Omar Believes?! Why Dont We?

Thursday, July 23, 2009

ESPN.com's Rob Neyer says:

Stunning news from Shea, via MLBTradeRumors:

"Right now we do not envision [being a seller]," [Omar] Minaya said. "If
we're 6 ½ [back] in the wild card with a couple of teams in front of us, we are
still kind of trying to find out how we can improve this team, if we can improve
it through trades."Awesome quote. One of the best of this season, for sure.

Apparently, in Minaya's mind: "a couple" = seven.*

*In case you're curious: Colorado, San Francisco, Chicago, Atlanta,
Houston, Florida and Milwaukee.

Once, in the course of trying to win an argument with a woman -- and yes, I've since learned just how pointless an exercise that is -- I cracked a dictionary and was shocked to discover that the word "few" could be reasonably used to describe a number as low as two.

So I figured I had better look up "couple" just in case I'm wrong,
again. And, sure enough:

4. Informal. A few; several: a couple of days.So we know that a couple can be a few, and we know that a few (same dictionary) refers to something "more than one but indefinitely small in number."

Is seven (or thereabouts) small enough to fall under the heading of "a couple." Technically? Perhaps (though probably not).

Realistically? Stop it. Just ... stop. Optimism is one thing, and often it's a good thing. But the notion that these terribly hobbled Mets are, right now, just a couple of wins or a spare outfielder away from being in a position to leapfrog six or seven teams
and grab a brass ring ... well, I'm afraid that it borders on delusional.

As messed up as this organization is right now, someone in charge really
needs to step in and tell Minaya to start thinking about 2010 and beyond. At the
absolute least, Minaya should consult the writings of our greatest modern
philosopher
...

...If you ever drop your keys into a river of molten lava, let 'em go, because, man, they're gone...

1 comments:

Skeptic Al said...

A delusion, in everyday language, is a fixed belief that is either false, fanciful, or derived from deception. Psychiatry defines the term more specifically as a belief that is pathological (the result of an illness or illness process). As a pathology, it is distinct from a belief based on false or incomplete information, apperception, illusion, or other effects of perception.

Delusions typically occur in the context of neurological or mental illness, although they are not tied to any particular disease and have been found to occur in the context of many pathological states (both physical and mental). However, they are of particular diagnostic importance in psychotic disorders and particularly in schizophrenia, paraphrenia, and manic episodes of bipolar disorder.