The annoying extra innings rule, exhausting local fandom, overblown economic fallout, misguided social media "improvements," and exasperating Ponzi schemers.
As we learned in the "Tom Sawyer" incident, the cost of Craig's soul is $6. I don't have it anymore. I traded it to the guy at the comic book store. But I got some cool pogs. Alf pogs. Remember Alf? He's back, in pog form.
The thing I love about being a baseball fan the most is the idea that, "eh. We'll get them tomorrow." It's how I totally detoxed from 37 years as a hardcore college football fan.
Question for the group: does winning a championship change that (for the worse)? After spending all of October 2019 essentially one loss from oblivion (except for the NLCS when the Cards left their bats at home), I find myself way more into the results of individual Nats games than I used to be.
In other words, I can tell myself "we'll get 'em tomorrow" but I have a harder time believing it.
(I'm kind of mocking myself because I don't have a super-firm grasp on the meaning of stochastic but I 100% agree with your reasoning here). That is the glory of baseball and to be a fan yet miss the forest for the trees, well...there is something deliciously ironic and sad about it.
I wanted to hate the running on 2nd rule. It's major league baseball, it's not beer league softball where the game needs to end because Murphy's Pub vs. the team of unathletic lawyers (been on that team) is supposed to start in 5 minutes. But it was nice to get the game over. And I agree, it's a solution in search of a problem. Which could probably describe a lot of what Manfred does.
The rule was ostensibly - I thought anyway - to help minimize the amount of time the players spent together in order to mitigate COVID risk. While that risk is not gone, it is diminishing, and soon should be all but a non-factor.
There are worse, non-tragic ways to wrap up playing your heart out for 9 innings than a sac-bunt, sac-fly and an unearned run...but I can't think of any just now.
- I totally don't treat the Mets that way. Though that might be because I never fully expect any given season to amount to much. But maybe also because I don't read or listen to every little thing anyone is saying. I have been treating the Knicks that way because I am now listening to a podcast about that team that drops often, and I figure the more you break down every game, the more you think every game is its own thing.
- I can't say that if everyone who manufactures baseball thinks the runner on second in extra innings is good for the workers, that I will oppose it just because the fans don't like it. Workers should have the right to determine workplace rules. Yes, the game doesn't exist without the fans, but it's not how we make our living.
- Thanks for the link to the particle physics story. Dennis Overbye is the dean of cosmology writers and one of the reasons it's worth having a subscription to the Times. "Who ordered that?" is one of the great one liners in physics history.
My daughter, who works at FermiLab but not on that project, was all excited about the news yesterday. I followed the news reports layman's description enough that I think I get the gist of it, but what the apparently large implications of it are were lost on me. They aren't quite there yet ("there" being 5 sigma), but based on what my daughter says it would be a surprise if they didn't get there.
She's a PhD doctoral candidate. She was working on a neutrino experiment. The expirement is over now, but the parsing of the data generated will go on for a long time and result in many papers, including her thesis.
Just an addendum to the Mariners-White Sox recap: That seven-run Mariners inning featured White Sox reliever Matt Foster being charged with five earned runs. I can't remember the last time I saw a reliever let up that many runs in the middle of a game, especially since each team is now allowed to carry umpteen relievers (or eight, which is still a lot).
Dallas Keuchel started the inning, and the M's hit two singles off him, ending up with runners on second and third, thanks to a crap throw by right fielder Adam Eaton, who already has three errors this season. I know errors can be subjective, there are other better analytic methods to evaluate defense, etc., but that's still not all that good.
Anyway, Foster then managed to let in three runs by the time there were two outs. And the bases were loaded for lefty Kyle Seager. La Russa had arms ready in the pen, including lefty Aaron Bummer. But Tony LaRussa left righty Foster in, and Seager proceeded to clear the bags with a double. Seager scored on a single off of...Foster. Only after that did the Hall Of Fame manager (I know he's a Hall of Famer...that's what he tells cops when he's pulled over) take Foster out.
After the game, TLR took the blame and said he should have pulled Foster earlier. He didn't explain why he didn't. Ugh.
Heh. In BA's defense, there IS a reason for treating Puerto Rico differently than the rest of the Untied States for baseball draft purposes: it was treated the same way the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and other countries were for many, many years, with players being signed as "international" free agents until they were brought into the draft relatively recently.
Oh, I know that. Some of us are old enough to have a very clear memory of it not being in the draft, though. And in the 1990s there was a lot of talk on baseball forums and among baseball people about how it's time in the draft may look after many years.
Yesterday, a friend of mine posted a photo to his Instagram story of his face. Then he smiled and revealed a new chipped tooth.
The next story was him playing with is dog. It was super cute. Ten seconds and then I started thinking, "wait a minute ... wait a minute ... wait a minute ..."
Sure enough, the dog headbutts him in the mouth, chipping his tooth.
What a rollercoaster, but the Judi tribute was better.
As someone that lived in New England for 30 years the Boston doom and gloom sports media has been around forever but it really took off in the late 80s, early 90s. It can be game to game for the Red Sox. WEEI really blossomed off it in the early 90s and it’s across all the major sports as well, not just baseball, though they really go all out bashing/praising the Sox on a daily basis.
I had one for a few years (in my small urban lawn). They are generally fine, but once grass gets too high, then the mower just pushes it down instead of cutting it. So I'd end up borrowing my neighbor's once or twice a year and have very prominent weeds all summer.
I'm not a big fan of the extra innings rule, but I can respect the improvement it is for the lives of people in and around baseball.
If you need a laugh, though, pull up the 7th inning of the Twins/Tigers game from yesterday and you can hear the Twins announcers tie themselves in knots whining about it. They essentially assert that the rule can prevent the "better team" from winning because you only have to move a guy 180 feet (they were unhappy the Twins lost to the Tigers the previous day). But then they noted that the team DOES have to execute their gameplan to get that runner to score, just as they would in ANY extra inning regardless of runners, and then immediately had to reassert that doing so still does not mean the better team might win and what a travesty! It was high humor for me from what I still consider to be one of the blandest, whiniest announce teams in regional MLB (yes, I know they have to shill for the team, but still).
As a local writer wrote, the effect of the rule is mess with the most exciting part of the game. Instead of doing something about pitchers taking 45 seconds between pitches in a 9-2 blowout, they try to get a tense, one-hit-can-end-it moment over as fast as possible.
I don't disagree that the rule is not enjoyable as a fan; I prefer the old way. But I can absolutely respect and understand the impetus for shorter extra-innings games due to the disruption to life/logistics that extra inning games cause.
I feel the same about 7-inning doubleheaders - I don't like it as a fan, but can definitely see where/how it makes sense for the players and teams, logistically.
First, it's called a reel lawnmower. And I'm in about $20 on maintenance and $0 on gas across about a dozen years. Second, it's my sister who has chickens. I'm just giving getting them some not-too-serious thought.
I live in one of those new urbanist suburban neighborhoods with tiny patches of grass out front, a back patio instead of a backyard, and an HOA that does all the mowing (including the big green space in the center of the neighborhood that makes up for us not having yards). Which means that I have not mowed a lawn since the fall of 2004, when I last lived in another place. As someone who was really, really, into lawn mowing and lawn maintenance from the time I was like 12 until I was 31 -- like, my lawn, other people's lawns, and with an enjoyment that was almost zen-like -- it was a weird adjustment for me. Now, though, I haven't even OWNED A TELEVISION -- er, I'm sorry, a lawnmower -- since W's first term.
Just in case we're gonna share lawn hipster bonafides. ;-)
That's not where I pictured you living at all. I had you in a on the outskirts of Columbus house that has a couple of acres of land. Not a fancy estate or anything, just a normal house. Not enough room to have the horse there, but big enough to not have neighbors too close.
That would be preferable. Unfortunately I'm still paying for choices I made 16 years ago when I had one baby and a baby on the way and my values were a bit different than they are now.
The post-kid plan is to either leave the area entirely or to move out into Licking County, just to the east of here, and live in a place much like you describe.
Craig, I have to say that as a central Ohio resident myself I hope you don't move out of the area because I like hearing little bits of what's happening in Columbus in your writing. Although, as you stated previously, with the current political climate in our state I can see why you're eager to leave.
I'm a father of young kids and both my wife and my families live in Ohio so it's doubtful that we ever leave this state. Plus we're both teachers with many years of experience so it would be difficult for us to move jobs. So we'll just have to stay here and hope that things reverse course over the next decade.
As we learned in the "Tom Sawyer" incident, the cost of Craig's soul is $6. I don't have it anymore. I traded it to the guy at the comic book store. But I got some cool pogs. Alf pogs. Remember Alf? He's back, in pog form.
The thing I love about being a baseball fan the most is the idea that, "eh. We'll get them tomorrow." It's how I totally detoxed from 37 years as a hardcore college football fan.
Question for the group: does winning a championship change that (for the worse)? After spending all of October 2019 essentially one loss from oblivion (except for the NLCS when the Cards left their bats at home), I find myself way more into the results of individual Nats games than I used to be.
In other words, I can tell myself "we'll get 'em tomorrow" but I have a harder time believing it.
I'm still de-toxing, apparently :)
TFW you understand the stochastic nature of the sport
(I'm kind of mocking myself because I don't have a super-firm grasp on the meaning of stochastic but I 100% agree with your reasoning here). That is the glory of baseball and to be a fan yet miss the forest for the trees, well...there is something deliciously ironic and sad about it.
Chaos! It's beautiful when you just sit back and let it be.
I wanted to hate the running on 2nd rule. It's major league baseball, it's not beer league softball where the game needs to end because Murphy's Pub vs. the team of unathletic lawyers (been on that team) is supposed to start in 5 minutes. But it was nice to get the game over. And I agree, it's a solution in search of a problem. Which could probably describe a lot of what Manfred does.
The rule was ostensibly - I thought anyway - to help minimize the amount of time the players spent together in order to mitigate COVID risk. While that risk is not gone, it is diminishing, and soon should be all but a non-factor.
There are worse, non-tragic ways to wrap up playing your heart out for 9 innings than a sac-bunt, sac-fly and an unearned run...but I can't think of any just now.
That’s the way to go. Godspeed, Judi.
- I totally don't treat the Mets that way. Though that might be because I never fully expect any given season to amount to much. But maybe also because I don't read or listen to every little thing anyone is saying. I have been treating the Knicks that way because I am now listening to a podcast about that team that drops often, and I figure the more you break down every game, the more you think every game is its own thing.
- I can't say that if everyone who manufactures baseball thinks the runner on second in extra innings is good for the workers, that I will oppose it just because the fans don't like it. Workers should have the right to determine workplace rules. Yes, the game doesn't exist without the fans, but it's not how we make our living.
- Thanks for the link to the particle physics story. Dennis Overbye is the dean of cosmology writers and one of the reasons it's worth having a subscription to the Times. "Who ordered that?" is one of the great one liners in physics history.
My daughter, who works at FermiLab but not on that project, was all excited about the news yesterday. I followed the news reports layman's description enough that I think I get the gist of it, but what the apparently large implications of it are were lost on me. They aren't quite there yet ("there" being 5 sigma), but based on what my daughter says it would be a surprise if they didn't get there.
As smart as Overbye is, he rarely explains the inexplicable well. I just read his book on Einstein and as ever relativity lost me.
I assume your daughter is a super smart PhD who gets to play with the particle accelerator?
She's a PhD doctoral candidate. She was working on a neutrino experiment. The expirement is over now, but the parsing of the data generated will go on for a long time and result in many papers, including her thesis.
Some beautiful writing from your friend Judi.
That Game 7 had two of the three biggest plays in MLB history. Number 3 is famous, number 1 less so...
https://grantland.com/features/mlb-win-percentage-added-world-series-championship-kirk-gibson-bobby-thomson-david-freese-mariano-rivera-yogi-berra/
Agree. I don't comment much, but I felt like I needed to say something re: Judi. What a great story and a great lady.
A little more (from me) on Great World Series stuff:
https://pureblather.com/2018/03/07/the-greatest-world-series-ever/
I might have to update that; it's three WS out of date.....
Just an addendum to the Mariners-White Sox recap: That seven-run Mariners inning featured White Sox reliever Matt Foster being charged with five earned runs. I can't remember the last time I saw a reliever let up that many runs in the middle of a game, especially since each team is now allowed to carry umpteen relievers (or eight, which is still a lot).
Dallas Keuchel started the inning, and the M's hit two singles off him, ending up with runners on second and third, thanks to a crap throw by right fielder Adam Eaton, who already has three errors this season. I know errors can be subjective, there are other better analytic methods to evaluate defense, etc., but that's still not all that good.
Anyway, Foster then managed to let in three runs by the time there were two outs. And the bases were loaded for lefty Kyle Seager. La Russa had arms ready in the pen, including lefty Aaron Bummer. But Tony LaRussa left righty Foster in, and Seager proceeded to clear the bags with a double. Seager scored on a single off of...Foster. Only after that did the Hall Of Fame manager (I know he's a Hall of Famer...that's what he tells cops when he's pulled over) take Foster out.
After the game, TLR took the blame and said he should have pulled Foster earlier. He didn't explain why he didn't. Ugh.
Craig - It's not in today's issue, but the folks who like to single out one region of the United States and claim it's a country are at it again: https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories/which-countries-produce-the-most-mlb-players/ (Hint: it's not Florida, California, or Texas, which would actually be hilarious)
Heh. In BA's defense, there IS a reason for treating Puerto Rico differently than the rest of the Untied States for baseball draft purposes: it was treated the same way the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and other countries were for many, many years, with players being signed as "international" free agents until they were brought into the draft relatively recently.
Except that Puerto Rico has been part of the draft for 32 years now (1989-present) and wasn't for 23 (1965-1988).
Oh, I know that. Some of us are old enough to have a very clear memory of it not being in the draft, though. And in the 1990s there was a lot of talk on baseball forums and among baseball people about how it's time in the draft may look after many years.
I know. I was on those same forums then, having gotten access as a graduate student and using Mosaic.
"acute chill deficit disorder"
Also, re: “whilst” - whomst among us?
You can do a WPA graph of my emotions as I read your tribute to Judi.
"She even subscribed to this newsletter."
Oh, yeah! I'll get to thank her in the comments.
"...she opened it and read it almost every day through this past Monday morning."
Wait, what. Oh. Oh no.
"Judi passed away unexpectedly on Monday evening."
DAMNIT.
What a gut punch. What a nice tribute.
Yesterday, a friend of mine posted a photo to his Instagram story of his face. Then he smiled and revealed a new chipped tooth.
The next story was him playing with is dog. It was super cute. Ten seconds and then I started thinking, "wait a minute ... wait a minute ... wait a minute ..."
Sure enough, the dog headbutts him in the mouth, chipping his tooth.
What a rollercoaster, but the Judi tribute was better.
As someone that lived in New England for 30 years the Boston doom and gloom sports media has been around forever but it really took off in the late 80s, early 90s. It can be game to game for the Red Sox. WEEI really blossomed off it in the early 90s and it’s across all the major sports as well, not just baseball, though they really go all out bashing/praising the Sox on a daily basis.
Can confirm - lived in MA 33 years, last nine in Lynn; did not come out the way I came in.
I actually saw a guy using one of those unpowered push mowers yesterday. But yeah, it was an urban lawn and the guy was probably a hipster.
Assuming they work OK (I've never used one), they probably do make a lot of sense for a small urban lawn though.
I had one for a few years (in my small urban lawn). They are generally fine, but once grass gets too high, then the mower just pushes it down instead of cutting it. So I'd end up borrowing my neighbor's once or twice a year and have very prominent weeds all summer.
The Pirates are ready to get out of Cincinnati, but where are they going to go where they'll like the results any better?
I'm not a big fan of the extra innings rule, but I can respect the improvement it is for the lives of people in and around baseball.
If you need a laugh, though, pull up the 7th inning of the Twins/Tigers game from yesterday and you can hear the Twins announcers tie themselves in knots whining about it. They essentially assert that the rule can prevent the "better team" from winning because you only have to move a guy 180 feet (they were unhappy the Twins lost to the Tigers the previous day). But then they noted that the team DOES have to execute their gameplan to get that runner to score, just as they would in ANY extra inning regardless of runners, and then immediately had to reassert that doing so still does not mean the better team might win and what a travesty! It was high humor for me from what I still consider to be one of the blandest, whiniest announce teams in regional MLB (yes, I know they have to shill for the team, but still).
As a local writer wrote, the effect of the rule is mess with the most exciting part of the game. Instead of doing something about pitchers taking 45 seconds between pitches in a 9-2 blowout, they try to get a tense, one-hit-can-end-it moment over as fast as possible.
I don't disagree that the rule is not enjoyable as a fan; I prefer the old way. But I can absolutely respect and understand the impetus for shorter extra-innings games due to the disruption to life/logistics that extra inning games cause.
I feel the same about 7-inning doubleheaders - I don't like it as a fan, but can definitely see where/how it makes sense for the players and teams, logistically.
First, it's called a reel lawnmower. And I'm in about $20 on maintenance and $0 on gas across about a dozen years. Second, it's my sister who has chickens. I'm just giving getting them some not-too-serious thought.
I live in one of those new urbanist suburban neighborhoods with tiny patches of grass out front, a back patio instead of a backyard, and an HOA that does all the mowing (including the big green space in the center of the neighborhood that makes up for us not having yards). Which means that I have not mowed a lawn since the fall of 2004, when I last lived in another place. As someone who was really, really, into lawn mowing and lawn maintenance from the time I was like 12 until I was 31 -- like, my lawn, other people's lawns, and with an enjoyment that was almost zen-like -- it was a weird adjustment for me. Now, though, I haven't even OWNED A TELEVISION -- er, I'm sorry, a lawnmower -- since W's first term.
Just in case we're gonna share lawn hipster bonafides. ;-)
That's not where I pictured you living at all. I had you in a on the outskirts of Columbus house that has a couple of acres of land. Not a fancy estate or anything, just a normal house. Not enough room to have the horse there, but big enough to not have neighbors too close.
That would be preferable. Unfortunately I'm still paying for choices I made 16 years ago when I had one baby and a baby on the way and my values were a bit different than they are now.
The post-kid plan is to either leave the area entirely or to move out into Licking County, just to the east of here, and live in a place much like you describe.
Craig, I have to say that as a central Ohio resident myself I hope you don't move out of the area because I like hearing little bits of what's happening in Columbus in your writing. Although, as you stated previously, with the current political climate in our state I can see why you're eager to leave.
I'm a father of young kids and both my wife and my families live in Ohio so it's doubtful that we ever leave this state. Plus we're both teachers with many years of experience so it would be difficult for us to move jobs. So we'll just have to stay here and hope that things reverse course over the next decade.