If the players were on strike, I would be loudly saying that I have no problem losing games if it lets the union achieve its goal. You would think that in theory, the owners would feel the same way about a lockout. But I doubt anyone from their side will say "in order to save our businesses, we are willing to make this sacrifice." Which might be the only hope that there aren't games lost. Though I wouldn't be too unhappy if the season were a month shorter. 162 games to eliminate only half the teams is too long.
Totally love WKRP. But not only do we have to deal with the unresolved rights issues, we can't stream it legally. There isn't so much as one season of the show anywhere. When I want to watch "Turkeys Away" on Thanksgiving, I have go find a bootleg version uploaded to DailyMotion, backwards. It's weird. But that show is a classic with a stellar cast. Huge fan of Hessman and Tim Reid. And i think I am not the only male my age who had a crush on Jan Smithers. (Yes, Loni Anderson is quite attractive and Jennifer was a really unusual character with more agency than most blonde bombshells ever have, but Bailey was the cute girl with glasses, and you know how nerds are.)
I was definitely Team Bailey. PS Shouldn’t that have been “Mic fright” rather than Mike no matter what AV Club wrote?
…
The players absolutely are entitled to look out for their best financial interests. Same too for the owners. But as a fan, sign me up for Rosenthal’s ‘no games should be lost.’ My rooting interest is not found in the sides of a conference room table with labor lawyers on either side.
Too bad the timeline doesn’t match up and I can’t blame Costanza for Maddux. Although I want to do so anyway.
I’ve always gotten the sense that Rosenthal goes “both ways” in the way that a lot of older writers and columnists do. They focus on a specific objective — “the Hall of Fame is for the greatest players” or “no games should be lost” — without seeing the forest, and I think it works at times. It helps that Rosenthal has cultivated a reputation as someone who genuinely loves and appreciates baseball’s history in addition to the modern era and wants to find positives where he can, as opposed to those with a prominent voice in sports media who tend to always focus more on the negatives.
I do think, though, that the “one objective” approach is flawed — and I say that as someone who respects Rosenthal. We KNOW that losing games is a bad thing and we KNOW that it takes two to tango. But you said it best, Craig. A fan can get away with the “no games should be lost” stance … and that’s who I think Rosenthal is writing for. The average fan, not the baseball fan who has used social media to become especially well-versed in service time manipulation or MLB’s hiring process.
Is that an excuse? I don’t know. But I do think there’s far more people who would take the simple stance of “both sides have to figure this out so no games are lost” as opposed to a more nuanced argument, and if that’s who Rosenthal is writing for, I 100% understand it.
*****************
OK on a less of a ramble, you know it’s a good sign when new cases in Florida are significantly down.
Ideally, the virus itself will become endemic sooner rather than later, I agree. I just have no idea how we begin the rebuilding phase (for lack of a better term) or where to even start societally. We know what parts of three academic years affected by the pandemic are doing to kids. There’s the people who are still recovering from having COVID. The people who lost their jobs or their businesses.
Maybe the first step of the rebuild is just continuing to support small businesses and restaurants? Bring in the wings and fries from a local pub on Super Bowl Sunday. Especially if the pub doesn’t have a sign.
I don't think this lack of positive movement in the labor negotiations is at all surprising. Despite the fact that we all know neither side will get everything they want in the end, there's not enough pressure to give ground on your position until spring training and (much more importantly) the regular season are threatened.
At the moment it's the owners who are unwilling to make a good faith proposal. But I doubt the union is at a point yet where they'd be willing to fold on their core demands either. But I guess we can't say that for sure without the owners being willing to really negotiate to find out.
1. Someone needs to make a good faith move towards the other. I don't care if it's players towards the owners or owners towards the players. If I was the players, I'd identify one thing I could give on, and give on it in this response. If the owners come back with a good faith response -- which may be unlikely -- great. If not, you go hard in the court of public opinion ...
2. Because, like Rosenthal says, no game should be lost. This isn't labor in a chicken factory negotiating with Costco. I'll just buy a roti chicken from the supermarket. There's a third party here with an interest in what happens. And while that third party's influence is obviously the smallest of the three parties, it does have influence.
3. It's cool to say that owners make more money off the game so they have more to lose, but players need the money way more than most owners do. The players may have a fund to keep the non-superstars afloat for a while, but in a labor disaster, where do they go? Do they really want to leave their families to play in the KBL?
4. While I agree with you about how the media at large is utterly failing in its job to describe the party whose platform is simply "owning the libz" accurately, here part of the problem is Dems sniping at Manchin and Sinema instead of getting behind a mic and blasting *all 50 Republicans* for being against voting. All. 50. Republicans. 100% of the party. Just like Dems should be doing every damn time Rs block something that most of the country supports, and every time they hypocrisy it up (Ds utterly failed in the court of public opinion when it came to Amy Coney Barrett). But they don't. They'd rather knock AOC.
5. When pre-crazy Giuliani was the mayor, his crackdown on minor crime really did clean up Manhattan south of 96th Street and really did make it safer and really did turn it into a grander economic powerhouse. While the Giuliani approach obviously was not ideal overall, there has to be a better way to address societal impacts than simply not prosecuting low level crime. I wish I was smart enough to have an idea. But the fact that I successfully powered my computer on this morning was an upset.
Endemicity also means updating vaccines so that we're not immunizing against a spike protein that's now extinct. I'm hopeful that we can fast track safety trials on variant vaccines, as the ability to quickly update the sequence is one of the best features of RNA vaccines.
My childhood kid's introduction to chess book 50 years ago said pawns only attack diagonally because they held a big shield in front of them making it impossible to thrust their spear straight ahead. So they only attack diagonally to either side of the big shield.
Which was probably just a made up explanation to help kids remember how pawns attack. And it apparently worked, since I still remember it from a book I had 50 years ago.
Craig: Thanks for the heads-up on the Railroad’s drastic cut-back on their police force, (Railroad “Bulls”). It makes much more sense of those pictures than blaming big-city DAs, or bail reform.
For more information, please see this ACLU report on PA’s situation. The graphs make it a quick, but shocking read.
RE: Rusney Castillo: The reason he was in Pawtucket so long was some sort of loophole where his salary didn't count against the luxury tax if he wasn't on the 40 man (a loophole that was closed shortly after Castillo was removed, so he was basically the only player impacted). As a result, Boston let him wither in Triple A rather than have his $10 million count against their bottom line
My favourite line from today:
"the bit at the end about it being the best job I’ll ever had is no longer true — this is..."
If the players were on strike, I would be loudly saying that I have no problem losing games if it lets the union achieve its goal. You would think that in theory, the owners would feel the same way about a lockout. But I doubt anyone from their side will say "in order to save our businesses, we are willing to make this sacrifice." Which might be the only hope that there aren't games lost. Though I wouldn't be too unhappy if the season were a month shorter. 162 games to eliminate only half the teams is too long.
Totally love WKRP. But not only do we have to deal with the unresolved rights issues, we can't stream it legally. There isn't so much as one season of the show anywhere. When I want to watch "Turkeys Away" on Thanksgiving, I have go find a bootleg version uploaded to DailyMotion, backwards. It's weird. But that show is a classic with a stellar cast. Huge fan of Hessman and Tim Reid. And i think I am not the only male my age who had a crush on Jan Smithers. (Yes, Loni Anderson is quite attractive and Jennifer was a really unusual character with more agency than most blonde bombshells ever have, but Bailey was the cute girl with glasses, and you know how nerds are.)
I was definitely Team Bailey. PS Shouldn’t that have been “Mic fright” rather than Mike no matter what AV Club wrote?
…
The players absolutely are entitled to look out for their best financial interests. Same too for the owners. But as a fan, sign me up for Rosenthal’s ‘no games should be lost.’ My rooting interest is not found in the sides of a conference room table with labor lawyers on either side.
Too bad the timeline doesn’t match up and I can’t blame Costanza for Maddux. Although I want to do so anyway.
I’ve always gotten the sense that Rosenthal goes “both ways” in the way that a lot of older writers and columnists do. They focus on a specific objective — “the Hall of Fame is for the greatest players” or “no games should be lost” — without seeing the forest, and I think it works at times. It helps that Rosenthal has cultivated a reputation as someone who genuinely loves and appreciates baseball’s history in addition to the modern era and wants to find positives where he can, as opposed to those with a prominent voice in sports media who tend to always focus more on the negatives.
I do think, though, that the “one objective” approach is flawed — and I say that as someone who respects Rosenthal. We KNOW that losing games is a bad thing and we KNOW that it takes two to tango. But you said it best, Craig. A fan can get away with the “no games should be lost” stance … and that’s who I think Rosenthal is writing for. The average fan, not the baseball fan who has used social media to become especially well-versed in service time manipulation or MLB’s hiring process.
Is that an excuse? I don’t know. But I do think there’s far more people who would take the simple stance of “both sides have to figure this out so no games are lost” as opposed to a more nuanced argument, and if that’s who Rosenthal is writing for, I 100% understand it.
*****************
OK on a less of a ramble, you know it’s a good sign when new cases in Florida are significantly down.
Ideally, the virus itself will become endemic sooner rather than later, I agree. I just have no idea how we begin the rebuilding phase (for lack of a better term) or where to even start societally. We know what parts of three academic years affected by the pandemic are doing to kids. There’s the people who are still recovering from having COVID. The people who lost their jobs or their businesses.
Maybe the first step of the rebuild is just continuing to support small businesses and restaurants? Bring in the wings and fries from a local pub on Super Bowl Sunday. Especially if the pub doesn’t have a sign.
https://youtu.be/IRrBlLeZENU
I don't know if you have Spotify, but they have a playlist of every song ever played on WKRP in Cincinnati.
I don't think this lack of positive movement in the labor negotiations is at all surprising. Despite the fact that we all know neither side will get everything they want in the end, there's not enough pressure to give ground on your position until spring training and (much more importantly) the regular season are threatened.
At the moment it's the owners who are unwilling to make a good faith proposal. But I doubt the union is at a point yet where they'd be willing to fold on their core demands either. But I guess we can't say that for sure without the owners being willing to really negotiate to find out.
1. Someone needs to make a good faith move towards the other. I don't care if it's players towards the owners or owners towards the players. If I was the players, I'd identify one thing I could give on, and give on it in this response. If the owners come back with a good faith response -- which may be unlikely -- great. If not, you go hard in the court of public opinion ...
2. Because, like Rosenthal says, no game should be lost. This isn't labor in a chicken factory negotiating with Costco. I'll just buy a roti chicken from the supermarket. There's a third party here with an interest in what happens. And while that third party's influence is obviously the smallest of the three parties, it does have influence.
3. It's cool to say that owners make more money off the game so they have more to lose, but players need the money way more than most owners do. The players may have a fund to keep the non-superstars afloat for a while, but in a labor disaster, where do they go? Do they really want to leave their families to play in the KBL?
4. While I agree with you about how the media at large is utterly failing in its job to describe the party whose platform is simply "owning the libz" accurately, here part of the problem is Dems sniping at Manchin and Sinema instead of getting behind a mic and blasting *all 50 Republicans* for being against voting. All. 50. Republicans. 100% of the party. Just like Dems should be doing every damn time Rs block something that most of the country supports, and every time they hypocrisy it up (Ds utterly failed in the court of public opinion when it came to Amy Coney Barrett). But they don't. They'd rather knock AOC.
5. When pre-crazy Giuliani was the mayor, his crackdown on minor crime really did clean up Manhattan south of 96th Street and really did make it safer and really did turn it into a grander economic powerhouse. While the Giuliani approach obviously was not ideal overall, there has to be a better way to address societal impacts than simply not prosecuting low level crime. I wish I was smart enough to have an idea. But the fact that I successfully powered my computer on this morning was an upset.
Endemicity also means updating vaccines so that we're not immunizing against a spike protein that's now extinct. I'm hopeful that we can fast track safety trials on variant vaccines, as the ability to quickly update the sequence is one of the best features of RNA vaccines.
I'm also looking forward to the GOP nuking the filibuster for tax cuts for rich people, with both Sinema and Manchin voting in favor.
For the record, it's never good to follow the New York Islanders.
My childhood kid's introduction to chess book 50 years ago said pawns only attack diagonally because they held a big shield in front of them making it impossible to thrust their spear straight ahead. So they only attack diagonally to either side of the big shield.
Which was probably just a made up explanation to help kids remember how pawns attack. And it apparently worked, since I still remember it from a book I had 50 years ago.
Craig: Thanks for the heads-up on the Railroad’s drastic cut-back on their police force, (Railroad “Bulls”). It makes much more sense of those pictures than blaming big-city DAs, or bail reform.
For more information, please see this ACLU report on PA’s situation. The graphs make it a quick, but shocking read.
https://aclupa.org/sites/default/files/field_documents/broken_rules_statewide_bail_report.pdf
RE: Rusney Castillo: The reason he was in Pawtucket so long was some sort of loophole where his salary didn't count against the luxury tax if he wasn't on the 40 man (a loophole that was closed shortly after Castillo was removed, so he was basically the only player impacted). As a result, Boston let him wither in Triple A rather than have his $10 million count against their bottom line