I understand that players should get the big money since it's they and not the owners who earn it. And that a lot of players want the security of long, long days. And that Lindor is a special talent.
But I have never really liked either huge contracts or long contracts. I will never feel comfortable with anyone earning that kind of money (a byproduct of both my distrust of capitalism and my mother forever saying that athletes shouldn't make more money than teachers). I think it's just silly to give anyone a contract for more than five years. And you know that the Mets being the Mets, they will eventually end up with an Albert Pujols situation, an old player sucking the money away from everyone else.
So I am happy the Mets extended Lindor and that he will be happy now and give it his all. But it's just not something I feel much joy over.
If you had signed 27-year-old Albert Pujols to a 10 year contract, you would not have been disappointed when it was done
That said, I understand this is the Mets and Lindor will probably take the field today and promptly get hit with a chunk of frozen poop falling out of a plane arriving to LGA
Pujols' career earnings are still less than what Fangraphs estimates his career value to his clubs to have been. It is an odd fact of baseball wages post Peter Seitz that players are grossly underpaid for a period then, sometimes, overpaid at later stages. As teams wise up to this and contracts for 30 year old good but not great players have been drying up, I will absolutely never criticize Pujols or Cabrera or, if I live long enough, Machado, Harper, Betts or Lindor, for not "earning" their salary in their latter years.
Yeah...the unhappy ending is kind of baked into these. The first 5 years you hope to realize some surplus value, the last 5 years are likely to be anywhere from not great to downright ugly. I know MLBPA has relied on these kind of contracts to set the market and help the rest of the players , and insure overall the players get a relatively fair share of revenue but I do hope in the future young players get paid faster, hit free agency faster...and a max AAV and/or max number of years could be a fair trade in return, imo (and just help so the fans don’t hate the best players in the end. Not saying the fans are right, just saying that’s how humans, and especially fans, tend to work.)
I'm sure I'm not the only Mets fan who had a frisson of wondering if in 2061, long after I'm gone, Lindor will still be collecting an annuity check on July 1, having been Bonillaed part way through this contract.
I get the impulse. I especially agree that teachers should be millions, but I have to remind myself that it's not a choice between teachers and athletes, its athletes and old money billionaires.
Not in our current system. But shouldn't we, I don't know, tax both athletes and old money billionaires more and use that to pay teachers? (Also, Steve Cohen is noveau riche, which might be worse.)
I know Opening Day is overhyped, but I do love all of the traditions: flag bunting, overlong player introductions and a positive COVID test for the Nats.
(Between COVID and the Lindor deal I think I’ll skip ESPN and just listen to Mets-Nats on the radio.)
Old man yelling at clouds moment for me: I miss the tradition of the Reds opening at home as the only game of the day. There was something a little extra special about that small bit of theater and the throw back to the 1860s.
"Sure opening day is baseball's bandwagon. Pundits and politicians and every prose poet on the continent jumps on board for a few days. But they're gone soon, off in search of some other windy event worthy of their attention. Then, once more, all those long, slow months of baseball are left to us. And our time can begin again." -- Thomas Boswell circa 1983
"For we know that baseball will be here for us next week. Next month. And on through June, July, August, September and October to keep us company." Do we, though? DO WE?
I'd say Kiki Hernandez was a surprise on that top jersey sales list. Even taking into consideration that he went from one very popular team to another.
I know it has a tilde and that it's, you know, his name. But that doesn't stop me from wincing every time I see it. (Interestingly, when that NBA dude used the word, I heard a podcast with fellow Jews Yaron Weitzman and Howard Beck, and they agreed that it's not a word in wide use by anti-Semites these days.)
Dodgers are shockingly dominating this list. Their fans just love a good jersey I guess. We’ll know the Padres have really arrived when we see Machado and Darvish on here.
I don't think the purpose of those new Amtrak lines is to connect Cheyenne and Pueblo. It's to connect Cheyenne and Denver, and connect Pueblo and Denver. Which is the kind of "long enough that you don't want to drive, but too short to fly" routes that work best for rail travel in the US.
Though I wouldn't think either Cheyenne nor Pueblo are big enough cities to have a lot of travel between them and Denver, they are the endpoints of the I-25 corridor north and south of Denver that have a number of communities (Colorado Springs, Boulder, Fort Collins, etc.) that might have residents frequently traveling to Denver.
Also, Cheyenne and Pueblo air service is expensive and indirect, which leads a lot of those people to drive to Denver to fly. If Amtrak can make it easy for those people to take the train to Denver and fly, they can eliminate some of the least efficient trips these people drive. There are a lot of routes like that here, like Chattanooga, Auburn and Montgomery to Atlanta; Iowa City, Rockford and Moline to Chicago, Wilmington to Raleigh; Mobile and Baton Rouge to New Orleans. The problem with these is going to be that last mile, from the train station to the airport,. If they can't get high quality direct service, like the European air port express trains and busses, no one will go for it.
Further west, Fresno to LA is the same situation. An expensive 45minute flight or a long drive. Technically they do have Amtrak for that route, but it is a bus.
Denver has light rail to the airport though, so the Cheyenne or Pueblo to the airport may work fine. Though when I took the clean, modern, and efficient light rail to the airport on a trip to Denver there was discouragingly few people using it.
Never taken it myself (I live in Longmont), but I know they had terrible problems with that particular line for months and months after it opened, something to do with automatic signaling at crossroads not working properly. Haven't heard anything about it for quite a while so I assume it's all sorted now, but that probably held ridership down quite a bit.
I would agree but the line south should go past Pueblo and connect with Albuquerque (or Santa Fe), imo. Pueblo and Cheyenne if you’re living there, you need a car anyway just to get around. So long as we’re wishcasting why not connect more of the west/southwest. ABQ and Santa Fe do have a nice train that runs between them, so either would be fine.
the truncated US HIGH SPEED RAIL map where there are regions that are around 4-600 miles is better. I agree that long rail travel is a retirement activity. But I would love to take a train to SoCal from SF. Right now travel to my parents house is about 7 hours by car, around 2 and a half for a 40 minute flight. If I could either in anything under 8 hours, I would take it much more often. Hell, I would just go to LA for fun (I like LA, lived htere for about 4 years)
I miss the SF of my 20's, when I could crash on a friend's floor in the Mission and wake up with my breakfast - a Farolito burrito, likely chorizo - right around the corner. Everybody's priced out now. Damn shame.
Uh, well. I uh. I mean if you stayed with us it wouldn't be around the corner, two blocks up and two blocks west. That too long for you? there is a farolito on 24th that is closer. Or there is a good one about a block away. haven't tried the one about a block away the other way. I like Can Cun better anyway, but I gave up arguing about taqueria's last year. they are all good! (just don't go to la taqueria, it's for tourists. it's fine, really)
It's been a minute since we had bands stay with us. Mostly because we were in a period of not going out. Would be surprised if people didn't start crashing here in the near future.
(and I would be priced out if I tried to move here now)
I loved listening to Blue Jays radio games on SiriusXM when my A’s would play in Toronto. The broadcasters would give room for the PA announcer to announce the batter and you’d get the walk up music, to boot. Always thought that was a nifty little thing to do (even tho with music broadcasting rights/royalties, maybe a little illegal? Still fun tho.)
Happily second Craig’s thoughts on improving local infrastructure/transportation first. Here in San Diego - America’s eighth largest city, depending on what we had for breakfast on any given day - the public transportation system is absolute booty. There’s a reasonably efficient trolley system, but deep-pocketed NIMBYs have ensured it stays almost entirely south of the 8 freeway (locals’ unofficial demarcation line for “I’m not racist, but...”) And, the few bus routes we have here in the north county run so irregularly, that my (now retired) co-worker (who lived 35 minutes away in Imperial Beach) needed nearly three hours to bus up north in the morning.
I bought tickets to a live sporting event yesterday. First time in over a year. It's the home opener for the Richmond Kickers soccer club (4th division of US soccer I think?) - but it's live sports! The Flying Squirrels (Giants AA affiliate) start in early May. Hoping to snag opening day tickets there too when they go on sale, although I suspect with the capacity limitations that might not happen. Still...live sports! Only 24 days away.
It's not going to happen. There is just no way to limit my treatise on the Clint Eastwood - "Every Which Way But Loose" and Burt Reynolds-"Smokey And The Bandit" as commedia dell'arte troupes to so few words as to not crowd out baseball coverage. Actually, by the time you incorporate my tangents on "Norma Rae" speaking to power and the derivative work of "BJ and The Bear" as establishment co-option, it could be more accurately be described as a manifesto. Suffice it to say, when the revolution comes, Greg Evigan's mullet is the first against the wall.
Is it the entire band or just Geddy? I find it ironic that he would complain about the sort of profit-driven calculation that’s at the heart of his ideology.
Classic Libertarian sowing/reaping. I dunno honestly! I would like to think fondly of Neil Peary beyond just his sick drumming but I’m not 100% sure I can.
I'm absolutely not a libertarian. It's easy to understand why people are upset that on the 2112 cover Neil acknowledged " the genius of Ayn Rand", especially as we watch the modern Ayn Rand fans. But I try to give people the benefit of the doubt.
And I won't bother to read The Fountainhead. But I have read the first paragraph of its Wikipedia page:
"The novel's protagonist, Howard Roark, is an intransigent young architect, who battles against conventional standards and refuses to compromise with an architectural establishment unwilling to accept innovation. Roark embodies what Rand believed to be the ideal man, and his struggle reflects Rand's belief that individualism is superior to collectivism."
Replace "architect" with "musician" and we have the story of pretty much any musician's battle with the music business. Especially right then, for 2112. Rush had made two successful albums, then a third much less so; and The Business told them that the fourth had to sell, or it would be their last. The fourth album had to be commercial.
But instead they decided to make one last album that they were proud of, even if it meant Neil going back to selling tractors, and Alex going home to work as a plasterer with his dad. Well, that decision worked out better than they could ever have dreamed. It's easy to see why Ayn Rand struck a chord with them at that time, and it certainly doesn't mean that Rush were signing up for all that is now being done in her name.
I have Lou Schiff beat! I grew up in Manhattan (not KS). When I was about nine, maybe 10, my Mother would, on a weekend, pack a couple of sandwiches in a paper sack and give me 50 cents to go to the Polo Grounds to watch the Giants for a Sunday double-header. The 50 cents covered bus fare round trip, a dime for a scorecard (I brought my own pencil), and a soda to wash down the sandwiches. I took the bus west to 8th Avenue and transferred to another bus that went north through Harlem. No worries! Today most Manhattan parents wouldn’t let their 10 year old kid go out to buy a newspaper without a Doberman and a can of mace. My time was better.
My kneejerk take on that one was that it was an FU to Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell.
I read on twitter Kentucky is opting out or something. FWIW, grain of salt and all. I didn't look further into it
Teoscar Hernandez doing Teoscar things! How's the transition strip coming?
I understand that players should get the big money since it's they and not the owners who earn it. And that a lot of players want the security of long, long days. And that Lindor is a special talent.
But I have never really liked either huge contracts or long contracts. I will never feel comfortable with anyone earning that kind of money (a byproduct of both my distrust of capitalism and my mother forever saying that athletes shouldn't make more money than teachers). I think it's just silly to give anyone a contract for more than five years. And you know that the Mets being the Mets, they will eventually end up with an Albert Pujols situation, an old player sucking the money away from everyone else.
So I am happy the Mets extended Lindor and that he will be happy now and give it his all. But it's just not something I feel much joy over.
If you had signed 27-year-old Albert Pujols to a 10 year contract, you would not have been disappointed when it was done
That said, I understand this is the Mets and Lindor will probably take the field today and promptly get hit with a chunk of frozen poop falling out of a plane arriving to LGA
Pujols' career earnings are still less than what Fangraphs estimates his career value to his clubs to have been. It is an odd fact of baseball wages post Peter Seitz that players are grossly underpaid for a period then, sometimes, overpaid at later stages. As teams wise up to this and contracts for 30 year old good but not great players have been drying up, I will absolutely never criticize Pujols or Cabrera or, if I live long enough, Machado, Harper, Betts or Lindor, for not "earning" their salary in their latter years.
Absolutely
They're playing in Washington so it would be DCA, but that tracks.
That depends somewhat on which year Pujols was 27, but if it was earlier than the official date that would only strengthen your point.
Yeah...the unhappy ending is kind of baked into these. The first 5 years you hope to realize some surplus value, the last 5 years are likely to be anywhere from not great to downright ugly. I know MLBPA has relied on these kind of contracts to set the market and help the rest of the players , and insure overall the players get a relatively fair share of revenue but I do hope in the future young players get paid faster, hit free agency faster...and a max AAV and/or max number of years could be a fair trade in return, imo (and just help so the fans don’t hate the best players in the end. Not saying the fans are right, just saying that’s how humans, and especially fans, tend to work.)
I'm sure I'm not the only Mets fan who had a frisson of wondering if in 2061, long after I'm gone, Lindor will still be collecting an annuity check on July 1, having been Bonillaed part way through this contract.
I'll be 99 then, so if I'm still alive to worry about it I'll count that slight aggravation as a win.
Apparently $5M/year is being deferred into 2032-2041. So not quite THAT bad...
I get the impulse. I especially agree that teachers should be millions, but I have to remind myself that it's not a choice between teachers and athletes, its athletes and old money billionaires.
Not in our current system. But shouldn't we, I don't know, tax both athletes and old money billionaires more and use that to pay teachers? (Also, Steve Cohen is noveau riche, which might be worse.)
I know Opening Day is overhyped, but I do love all of the traditions: flag bunting, overlong player introductions and a positive COVID test for the Nats.
(Between COVID and the Lindor deal I think I’ll skip ESPN and just listen to Mets-Nats on the radio.)
Old man yelling at clouds moment for me: I miss the tradition of the Reds opening at home as the only game of the day. There was something a little extra special about that small bit of theater and the throw back to the 1860s.
I wouldn't go that far, but I'm on board with the Reds being the first game to start on Opening Day.
Alas the game has been postponed and they won't play till at least Saturday.
"Sure opening day is baseball's bandwagon. Pundits and politicians and every prose poet on the continent jumps on board for a few days. But they're gone soon, off in search of some other windy event worthy of their attention. Then, once more, all those long, slow months of baseball are left to us. And our time can begin again." -- Thomas Boswell circa 1983
"For we know that baseball will be here for us next week. Next month. And on through June, July, August, September and October to keep us company." Do we, though? DO WE?
I woke up to the first sign of Opening Day in NE Ohio. Snow.
I'd say Kiki Hernandez was a surprise on that top jersey sales list. Even taking into consideration that he went from one very popular team to another.
It’s all the racists in Boston excitedly ordering a jersey that says KIKE
I know it has a tilde and that it's, you know, his name. But that doesn't stop me from wincing every time I see it. (Interestingly, when that NBA dude used the word, I heard a podcast with fellow Jews Yaron Weitzman and Howard Beck, and they agreed that it's not a word in wide use by anti-Semites these days.)
Tell Meyers Leonard that though!
Dodgers are shockingly dominating this list. Their fans just love a good jersey I guess. We’ll know the Padres have really arrived when we see Machado and Darvish on here.
He's a very magnetic player. He was a fan favorite even on his brief stint with the Astros.
Nice Louis. But will Dave Van Horn and Art Shamsky's wives just throw those tickets away instead of your wife?
I don't think the purpose of those new Amtrak lines is to connect Cheyenne and Pueblo. It's to connect Cheyenne and Denver, and connect Pueblo and Denver. Which is the kind of "long enough that you don't want to drive, but too short to fly" routes that work best for rail travel in the US.
Though I wouldn't think either Cheyenne nor Pueblo are big enough cities to have a lot of travel between them and Denver, they are the endpoints of the I-25 corridor north and south of Denver that have a number of communities (Colorado Springs, Boulder, Fort Collins, etc.) that might have residents frequently traveling to Denver.
Agreed. Plus for longer trips, trains a) are much safer than cars and b) have the potential to be far greener than any other option.
Also, Cheyenne and Pueblo air service is expensive and indirect, which leads a lot of those people to drive to Denver to fly. If Amtrak can make it easy for those people to take the train to Denver and fly, they can eliminate some of the least efficient trips these people drive. There are a lot of routes like that here, like Chattanooga, Auburn and Montgomery to Atlanta; Iowa City, Rockford and Moline to Chicago, Wilmington to Raleigh; Mobile and Baton Rouge to New Orleans. The problem with these is going to be that last mile, from the train station to the airport,. If they can't get high quality direct service, like the European air port express trains and busses, no one will go for it.
Further west, Fresno to LA is the same situation. An expensive 45minute flight or a long drive. Technically they do have Amtrak for that route, but it is a bus.
I am excited to HSR. I wish I could pop down for a grizzlies game.
Chowchilla to B-Field!
Denver has light rail to the airport though, so the Cheyenne or Pueblo to the airport may work fine. Though when I took the clean, modern, and efficient light rail to the airport on a trip to Denver there was discouragingly few people using it.
Never taken it myself (I live in Longmont), but I know they had terrible problems with that particular line for months and months after it opened, something to do with automatic signaling at crossroads not working properly. Haven't heard anything about it for quite a while so I assume it's all sorted now, but that probably held ridership down quite a bit.
My daughter lives in Denver and she's never taken it either.
I would agree but the line south should go past Pueblo and connect with Albuquerque (or Santa Fe), imo. Pueblo and Cheyenne if you’re living there, you need a car anyway just to get around. So long as we’re wishcasting why not connect more of the west/southwest. ABQ and Santa Fe do have a nice train that runs between them, so either would be fine.
I'm wondering if they'll give any special names to these new lines. Could that cross-Indiana route be named the Wabash Cannonball?
the truncated US HIGH SPEED RAIL map where there are regions that are around 4-600 miles is better. I agree that long rail travel is a retirement activity. But I would love to take a train to SoCal from SF. Right now travel to my parents house is about 7 hours by car, around 2 and a half for a 40 minute flight. If I could either in anything under 8 hours, I would take it much more often. Hell, I would just go to LA for fun (I like LA, lived htere for about 4 years)
I miss the SF of my youth before the rise of Big Tech. Gosh, I am old.
I miss the SF of my 20's, when I could crash on a friend's floor in the Mission and wake up with my breakfast - a Farolito burrito, likely chorizo - right around the corner. Everybody's priced out now. Damn shame.
Uh, well. I uh. I mean if you stayed with us it wouldn't be around the corner, two blocks up and two blocks west. That too long for you? there is a farolito on 24th that is closer. Or there is a good one about a block away. haven't tried the one about a block away the other way. I like Can Cun better anyway, but I gave up arguing about taqueria's last year. they are all good! (just don't go to la taqueria, it's for tourists. it's fine, really)
It's been a minute since we had bands stay with us. Mostly because we were in a period of not going out. Would be surprised if people didn't start crashing here in the near future.
(and I would be priced out if I tried to move here now)
I loved listening to Blue Jays radio games on SiriusXM when my A’s would play in Toronto. The broadcasters would give room for the PA announcer to announce the batter and you’d get the walk up music, to boot. Always thought that was a nifty little thing to do (even tho with music broadcasting rights/royalties, maybe a little illegal? Still fun tho.)
Jerry Howrath was the best. Also from Pleasanton or the environs. Concord? Anyway, I loved that drop out for the PA announcer.
Happily second Craig’s thoughts on improving local infrastructure/transportation first. Here in San Diego - America’s eighth largest city, depending on what we had for breakfast on any given day - the public transportation system is absolute booty. There’s a reasonably efficient trolley system, but deep-pocketed NIMBYs have ensured it stays almost entirely south of the 8 freeway (locals’ unofficial demarcation line for “I’m not racist, but...”) And, the few bus routes we have here in the north county run so irregularly, that my (now retired) co-worker (who lived 35 minutes away in Imperial Beach) needed nearly three hours to bus up north in the morning.
I bought tickets to a live sporting event yesterday. First time in over a year. It's the home opener for the Richmond Kickers soccer club (4th division of US soccer I think?) - but it's live sports! The Flying Squirrels (Giants AA affiliate) start in early May. Hoping to snag opening day tickets there too when they go on sale, although I suspect with the capacity limitations that might not happen. Still...live sports! Only 24 days away.
The good thing about what Geddy Lee wrote is:
1) He is always hopeful, but discontent.
2) He knows changes aren't permanent.
3) But Change is.
If I didn't charge for this newsletter I'd seriously consider banning you for that. But I also suppose I asked for it.
On the contrary, I nominate Frank for the next guest post.
It's not going to happen. There is just no way to limit my treatise on the Clint Eastwood - "Every Which Way But Loose" and Burt Reynolds-"Smokey And The Bandit" as commedia dell'arte troupes to so few words as to not crowd out baseball coverage. Actually, by the time you incorporate my tangents on "Norma Rae" speaking to power and the derivative work of "BJ and The Bear" as establishment co-option, it could be more accurately be described as a manifesto. Suffice it to say, when the revolution comes, Greg Evigan's mullet is the first against the wall.
"Right turn, Clyde." Back then, people knew how to write dialogue.
Yeah, this has all but convinced me I must read a guest post from you!
And what you say about my company is what you say about society. Catch the witness, catch the wit. Catch the spirit, catch the spit.
Bud Abbot wasn't this good a straight man.
Count the hearts, Craig. Gotta know when to fold em.
Dying. Since Rush are libertarians I can’t say I’m a fan overall. But baseball on the radio is perfect. For once, I’m with Geddy.
Is it the entire band or just Geddy? I find it ironic that he would complain about the sort of profit-driven calculation that’s at the heart of his ideology.
Classic Libertarian sowing/reaping. I dunno honestly! I would like to think fondly of Neil Peary beyond just his sick drumming but I’m not 100% sure I can.
No, I think you’re right, it’s Neil too. I think Geddy just may be the most outspoken about it.
This is what I suspected. Canadian prog-rock libertarians (shudder). Each word a bit more frightening than the last.
I'm absolutely not a libertarian. It's easy to understand why people are upset that on the 2112 cover Neil acknowledged " the genius of Ayn Rand", especially as we watch the modern Ayn Rand fans. But I try to give people the benefit of the doubt.
And I won't bother to read The Fountainhead. But I have read the first paragraph of its Wikipedia page:
"The novel's protagonist, Howard Roark, is an intransigent young architect, who battles against conventional standards and refuses to compromise with an architectural establishment unwilling to accept innovation. Roark embodies what Rand believed to be the ideal man, and his struggle reflects Rand's belief that individualism is superior to collectivism."
Replace "architect" with "musician" and we have the story of pretty much any musician's battle with the music business. Especially right then, for 2112. Rush had made two successful albums, then a third much less so; and The Business told them that the fourth had to sell, or it would be their last. The fourth album had to be commercial.
But instead they decided to make one last album that they were proud of, even if it meant Neil going back to selling tractors, and Alex going home to work as a plasterer with his dad. Well, that decision worked out better than they could ever have dreamed. It's easy to see why Ayn Rand struck a chord with them at that time, and it certainly doesn't mean that Rush were signing up for all that is now being done in her name.
Don't waste your time and brain on the fountainhead. So stupid.
I have Lou Schiff beat! I grew up in Manhattan (not KS). When I was about nine, maybe 10, my Mother would, on a weekend, pack a couple of sandwiches in a paper sack and give me 50 cents to go to the Polo Grounds to watch the Giants for a Sunday double-header. The 50 cents covered bus fare round trip, a dime for a scorecard (I brought my own pencil), and a soda to wash down the sandwiches. I took the bus west to 8th Avenue and transferred to another bus that went north through Harlem. No worries! Today most Manhattan parents wouldn’t let their 10 year old kid go out to buy a newspaper without a Doberman and a can of mace. My time was better.