Paragraph of the Week

From Will Leitch's series of baseball previews over at Deadspin, the Chicago White Sox edition:

But I'm more interested in those players who are supposed to be supernatural and then turn out to be, well, normal players. Just three years ago, Alex Gordon was supposed to be George Brett. A superstar phenom out of the University of Nebraska who had grown up a Royals fan, Gordon was the next great savior of a dormant franchise. Three years later, with some injuries and some big league struggles, he's entering his peak needing a big year just to make everyone stop thinking of him as a disappointment. But he's not a disappointment: He's just a regular player. That isn't enough. He's not what we thought he was, what we wanted him to be, even though none of us had any idea in the first place. He was mortal, not magic.

Measuring Up

I imagine this feeling is somewhat common in graduates of Yeshiva University: I'm kinda wondering how I stack up Out There. Sure, my grades were good in school, but how does that translate? I feel like I need some PECOTA-like system that lets me know what my GPA means in a different school.

It's not even that I'm having like serious self-doubt issues; I'm just curious.

My curiosity was somewhat (in a seriously trivial way) answered by my recent acceptance as a Deadspin commenter. Deadspin, this popular sports blog with around 10,000,000 hits a month, only allows comments by approved commenters. You basically have to try out by posting a comment, and if you're approved the comment is displayed and you have free comment-automony until you are executed, usually provoked by violating one of the three cardinal rules of Deadspin commenting:

First, be funny. Second, do not not be funny. Third, don't be a f'ing idiot.

I think I'm OK with the last rule, but I'm still working on the first two.

But, again, it's nice to know that at least the Commenting Guru thinks I'm not an f'ing idiot.