Yes, the asterisk. Yes, it has been removed from the record books, but of all the records in baseball this one most deserves the protection of the asterisk since hits are the most frequently occurring offensive baseball statistic (yes, I'm ignoring at-bats and total bases). When George Sisler had 257 hits in 1920, he did it in only 154 games (and 631 at-bats). Ichiro's Mariners has played in 151 games (he has missed one) and he has amassed 243 hits in 654 at bats (already more than Sisler). Though Ichiro already has 4 games this year of 5 hits, the odds of him getting three more in a row or almost nil, so there is no way he's going to break the record in 154 games - though there is a very good chance he will accomplish the task in 162 (but not 100%).
I will give Ichiro a sporting chance. Besides getting 14 hits in his next 3 games, I'll be kind enough to say he just needs to have more than 257 hits in any consecutive string of 154 team games during 1 season to truly hold the record. If you take away the first 8 games of this season where he got 13 hits, that means he needs 27 hits in his last 11 games to tie the record (must better shot than 14 in 3). I'll even be sporting and remove any record of his first 3 games of the year when he only had 2 hits. Thus if he gets more than 16 hits in his next 6 games, he'll have the record (Yes, higher hit percentage but probably easier to do with streak-ability).
The other consideration I'll give is to just pro-rate Sisler's 257 hits over a 162 games season, which comes out to 270.350..... and coincidentally enough means the same thing - he'll have to have 28 or more hits in his last 11 games to truly have the hits record.
For people concerned with paces, Sisler had 1.669 hits per game in 1920 while Ichiro is currently on a pace of 1.609 hits per game (or over the course of a full season 261 hits, 4 more than Sisler).
Yep, a couple of weeks old but I just saw it today: someone had to use kuro5hin to force their opinion on Shyamalan's works on the rest of us. Besides holding this person up to public ridicule for failing to construct an argument and confusing his takes on emotions as cinematic law, I'm poking fun at myself for also at one time planning to join the line of people writing articles praising Shyamalan.
A little past 4 years since the time of its frankenstein creation, my faithful companion has bitten the dust in a puff of black (probably toxic) smoke. He was built of some of the finest parts of his time, which makes him woefully out-of-date now. I was thinking of putting him out of his misery, but didn't think I would be compelled to (my 8 year old Dell which they claim is just old enough to be un-recyclable by them still works fine on the occasions I pull it out). After probably too hard a workout since being taken out of its storage box from the move, the system did shutdown gracefully before the crackling and acrid smell commenced. A first glance after a cool down period did not provide any great clue to what exactly what wrong. Guesses are power supply fan, case fan, processor, or something on the motherboard (wouldn't the puff of black smoke mean a fuse or resistor?). I was planning on replacing everything on it except the drives (which have been gradually upgraded over the years), but if it is just the power supply I might spend 30 or 40 bucks to get it going again. The damn thing was noisy as hell anyway. The autopsy will probably have to wait for a couple of weeks. Sleep well old friend - the computing world is diminished and the continent is a tad smaller.
A couple of days late, but they are still buzzing about it here - I apologize to the Yankees for not warning them about moving my energy to that mistake by the lake. It is no coincidence that my move to this region coincided with the Yankees largest defeat in history at the hands of those Native Americans. I assure them though that my heart is still with the Yankees and my energy is channeled to help them win their 27th World Series... or at least avoid the most foreseeable unbelievable collapse in sports history.