Insights from reading the new document

The main concepts are about Billy Bean, the general manager of the Oakland A's, and the revolutionary techniques of appraising talent and selecting baseball players he and his staff pioneered. Despite having one of the lowest payrolls in all of major league baseball, something like 1/5 the size of the biggest budget teams, Oakland won more games than any other team over a recent four year stretch, though their post season success was lacking. The brilliancy of Billy is his rejection of all typical analytical baseball stats, and the fact that he found better stats to measure talent. His style was largely one of necessity -- the budget he had to work with in Oakland wasn't large enough to get the players everyone else thought were solid. Billy starts off with these huge lists of top prospects, and simply throws away at least half of them right away. Guys he knows Oakland can't pay, high school guys he doesn't think are anywhere near as good as the scouts say, guys who look good but don't have any stats. The main reason for Oakland's recent success is the "big 3" their three great starting pitchers, all of whom were drafted shortly before Billy Bean took over the team. He gets credit for promoting them to the majors and surrounding them with talent to win games, but he obviously had some luck in inheriting those weapons. Since two of them are now gone, traded away before they became free agents and thus became far too expensive for Oakland to afford to keep, 2005 should be the best test yet of Billy Bean's ability to massage a low-pay group of players into a quality baseball team.

          This article in a way is similar to the other article based on the question and answer of the confession of Shoeless Joe Jackson. They both involve the concept and importance of money. I feel the game of baseball is based on money instead of pure talent. The White Sox’s were willing to throw the entire world series give up all their hard work for money. The Draft in the article “Trading Desk” is all about the concept of buying players they feel will help them win the series. The fact is that Billy Bean ignored that concept of money and based his decisions on pure instinct and talent and in the end built and amazing team.

Revising the 1Report Assignment

I feel my paper does not need too much more revising. I am going to reread my document and highlight more important facts. I think since I already mention my document and how it affected Joe Jackson, the players, and society that I do not need to add much more. I will change my introduction to summarize more of the document instead of summarizing the scandal. I will let the reader know that the document is a court case. I will also illustrate that the document was a question and answer of Shoeless Joe Jackson's confession, and how that confession changed baseball. Once I fix my introduction I think I will add a little to each paragraph explain the effects the court case or document had on each subtopic. I feel like I explained the importance of Joe Jackson's confession and how this whole scandal changed baseball.

Once I talked with you and had that meeting I feel like I had a slightly better idea of what the assignment consisted of. I like that in Google documents that we can comment back and forth and discuss each individual part of my essay. After our meeting I went on and commented on my essay to help illustrate the point I was trying to get across. I am really going to try and go back and illustrate my main point: The fact that Joe Jackson’s confession and The Black Sox Scandal changed baseball. It changed Joe Jackson’s life in particular; it changed the lives of the seven other players, and finally affected the society around the 1920’s. I am trying to take the concept of this document and the importance of this document and turn it into an essay. I want to provide quotes from the document I want the reader to feel the voices of Joe Jackson, the seven other players, and members of the community during that time period.

They Say/I Say Response 1

            Fast food restaurants are convenient and easy to grab food on the go, and are also suitable for teenagers who are not provided proper nutrition by their parents. In the article “Don’t Blame the Eater” by David Zinczenko, he explains that there are no inexpensive and convenient alternatives to fast-food restaurant’s that are healthy and nutritious. This fact though is incorrect and there are some healthy and inexpensive alternatives to the greasy fast-food restaurants. Many people use fast-food restaurants because they are in a hurry, well if you plan ahead of time like that morning or the night before you avoid going to McDonalds or Burger King for lunch. All you have to do is pack apples or a granola bar in a brown paper bag, both cheap items from the grocery story, and now you have a prepared healthy lunch. Another cheap alternative is going to Wawa or subway, which offer yogurts or sandwiches that are much lower in fat then fast-food.

            The issue of being over weight is often argued whether it’s a genuine medical problem or a problem of cultural stereotypes. I feel it is both. Obesity in some circumstances is a medical problem.  About 40 to 80% of obesity is genetic due to the thrifty gene or the diabetic gene. Also physical damage to the body is a key factor in obesity problems, but cultural stereotypes are also problematic. Today the lifestyle choices that people make affect the obesity population in the U.S. Where people eat unhealthily and then do not exercise or work out. People own cars and do not want to walk throughout the day, or have jobs were they sit at a desk. Also there is so much advertising for fast-food restaurants that people are drawn to that convenient, inexpensive lifestyle.

            These two summaries are very similar but at the same time very different. They both talk about the issue obesity and how its affects people in our society. They also discuss how fast food restaurants are convenient and inexpensive. The first article focuses more on some alternative to fast food and the second article focuses more on the causes for obesity. 

Blogger Assignment 1

I was interested in the topic sports because I grew up watching baseball. My family and I always connected watching and playing sports. I wanted to do more in depth research and learn the history behind some of the scandals involved, particularly baseball. One event in particular was the Black Sox Scandal, and the player involved was Shoeless Joe Jackson. When I was younger I remember reading a book on Shoeless Joe Jackson and immediately was curious about the reasons behind the scandal.

Once I choose my topic I began to research. I visited the D2L website and went on the mind map to look up an article. The article 1919 Black Sox was very helpful, and provided a time line, biographies, each individual game in the series and much more. The website was broken into individual topics and categories. I visited each one and took notes on all the information. There were several extra links on this website that brought me to magazine articles, newspaper readings, and book sources. One newspaper article in particular was very helpful and provided a source in my bibliography. It also provided some quotes from the players and bystanders.

After doing some research I narrowed it down to the Black Sox Scandal as my event and Shoeless Joe Jackson as my mediator. Shoeless Joe Jackson was one of the eight players involved in the fix. I would like to do further research and find out the reasons why the players fixed the series, and if Shoeless Joe Jackson  was truly involved. I want to learn more about the eight player's personalities and characteristics that were involved, and how they were affected after the scandal. Also I wanted to know how the scandal affected society around the 1920's, and who in particular was affected. I want to know how the Black Sox scandal affected todays baseball and baseball players. Apparently, this World Series fix changed the way the game of baseball was played and governed. It is one of the most serious and biggest scandals in baseball history.