Another near no-no, A.J. Hinch is on a quest to find the real pitch-changers, and we talk about antitrust, dirty laundry, mascots, capitalism, God's Plan, and a strange disappearance
Isn't a pitch clock part of "mondern baseball's fascination with 'improving the game?" And don't both pitch clocks and the manfred man expedite games which have lengthened by almost an hour over the past 60 years?
95% of MLB games end by the 10th inning prior to the Manfred Man, so it can't have much of an overall effect. It's solving a problem that isn't a major problem to begin with.
A pitch clock, however, could affect every inning of every game. I don't know if the net effect would be good or bad, but it would likely be more impactful than the Manfred Man rule in extra innings. (Unless the pitch clock only applies with bases empty and the enforcement was spotty, in which case it might not have much of an effect at all.)
Personally, I'm in on pitch clocks, the manfred man AND scheduling one-admission 7-inning Doubleheaders throughout the season to start and end the season earlier.
The Manfred Man is solving a problem that isn't really a big deal in the first place; only 5% of games even made it past the 10th inning prior to the Manfred Man. I'd rather just declare games tied after 9 than turn extra innings into a slow-pitch softball run environment.
I'd assume the impact to strategy would be a lot less than in timed sports like football or soccer.
I don't get what you mean by "teams are more likely to play defense" - wouldn't teams still try to get every batter out? It's not like you can decide to sit on a tie game and run out the clock in baseball, like you can in football.
(Not that it matters, of course - ties ain't happening, lol. I shouldn't have even mentioned it.)
Fun fact: Ken Griffey, Jr's first game as a Cincinnati Red ended in a tie. Opening Day, 2000.
I finally got the email informing me that I can choose the form of digital payout for my $7.61 from the class action suit related to the Optical Disk Drive settlement. The options are Amazon, Target, MC, or Starbucks. FINALLY!
"This antitrust class action lawsuit was filed by plaintiffs alleging a conspiracy involving ODD suppliers to fix, maintain, or stabilize the prices of ODDs at artificially high levels in violation of federal and state antitrust laws."
But now, years later, it was ALL worth it for the consumer! JUSTICE FOR ALL!
So...one cup of coffee? (I am that sort of mood today. I heard the US is giving a billion dollars more military gear to Ukraine - which I support, BTW - and my first thought was, "so...one airplane?")
Gloria married Peter Angelos - and John and Louis are his sons. It’s clear that litigation and combative press releases are simply their family love language.
PS A sincere tip of my Nats cap to Erick Fedde, who threw 111 pitches last night to make it into the sixth (only 12 fewer than the Dodgers’ Tyler Anderson threw to reach the ninth) - and thus preserve the possibility that two swingmen (Evan Lee and Paolo Espino) can start both ends of a doubleheader on Friday against the Phillies. The god of bullpen death will eventually get the Nats, but Fedde looked it in the eye last night and said, “not today.”
Between the Nats' Jaguar going back in the shop and replaced by the next available minor leaguer that MASN swears is an overlooked prospect (he's neither; read the handle folks), we're now fast approaching "Well, at least nobody got hurt today" season.
It does tend to concentrate the pitching misery into doubleheaders and long stretches with no off days, so yes ... Nats pitching is best enjoyed like nouvelle cuisine, where the food is bad but the portions are small.
The Mets' lead is down to four. Some of that is on them as the starting pitching has been iffy of late. But frankly, if your chief rival wins 14 in a row, the most you can do is just hope someone can beat them. Which doesn't mean I am not a bit nervous now.
So I am religious, as most of you know. And as such, I also believe God has a plan. But I have no idea what that means. I have no idea how much God is involved in every little thing. I have no idea if He really did want children to be massacred. I am of course hardly the first person to grapple with this. Jews have grappled with this through an unending series of tragedies, and anyone who thinks he knows God's mind - and when I say "he," I mean the lesser lights of the Orthodox rabbinic tradition - is a fool. The best we I have ever heard offered is that sometimes God "hides His face" and doesn't intervene. And yet, what if He really did ordain the deaths of children, or the deaths of millions in war and plague and famine? I have no answer. And that is horrifying and humbling and should still never ever be something inept politicians hide behind to avoid taking responsibility for their actions. Leave God to God and do your job, Abbott!
The "God has a plan" business is one of those statements that's attributed to the Bible (mostly OT) but takes some imaginative connecting of dots to unearth. You read the meaning that you're looking for. Somehow it's gotten accepted that when something horrible happens that could have been modified by people making choices, it attributed to God's Plan like it was some sort of cosmic eventuality. Global Warming? God's plan. Uvalde? God's plan.
Agreed. Indeed, Jesus told people to pray "Our Father, may your will be done on earth...". So, we can't just assume that God's will automatically happens: otherwise, why ask for it to be done?
This prayer, which has come to be called "The Lord's Prayer" is one of Jesus' more famous teachings, so it's maybe a little surprising that some Christians haven't got hold of it.
It's easy for me to say that if I were an American Christian, then I would drop any belief that came from America, especially anything related to guns, wars, patriotism, or white supremacy. But I would.
In the context the soon-to-be-felon Paxton uses it, "god has a plan" is simply a way to absolve oneself of responsibility and an obligation to do something -- especially when the "oneself" is someone who the people elected specifically to be responsible and do something.
I should never be surprised when people under indictment are re-elected, but it still boggles my mind every time it happens. What exactly does Paxton bring to the job that a hundred other non-indicted Trumpist evangelical lawyers wouldn't?
My theory on God; God does exist and world we live in was a toy he played with as a child which has been left in a closet in the basement of the house he lived in eons ago.
The Squire of Gothos is a god-like being who toys with Kirk and buddies, but is revealed in the end to be a child-god, and the story ends when his parents take him home and fix his mess. Thus my comparison with Dale's theory (which is not quite the same, but still posits "God is a spoiled brat").
That's essentially what Masons and Deists believe, as I understand it. God made the universe, wound it up like a clock and now it basically runs on its own. Horrifying.
I mean, what's he even doing with all that free time?
It me, the Deist. [I think I always had those tendencies but when my kind and impossibly wonderful wife - who never hurt a living thing in any way in her life or did anything more harmful to herself than the occasional glass of champagne - got terminal brain cancer for no apparent reason I decided I was right.]
Can't source the quote but I believe it - "God deals the cards - but we have to play them."
My guess is that God is out there winding up other clocks - when you get old enough it's a full-time job.
Ken "God Has A Plan" Paxton. Comes home to someone else having sex with his wife? Says "God has a plan." and walks out. I mean, why even fund the police, because if crime happens, and "God has a plan" then your police officers are just interfering with God's will.
I've always found it interesting that the same people might think that someone else getting pregnant is "God's plan" but themselves NOT getting pregnant when they want to means obviously God made a mistake and they need IVF. Odd how they always find their God giving answers they agree with instead of accepting that maybe God is telling them NO I DON'T WANT YOU TO HAVE KIDS FOR CRYING OUT LOUD.
You have no way to know this. but this is actually the most sensitive of subjects for me. I was pissed, utterly pissed, with God when my wife miscarried (after we did IVF). Is it God's plan we don't have kids? Maybe. He didn't tell me. (At some level, and despite making peace with not having kids and even being glad to some degree I don't have to deal with kids during the pandemic and with the endless horrors of the world, I am still pissed.)
But of course I think I have the empathy to understand that you never tell someone else "this is God's plan." And the desire to make sure that IVF is covered by insurance for all who want it.
Oh I agree. Having children or not is such a personal decision, and so emotional, that no one should ever comment on it other than "I'm happy for you" if they are happy or "I'm so sorry" if they are sad. I hate it when someone says that it's part of a divine plan if someone else has a child they don't want or loses a child they did, but for THEM PERSONALLY they need all possible medical interventions to get exactly the outcome that they want (either fertility treatments or an abortion) because "they" are more special than all those other peasants.
And I'm so very sorry for yours and your wife's loss. When a wanted pregnancy fails it's so incredibly painful and no one else has the right words to talk about it, so the individuals often are left to suffer alone. Happy words of toxic positivity are the worst possible option in such a case. ❤️
"No one else has the right words to talk about it."
A dear friend whose wife also miscarried said to me that "we are in the same forest but different paths." It was such a good metaphor for the feeling that are alone, and yet not alone. Nothing else anyone said to me meant as much. And people did try, people who love us and who also dealt with miscarriages in their marriages. No one was insensitive, but only he had the right sensitivity. Just had to share that.
My mother miscarried after 4 months in the early 60's. She was completely at peace with it, and never saw it as a mysterious divine plan. In the best Unitarian tradition, her scientific mind simply concluded that something went wrong genetically and that evolution did not allow the flaw to continue. Some of her Christian friends kept trying to elicit grief and misery, and never forgave her for that belief.
Your mother was scary rational. It took me a while to get to where she started. I even yelled at my wife's doctor for not being able to explain why she miscarried. Surely science had answers!! But science does, as your mother knew.
I assume she inculcated such rationality in you. I hope so, at least.
She and my dad, did. I expanded the approach to be more tolerant of deistic beliefs (mom claimed to be agnostic, but was terribly hostile). Rationality informed my legal and judging career. I have found that nothing seems to piss people off more than when you try to see all sides of a complicated question that other people are screaming about.
That's definitely true with non-human animals. There was one case where a nesting owl kept shoving what appeared to be perfectly healthy chicks out of the nest even though rehabbers kept putting them back. When they tested them it turned out they were all deaf - which understandably would have been a death sentence of starvation for an adult owl and a complete waste of resources for the parents.
It's very likely that a lot of miscarriages or pregnancies that just don't "take" for whatever reason have a biological reason even if doctors can't figure it out exactly.
About half of human miscarriages are due to chromosomal abnormalities, and those occur with unfortunate regularity. Many of those miscarriages happen so early that they are undetected.
For historical context for our younger readers, don't construe "The Reds won the game, but the Pirates won the NL East that year so let that be a lesson, kids." to mean the Pirates beat the Reds in the NL East. Because the Reds were in the NL West at the time. They didn't win the West either, though they did win 98 games while the Pirates won 88.
Sedating all passengers reminds me of the bit from HHGTTG "The ship has been delayed 900 years whilst awaiting a complement of lemon-soaked paper napkins. The robot crew-an auto-pilot and an android stewardess-have placed the passengers into suspended animation and only bring them round every 10 years for coffee and biscuits."
Point of order - the United States Men's National Team participated in the inaugural World Cup in Uruguay in 1930, winning its group and advancing to the semifinals, heights it has yet to return.
It's only a matter of time until the U.S. returns to that level, as MLS already surpassed the rest of the world's pro leagues in 2014 when the MLS All-Stars smacked down Bayern Munich 2-1. A Bayern Munich team, mind you, that was basically the German national team that had just won the World Cup and was also a consistent Champions League/FIFA Club World Cup champion and contender.
Some will say, laughably, that Bayern just considered that a "practice" match. But their coach, Pep Guardiola, was pissed after the match - which proves that he really wanted to win, and was frustrated that he had just witnessed the power of professional soccer shift from Europe to America that very night.
So now that a lot of the future U.S. players have been sharpening their skills in MLS - the undisputed best league in the world for the last 7-8 years - against the best players of all time like Wayne Rooney, Thierry Henry, Didier Drogba, David Villa, and Bastian Schweinsteiger (to name a few), it's safe to say the U.S. will be knocking on the door for a World Cup championship real soon.
I wonder if there are ever any internal discussions of bringing these 1/6 clowns like Eric Barber back before the bench for contempt after they almost immediately publicly repudiate the contrition they claim during their sentencing or other court statements. Sure seems contemptuous to me.
I don't think there is a mechanism here to bring him back. But I have seen judges refuse to allow a plea when people equivocate about their guilt when they are changing their plea to guilty. Saying ""you don't think you are guilty fine, we will send it out for triial."
I think I'm much more irritated that judges listen to horseshit statements from these terrorists in the first place. Attacking the national Capitol with the clear intent to prevent the certification of a Presidential election is serious goddamn business.
The fact that many of these assholes are very, very stupid should do nothing to mitigate the actual severity of their crimes.
Let us hope that the latest Astros acquisition doesn't languish with the Sugar Land Space Cowboys, where time holds him green and dying, and he sings in his chains like the sea.
I love that Washington YouTube video - "Six foot twenty, weighs a fucking ton." Surprised I hadn't seen this news about GW, given that I a) also am an alum (MBA 2010), b) live right across the river, and c) count among some of my very best friends other alumni (of both grad and undergrad programs - friendships are literally the only thing that school has ever done for me in any capacity). Maybe they'll change it to the Hippos?
He "only" hit .261 in May after his .342 BA April.
Of course, being Jose Ramirez, his OBP/SLG in May was .393/.580, so he was still a marvelous hitter. Just had a little blip in the batting average, that's all. (His June BA is .333)
That "other" Dock Ellis game was immortalized by the Baseball Project in "The Day Dock Went Hunting Heads" (one of their most Fountains of Wayne-esque tunes):
Scott McCaughey has been on the mend for a while -- he's even back appearing live with the Young Fresh Fellows. Can't wait to see what BP cooks up this time....
Until I read your comment it never occurred to me that ol' G-Dub never fathered any children.
Meanwhile, what, one of John Tyler's grandsons is still alive? *checks* Yup! Harrison Ruffin Tyler.
Isn't a pitch clock part of "mondern baseball's fascination with 'improving the game?" And don't both pitch clocks and the manfred man expedite games which have lengthened by almost an hour over the past 60 years?
95% of MLB games end by the 10th inning prior to the Manfred Man, so it can't have much of an overall effect. It's solving a problem that isn't a major problem to begin with.
A pitch clock, however, could affect every inning of every game. I don't know if the net effect would be good or bad, but it would likely be more impactful than the Manfred Man rule in extra innings. (Unless the pitch clock only applies with bases empty and the enforcement was spotty, in which case it might not have much of an effect at all.)
(I grabbed that 95% stat from this 2008 paper: https://web.williams.edu/Mathematics/sjmiller/public_html/105Sp10/sabr/GlassLowry_Quasigeometric_mathmag127-137.pdf)
I would think it has lopped off the number of 4+ hour games fairly significantly.
Personally, I'm in on pitch clocks, the manfred man AND scheduling one-admission 7-inning Doubleheaders throughout the season to start and end the season earlier.
Oh, and definitely in on robo-umps.
But Id have started the manfred man in the 11th inning.
*start the RS later and end it earlier*
Yeah, I'm definitely in on pitch clocks.
The Manfred Man is solving a problem that isn't really a big deal in the first place; only 5% of games even made it past the 10th inning prior to the Manfred Man. I'd rather just declare games tied after 9 than turn extra innings into a slow-pitch softball run environment.
That changes the whole strategy. If games can end in ties teams are more likely to play defense.
What was it like in the old days, pre-lights, when games could end in ties?
I'd assume the impact to strategy would be a lot less than in timed sports like football or soccer.
I don't get what you mean by "teams are more likely to play defense" - wouldn't teams still try to get every batter out? It's not like you can decide to sit on a tie game and run out the clock in baseball, like you can in football.
(Not that it matters, of course - ties ain't happening, lol. I shouldn't have even mentioned it.)
Fun fact: Ken Griffey, Jr's first game as a Cincinnati Red ended in a tie. Opening Day, 2000.
I finally got the email informing me that I can choose the form of digital payout for my $7.61 from the class action suit related to the Optical Disk Drive settlement. The options are Amazon, Target, MC, or Starbucks. FINALLY!
"This antitrust class action lawsuit was filed by plaintiffs alleging a conspiracy involving ODD suppliers to fix, maintain, or stabilize the prices of ODDs at artificially high levels in violation of federal and state antitrust laws."
But now, years later, it was ALL worth it for the consumer! JUSTICE FOR ALL!
So...one cup of coffee? (I am that sort of mood today. I heard the US is giving a billion dollars more military gear to Ukraine - which I support, BTW - and my first thought was, "so...one airplane?")
The lawsuit has resulted in you and 3 friends being able to pool your settlement payments and now having a chance to buy an ODD for that very price. https://www.walmart.com/ip/USB-2-0-External-DVD-Combo-CD-RW-Drive-Burner-Writer-For-Notebook-PC-Desktop-Computer/530035005?wmlspartner=wlpa&selectedSellerId=16214
as a consumer I took one on the chin this past weekend as Stubhub and Ticketmaster tag-teamed me but this is a HUGE WIN!!!
wrap up: little guy 1 vs corporate 'Merica 0
Wake me when they settle one involving oil companies. ..
1st quarter profits are in:
Shell: $9B
ExxonMobil: $8.8B
Chevron: $6.5B
BP: $6.2B
Gloria married Peter Angelos - and John and Louis are his sons. It’s clear that litigation and combative press releases are simply their family love language.
PS A sincere tip of my Nats cap to Erick Fedde, who threw 111 pitches last night to make it into the sixth (only 12 fewer than the Dodgers’ Tyler Anderson threw to reach the ninth) - and thus preserve the possibility that two swingmen (Evan Lee and Paolo Espino) can start both ends of a doubleheader on Friday against the Phillies. The god of bullpen death will eventually get the Nats, but Fedde looked it in the eye last night and said, “not today.”
Between the Nats' Jaguar going back in the shop and replaced by the next available minor leaguer that MASN swears is an overlooked prospect (he's neither; read the handle folks), we're now fast approaching "Well, at least nobody got hurt today" season.
Hey, no position platers pitched today! WIN!!!
Well, they're not really pitchers.. There is a roster limit on pitchers, isnt there?
(Sorry, being too literal here. Time for another cup..)
PPS There's another chance of soaking storms in DC from about 4pm to 10pm today.
Since the Nats have neither Spahn nor Sain, does it matter whether it rains?
It does tend to concentrate the pitching misery into doubleheaders and long stretches with no off days, so yes ... Nats pitching is best enjoyed like nouvelle cuisine, where the food is bad but the portions are small.
The Mets' lead is down to four. Some of that is on them as the starting pitching has been iffy of late. But frankly, if your chief rival wins 14 in a row, the most you can do is just hope someone can beat them. Which doesn't mean I am not a bit nervous now.
So I am religious, as most of you know. And as such, I also believe God has a plan. But I have no idea what that means. I have no idea how much God is involved in every little thing. I have no idea if He really did want children to be massacred. I am of course hardly the first person to grapple with this. Jews have grappled with this through an unending series of tragedies, and anyone who thinks he knows God's mind - and when I say "he," I mean the lesser lights of the Orthodox rabbinic tradition - is a fool. The best we I have ever heard offered is that sometimes God "hides His face" and doesn't intervene. And yet, what if He really did ordain the deaths of children, or the deaths of millions in war and plague and famine? I have no answer. And that is horrifying and humbling and should still never ever be something inept politicians hide behind to avoid taking responsibility for their actions. Leave God to God and do your job, Abbott!
The "God has a plan" business is one of those statements that's attributed to the Bible (mostly OT) but takes some imaginative connecting of dots to unearth. You read the meaning that you're looking for. Somehow it's gotten accepted that when something horrible happens that could have been modified by people making choices, it attributed to God's Plan like it was some sort of cosmic eventuality. Global Warming? God's plan. Uvalde? God's plan.
Agreed. Indeed, Jesus told people to pray "Our Father, may your will be done on earth...". So, we can't just assume that God's will automatically happens: otherwise, why ask for it to be done?
This prayer, which has come to be called "The Lord's Prayer" is one of Jesus' more famous teachings, so it's maybe a little surprising that some Christians haven't got hold of it.
It's easy for me to say that if I were an American Christian, then I would drop any belief that came from America, especially anything related to guns, wars, patriotism, or white supremacy. But I would.
In the context the soon-to-be-felon Paxton uses it, "god has a plan" is simply a way to absolve oneself of responsibility and an obligation to do something -- especially when the "oneself" is someone who the people elected specifically to be responsible and do something.
I should never be surprised when people under indictment are re-elected, but it still boggles my mind every time it happens. What exactly does Paxton bring to the job that a hundred other non-indicted Trumpist evangelical lawyers wouldn't?
My theory on God; God does exist and world we live in was a toy he played with as a child which has been left in a closet in the basement of the house he lived in eons ago.
Trekkies call this the Squire of Gothos Theory.
Interesting, for real? How did that come about?
The Squire of Gothos is a god-like being who toys with Kirk and buddies, but is revealed in the end to be a child-god, and the story ends when his parents take him home and fix his mess. Thus my comparison with Dale's theory (which is not quite the same, but still posits "God is a spoiled brat").
That's essentially what Masons and Deists believe, as I understand it. God made the universe, wound it up like a clock and now it basically runs on its own. Horrifying.
I mean, what's he even doing with all that free time?
It me, the Deist. [I think I always had those tendencies but when my kind and impossibly wonderful wife - who never hurt a living thing in any way in her life or did anything more harmful to herself than the occasional glass of champagne - got terminal brain cancer for no apparent reason I decided I was right.]
Can't source the quote but I believe it - "God deals the cards - but we have to play them."
My guess is that God is out there winding up other clocks - when you get old enough it's a full-time job.
Ken "God Has A Plan" Paxton. Comes home to someone else having sex with his wife? Says "God has a plan." and walks out. I mean, why even fund the police, because if crime happens, and "God has a plan" then your police officers are just interfering with God's will.
I've always found it interesting that the same people might think that someone else getting pregnant is "God's plan" but themselves NOT getting pregnant when they want to means obviously God made a mistake and they need IVF. Odd how they always find their God giving answers they agree with instead of accepting that maybe God is telling them NO I DON'T WANT YOU TO HAVE KIDS FOR CRYING OUT LOUD.
You have no way to know this. but this is actually the most sensitive of subjects for me. I was pissed, utterly pissed, with God when my wife miscarried (after we did IVF). Is it God's plan we don't have kids? Maybe. He didn't tell me. (At some level, and despite making peace with not having kids and even being glad to some degree I don't have to deal with kids during the pandemic and with the endless horrors of the world, I am still pissed.)
But of course I think I have the empathy to understand that you never tell someone else "this is God's plan." And the desire to make sure that IVF is covered by insurance for all who want it.
Oh I agree. Having children or not is such a personal decision, and so emotional, that no one should ever comment on it other than "I'm happy for you" if they are happy or "I'm so sorry" if they are sad. I hate it when someone says that it's part of a divine plan if someone else has a child they don't want or loses a child they did, but for THEM PERSONALLY they need all possible medical interventions to get exactly the outcome that they want (either fertility treatments or an abortion) because "they" are more special than all those other peasants.
And I'm so very sorry for yours and your wife's loss. When a wanted pregnancy fails it's so incredibly painful and no one else has the right words to talk about it, so the individuals often are left to suffer alone. Happy words of toxic positivity are the worst possible option in such a case. ❤️
"No one else has the right words to talk about it."
A dear friend whose wife also miscarried said to me that "we are in the same forest but different paths." It was such a good metaphor for the feeling that are alone, and yet not alone. Nothing else anyone said to me meant as much. And people did try, people who love us and who also dealt with miscarriages in their marriages. No one was insensitive, but only he had the right sensitivity. Just had to share that.
My mother miscarried after 4 months in the early 60's. She was completely at peace with it, and never saw it as a mysterious divine plan. In the best Unitarian tradition, her scientific mind simply concluded that something went wrong genetically and that evolution did not allow the flaw to continue. Some of her Christian friends kept trying to elicit grief and misery, and never forgave her for that belief.
Your mother was scary rational. It took me a while to get to where she started. I even yelled at my wife's doctor for not being able to explain why she miscarried. Surely science had answers!! But science does, as your mother knew.
I assume she inculcated such rationality in you. I hope so, at least.
She and my dad, did. I expanded the approach to be more tolerant of deistic beliefs (mom claimed to be agnostic, but was terribly hostile). Rationality informed my legal and judging career. I have found that nothing seems to piss people off more than when you try to see all sides of a complicated question that other people are screaming about.
That's definitely true with non-human animals. There was one case where a nesting owl kept shoving what appeared to be perfectly healthy chicks out of the nest even though rehabbers kept putting them back. When they tested them it turned out they were all deaf - which understandably would have been a death sentence of starvation for an adult owl and a complete waste of resources for the parents.
It's very likely that a lot of miscarriages or pregnancies that just don't "take" for whatever reason have a biological reason even if doctors can't figure it out exactly.
About half of human miscarriages are due to chromosomal abnormalities, and those occur with unfortunate regularity. Many of those miscarriages happen so early that they are undetected.
And those 14 wins by the Braves? Check out the opposition.... Let's see how they do against teams with winning records.
Oh, for sure. But wins are wins. Though we will see if the Mets do what they need to against the Marlins at home.
For historical context for our younger readers, don't construe "The Reds won the game, but the Pirates won the NL East that year so let that be a lesson, kids." to mean the Pirates beat the Reds in the NL East. Because the Reds were in the NL West at the time. They didn't win the West either, though they did win 98 games while the Pirates won 88.
2 things
The first World Cup was 1930, the USA placed third, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1930_FIFA_World_Cup Only 4 European countries made the trek to Uruguay.
Sedating all passengers reminds me of the bit from HHGTTG "The ship has been delayed 900 years whilst awaiting a complement of lemon-soaked paper napkins. The robot crew-an auto-pilot and an android stewardess-have placed the passengers into suspended animation and only bring them round every 10 years for coffee and biscuits."
Yeah, but the coffee is REALLY good!
"The Cubs have lost nine straight." During which streak their opponents have outscored them 84-25, or by an average score of worse than 9-3.
Fortunately(?) for you, the Barves are rolling into town after winning three straight in DC by basically the same score. Have fun!
Relegation!
Point of order - the United States Men's National Team participated in the inaugural World Cup in Uruguay in 1930, winning its group and advancing to the semifinals, heights it has yet to return.
It's only a matter of time until the U.S. returns to that level, as MLS already surpassed the rest of the world's pro leagues in 2014 when the MLS All-Stars smacked down Bayern Munich 2-1. A Bayern Munich team, mind you, that was basically the German national team that had just won the World Cup and was also a consistent Champions League/FIFA Club World Cup champion and contender.
Some will say, laughably, that Bayern just considered that a "practice" match. But their coach, Pep Guardiola, was pissed after the match - which proves that he really wanted to win, and was frustrated that he had just witnessed the power of professional soccer shift from Europe to America that very night.
So now that a lot of the future U.S. players have been sharpening their skills in MLS - the undisputed best league in the world for the last 7-8 years - against the best players of all time like Wayne Rooney, Thierry Henry, Didier Drogba, David Villa, and Bastian Schweinsteiger (to name a few), it's safe to say the U.S. will be knocking on the door for a World Cup championship real soon.
I wonder if there are ever any internal discussions of bringing these 1/6 clowns like Eric Barber back before the bench for contempt after they almost immediately publicly repudiate the contrition they claim during their sentencing or other court statements. Sure seems contemptuous to me.
I wish. If I were making decisions they would certainly have their sentences re-evaluated on that basis.
And have their tweeting fingers superglued together if they didn't shut up.
A free society allows Twitter.
A sane society might ban it.
I don't think there is a mechanism here to bring him back. But I have seen judges refuse to allow a plea when people equivocate about their guilt when they are changing their plea to guilty. Saying ""you don't think you are guilty fine, we will send it out for triial."
I think I'm much more irritated that judges listen to horseshit statements from these terrorists in the first place. Attacking the national Capitol with the clear intent to prevent the certification of a Presidential election is serious goddamn business.
The fact that many of these assholes are very, very stupid should do nothing to mitigate the actual severity of their crimes.
Let us hope that the latest Astros acquisition doesn't languish with the Sugar Land Space Cowboys, where time holds him green and dying, and he sings in his chains like the sea.
I love that Washington YouTube video - "Six foot twenty, weighs a fucking ton." Surprised I hadn't seen this news about GW, given that I a) also am an alum (MBA 2010), b) live right across the river, and c) count among some of my very best friends other alumni (of both grad and undergrad programs - friendships are literally the only thing that school has ever done for me in any capacity). Maybe they'll change it to the Hippos?
Obligatory Dock Ellis reference:
https://youtu.be/006i_UxLJjM
How is Jose Ramirez only hitting .307? He gets 2 hits every day. Huh!
He "only" hit .261 in May after his .342 BA April.
Of course, being Jose Ramirez, his OBP/SLG in May was .393/.580, so he was still a marvelous hitter. Just had a little blip in the batting average, that's all. (His June BA is .333)
The G-Wings Owen Miller is tied for the major league lead with 7 sac fly this year but I don't know how to look thi6stuff up either.
That "other" Dock Ellis game was immortalized by the Baseball Project in "The Day Dock Went Hunting Heads" (one of their most Fountains of Wayne-esque tunes):
https://youtu.be/wSJ4Yc7Ensg
New BP album coming soon!
Wait really? I thought after their lead singer had a stroke they were done with all that.
Scott McCaughey has been on the mend for a while -- he's even back appearing live with the Young Fresh Fellows. Can't wait to see what BP cooks up this time....
This is the best news I've got all week!