Insomnia-driven recaps, Day Three of the Bauer hearings, a farkakte MLB labor proposal, Jack Morris, Steve Cohen, and I got MAJORLY trolled by my in-laws.
Sorry, man. I almost felt as bad for you as I was happy for the Nats. [Almost.]
Tell you what - I'm loving the Life of Riley here in DC ... no idea if he ends up as the backup for uber-prospect Keibert Ruiz but I like his style. Totally worth watching Mr. Hand blow leads for another team.
Craig earlier opined that judges tend to allow in more questionable stuff on behalf of the party they are likely to rule against to minimize opportunities to be reversed on appeal. Back in my now long ago days of practicing law, that was my experience too.
I'd add that the questions largely are trying to paint her as a liar and financially motivated. While crass and ugly, trying to establish that is not irrelevant. There are exceptions - past sexual encounters with others - but for the most part things like her texts aren't *legally* controversial.
No, they don't admit that. The contend that the entire episode was consensual. And no, the restraining order most certainly has a massive effect on his life: at a minimum it will end up with a long suspension from MLB and limit his off-field earnings too.
Of course it is an attack. But Bauer's legal team would say it is an attack on an accuser, not a victim.
It isn't a sharp line about how much evidence going towards creating the narrative that she is a liar is admissible and how much isn't. That is particularly true in a bench trial.
Again, no. The temporary restraining order has *already* had an effect on his career! He has been suspended (with pay) and likely will be suspended without pay if / when it becomes permanent. Do you think that endorsement money won't change? Or his future pay won't? That is implausible to the extreme.
And I'm not 100% sure of this, but my reading of tweets from the courtroom indicate that they admit anal penetration but deny it occurred when she was unconscious. That is, the defense is that she consented to rough sex, including rough anal sex. What is your basis for concluding that he admits unconscious sex?
I don't know her rationale for letting it all in -- I'm not privy to the transcripts during which she likely handled objections to this evidence -- but I'll note that when you don't have a jury the threat of prejudice -- which is the reason for most of those evidence-barring rules -- is mostly gone. Yes, judges can be prejudiced as well, but the law treats them differently than juries in that regard. Also at play is that this is not a criminal trial or even a civil lawsuit proceeding. On a restraining order like this the normal rules of evidence do not apply.
Now, the idea that this is an open hearing and it is thus being widely reported and thus prejudicing FUTURE juries is a whole other matter and in my view a pretty massive mistake by the judge.
The bottom line is you'd have to be alarmingly stupid and oblivious to mess around with sticky stuff as a pitcher in a game today. And you'd have to have a clubhouse full of people equally as oblivious. After the PED crackdown it seemed insane that a player would get caught with all the testing going on. But, at least in the court of public opinion, it was way easier to cast a shadow of a doubt. Seems like players wouldn't be so brazen as to try and get away with sticky substances in the same way.
Cuzzi blew the extremely important Mauer call in the 2009 ALDS against the Yankees (note: Cuzzi is from New Jersey and a Yankees fan), and has had to prove the negative, that he's not incompetent, ever since.
In Steve Cohen's defense, he did spend some serious dough on Lindor in his short time as owner. And on paper he does have a team that should have hit. (Though Lindor aside, not much of it was Cohen's doing) They just haven't done it.
Can you fire the hitting coach and blame it on him more than once in a season, or is there a limit to that trick?
We work with the UK several times a year. They can propose things and we have to stop ourselves cause at times the accent can give the proposal an air of authority. It’s like “is that a good idea or is it because it’s coming from a Brit and it just literally sounds correct”
Heard about a study (no reference, sorry) that showed people rated science presentations as more authoritative if the speaker had a British accent. Is this the legacy of PBS??!! 😊
I mean have you heard Richard Attenborough speak in nature documentaries?? There could be a single adult male tiger on the screen and if he said “Look, at the juvenile hippopotamus as she gracefully swims with her mother in an African River” I’d be all, man, that a pretty nice hippo right there.
Count me among the people who think that public criticism of your players is tacky and worthless. As ever, the question remains of what Cohen will do to change things, or rather who he brings into to make the changes since his job is not to be the GM.
The Mets used a new catcher yesterday named Chance Sisco. Wasn't he a bit player in a few Dane Dunning westerns?
Why is Rizzo a True Yankee? I have a theory that a certain part of the fan base embraces players like Rizzo because he is white. Why else did he immediately get adopted and Gallo seemed to be an afterthought in his first week? Yes, it's not all the fans by any means, and plenty of non-whites have been stars in the Bronx. But sometimes I really wonder about certain fan attitudes in the Bronx.
Could the judge in the Bauer hearing have told Bauer's lawyers their line of questioning was irrelevant to the issue at hand? If he didn't, is that judicial malpractice?
And if after all this stuff has been publicly aired there is no arrest...I would be quite disappointed and not the least bit surprised.
Don't forget that the Yankees changed their name along the way, too. And when they had to renovate (a "rebuild in place", actually) their stadium, the Mets were kind enough to let them play in Shea Stadium. The Yankees owe the Mets one....
I think that consciously or otherwise, the Yankees have avoided the level of cultivation they ought to be doing of a natural Latinx fanbase in the NYC area. The Mets noticed this and have worked a lot harder to tap that audience.
Surprised you whiffed on that one. Most of the chatter in the area seems to be about the guy from the Bronx and the two Italians coming to save the day, as if this is the second coming of DiMaggio/Berra/Rizzuto/Lazerri…
Absent extraordinary circumstances, in order for a judge to rule on the relevancy or admissibility of evidence, the opposing attorney has to object. I don't know if the accuser's attorney did did here.
My thoughts are the judge is building the trial record to limit issues in Bauer's inevitable appeal at the next level. When his attorneys appeal what looks to be a certain loss at trial, the appellate court will look at what the judge ruled and say Bauer's lawyers were allowed to ask what they wanted and anything else is a question of fact the judge was in the best position to decide.
Well not to defend Francesca, but I’m betting he based that comment on the name. In his mind Anthony Rizzo was the kid running through the streets in the Prego tomato sauce commercial.
This Nats season has been disappointing and frustrating on so many levels, but seeing Brad Hand (whose repeated failures, especially in Baltimore right before the deadline, helped precipitate the team’s sell off) was absolutely DELICIOUS. Sorry, Cur.
PS Freddie Freeman hits for the cycle and gives his WIFE the credit?! C’mon man - you’re making the rest of us look bad.
PPS Someday I hope to be a father-in-like Gary. Savage - and I’m here for it.
I usually read this first thing in the morning, so I don't know: Has it been discussed here whether or not the accuser's attorney will call Bauer to the stand? And if he'll take the Fifth if called?
Which will apparently include him stating his name and his occupation of professional ballplayer. Is it standard to state your occupation if you plead the Fifth? Or is he just going to be grandstanding?
When you Plead the 5th, it's in response to a specific question or subject, to avoid self-implication. He wouldn't have grounds on which to refuse to state his occupation.
I have been a lawyer for 15 years. My greatest legal accomplishment was talking a young person out of going to law school. I am way prouder of that than any of the not guilty verdicts I got.
Avoid a soul-crushing job like being a lawyer, and become a teacher instead? My wife the public high school teacher would like to have a word with you about which jobs are soul-crushing right now.
I guess it comes down to whether it's more soul-crushing to be in a position where you're trying to do good but are thwarted and broken down as you attempt to do so vs. being in a position where you are actively encouraged to do evil.
Is there anybody who doesn't think a "salary floor" (or anything similar) is just going to cause tanking teams to take on a lot of contracts from players that are retired, injured, etc so they can hit the floor? E.g. Chris Pronger's (NHL) contract getting traded after he had already been elected to the Hall of Fame. I suppose it could accelerate a rebuild to the extent that teams will add prospects to get tanking teams to take on horrible contracts but tanking teams are going to tank, no matter how much they have to spend along the way.
Most fans in Pgh or Baltimore are asking why the respective owners are spending (or not spending) money in a way that seems like hiring any 9 guys to fill a lineup card. Asking is one thing; getting an answer is another.
Craig is correct. The Pirates are embarrassing. There is little I can do about it. The Pittsburgh Baseball Club has a proud heritage, now squandered.
I’m not positive but I ~think~ that’s essentially how a floor would work. Any team with a payroll under the floor would just pay more money to the existing players on the team. (Probably some sort of pro-rated deal based on how many days they were on the team.)
But yeah, you’d also see teams picking up bad contracts to get to that floor….and if they also got a prospect or two as part of the deal, maybe that wouldn’t be so bad?
The law school thread on one of the forums I read had a longstanding title of "Don't go, there are no jobs, you will die alone." It has been around for years, so you can watch people come in all "I know the title of the thread says don't go, there are no jobs, you will die alone...but I think I should go, I think I'm the exception" and then watch their souls and spirits break over time. One guy mortgaged his house to go to law school, wound up banging his law school study partner, tried to swing (lmao) some kind of poly thing, mended his marriage, wound up divorced anyway, and that was just the law school part of his arc!
I read it regularly because...sometimes there are things where yeah, if my life had been different maybe I could've done (thing). But law school was CLOSE for me. If I make 2 or 3 decisions differently--and I know what decisions those were!--I wind up wandering into law school because I can write and I "love to argue." I finish law school in...2003. You know how it goes from there.
So it's like a portal to that alternate timeline where I wind up even more drunk and broken.
Sorry, man. I almost felt as bad for you as I was happy for the Nats. [Almost.]
Tell you what - I'm loving the Life of Riley here in DC ... no idea if he ends up as the backup for uber-prospect Keibert Ruiz but I like his style. Totally worth watching Mr. Hand blow leads for another team.
Where might one subscribe to this mailing list?
Craig earlier opined that judges tend to allow in more questionable stuff on behalf of the party they are likely to rule against to minimize opportunities to be reversed on appeal. Back in my now long ago days of practicing law, that was my experience too.
I'd add that the questions largely are trying to paint her as a liar and financially motivated. While crass and ugly, trying to establish that is not irrelevant. There are exceptions - past sexual encounters with others - but for the most part things like her texts aren't *legally* controversial.
No, they don't admit that. The contend that the entire episode was consensual. And no, the restraining order most certainly has a massive effect on his life: at a minimum it will end up with a long suspension from MLB and limit his off-field earnings too.
Of course it is an attack. But Bauer's legal team would say it is an attack on an accuser, not a victim.
It isn't a sharp line about how much evidence going towards creating the narrative that she is a liar is admissible and how much isn't. That is particularly true in a bench trial.
Again, no. The temporary restraining order has *already* had an effect on his career! He has been suspended (with pay) and likely will be suspended without pay if / when it becomes permanent. Do you think that endorsement money won't change? Or his future pay won't? That is implausible to the extreme.
And I'm not 100% sure of this, but my reading of tweets from the courtroom indicate that they admit anal penetration but deny it occurred when she was unconscious. That is, the defense is that she consented to rough sex, including rough anal sex. What is your basis for concluding that he admits unconscious sex?
I don't know her rationale for letting it all in -- I'm not privy to the transcripts during which she likely handled objections to this evidence -- but I'll note that when you don't have a jury the threat of prejudice -- which is the reason for most of those evidence-barring rules -- is mostly gone. Yes, judges can be prejudiced as well, but the law treats them differently than juries in that regard. Also at play is that this is not a criminal trial or even a civil lawsuit proceeding. On a restraining order like this the normal rules of evidence do not apply.
Now, the idea that this is an open hearing and it is thus being widely reported and thus prejudicing FUTURE juries is a whole other matter and in my view a pretty massive mistake by the judge.
The bottom line is you'd have to be alarmingly stupid and oblivious to mess around with sticky stuff as a pitcher in a game today. And you'd have to have a clubhouse full of people equally as oblivious. After the PED crackdown it seemed insane that a player would get caught with all the testing going on. But, at least in the court of public opinion, it was way easier to cast a shadow of a doubt. Seems like players wouldn't be so brazen as to try and get away with sticky substances in the same way.
Cuzzi blew the extremely important Mauer call in the 2009 ALDS against the Yankees (note: Cuzzi is from New Jersey and a Yankees fan), and has had to prove the negative, that he's not incompetent, ever since.
Dear Gary P.: Bravo! Excellent work.
In Steve Cohen's defense, he did spend some serious dough on Lindor in his short time as owner. And on paper he does have a team that should have hit. (Though Lindor aside, not much of it was Cohen's doing) They just haven't done it.
Can you fire the hitting coach and blame it on him more than once in a season, or is there a limit to that trick?
but he's diesel!
Steve needs to clean house from top to bottom - including Alderson.
way too much reliance on hitting success in a 60 game season
Carrot In A Box: The Rematch. https://youtu.be/Bp04HZDCELw
If you think those are posh English accents, you'd assume I was a minor royal.
Oh, I can do that.
We work with the UK several times a year. They can propose things and we have to stop ourselves cause at times the accent can give the proposal an air of authority. It’s like “is that a good idea or is it because it’s coming from a Brit and it just literally sounds correct”
Heard about a study (no reference, sorry) that showed people rated science presentations as more authoritative if the speaker had a British accent. Is this the legacy of PBS??!! 😊
I mean have you heard Richard Attenborough speak in nature documentaries?? There could be a single adult male tiger on the screen and if he said “Look, at the juvenile hippopotamus as she gracefully swims with her mother in an African River” I’d be all, man, that a pretty nice hippo right there.
Reminds me of Arrested Development, and MR. F.
By the way, Jon Richardson said "if there's not a carrot in that box, you're a psychopath" but they had to (clumsily) edit in "genius".
Count me among the people who think that public criticism of your players is tacky and worthless. As ever, the question remains of what Cohen will do to change things, or rather who he brings into to make the changes since his job is not to be the GM.
The Mets used a new catcher yesterday named Chance Sisco. Wasn't he a bit player in a few Dane Dunning westerns?
Why is Rizzo a True Yankee? I have a theory that a certain part of the fan base embraces players like Rizzo because he is white. Why else did he immediately get adopted and Gallo seemed to be an afterthought in his first week? Yes, it's not all the fans by any means, and plenty of non-whites have been stars in the Bronx. But sometimes I really wonder about certain fan attitudes in the Bronx.
Could the judge in the Bauer hearing have told Bauer's lawyers their line of questioning was irrelevant to the issue at hand? If he didn't, is that judicial malpractice?
And if after all this stuff has been publicly aired there is no arrest...I would be quite disappointed and not the least bit surprised.
Spoiler: This is not a great day for you to go to the MLB website and peruse the East "standings" in the National and American leagues.
The Yankees are back baby!! (wink emoji)
Don't forget that the Yankees changed their name along the way, too. And when they had to renovate (a "rebuild in place", actually) their stadium, the Mets were kind enough to let them play in Shea Stadium. The Yankees owe the Mets one....
The Mets actually refused to share Shea Stadium until the city (who owned the stadium) forced them to.
Yes, the Yankees are back...five games back.
I think that consciously or otherwise, the Yankees have avoided the level of cultivation they ought to be doing of a natural Latinx fanbase in the NYC area. The Mets noticed this and have worked a lot harder to tap that audience.
Isn't Gallo white too?
Googles Gallo. And, er, yeah. I have no idea why I thought otherwise.
Surprised you whiffed on that one. Most of the chatter in the area seems to be about the guy from the Bronx and the two Italians coming to save the day, as if this is the second coming of DiMaggio/Berra/Rizzuto/Lazerri…
I haven't listened to sports radio in a long time, and tend to follow just the Mets when I look at the news.
Absent extraordinary circumstances, in order for a judge to rule on the relevancy or admissibility of evidence, the opposing attorney has to object. I don't know if the accuser's attorney did did here.
My thoughts are the judge is building the trial record to limit issues in Bauer's inevitable appeal at the next level. When his attorneys appeal what looks to be a certain loss at trial, the appellate court will look at what the judge ruled and say Bauer's lawyers were allowed to ask what they wanted and anything else is a question of fact the judge was in the best position to decide.
Well not to defend Francesca, but I’m betting he based that comment on the name. In his mind Anthony Rizzo was the kid running through the streets in the Prego tomato sauce commercial.
This Nats season has been disappointing and frustrating on so many levels, but seeing Brad Hand (whose repeated failures, especially in Baltimore right before the deadline, helped precipitate the team’s sell off) was absolutely DELICIOUS. Sorry, Cur.
PS Freddie Freeman hits for the cycle and gives his WIFE the credit?! C’mon man - you’re making the rest of us look bad.
PPS Someday I hope to be a father-in-like Gary. Savage - and I’m here for it.
*seeing Brad Hand (long parenthetical) IMPLODE
(Sorry, I was so excited about the schadenfreude that I forgot the verb.)
When I hit for the cycle I too will credit Freddie Freeman's wife.
I mean, she gave him the drink with all the hits in it. He'd be a dick if he didn't credit her. What is she going to do with all them hits?
I usually read this first thing in the morning, so I don't know: Has it been discussed here whether or not the accuser's attorney will call Bauer to the stand? And if he'll take the Fifth if called?
He is expected to be called and take the Fifth today.
Which will apparently include him stating his name and his occupation of professional ballplayer. Is it standard to state your occupation if you plead the Fifth? Or is he just going to be grandstanding?
If he's on apparently indefinite leave, can he truthfuly state that his profession is professional baseball player?
When you Plead the 5th, it's in response to a specific question or subject, to avoid self-implication. He wouldn't have grounds on which to refuse to state his occupation.
Which is what just happened. According to Hensom (sp?), judge just asked him and he said "yes, your honor" --didn't even come up to the box.
I have been a lawyer for 15 years. My greatest legal accomplishment was talking a young person out of going to law school. I am way prouder of that than any of the not guilty verdicts I got.
Avoid a soul-crushing job like being a lawyer, and become a teacher instead? My wife the public high school teacher would like to have a word with you about which jobs are soul-crushing right now.
My wife the former physician would also argue against the med school route.
For similar reasons, Communications-related jobs can be dicey at the moment, too
You guys are really limiting the options - what's left at this point?
"Selling homeopathic tinctures to brain-poisoned Boomers" seems to be a pretty lucrative gig, I suppose.
In that case, seems to be more of a "can't crush what you no longer have" thing.
I guess it comes down to whether it's more soul-crushing to be in a position where you're trying to do good but are thwarted and broken down as you attempt to do so vs. being in a position where you are actively encouraged to do evil.
Now you can take a job with the federal government, and if you work there for 10 years, they pay your tuition. So I’ve been told.
“ Shohei Ohtanti went eight innings allowing only one run while striking out eight and hit a home run — his 40th on the year — as the DH.”
You know, when he’s pitching in the game he’s not actually the DH. He hit that homer as the pitcher dammit.
Is there anybody who doesn't think a "salary floor" (or anything similar) is just going to cause tanking teams to take on a lot of contracts from players that are retired, injured, etc so they can hit the floor? E.g. Chris Pronger's (NHL) contract getting traded after he had already been elected to the Hall of Fame. I suppose it could accelerate a rebuild to the extent that teams will add prospects to get tanking teams to take on horrible contracts but tanking teams are going to tank, no matter how much they have to spend along the way.
Most fans in Pgh or Baltimore are asking why the respective owners are spending (or not spending) money in a way that seems like hiring any 9 guys to fill a lineup card. Asking is one thing; getting an answer is another.
Craig is correct. The Pirates are embarrassing. There is little I can do about it. The Pittsburgh Baseball Club has a proud heritage, now squandered.
I’m not positive but I ~think~ that’s essentially how a floor would work. Any team with a payroll under the floor would just pay more money to the existing players on the team. (Probably some sort of pro-rated deal based on how many days they were on the team.)
But yeah, you’d also see teams picking up bad contracts to get to that floor….and if they also got a prospect or two as part of the deal, maybe that wouldn’t be so bad?
Sure, but if a team takes on a bad contract for a prospect, it frees up those dollars for a contending team to pay for a useful player.
Freddie Freeman's cycle was his second. He is the first player in franchise history to have two.
If Shohei hits for the cycle while pitching, then beans a guy, is that a quint-sickle?
The law school thread on one of the forums I read had a longstanding title of "Don't go, there are no jobs, you will die alone." It has been around for years, so you can watch people come in all "I know the title of the thread says don't go, there are no jobs, you will die alone...but I think I should go, I think I'm the exception" and then watch their souls and spirits break over time. One guy mortgaged his house to go to law school, wound up banging his law school study partner, tried to swing (lmao) some kind of poly thing, mended his marriage, wound up divorced anyway, and that was just the law school part of his arc!
I read it regularly because...sometimes there are things where yeah, if my life had been different maybe I could've done (thing). But law school was CLOSE for me. If I make 2 or 3 decisions differently--and I know what decisions those were!--I wind up wandering into law school because I can write and I "love to argue." I finish law school in...2003. You know how it goes from there.
So it's like a portal to that alternate timeline where I wind up even more drunk and broken.