Another disputed play at the plate, two winning streaks were extended, Hal Steinbrenner doesn't get it, the Nats and O's settle a beef, Alito is corrupt, I meet the neighbors and go to a reunion
Yes the entire MAGA movement is about who you can belittle and punish because putting them back in power is an invitation to more of the same. “ _________ is destroying your way of life. Government cannot and should not do anything. Put us in charge of it.” It’s just a recipe for more giveaways to people who don’t need, and for government to (a) punish marginal vulnerable groups, and (b) be an exercise in patronage and and more fearmongering.
Eventually, the MAGA types will be outnumbered by everyone else, but that will take decades. And even then, the whites are not going to give up power easily.
The MAGA base is indeed already outnumbered by everyone else. But they are the GOP base, and thus the rush in Republican controlled States to restrict and make more challegeable actual votes cast.
Interesting how Trump fans openly admit it's about power and nothing else. Also, "the people they can't stand"? What does that mean? Burn down the world because some people in Brooklyn drink oat milk lattes?
Gah. I used to walk by a house that had a Trump sign in the front yard that said something like "Enough of the Bullshit." And every time I walked by that place (a multi-million dollar, massive home on the water in a resort town) I would think, "but most of the bullshit is coming from YOUR side!"
Alcantara might be one of those pitchers who isn't doing well with the pitch clock. I am not how sure a thing that is, but it kind of makes sense to explain his drop-off. Anyway, has there ever been a year when both reigning Cy Young winners were so bad?
I can't imagine wanting to go to a reunion at my old place of work. You know, the place that I was at nearly 30 years and that let me go during the early days of the pandemic and where I made maybe five meaningful friends all that time, and where I was really treated poorly and didn't know it till I started my current job. I liked that job but in retrospect, I realize I should have left a lot sooner.
Something something Mets are terrible something something. My interest has shifted entirely to all the surprise teams this season, and I am now rooting for a Reds-Giants NLCS and a Rangers-Rays ALCS.
I thought that Alcantarra was a pretty fast worker last season but haven’t looked at the numbers.
Reigning CYA coming way down? 2020 winners barely pitched in 21 due to injuries to them (Bieber) or others (Bauer). 1989 had a reliever (Davis) who returned to form an an odd/even year Saberhagen. 1983 winners lead in losses (Hoyt) or were injured (Denny) the next year.
I still have interest in the Mets because, once they've gotten bad enough that they're just playing out the string, the pain of losses is no longer there and I enjoy watching baseball for baseball's sake without any playoff implications.
Unfortunately, with the expanded wild card that status is hard to reach. So, as long as we're quoting Springsteen, you wind up wounded, and not even dead.
PS Ferg will probably get mad at me again, but I’m pretty sure the issue with MASN was the AngelO’s unwillingness to pay anything. That said, given that potential buyer Ted Leonsis is currently stripping the Wizards for parts I’m less optimistic about a Nats sale … though the Nats, if we’re honest, don’t really have good parts anymore.
PPS It’s interesting, Craig, that you feel that way about your mid-thirties self; I was actually thinking recently about my mid/late-twenties’ self and feeling similarly unimpressed. It’s always good when you are happy to be the age you are (and I am) - but yikes, early 90s DMCj was a mess, especially at work. Hope he’s in the way back where he can’t drive - we’ll let him make a WHFS playlist.
Full disclosure: finally getting off what one writer called “the hamster wheel of mediocrity“ makes the Wizards interesting again to me as a fan. Watching them win 38 games a year, miss the postseason but still draft 10th got old fast.
The issue was the O's alleged they'd signed up for a panel of MLB people to determine the Nats' fee, and the panel ended up being biased towards the Nats (and initially the Nats' lawyer had done work for two of the teams represented on the panel). After the O's filed suit, MLB made the Nats change lawyers, the new panel came up with the same number as the old panel, and judges all along the way have basically ruled that this was what the O's signed up for.
Peter Angelo stopped making decisions a few years ago as he was diagnosed with dementia, but his dysfunctional sons and wife had continued the lawsuits until this week. The O's had the $100M they just settled upon sitting in escrow for 3+ years, so they can literally cut the check today if they haven't already.
The Nats and MASN still have to go through this whole song-and-dance about the period between 2017-21, but I've read in several places the two sides will probably settle in that case, too.
Also the possibility that the Angelos ownership group may have additional incentive to tie up hanging loose ends prior to dealing with their own succession issues.
Interesting that the dollar amount is more or less what the Nats felt they were entitled to all along. What has changed (in addition to the cord cutting) is the incapacity of Papa Angelos and the passing of Ted Lerner: two of the most reflexively litigious SOBs in the Mid-Atlantic.
Probably didn't help that Lerner was a landlord and Angelos (for all his faults as an owner) was a pretty progressive lawyer almost certainly on the side of tenants.
You're right -- Angelos has *tons* of faults as an owner, and in no way can you consider his family's stewardship of the team as a success (at least, so far). They've had--what?--like eight winning seasons over 30-ish years? Yeah, that's bad.
But Peter's a complicated guy. He has done a lot for the city of Baltimore, and definitely was pretty progressive-minded in his legal dealings. He had a deserved reputation for being tough and fierce, but in a good way, and he was loyal to the people around him -- often to a fault (Syd Thrift or Chris Davis memories, anyone?)
I largely agree, except for this part: "..the dollar amount is more or less what the Nats felt they were entitled to all along."
The Nats were originally seeking something closer to $120+ per year in rights fees. What they wound up getting was something closer to $60MM per year. That delta most likely would have bankrupted the network, especially since such a calculation would have resulted in the Orioles ALSO being owed higher rights fees.
People forget that the Orioles get payments from MASN too. The O's want the max dollars they can get so it would actually benefit the Orioles for the Nats to get more money in rights fees. The argument from Peter all along is that MLB and the Nats were wrong in their calculations (and much of the legal dispute before the arbitration panels revolved around the methodology for determining the rights fees) and that paying what they were asking would mean the end of MASN.
I think that's exactly what MLB wanted because that gives them leverage to get out of that original deal. But regardless, Peter was right that what was being asked was far too high, and also the network wouldn't have the cash flow to pay both teams at that rate. Turns out, he was most likely correct on both parts.
It's no biggie, plus that info is not easy to find at this point because of all the digging you have to do back to 2011. I'm also working off of memory of having dug through all this before. I think the actual number was closer to something like $134MM per year? I may be way off though because again, working from memory, and I drink a lot of wine, so there's that. :D But yeah, your points were spot-on.
D, I wasn't ever mad at *you*! Nothing but hearts, brother.
The problem with the MASN issue is that everyone involved is a putz. You're not wrong about the Angelos clan being penny-pinchers. (But even that narrative doesn't work all the time as it wasn't all that long ago they were rolling with a $170MM+ payroll. Not that they spent wisely, but that's another topic altogether.)
I have maintained, since the day that deal was announced, that MLB--and by extension, whatever the team was going to be called in DC--would do everything they can to get out of that deal eventually. That deal was simply a tool to appease Peter Angelos, who, to his credit, does appear to have been a fierce and smart negotiator. Now that Peter is largely out of the picture and the regional model has serious flaws--and remember, the O's majority ownership was supposed to be the mechanism to monetarily make the O's whole for losing a large portion of viewership--it appears the Orioles will not receive much in the way of compensation for a team moving 30 miles away. And it hasn't helped that MLB has had its thumb on the scales for much of this mess.
The weird part is that most other fans seem to line up against the Orioles in the matter, even though it has been shown, definitively, that MLB did in fact have it's thumb on the scales.
How would Phillies fans feel about a team dropped into Wilmington, DE and then MLB doing what it can to not honor the agreement? Or Detroit fans about a team dropped into Toledo? Or Red Sox fans if a team was put in Providence, RI? These, of course aren't perfect analogies, but close enough to paint a picture.
And I for one think that DC *should* have a team. But it shouldn't also hurt the Orioles. Near as anyone can tell, MASN is slowly collapsing as a result of the current environment with cable-cutting, etc, and there hasn't been any kind of economic benefit to either the O's or the Nats. I think that's bad for both teams.
Except it couldn't have hurt the Orioles that the Nats came to DC because, according to Peter, "There's no real baseball fans in Washington."
I grew up an Orioles fan in DC. In the mid-90s I swore I would never attend another game in Baltimore until Angelos died or sold the team. And I have kept my word.
I don't recall him saying that, but I'm not an avid reader of Angelos either. My memories of that era were that Peter said something like 30% of the fan base came from DC and the Maryland suburbs of DC. That seems to suggest he knew there were a lot of fans down that way. Having worked in DC and in the 'burbs for several years, I met many many O's fans who lived there, and then converted over to Nats fans. Of course, the O's were terrible at that time so the draw of a new team and leaving behind a team that was in the midst of a 14-year long streak of losing baseball was certainly compelling.
The Angelos territory argument was always specious:
"The St. Louis Browns don’t move to Baltimore in 1954 if the Senators owners — the Griffith family — stand in the way. As it was, the Griffiths worked out their own version of a MASN deal to allow the Orioles to set up shop in what was considered Washington’s market. New Orioles owner Jerry Hoffberger agreed to buy advertising for his National Brewery on Senators broadcasts, and make a $300,000 payment for encroaching on Washington’s market."
That's totally true. Though it's worth noting that the impact in 2004 isn't the same as what it was/would have been in 1954, so I'm not sure that a direct comparison can be drawn. It's just a different world financially, technologically, from a media/delivery perspective, etc. Heck, TV was still new back then, and the internet was relatively young in 2004.
Re: the Nats potential sale. There's always a tax angle. Once Ted Lerner died, his shares are part of his taxable estate. If there's an estate tax, it may take upwards of 5 years with of interaction with the IRS before Mark has that all-important "closing letter" in his hand. If there's no tax due on the shares (i.e., they pass to spouse or charity) then that letter could be obtained as soon as two years after date of death. With extremely rare exceptions, no one sells a major estate asset until that closing letter is in hand, because a valuation dispute can have some ugly consequences. So yeah, that MASN settlement is great, but it's by no means the final impediment to a sale (and that assumes Mark still wants to sell). Speaking from experience with team owners here--but not with the Lerners, of course, or I wouldn't be speaking up!
Not exactly the same, but that brings to mind George Steinbrenner. His death was during a brief pause in federal estate taxes, saving Hank and Hal nine figures.
You say that, but over the decades of estate tax practice I'd seen a handful of people who seemed to will themselves to live into the next year to save taxes for their family.
I believe it; my grandfather died just a couple weeks short of his 100th birthday, and was convinced that he would somehow beat the tax man if he made it :-)
The Steinbrenners banked where I worked in Tampa. Mrs. would come through the drive-thru weekly to get her spending money. I got to be friendly with her over those brief conversations. Because of those conversations when something needed to be done in the bank she would come see me, or rather send her people to see me. One day, two guys in Yankee's gear should up to see me in order to change $250,000 of moldy 100's bills that were stored in a safe at the Steinbrenners Ocala horse farm. They had stored the money up there for the 2k scare, forgot about it. The only reason they found it was because of a water leak where the safe was located, hence the moldy money. Luckily, I convinced them to deposit it, once I explained no bank has $250,000 just to exchange out bills. The payoff for being her bank do-boy was helping her clean out their safe deposit boxes after the old man died. The first box was full of nickels. She told me her father bought all the nickles minted in Denver the year of her marriage as a wedding gift. In one of the other boxes were some old cotton jersey's, some baseballs and other yankee related memorbilia. Although just a bystander of the accounting of items, one of the best days of banking I ever had.
Oooh, a Steinbrenner story I hadn't thought about in years! My ex lived in St Pete after we split up. In one of our few friendly conversations, he told me about taking his new girlfriend's kid trick or treating. Of course they went to the big houses. He was grousing that the kid got some cheesy small candy bar from the Steinbrenner house. I pointed out that the housekeeper who had been distributing the candy probably was the one who bought it. So yeah.
My maternal grandmother was a refugee from Nazi Germany arriving in the US with little more than the clothes on her back. Ever after, she kept ‘run away’ money’ at home. Not a quarter of a million dollars but a sizable sum. In her last few years, she moved in with my mother and we spent a while cleaning out her townhouse. There were envelopes with hundreds and shoe boxes of small bills in several different places.
Thanks for the heads up about “The League” that might be a field trip in the coming weeks.
I’m convinced that 80%-90% of the people involved in sports ownership/mgmt hate sports. Whether this is their way of sticking it to the jocks or what 🤷🏼♀️ The Steinbrenner thing makes me a little sad bc George IV had been involved with a one-car IndyCar team and had to get out/sell to be part of the family biz. I think he was on to something with Colton Herta…
There is certainly debate among Tigers fans if Chris Ilitch actually likes baseball or not. Whatever you want to say about Mike Ilitch, he loved the Tigers and really wanted that World Series ring. At least in his later years after the Red Wings got their Cups.
What is there to gain in professional sports ownership? Everything. Other industries have competition, and there are consequences for failure. Sports owners? There's nothing you can do that will lead to you losing money. It's the absolute perfect gig for wealthy failsons. Dan Snyder spent a quarter century turning one of the NFL's proudest franchises into a literal laughing stock, then sold it for six times what he paid for it. Try doing that in any other industry.
I think Jeff Wilpon really liked baseball. He just didn't like spending money (especially after his family was Madoffed). I am sure that Jim Dolan loves the Knicks, and that might actually be worse than if he didn't care, since the Rangers have for the most part done better under his apathetic ownership than the Knicks have under his half-assed over-management. And I cannot tell for the life of whether John Mara likes football or just does what he does out of a sense of obligation to his late father's legacy.
I've thought about this a bit, and decided that I do think Mark Lerner likes baseball. Never talked to him, but I've seen him at Spring Training over the years and he seemed to be really interested in the drills. If he was just down there to get out of the winter weather in DC, he didn't need to be on the field watching Gio try to get a ball into a bucket.
The Cincy Reds have taken to calling themselves “America’s Team”. Now it makes more sense because that’s the exact sort of thing a Commie pinko infiltration advance unit would call themselves to lure in and pacify the general public before the impending Red Dawn invasion.
So if they want to bitch and complain and try to get something done about inflation perhaps they should attack the companies who will NEVER bring their prices down nor will they NEVER increase the size of the packages that shrunk along with the rising prices. If not they can GFT.
Craig, I’m glad your reunion was a good thing. And I’m glad you found a place where you’re happy and what you’re doing. I have days, like yesterday, when I’m surrounded by children and tie-dye and chaos, and I know I figured out where I belong.
It would be worth it for you to pull up the video of Bo Naylor’s first hit. I actually rewound it and shared it with my grandson. (Yeah, he’s 8.) Bo makes contact and makes it to first, Sandy Alamar is showing him all the love, and Josh Naylor is in the dugout losing his mind. I swear you could see every one of that man’s teeth.
In the post game interview, Bo got the moment over his brother because today is Josh’s birthday and bow told the interviewer that Josh was turning 27. (Only 26.) I asked Brayden if he had ever had a moment when he could cheer on his sister quite like that. “Not yet.“
In addition to the Sabol play at home in the Giants game, there was a horrible call at first in the Twins game. Yes, first base, but it was in the 10th inning. I don't know why everyone thinks Supreme Court justices and umpires are all corrupt and should be in prison.
That entire Nats - Cards game yesterday was played in the rain. The rain, which had paused for hours, started up 1 minute before first pitch and did not stop. It was windy. It was cold. It was the coldest game of the year I've been to, much colder than March-April. Very odd for the first day of summer. Very difficult for the players.
I was chatting with the person next to me and we both noticed that when Hunter Harvey came in, he relied more heavily on breaking pitches than usual and did not throw that many of his 4 seam fastballs. It stood out from his normal pitch mix. We decided it must be because it was way too dangerous to be throwing 100 mph with the ball as wet as it was. Just to make sure that impression was correct, I looked at Brooks. It was not only the lowest percentage of 4 seamers he's thrown in an outing this season, but the lowest percentage in his entire career. He also threw more splitters than 4 seamers. (4 vs. 3; 4 sliders; 2 curves)
That was wild. I've been to about 20 games so far this season and they have not won many of them. I'm glad I toughed it out to see them actually win again. I'm dressing even warmer today (I had 3 layers on!) but the rain is not supposed to be as bad. Today is the makeup of a smoked out game against AZ.
I was really tempted to drop a Tungsten Arm O'Doyle joke due to Ohtani's pitching line but decided it wasn't worth it. The bit is pretty played out by now. Of course that has never stopped me from still doing a bit. If we get some 4-for-4 2HR game from one of them in which they lose soon I may do it again, but it will be with tongue in cheek in the way all my hacky old jokes are.
“ In closing: please, make it stop. Make all of it stop. I’m so tired of living in the dumbest timeline imaginable.”
This is why I have to disagree with the “things really are better now”. Yes, standards of living have increased generally ( although the US manages to have the world’s highest infant mortality rate and a maternal death rate 3x that in most countries - of course the lives of embryos are more important than actual humans - but I digress). But, people are constantly stressed - we work longer hours and feel like we get less done, our political systems are in shambles, the race to the bottom by media outlets is accelerating, and the existential threat of fucking up our climate irrevocably is becoming reality. So, no, things are really worse now.
(I haven’t had time to read the article Craig mentioned, but will soon) - maybe a coffe cup purchase and I can really get it all off my chest 🥸
I don't want to wade back into that fully blown conversation -- and I do agree with you on all that you cite -- but it is useful to remember that a whole lot of those things are the sorts of things we only have the "luxury" of being worried about now because most of us are not, like, literally going hungry or tending to family members dying of tuberculosis. Our great grandparents also lived in a world in which corrupt media barons and plutocrats dictated the direction of society and their environment was killing them as well (no climate change, but the air was so filled with black, acrid smoke that it literally cut years off their lives). That doesn't mean that things are good now. It's just to say that it's easy to look back at the bad things of the past and discount how bad they were because we "survived" them and moved on. When, actually, a hell of a lot of people didn't.
I feel like people of the past had a blissful ignorance where a miserable way of life was all they could imagine…..whereas now we can envision things being so much better than they are, but we just can’t get everyone on board to help make it happen.
I don't discount any of those bad things of the distant past - but I'm not really talking about our great-grandparents, I'm talking about my parents' (your grandparents') generation and the intervening years between then and now. We had a Republican President who created the EPA! We thought things were bad with Bush Senoir and then got Bush Junior - things couldn't be worse than that could they? Oops - yes they could get a lot worse ...
As I used to tell my middle school history students - time travel to the past would suck for women or minorities (and that definition would change depending on the destination).
This is pretty much the question I pose to people who say there is no racism in America. If you are black and could travel back in time to the United States , how far back do you safely go?
I think the difference (or perceived difference) between the past (which was obviously worse for a whole lot of people) and now (which feels worse for the people living in it) is that when you look at the past, everything seemed much less settled.
We've had 30 years of more or less geopolitical stasis (minus the occasional US or Russian imperial adventure) and any kind of progressive Keynesianism has been fully and (this is important) globally supplanted by neoliberal austerity and privatization.
So we in the West get a steady supply of treats, while the environment and our health slowly degrade and the quality of everything goes down. The people in the global South don't even get that, they just get all of our pain exported onto them.
In the past, it felt like there was a possibility for change, because basically everyone had lived through some sort of mass social upheaval. Now, we're locked in for the ride and everything's going to keep getting worse.
I was definitely making Know-Nothing references to some of the, ahem, "Catholics" who were filling their diapers over the Dodgers recently. Don't know if any of them had a clue what I was talking about; we already know most of that ilk are clueless about basic history.
This is correct. I can empathize with the "dumbest" timeline take, but things could be exponentially worse, and it doesn't take that much imagination to see how either.
Oh man, Mrs. Cosmo LOVES to try to figure out what people's deal is. We had a new family move in across the street earlier this year. A few days after there was a sold sign in the yard she was checking the county tax records daily so she could get their names and try to figure out what they paid. In Texas, the sale price of a house is not public but you can see the mortgage amount on the deed and make an estimated guess on sale price. Once she has the names, it's off to linkedin, facebook, etc to see what she can find.
The house next door to me is on the market for the third time in the almost 20 years we've lived here. Looking forward to "researching" the new neighbors.
Also, interested in what it goes for. It's a virtual copy of our home except for a few details and we plan on moving on in the next 2-5 years.
Back in the late '90s-early oughts we would routinely drop a grand or so in the SF SOMA costco. Not sure if that says more about me, bay area prices, or inflation.
I've spent almost $2000 at Costco this month. A couple of regular visits ($200-300 depending on how much wine I buy). A new mattress and a portable AC unit. Oh and some shelving for the garage and a couple of fun Lego sets.
It's probably more than $2000 honestly. At least the cash back check next year will be sizeable...
Yes the entire MAGA movement is about who you can belittle and punish because putting them back in power is an invitation to more of the same. “ _________ is destroying your way of life. Government cannot and should not do anything. Put us in charge of it.” It’s just a recipe for more giveaways to people who don’t need, and for government to (a) punish marginal vulnerable groups, and (b) be an exercise in patronage and and more fearmongering.
Eventually, the MAGA types will be outnumbered by everyone else, but that will take decades. And even then, the whites are not going to give up power easily.
The MAGA base is indeed already outnumbered by everyone else. But they are the GOP base, and thus the rush in Republican controlled States to restrict and make more challegeable actual votes cast.
Same. If you don't start with a foundation of a shared reality, how can you even talk to anyone?
And the entire mainstream GOP is happy to go along with it.
Speaking of Trump, I was in Latrobe, PA last weekend and came across this.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/WxzSmBEarfwyEjop9
https://photos.app.goo.gl/zkFat8VdShkmDPWM8
Is that house made of Legos?
I knew as soon as I hit send that I'd used the wrong combination of letters to refer to the building materials for that house.
Latrobe or latrine?
Lobotomy
The owner of that house would the first to say the libs are brainwashed and he (it's for sure a he) thinks for himself.
Actually, it's a woman. https://globalnews.ca/news/6301879/pennsylvania-trump-house-owner/
I clicked on that link to read the article, and just below the headline was a video of a tapeworm, and just below that was the text:
"4 signs that parasites are living in your body"
I refuse to believe this is just a coincidence.
Interesting how Trump fans openly admit it's about power and nothing else. Also, "the people they can't stand"? What does that mean? Burn down the world because some people in Brooklyn drink oat milk lattes?
Seems obvious the word was originally "understand" but, in the spirit of the McIntosh Jr. kid, someone changed it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/VintageApple/comments/bq4ucw/mcintosh_jr_vintage_apple_parody/
Gah. I used to walk by a house that had a Trump sign in the front yard that said something like "Enough of the Bullshit." And every time I walked by that place (a multi-million dollar, massive home on the water in a resort town) I would think, "but most of the bullshit is coming from YOUR side!"
Alcantara might be one of those pitchers who isn't doing well with the pitch clock. I am not how sure a thing that is, but it kind of makes sense to explain his drop-off. Anyway, has there ever been a year when both reigning Cy Young winners were so bad?
I can't imagine wanting to go to a reunion at my old place of work. You know, the place that I was at nearly 30 years and that let me go during the early days of the pandemic and where I made maybe five meaningful friends all that time, and where I was really treated poorly and didn't know it till I started my current job. I liked that job but in retrospect, I realize I should have left a lot sooner.
Something something Mets are terrible something something. My interest has shifted entirely to all the surprise teams this season, and I am now rooting for a Reds-Giants NLCS and a Rangers-Rays ALCS.
I thought that Alcantarra was a pretty fast worker last season but haven’t looked at the numbers.
Reigning CYA coming way down? 2020 winners barely pitched in 21 due to injuries to them (Bieber) or others (Bauer). 1989 had a reliever (Davis) who returned to form an an odd/even year Saberhagen. 1983 winners lead in losses (Hoyt) or were injured (Denny) the next year.
I still have interest in the Mets because, once they've gotten bad enough that they're just playing out the string, the pain of losses is no longer there and I enjoy watching baseball for baseball's sake without any playoff implications.
Unfortunately, with the expanded wild card that status is hard to reach. So, as long as we're quoting Springsteen, you wind up wounded, and not even dead.
Nats win. Let the new losing streak commence.
PS Ferg will probably get mad at me again, but I’m pretty sure the issue with MASN was the AngelO’s unwillingness to pay anything. That said, given that potential buyer Ted Leonsis is currently stripping the Wizards for parts I’m less optimistic about a Nats sale … though the Nats, if we’re honest, don’t really have good parts anymore.
PPS It’s interesting, Craig, that you feel that way about your mid-thirties self; I was actually thinking recently about my mid/late-twenties’ self and feeling similarly unimpressed. It’s always good when you are happy to be the age you are (and I am) - but yikes, early 90s DMCj was a mess, especially at work. Hope he’s in the way back where he can’t drive - we’ll let him make a WHFS playlist.
Not just stripping the Wiz for parts, but for no first round draft picks. That is madness (by the definition of madness in the NBA).
Given the Wiz’ record with first-rounders, I’m calling it self-care.
Full disclosure: finally getting off what one writer called “the hamster wheel of mediocrity“ makes the Wizards interesting again to me as a fan. Watching them win 38 games a year, miss the postseason but still draft 10th got old fast.
I waited a long time for the Knicks to even be on that hamster wheel. But I am watching the Isles do that now instead.
I’ll watch en again in 5 years when they sniff the playoffs. Not looking forward to Johnny Davis being the “star” on this time-biding roster.
Tyus Jones could be pretty good. But he's also a free agent after next season.
Surely there’s another trade to be swung to move Jones along. Probably mid-season.
Get Mark the Spacey Alien to DJ the playlist!
Though I feel like maybe he's dead? I'm not sure.
I miss mid-90s WHFS and HFStival
You can still hear former morning news guy Wes Johnson at the Capital One Centre, where he's the PA announcer for Capitals (and Wizards?) games.
That was all fun and games until those dudes got struck by lightning that year.
At least I think that was the HFStival. May have been the Tibetan Freedom Concert. It was definitely at RFK.
Low-key irritating part of our current political moment in a see RFK in a stadium context and cringe.
Lightning also struck someone at the last RFK Grateful Dead concert.
The issue was the O's alleged they'd signed up for a panel of MLB people to determine the Nats' fee, and the panel ended up being biased towards the Nats (and initially the Nats' lawyer had done work for two of the teams represented on the panel). After the O's filed suit, MLB made the Nats change lawyers, the new panel came up with the same number as the old panel, and judges all along the way have basically ruled that this was what the O's signed up for.
Peter Angelo stopped making decisions a few years ago as he was diagnosed with dementia, but his dysfunctional sons and wife had continued the lawsuits until this week. The O's had the $100M they just settled upon sitting in escrow for 3+ years, so they can literally cut the check today if they haven't already.
The Nats and MASN still have to go through this whole song-and-dance about the period between 2017-21, but I've read in several places the two sides will probably settle in that case, too.
Also the possibility that the Angelos ownership group may have additional incentive to tie up hanging loose ends prior to dealing with their own succession issues.
Hopefully, that settlement happens quickly.
Interesting that the dollar amount is more or less what the Nats felt they were entitled to all along. What has changed (in addition to the cord cutting) is the incapacity of Papa Angelos and the passing of Ted Lerner: two of the most reflexively litigious SOBs in the Mid-Atlantic.
Probably didn't help that Lerner was a landlord and Angelos (for all his faults as an owner) was a pretty progressive lawyer almost certainly on the side of tenants.
You're right -- Angelos has *tons* of faults as an owner, and in no way can you consider his family's stewardship of the team as a success (at least, so far). They've had--what?--like eight winning seasons over 30-ish years? Yeah, that's bad.
But Peter's a complicated guy. He has done a lot for the city of Baltimore, and definitely was pretty progressive-minded in his legal dealings. He had a deserved reputation for being tough and fierce, but in a good way, and he was loyal to the people around him -- often to a fault (Syd Thrift or Chris Davis memories, anyone?)
I largely agree, except for this part: "..the dollar amount is more or less what the Nats felt they were entitled to all along."
The Nats were originally seeking something closer to $120+ per year in rights fees. What they wound up getting was something closer to $60MM per year. That delta most likely would have bankrupted the network, especially since such a calculation would have resulted in the Orioles ALSO being owed higher rights fees.
People forget that the Orioles get payments from MASN too. The O's want the max dollars they can get so it would actually benefit the Orioles for the Nats to get more money in rights fees. The argument from Peter all along is that MLB and the Nats were wrong in their calculations (and much of the legal dispute before the arbitration panels revolved around the methodology for determining the rights fees) and that paying what they were asking would mean the end of MASN.
I think that's exactly what MLB wanted because that gives them leverage to get out of that original deal. But regardless, Peter was right that what was being asked was far too high, and also the network wouldn't have the cash flow to pay both teams at that rate. Turns out, he was most likely correct on both parts.
Serves me right for not looking up the $ before clicking "post."
It's no biggie, plus that info is not easy to find at this point because of all the digging you have to do back to 2011. I'm also working off of memory of having dug through all this before. I think the actual number was closer to something like $134MM per year? I may be way off though because again, working from memory, and I drink a lot of wine, so there's that. :D But yeah, your points were spot-on.
D, I wasn't ever mad at *you*! Nothing but hearts, brother.
The problem with the MASN issue is that everyone involved is a putz. You're not wrong about the Angelos clan being penny-pinchers. (But even that narrative doesn't work all the time as it wasn't all that long ago they were rolling with a $170MM+ payroll. Not that they spent wisely, but that's another topic altogether.)
I have maintained, since the day that deal was announced, that MLB--and by extension, whatever the team was going to be called in DC--would do everything they can to get out of that deal eventually. That deal was simply a tool to appease Peter Angelos, who, to his credit, does appear to have been a fierce and smart negotiator. Now that Peter is largely out of the picture and the regional model has serious flaws--and remember, the O's majority ownership was supposed to be the mechanism to monetarily make the O's whole for losing a large portion of viewership--it appears the Orioles will not receive much in the way of compensation for a team moving 30 miles away. And it hasn't helped that MLB has had its thumb on the scales for much of this mess.
The weird part is that most other fans seem to line up against the Orioles in the matter, even though it has been shown, definitively, that MLB did in fact have it's thumb on the scales.
How would Phillies fans feel about a team dropped into Wilmington, DE and then MLB doing what it can to not honor the agreement? Or Detroit fans about a team dropped into Toledo? Or Red Sox fans if a team was put in Providence, RI? These, of course aren't perfect analogies, but close enough to paint a picture.
And I for one think that DC *should* have a team. But it shouldn't also hurt the Orioles. Near as anyone can tell, MASN is slowly collapsing as a result of the current environment with cable-cutting, etc, and there hasn't been any kind of economic benefit to either the O's or the Nats. I think that's bad for both teams.
Except it couldn't have hurt the Orioles that the Nats came to DC because, according to Peter, "There's no real baseball fans in Washington."
I grew up an Orioles fan in DC. In the mid-90s I swore I would never attend another game in Baltimore until Angelos died or sold the team. And I have kept my word.
I don't recall him saying that, but I'm not an avid reader of Angelos either. My memories of that era were that Peter said something like 30% of the fan base came from DC and the Maryland suburbs of DC. That seems to suggest he knew there were a lot of fans down that way. Having worked in DC and in the 'burbs for several years, I met many many O's fans who lived there, and then converted over to Nats fans. Of course, the O's were terrible at that time so the draw of a new team and leaving behind a team that was in the midst of a 14-year long streak of losing baseball was certainly compelling.
The Angelos territory argument was always specious:
"The St. Louis Browns don’t move to Baltimore in 1954 if the Senators owners — the Griffith family — stand in the way. As it was, the Griffiths worked out their own version of a MASN deal to allow the Orioles to set up shop in what was considered Washington’s market. New Orioles owner Jerry Hoffberger agreed to buy advertising for his National Brewery on Senators broadcasts, and make a $300,000 payment for encroaching on Washington’s market."
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jul/10/suck-buck-showalter-could-use-history-lesson/
That's totally true. Though it's worth noting that the impact in 2004 isn't the same as what it was/would have been in 1954, so I'm not sure that a direct comparison can be drawn. It's just a different world financially, technologically, from a media/delivery perspective, etc. Heck, TV was still new back then, and the internet was relatively young in 2004.
+1 Radiohead
Re: the Nats potential sale. There's always a tax angle. Once Ted Lerner died, his shares are part of his taxable estate. If there's an estate tax, it may take upwards of 5 years with of interaction with the IRS before Mark has that all-important "closing letter" in his hand. If there's no tax due on the shares (i.e., they pass to spouse or charity) then that letter could be obtained as soon as two years after date of death. With extremely rare exceptions, no one sells a major estate asset until that closing letter is in hand, because a valuation dispute can have some ugly consequences. So yeah, that MASN settlement is great, but it's by no means the final impediment to a sale (and that assumes Mark still wants to sell). Speaking from experience with team owners here--but not with the Lerners, of course, or I wouldn't be speaking up!
Not exactly the same, but that brings to mind George Steinbrenner. His death was during a brief pause in federal estate taxes, saving Hank and Hal nine figures.
Oh, yeah! The baseball gods set that one up for sure! We in the estate planning field laughed about his timing!
Or was it .... MURDER?!
You say that, but over the decades of estate tax practice I'd seen a handful of people who seemed to will themselves to live into the next year to save taxes for their family.
I believe it; my grandfather died just a couple weeks short of his 100th birthday, and was convinced that he would somehow beat the tax man if he made it :-)
The Steinbrenners banked where I worked in Tampa. Mrs. would come through the drive-thru weekly to get her spending money. I got to be friendly with her over those brief conversations. Because of those conversations when something needed to be done in the bank she would come see me, or rather send her people to see me. One day, two guys in Yankee's gear should up to see me in order to change $250,000 of moldy 100's bills that were stored in a safe at the Steinbrenners Ocala horse farm. They had stored the money up there for the 2k scare, forgot about it. The only reason they found it was because of a water leak where the safe was located, hence the moldy money. Luckily, I convinced them to deposit it, once I explained no bank has $250,000 just to exchange out bills. The payoff for being her bank do-boy was helping her clean out their safe deposit boxes after the old man died. The first box was full of nickels. She told me her father bought all the nickles minted in Denver the year of her marriage as a wedding gift. In one of the other boxes were some old cotton jersey's, some baseballs and other yankee related memorbilia. Although just a bystander of the accounting of items, one of the best days of banking I ever had.
Did the bank do-boy look like Smithers?
No. Horatio Sans was who customers said I reminded them of. When I worked In Atlanta mid 90's, I got Maynard Jackson quite a bit.
"She told me her father bought all the nickles minted in Denver the year of her marriage as a wedding gift."
Rich people really do live in a different reality.
I asked her if I could buy one of the nickels for a $1 but she didn't find it amusing.
Oooh, a Steinbrenner story I hadn't thought about in years! My ex lived in St Pete after we split up. In one of our few friendly conversations, he told me about taking his new girlfriend's kid trick or treating. Of course they went to the big houses. He was grousing that the kid got some cheesy small candy bar from the Steinbrenner house. I pointed out that the housekeeper who had been distributing the candy probably was the one who bought it. So yeah.
My maternal grandmother was a refugee from Nazi Germany arriving in the US with little more than the clothes on her back. Ever after, she kept ‘run away’ money’ at home. Not a quarter of a million dollars but a sizable sum. In her last few years, she moved in with my mother and we spent a while cleaning out her townhouse. There were envelopes with hundreds and shoe boxes of small bills in several different places.
Thanks for the heads up about “The League” that might be a field trip in the coming weeks.
I’m convinced that 80%-90% of the people involved in sports ownership/mgmt hate sports. Whether this is their way of sticking it to the jocks or what 🤷🏼♀️ The Steinbrenner thing makes me a little sad bc George IV had been involved with a one-car IndyCar team and had to get out/sell to be part of the family biz. I think he was on to something with Colton Herta…
There is certainly debate among Tigers fans if Chris Ilitch actually likes baseball or not. Whatever you want to say about Mike Ilitch, he loved the Tigers and really wanted that World Series ring. At least in his later years after the Red Wings got their Cups.
I get it: not every kid wants to inherit the family business. But what is there to gain by sucking at your job?
What is there to gain in professional sports ownership? Everything. Other industries have competition, and there are consequences for failure. Sports owners? There's nothing you can do that will lead to you losing money. It's the absolute perfect gig for wealthy failsons. Dan Snyder spent a quarter century turning one of the NFL's proudest franchises into a literal laughing stock, then sold it for six times what he paid for it. Try doing that in any other industry.
I think Jeff Wilpon really liked baseball. He just didn't like spending money (especially after his family was Madoffed). I am sure that Jim Dolan loves the Knicks, and that might actually be worse than if he didn't care, since the Rangers have for the most part done better under his apathetic ownership than the Knicks have under his half-assed over-management. And I cannot tell for the life of whether John Mara likes football or just does what he does out of a sense of obligation to his late father's legacy.
I've thought about this a bit, and decided that I do think Mark Lerner likes baseball. Never talked to him, but I've seen him at Spring Training over the years and he seemed to be really interested in the drills. If he was just down there to get out of the winter weather in DC, he didn't need to be on the field watching Gio try to get a ball into a bucket.
The Cincy Reds have taken to calling themselves “America’s Team”. Now it makes more sense because that’s the exact sort of thing a Commie pinko infiltration advance unit would call themselves to lure in and pacify the general public before the impending Red Dawn invasion.
Coming soon, a hearing chaired by James Comer or Jim Jordan.
So if they want to bitch and complain and try to get something done about inflation perhaps they should attack the companies who will NEVER bring their prices down nor will they NEVER increase the size of the packages that shrunk along with the rising prices. If not they can GFT.
I failed miserably on GFT. I googled it and there was what seemed like a hundred different options and none of them fit.
Lol ! I make these up as I go along.
They can Go F Themselves (GFT)
Ha!
Craig, I’m glad your reunion was a good thing. And I’m glad you found a place where you’re happy and what you’re doing. I have days, like yesterday, when I’m surrounded by children and tie-dye and chaos, and I know I figured out where I belong.
It would be worth it for you to pull up the video of Bo Naylor’s first hit. I actually rewound it and shared it with my grandson. (Yeah, he’s 8.) Bo makes contact and makes it to first, Sandy Alamar is showing him all the love, and Josh Naylor is in the dugout losing his mind. I swear you could see every one of that man’s teeth.
In the post game interview, Bo got the moment over his brother because today is Josh’s birthday and bow told the interviewer that Josh was turning 27. (Only 26.) I asked Brayden if he had ever had a moment when he could cheer on his sister quite like that. “Not yet.“
I posted about Josh before I saw your comment, what a fun video clip that was! So great.
In addition to the Sabol play at home in the Giants game, there was a horrible call at first in the Twins game. Yes, first base, but it was in the 10th inning. I don't know why everyone thinks Supreme Court justices and umpires are all corrupt and should be in prison.
The Twins may never ever ever ever Ever EVER complain about a bad call at first base.
dlf - if I had your home address I'd Fedex you a six pack of this:
https://surlybrewing.com/beer/ron-gant-was-out/
Please don't give me your home address.
1000 Hazel Street. Right across from what used to be the high school football field.
Glad you enjoyed your return to legal Jurassic Park, Craigster. Life found a way.
And when she's raised hell, you'll know it.
Ah well. Some mornings I just feel like taking the bait, you know?
That entire Nats - Cards game yesterday was played in the rain. The rain, which had paused for hours, started up 1 minute before first pitch and did not stop. It was windy. It was cold. It was the coldest game of the year I've been to, much colder than March-April. Very odd for the first day of summer. Very difficult for the players.
I was chatting with the person next to me and we both noticed that when Hunter Harvey came in, he relied more heavily on breaking pitches than usual and did not throw that many of his 4 seam fastballs. It stood out from his normal pitch mix. We decided it must be because it was way too dangerous to be throwing 100 mph with the ball as wet as it was. Just to make sure that impression was correct, I looked at Brooks. It was not only the lowest percentage of 4 seamers he's thrown in an outing this season, but the lowest percentage in his entire career. He also threw more splitters than 4 seamers. (4 vs. 3; 4 sliders; 2 curves)
That was wild. I've been to about 20 games so far this season and they have not won many of them. I'm glad I toughed it out to see them actually win again. I'm dressing even warmer today (I had 3 layers on!) but the rain is not supposed to be as bad. Today is the makeup of a smoked out game against AZ.
Can't decide if I should be impressed or horrified at your dedication. Going to say yes ;)
Lot fewer Tungsten Arm O’Doyle jokes when Trout and Ohtani combine to go 0-14 while getting shut out two nights in a row.
I was really tempted to drop a Tungsten Arm O'Doyle joke due to Ohtani's pitching line but decided it wasn't worth it. The bit is pretty played out by now. Of course that has never stopped me from still doing a bit. If we get some 4-for-4 2HR game from one of them in which they lose soon I may do it again, but it will be with tongue in cheek in the way all my hacky old jokes are.
America begs for Tungsten Arm O’Doyle historical fiction.
“ In closing: please, make it stop. Make all of it stop. I’m so tired of living in the dumbest timeline imaginable.”
This is why I have to disagree with the “things really are better now”. Yes, standards of living have increased generally ( although the US manages to have the world’s highest infant mortality rate and a maternal death rate 3x that in most countries - of course the lives of embryos are more important than actual humans - but I digress). But, people are constantly stressed - we work longer hours and feel like we get less done, our political systems are in shambles, the race to the bottom by media outlets is accelerating, and the existential threat of fucking up our climate irrevocably is becoming reality. So, no, things are really worse now.
(I haven’t had time to read the article Craig mentioned, but will soon) - maybe a coffe cup purchase and I can really get it all off my chest 🥸
I don't want to wade back into that fully blown conversation -- and I do agree with you on all that you cite -- but it is useful to remember that a whole lot of those things are the sorts of things we only have the "luxury" of being worried about now because most of us are not, like, literally going hungry or tending to family members dying of tuberculosis. Our great grandparents also lived in a world in which corrupt media barons and plutocrats dictated the direction of society and their environment was killing them as well (no climate change, but the air was so filled with black, acrid smoke that it literally cut years off their lives). That doesn't mean that things are good now. It's just to say that it's easy to look back at the bad things of the past and discount how bad they were because we "survived" them and moved on. When, actually, a hell of a lot of people didn't.
I feel like people of the past had a blissful ignorance where a miserable way of life was all they could imagine…..whereas now we can envision things being so much better than they are, but we just can’t get everyone on board to help make it happen.
I don't discount any of those bad things of the distant past - but I'm not really talking about our great-grandparents, I'm talking about my parents' (your grandparents') generation and the intervening years between then and now. We had a Republican President who created the EPA! We thought things were bad with Bush Senoir and then got Bush Junior - things couldn't be worse than that could they? Oops - yes they could get a lot worse ...
As I used to tell my middle school history students - time travel to the past would suck for women or minorities (and that definition would change depending on the destination).
This is pretty much the question I pose to people who say there is no racism in America. If you are black and could travel back in time to the United States , how far back do you safely go?
I think the difference (or perceived difference) between the past (which was obviously worse for a whole lot of people) and now (which feels worse for the people living in it) is that when you look at the past, everything seemed much less settled.
We've had 30 years of more or less geopolitical stasis (minus the occasional US or Russian imperial adventure) and any kind of progressive Keynesianism has been fully and (this is important) globally supplanted by neoliberal austerity and privatization.
So we in the West get a steady supply of treats, while the environment and our health slowly degrade and the quality of everything goes down. The people in the global South don't even get that, they just get all of our pain exported onto them.
In the past, it felt like there was a possibility for change, because basically everyone had lived through some sort of mass social upheaval. Now, we're locked in for the ride and everything's going to keep getting worse.
My take on it is we are not living in the worst version of America, the world, whatever. But we are for sure living the dumbest version of it.
Bring back the Know-Nothing Party! (or rename one of the existing ones--guess which).
I was definitely making Know-Nothing references to some of the, ahem, "Catholics" who were filling their diapers over the Dodgers recently. Don't know if any of them had a clue what I was talking about; we already know most of that ilk are clueless about basic history.
This is correct. I can empathize with the "dumbest" timeline take, but things could be exponentially worse, and it doesn't take that much imagination to see how either.
Oh man, Mrs. Cosmo LOVES to try to figure out what people's deal is. We had a new family move in across the street earlier this year. A few days after there was a sold sign in the yard she was checking the county tax records daily so she could get their names and try to figure out what they paid. In Texas, the sale price of a house is not public but you can see the mortgage amount on the deed and make an estimated guess on sale price. Once she has the names, it's off to linkedin, facebook, etc to see what she can find.
I feel like Ms. Cosmo and me would have a lot to talk about. Like, we should meet in a conference room and workshop best practices.
If you do, I will contribute a pair of binoculars and a telephoto lens so you can figure out what that one neighbor is up to..
The house next door to me is on the market for the third time in the almost 20 years we've lived here. Looking forward to "researching" the new neighbors.
Also, interested in what it goes for. It's a virtual copy of our home except for a few details and we plan on moving on in the next 2-5 years.
Back in the late '90s-early oughts we would routinely drop a grand or so in the SF SOMA costco. Not sure if that says more about me, bay area prices, or inflation.
I've spent almost $2000 at Costco this month. A couple of regular visits ($200-300 depending on how much wine I buy). A new mattress and a portable AC unit. Oh and some shelving for the garage and a couple of fun Lego sets.
It's probably more than $2000 honestly. At least the cash back check next year will be sizeable...