls such that cheating like this couldn’t happen?

and showed the camera in the dugout pointing at the bag o’ balls. You’d probably have to further research to find anything in writing.

http://img197.imageshack.us/img197/2879/ballparkcam.jpg

Noted.

You want a cookie?

Thanks!

That the MLB has investigated and given the thumbs up. Your poorly written post implies this has happened.

Brad Hawpe’s defense: YEP LOL

WTF is a gynocracy?

filing a weekly report and the fact that MLB occasionally comes to check the humidor doesn’t address the concerns at ALL though. No one’s saying the humidor isn’t working fine. The question is whether the Rockies occasionally, when they’re losing and think it might be to their advantage, don’t occasionally switch out some balls from the humidor for others that weren’t. If they know when they’re being watched by MLB (and from this it sounds like they do) then this oversight basically means nothing.

I’ve said it in every post I’ve made so far, but I’ll say it again: just fix it. It’s the easiest thing in the world to do. Rockies fans— if your team wasn’t cheating, you’re not losing anything. No other sanctions, no investigations, no admissions of fault— just change things so as to remove all doubt.

Yeah, and BP had to file safety reports as well.

The fact that you don’t see anything.

It’s intentional, my friend.

If MLB wasn’t going to mandate it, and the benefit would be far less than it is for Colorado, why pay for it?

Thank you in advance.

I was actually just getting to that because this response was to one way above yours. I apologize for not reading the entire comment string first.

Hang on…

Since the balls go straight to the humidor once they arrive from Rawlings.

Okay, so here’s the thing.

I don’t have a problem with the humidor. It’s obviously good for Coors, and it’s obviously necessary when put in the context of the USA Today you show above. If the balls are being affected to the point where they no longer meet regulation, that’s a problem.

And I don’t think the issue really is the humidor, or even the fair use of the humidor. It’s the possibility that it’s being used unfairly.

I think my mistake was making it seem like I was accusing the Rockies of unfair use. I’m not, and I doubt they would. I’m even skeptical that they could. But the fact that the possibility even exists will always create cause for suspicion. And really, those suspicions will probably never go away.

Even my original comment gets at this (“But the issue isn’t "normalizing" balls. It’s "changing" balls.”). It just doesn’t have much thought behind it. The balls do go through a process in the humidor that they don’t experience anywhere else. It’s also true that they go through a process that they wouldn’t experience anywhere else if they don’t go into the humidor.

The reason this keeps coming up is simply that with no humidor all the balls are presumed to be in the same condition (this actually isn’t necessarily true, as older balls will have been affected more than newer ones – conceivably actually making it easier to cheat with no humidor – “here, away team, have all these new balls”). But nobody thinks like that though in the parens. The thinking is “nothing is done to the balls, so they are the same.” It’s totally rational.

So when the humidor comes into play, that same totally rational thought process kicks in. “Something is being done to the balls, so they might not all be the same.”

It’s a totally rational suspicion. And it will never go away. It may be dead wrong. It almost certainly is dead wrong. But it will never go away.

After all that… I’m not really sure what point I’m driving at here anymore. It was kind of rambling, and the thoughts developed as I wrote it. So I ended in a different place than I think I started.

But that’s where I am now. I don’t really know how to conclude. I guess I’ll just ramble to the finish li… … … .

That would be a excellent analogy if corked bats actually worked like they were supposed to…

Do you know how long a ball would have to be exposed to the dry Denver air before changing substantially?

Do you (or anyone else) know how long a club typically stores balls before use? That is, are the shipments of new balls happening weekly, monthly, or do they get them all at the beginning of the season?

Okay, so when I say climate I mean general weather conditions including humidity, and when you say climate you mean temperature. Webster says I’m right, but we can just ignore that for the sake of your ego. The humidity is affecting the baseballs, which is why the humidor corrects the difference.

In any case, I still don’t see your argument. The balls ARE regulation, they’re simply being affected by the climate in a way that makes them play as if they weren’t. What about the climate in Florida, which is usually ridiculously hot and humid? If the dry air in Denver is making the balls smaller, drier, and lighter, then doesn’t the climate in Florida make them larger, wetter, and heavier? Why don’t we correct that imbalance?

And that’s where you open up the Pandora’s box; if we’re correcting this imbalance, we ought to correct ALL imbalances. Removing the humidor in Denver would increase the HR rate at Coors, but allowing the 421’ to right-center to continue to exist at ATT decreases the HR rate in SF. Allowing short porches in Fenway and San Diego increases the HR rate there. Allowing high walls decreases the HR rate. And if the balls have to be so tightly regulated, then why don’t the parks, considering they can have a significant effect on play? You’re right, the game is affected by tiny details, like when players foul out in the Coliseum on popups that would have been ten rows back anywhere else, but we don’t seem to have a problem putting freaking hills in the outfield when we feel like it.

Basically, I’d love for someone to explain to me why the dry air in Denver is so special that we have to introduce special equipment to try and balance the game, when we really don’t do it anywhere else. And if the answer is “Because the air in Denver affects play more than anything else” I’d like 1. Proof of this and 2. A reason why we are drawing the line there as opposed to anywhere in either direction (i.e. being more lenient would let us remove the humidor and being more strict would make us put humidors everywhere, change ballpark dimensions to fit a specific regulation size, etc.).