Cy Young winners, an even shorter pitch clock, a new manager in Milwaukee, John Fisher being a jackass, college helicopter parents, Facebook is tapping my phone, the scandalous 60s, and a guest post
Why do people still think that? Thrown correctly, curves don't put any more stress on the arm than any other pitch. I started throwing curves at age 11 (I sucked too much at age 10 to pitch) and I'm still pitching at age 46 without any significant arm injuries.
Agreed, feel like Tom House has fully busted this myth. We teach to set the wrist with the ball facing first base for a righty and throw a fastball. A pitcher still pronates on a curveball.
Blake Snell has twice qualified for leaderboards with 162+ IP in non-pandemic years. He has won the CYA both times. He’s about to get a pot full of money and then pitch his more normal 120 IP. Like as less leveraged Goose Gossage.
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Speaking of money, the Braves have a new owner. Sorta.
Berkshire Hathaway released its quarterly reports. In the past three months, they bought about $7m worth of shares in the Liberty Media spinoff. That is, of course, a rounding error for Warren and Charlie. But it comes about a week after a great lengthy interview with Munger where the 99 year old skewered John Malone and the creative accounting and tax gimmicks that underlined the growth of TCI and LM.
It’s been weird for me to see multiple lists that have the Cy Young winner, in theory the best pitcher in the league, listed as only the 4th best free agent pitcher. But you nailed it with the innings data, as did they.
I suspect some team and their fan base will be super excited when they sign Snell and a season and a half later be complaining. I hope this goes better than Robbie Ray.
He'll be 31 before Xmas and has 71 wins to his career. Absent a second half to his career that is similar to Dennis Eckersley's post Cubs years, the only way he goes to Cooperstown is with a ticket. If he doubled his career totals, he'd still be short of Johan Santana's career and Santana was well short of the career length required and significantly better at their respective peaks. See also Lincecum, Kluber, & Saberhagen among 2x winners or Brandon Webb with one win and two seconds.
With even marginal health in '24, Snell will finally pass Dan Quisenberry's career IP! They both have five seasons with 120+ IP. Snell now has 2 CYAs; Quiz had 2 seconds, 2 thirds and one fifth place finish. Plus Quiz published books of poetry. I'll take him easily over Snell.
Snell also had an xERA of 3.77 against that 2.25 ERA due to rather flukey BABIP and LOB% (at least compared to his career averages). It's better to be lucky than good, but someone is gonna pay for some major regression.
Omg. If my parents had done that when I went to college I would have dyed my hair and changed my name and pretended there was no connection between us. How horrifying.
You didn't die your hair in college anyway? I did. It did not look good. But then again, neither did the pastel pink blazer that I tried to get away with. Ahh, the 1980s!
What is college even for if not doing ridiculous things with your hair? I grew mine out all sophomore year until it reached my shoulders, then the week before finals, I just got sick of it and had the barber put the #1 guard on the clippers and take it all off.
I also wondered why I didn’t have a girlfriend. Which seems self-fulfilling in hindsight.
My kid has gone with the mid-90s Chris Cornell look. Fitting in Seattle, I guess. I don't like it but I keep my mouth shut. Shame too, because he's finally grown into his features otherwise. Eh, he'll figure it out.
He moved into a studio apartment this year after doing the tiny dorm room year one and a 4 person shared apartment year two. I worried he might become a hermit because, like his father, that's his natural inclination. Instead, he seems to be happier than ever and goes to more parties now than he ever did before. It's been wonderful too see him grow into a tremendous young man.
I belong to a couple of parent Facebook groups. I never post but occasionally comment. I'm little shocked I haven't gotten myself banned because I have certainly woken up to 20+ notifications after posting with bourbon and basically telling a parent to get over themselves and let their kid figure it out.
Nah, that's too much work. I don't even like using separate shampoo and conditioner which is why I love having the time to keep it short now. So much easier to take care of than when it was down to my waist.
Ha, I have never colored my hair for any reason, and it's the season of my life where the gray is starting to creep. Seems like SO MUCH EFFORT. Glad to see someone else as not into it as I am.
I talked to my parents about once a month when I was in college, and always after 8 PM when the long-distance rates went down. However given some of the choices I made, especially my first 3 semesters, a little extra parenting might not have been out of line.
I called my parents on Sundays at 5pm, rarely on other occasions. They gave me a calling card for this purpose. I still remember the calling card number. I graduated college in 1994.
I remember calling my then girlfriend now wife after 11pm because the long distance rates were even cheaper then. Which, in retrospect, must have been pretty disruptive to have the phone ringing at 11 when her younger siblings were presumably asleep.
My first year I'd call every weekend, sometimes to ask for advice on how to deal with an academic issue but I'd have been mortified if they inserted themselves into a conversation with my professors. Mostly just to say hi and tell them how things were going and when I'd be done with classes so they could pick me up for holiday breaks.
After that it was about every two or three weeks, maybe only 10 or 20 minutes, depending on how busy I was with classes and when I was expecting mail to be sent to my parents house since that was my permanent address. Enough to stay in touch so they knew I wasn't dead but not intrusive for either of us.
I called my parents every Sunday morning at 9. It became a pattern for us and after I moved to Texas (the first time) I added a Wednesday evening call. A pattern that lasted 35+ years.
I'm not that far removed from college, or at least I like to tell myself that. When I was deciding where to go, I thought about the hometown school. My mom said "Oh, if you do that you can live at home." My dad replied, "absolutely not."
Joke was on them, I moved back home for law school.
Frank, my dad died 16 years ago, two years after doctors found a large glioblastoma tumor on his brain. I am glad he didn’t die just days later, as he would have without that diagnosis, but the downside to the next 25 months is that a huge amount of my memories of my dad are from that time, and sometimes it’s hard for me to put earlier, more carefree times with my dad at the forefront of my mind, which I think is part of what you’re describing with your sister. My deepest condolences on this second sort of loss.
Also, on a far less significant side note, while I’m sure it didn’t invent the term, I believe “core memories” was brought into being a somewhat common concept by the 2015 Pixar movie, Inside Out, which takes place primarily inside the mind of an 11-year-old girl.
I am a huge fan of Pixar. While there have been some clunkers, they punch way above their weight. Inside Out was a good example of that.
My problem is that as a 50-something year old bearded grey haired old man who no longer has young kids at home and whose niece and nephews have aged out of Pixar, I can't just go to the theater. Especially since I enjoy my trench coat. The looks I get ...
Funny/sad story about that movie: The other year, after maybe our third or so viewing on Disney+, I found my son , then about 8, crying in bed. When I asked why, he said he didn’t want to forget about all his toys and (especially) stuffed animals when he grew up.
It’s a really good movie, but we haven’t watched it since.
I was thinking today driving into work about how much I miss my dad. He died 6 years ago but it doesn't matter, every day I feel the huge gap in my life where he was. It will never go away. His lungs and heart were never, ever good in my lifetime, and it only got worse until he couldn't breathe, and the cancer he had would have been a much bigger deal if the other 2 things hadn't gotten him first. Enjoy every day you can with your loved ones, I really regret all the stupid arguments I had with Dad now. Thank you, Frank, once again for an elegant post.
I am guilty of participating in a few parents facebook groups for my 2 college kids at 2 different schools (one of which is where I went). Honestly, I cringe at some of the parental behavior I see in them. I do think it's beneficial on some level especially that first year to participate, meet some other parents, help each other out - it definitely helped on some level. But most of the questions asked are ones that are easily look-up-able or google-able like "how will my bubby get home for thanksgiving" or "does anyone know the menu in the dining hall this week" or whatever other ridiculous thing parents should have nothing to do with at this point - like "does anyone know where DS can get an algebra tutor" (um, DS should be dealing w/that at this age, not you). But there are a few useful gems in there worth combing thru the dreck. One of the groups unfortunately has an admin who shares EVERYTHING posted by the college on their facebook page so I get to see it twice - lovely. It's not perfect but like any tool (he he he I said tool) if used responsibly for good it can be a positive.
Congrats to Blake Snell especially, winning 2 in different leagues puts him in very unique company, he's better than we think.
Last night I came home to put on... well, that's the problem. I'm not a huge hockey/nba guy and there was no baseball and no football. I got a ton of stuff on Netflix to comb thru. And I started Geddy Lee's excellent new autobiography and am thru the chapters about his family's experience in the holocaust -this should be required reading - it's difficult but necessary reading, we should never forget especially, as he mentions, the forces of fascism are rearing their ugly head again...
I come down on the opposite side on Snell. Because he has now won two CYAs, he is treated as better than he really is.
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As someone with a truly rotten history with my father, I feel both envious of your relationship and lucky that I won't have the pangs of loss that society tells me must accompany the eventual passing of his 80-something year old drunk, abusive, sociopathic arse.
Unfortunately I suspect you have a very common experience with your dad as many others. I am lucky in that mine was none of those but he was far from perfect. We'd argue over what I now see as silly stuff. Mine actually rescued me from a potentially abusive situation that happened after I was born, for which I will be forever grateful. Unfortunately I know many very bad fathers even in my sons' friends groups...
Thanks. And I neither hold it against him that he wasn't perfect nor do I hope my kids think that I am. We can't all be George Brett; I would have been happy if he just cleared the Mario Mendoza line. Sounds like you got one of the good ones!
The more I read stories like this, the more I think we should operate in a society where kids finish school, thank their parents, then head into the world and have limited contact the rest of their lives.
Of course, I’m fresh off reading the Britney Spears book and she really does have the worst parents ever.
He was not a sports guy, didn’t really like baseball but played catch with me every day and coached me for years simply because •I• liked baseball and therefore he did too.
He spent his whole life doing things for other people.
Not really defending these parents -- two wrongs don’t make a right -- but I feel like there’s so much pressure to do well and build a strong resume in high school to get INTO a good college these days that many kids don’t develop some basic skills we all did as teenagers. This in college, not only don’t they know how to find an Algebra tutor or what the lunch menu is, but they don’t even who or how to ask where they might find that info.
I agree that many kids in today's world haven't developed basic life skills. But I don't think it has anything to do with high school pressure. They seem incapable of having even the most basic phone conversation. This directly relates to their almost robotic all text, all the time day to day lives. They then continue this pattern all the way into early adulthood to a point in which they literally can't verbally communicate a thought/question/answer. You are hard pressed to get even a bit of eye contact when you do approach the brazen few who took the leap and got a job out in the wild. They have life coaches who teach kids things like how to talk on the phone and shop at grocery stores. Their parents should bear 95% of the burden in this.
Agree that the verbal communications skills of even the tail end Millennials is lacking. My wife has added a formal presentation to the battery of interviews for her department's hiring process. She's usually dealing with PhDs, so they will distill their dissertations down to a 15-20 minute overview. For others, it can be about literally anything. Career related or history of NASCAR just show her you can distill a large volume of information down to an understandable presentation without getting too deep in the weeds.
She needs to know that she can send a new hire to a meeting and not have them embarrass the entire department. Other hiring managers are adding this to their process as well.
I can believe it. Great idea by your wife. I make it a point to call the kids as much as possible as opposed to texting them. It seems silly. However, the way I see it, even the little things go a long way.
No football? There was MAC-tion. Including the school our esteemed newsletter writer sends money to.
I agree this time of year is tough. I do enjoy NHL but the Kraken are blacked out for me and the Red Wings play far too many 4pm starts for me to get to see them consistently.
Frank, that was so beautiful. You’ve made me wish I had known Heidi, even a little. Sometimes grief is the gift that keeps on giving, and for me at least it’s always stronger around the holidays. I love the idea to do something to help another, so thanks for a great reminder.
I work at a small two-year college and while I understand the parents' concern, seeing their level of involvement is just wild. The worst ones are the parents who make their students call them while we're discussing their next semester classes so they can listen in and ask questions.
Craig, I have a college kid too. I have avoided the trap of parent groups, thank goodness. I do feel for the parents (mostly moms, I’m guessing). You take on a bundle of almost incessant needs, and you slowly work yourself out of the job. Along the way you learn to feel needed, and on some levels it can feel really good. The flip side is that it sometimes feels very hard not to be needed anymore. I think those parents are struggling with that most of all. It’s hard to find substitutes that feel as purposeful as caring for people; it can take awhile to learn to put that energy somewhere else. It’s worth it, though, for our families and for our communities.
Then, assuming parents are far more involved with their college kids daily decisions now than in the past (which I think is truly the case), why is that the case? Presumably moms have always felt this way about the loss of being needed as much. (Though they still occasionally need your advice even at 35)
I guess the difference is always connected technology. In the distant past parents didn't have the means to follow every detail of their kid's lives. All they had was the occasional phone call, which pretty much had to be initiated by the kid because they sure as hell weren't hanging around their dorm room waiting for the phone to ring.
I wonder if some of it is generally smaller families, too. When I went to college even if I WANTED to come home every weekend it wasn't happening because my parents were busy not only with their own lives, but my four younger siblings. And by the time the youngest set off for college they were very experienced in setting them off on their own and being available for questions and advice and depositing a few extra bucks in the checking account, but since the older kids had made it okay they had no doubt the younger ones would too.
In a lot of primate species the first baby doesn't have a very good survival rate compared to later ones just because the mother is less experienced, so I wonder if parents are naturally more worried about an only child than an oldest child.
That sounds reasonable. Another way to look at the same thing is to say for only child families the parents have a lot more invested in that one child and that kid has always been the center of focus, unlike in bigger families.
I think there is a lot more societal pressure on mothers to be involved now than there used to be. Compare and contrast today’s family life with the “benign neglect” that was normal in our day.
And if you're a dude with kids and just do the bare fucken minimum, like watch them for an hour when your wife gets a haircut, there's a fucken ticker-tape parade.
I’ve encountered parents who refresh their Life360 account to check on their kids’ whereabouts more frequently than I do Twitter on MLB’s trade deadline day. Felons on house arrest have more leniency than those poor kids. It’s just a bizarre way to waste time and creates problems where none exist.
I'm pretty sure I could trigger a Find my Phone on my kid's device but he'll also get a notification about it, so I've never done it. Don't plan to unless it's been like 4 days with my Signal read receipts still undarkened.
Last month, I found out he was traveling to Canada about 6 hours before he left. We joke that we never know what continent my in-laws are on. Maybe our family dynamic is weird but I can't imagine cyber-stalking my child to the degree some parents of adult children find acceptable.
I wrote about this above but basically I suspect parents are WAY more involved in their kids lives during high school for a number of reasons. When they scale it back a bit in college, it’s still way too involved for an adult child.
Our daughter graduated college last year, so this would have been about 5 years ago when she started college and moved away from Maine. She went to a college in New York and we thought joining the Facebook group for parents of the Class of 2022 was a good idea. We could see what was going on. That lasted about two weeks before I couldn't take it any longer. It was exactly as Craig illustrated and I got out!
You know Craig, you aren't required to keep the FB app on your phone. Or, for that matter, anything else by Meta. The only Meta product on my phone is WhatsApp, and if I could convince my European friends to switch to Signal I'd do it in a heartbeat. I don't miss the other stuff at all, and I'm counting the days until I can do the same with Xitter.
I dropped Xitter back in January. I have not missed it at all. Mastodon has been fine filling that void for idle short form chat, and I simply never see Nazis in my feed there.
I set up a Mastodon account last year, went through all the growing pains, found people to follow, posted content, with alt text on pictures and everything. I even supported my instance. But not enough people did, so the admin shut down the server. Yeah, there were instructions on how to migrate. But I didn't feel enough of a sense of community to puzzle out those instructions and start over. The difference? Bluesky. Speaking of which: bsky-social-finxn-rl7rg still hasn't been cashed in.
I like Bluesky, it's virtually identical to Twitter, and thus far they don't seem to be gladhanding Nazis. That's all good!
But Jack Dorsey has a history and I do not trust him for a second, so I'm concerned that the federated aspect of Bluesky won't ever be fully workable. And then what happens when he decides to sell to another Nazi sympathizer like Space Karen?
I'm using both Mastodon and Bluesky for the time being and ditching Twitter.
I'm really liking Bluesky. I have noticed some obvious bot behavior creeping in. I have to imagine the wholesale posting of codes various places has allowed some bad actors to scoop up accounts. Still, I'd rather more people get access than try to police code posting here or anywhere else.
I haven't found Mastodon to be nearly as engaging. I don't miss Twitter at all.
I love Mastodon so much. It’s been nearly a year since I was part of the great migration--it was such a good decision. I’m on Bluesky now too, but it was jarring when I first got on there. I’m not used to that level of edgy dunking anymore I guess. But to each our own; we all like what we like. Mastodon has changed in the last year too; it’s not nearly as precious as it was, and of course new features have been rolled out.
I use an app called Friendly on iOS. It's a web browser that allows you to set up independent instances of most web sites. I can use the mobile version of Facebook and it can't see what I'm doing on mobile Reddit.
I don't get notifications from FB Messenger but everyone I communicate with knows that's not the way to reach me if you need any kind of timely response.
Lists I've made still have value for me, especially for local traffic and weather and sports teams that I follow. I don't use "For You" any more, and any blue☑️ MAGATS in replies get blocked immediately. This cuts way down on RWNJ talking points that clog so many feeds. I won't post or reply any more, and as the journalists and public agencies on my lists migrate elsewhere I will follow them there (except for Threads. I have limits.).
I certainly don't rule out that Facebook is listening to your phone calls, is it not also possible that they know you two are married even without a shared IP address, and targeted you for the ad that way? Surely the internet knows much more intimate details about you than the publicly known fact that you two are married.
Yeah, Occam’s Razor applies here. Facebook probably knows that Craig & Allison are married because they’ve told them so in their Facebook profile. And even if that’s not the case, FB can figure it out based on all their shared friends, posts, and location data.
Allison googles a topic, Facebook gets that info from BIG DATA, and an ad gets fed to Allison and spouse…
This is what it is. I read an article or heard a podcast about this (that I can’t seem to find this morning) and the gist was, Facebook (probably) isn’t listening but it *is* spying on you in just about every other way. Yes, it knows Craig and Allison are married, but it also knows where precisely they were that day (did one of you go to the grocery store?), when and where they normally shop. Almost every website has what’s called a “Facebook pixel” that reports back your browsing, so it knows just about everything you search for and buy. If you use any of those cash back apps where you have to take a picture of your receipt, that’s purely data mining to advertise to you, and Facebook almost certainly gets that info as well.
All told, it knows Allison is interested in FODMAP stuff so it just goes “oh hey, they’re together now, and Allison usually searches for this around this time, let’s show this to Craig and maybe he can nudge her a bit.” Got you talking about that ad, didn’t it? That’s a win!
This is why I don’t have the Facebook app on my phone and when I do check Facebook via web, I always log out when done. It doesn’t prevent all of the spying, but it helps.
Yep, came here to say this. Not sure if Craig has his "facebook relationship status" set, but I always sort of figured Facebook was running everything thru an algorithm to see if you're liking/commenting on each other's posts & messaging on Facebook. Even without a set relationship status, Zuckerburg probably feels pretty confident with regards to who is with who.
If it's going through the house's router, you have a partially sharable IP. InPrivate mode hides the browser from other apps, but your internet provider knows everything that's gone through the router.
Locals are panicking, asking WHICH McD's actually have it. Would any operator actually choose to opt-out on selling these bricks of sawdust slathered in supersweetsauce!?!?
I hadn’t thought of it until I read your comment, but parental involvement is just another way the world is shrinking. When my sister went to college in NY, it was like she took a boat to Europe or something. We actually wrote letters to each other.
The fact that we are in basically constant contact with our kids in a way that is new to this generation, it makes it all harder to let go.
Remember going to the registrars office? It was possibly the first adult thing I had to do. To change a class. I didn’t want to do it. And now it’s all online. I could see my son (not my daughter) texting me to switch a class or whatever.
While I think we all agree helicopter parenting is lame, there is a chance we are sentimentalizing our own college experience.
I very specifically didn't apply to what would have probably been a full ride at a better school because it would have been 10 minutes away. Not that I had any problems with my parents or that I thought they would interfere in any way, but I absolutely needed the 150 miles between us to be my own person.
Meanwhile, I have a cousin who met his daughter at least once a week in the library to help her study. Not surprisingly a good portion of that part of the family is a bit of a mess.
The funny thing is that I felt the same way about college when my kids went - I was looking forward to not being as involved in the day-to-day of parenting. My wife had a harder time but it was ultimately good for her as well.
Facebook is (probably) not listening to you. But your phone and everyone else’s phone’s locations are definitely being tracked, even if allegedly anonymously. Advertisers push ads to you about things that people around you searched for, assuming you would also likely be interested in it. Alison probably searched for foodmap with more frequency recently and her phone and yours were around each other a lot, so you got pushed the ad. It’s still dystopian even without the listening part.
I posted this as a standalone comment, but I'll respond here, too: Re: The Facebook spying thing. I went to get a few drinks with my parents last weekend (at a public bar) and had my phone sitting on the table facedown like I usually do when I'm out and about. Over the course of our drinks, they were telling me that my grandfather had to get a new sleeping chair (he has a back issue where he can't lay flat, so he sleeps in some kind of zero gravity chair thing). No brand names were said and nothing more descriptive than "We have to go to Wilmington to get him a new sleeping chair." and literally the next day, I started getting ads on Facebook for the actual chair that he uses despite not being on any wifi, public or private, or even searching on my phone for the chair they were talking about.
Right. The providers know what you're searching and where you are. They sell that (supposedly anonymized) data to companies that push ads. So these advertisers know that your phone spent a significant amount of time in the same location as a phone or phones that had searched the web for information on sleeping chairs. Their algorithm sees that your phone and your parents phones were in close proximity for an extended period of time, so they are making a guess that you know each other and are possibly interested in the same things, so they push ads to you that are related to searches on those phones
Weird Thing I Noticed That Is Probably Meaningless But Stuck In My Mind As I Try To Find Patterns And Make Sense Of The Existential Chaos, Of The Day:
Both of the voters who didn't vote for Snell first placed him second. But the one who voted Webb first placed Gallen fifth, while the one who voted Gallen first placed Webb fifth.
Frank, first, a bit of background, I donate to our church’s pantry (which gives out items that other pantries don’t and allows complete anonymity from anyone using the pantry) every month. We don’t proselytize is what I am saying (with too many words).
The next time I buy my regular pantry donation, I will do so in Heidi’s memory.
Not throwing at maximum velocity every single time might also reduce pitcher injuries, but no one's ready for that conversation.
Perhaps. But pitchers have been getting injured since the 60s, the 1860s that is.
Perhaps not teaching 10 year olds to throw curve balls might reduce pitcher injuries.
Why do people still think that? Thrown correctly, curves don't put any more stress on the arm than any other pitch. I started throwing curves at age 11 (I sucked too much at age 10 to pitch) and I'm still pitching at age 46 without any significant arm injuries.
Agreed, feel like Tom House has fully busted this myth. We teach to set the wrist with the ball facing first base for a righty and throw a fastball. A pitcher still pronates on a curveball.
We might at least get a few complete games....
Thanks Frank.
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Blake Snell has twice qualified for leaderboards with 162+ IP in non-pandemic years. He has won the CYA both times. He’s about to get a pot full of money and then pitch his more normal 120 IP. Like as less leveraged Goose Gossage.
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Speaking of money, the Braves have a new owner. Sorta.
Berkshire Hathaway released its quarterly reports. In the past three months, they bought about $7m worth of shares in the Liberty Media spinoff. That is, of course, a rounding error for Warren and Charlie. But it comes about a week after a great lengthy interview with Munger where the 99 year old skewered John Malone and the creative accounting and tax gimmicks that underlined the growth of TCI and LM.
It’s been weird for me to see multiple lists that have the Cy Young winner, in theory the best pitcher in the league, listed as only the 4th best free agent pitcher. But you nailed it with the innings data, as did they.
I suspect some team and their fan base will be super excited when they sign Snell and a season and a half later be complaining. I hope this goes better than Robbie Ray.
Ray is a good comp. His '22 is disappointing only if one didn't look at his career before '21.
Snell has the feel of a guy who won't get into the HoF despite having multiple CYAs
He'll be 31 before Xmas and has 71 wins to his career. Absent a second half to his career that is similar to Dennis Eckersley's post Cubs years, the only way he goes to Cooperstown is with a ticket. If he doubled his career totals, he'd still be short of Johan Santana's career and Santana was well short of the career length required and significantly better at their respective peaks. See also Lincecum, Kluber, & Saberhagen among 2x winners or Brandon Webb with one win and two seconds.
Snell isn’t even Hall of Good. But a first ballot Hall of Fluky, if they had such a thing.
With even marginal health in '24, Snell will finally pass Dan Quisenberry's career IP! They both have five seasons with 120+ IP. Snell now has 2 CYAs; Quiz had 2 seconds, 2 thirds and one fifth place finish. Plus Quiz published books of poetry. I'll take him easily over Snell.
Snell also had an xERA of 3.77 against that 2.25 ERA due to rather flukey BABIP and LOB% (at least compared to his career averages). It's better to be lucky than good, but someone is gonna pay for some major regression.
Omg. If my parents had done that when I went to college I would have dyed my hair and changed my name and pretended there was no connection between us. How horrifying.
You didn't die your hair in college anyway? I did. It did not look good. But then again, neither did the pastel pink blazer that I tried to get away with. Ahh, the 1980s!
What is college even for if not doing ridiculous things with your hair? I grew mine out all sophomore year until it reached my shoulders, then the week before finals, I just got sick of it and had the barber put the #1 guard on the clippers and take it all off.
I also wondered why I didn’t have a girlfriend. Which seems self-fulfilling in hindsight.
My kid has gone with the mid-90s Chris Cornell look. Fitting in Seattle, I guess. I don't like it but I keep my mouth shut. Shame too, because he's finally grown into his features otherwise. Eh, he'll figure it out.
He moved into a studio apartment this year after doing the tiny dorm room year one and a 4 person shared apartment year two. I worried he might become a hermit because, like his father, that's his natural inclination. Instead, he seems to be happier than ever and goes to more parties now than he ever did before. It's been wonderful too see him grow into a tremendous young man.
I belong to a couple of parent Facebook groups. I never post but occasionally comment. I'm little shocked I haven't gotten myself banned because I have certainly woken up to 20+ notifications after posting with bourbon and basically telling a parent to get over themselves and let their kid figure it out.
Mine was much more Mudhoney than Soundgarden. Totally unkempt. Just a mop that covered my eyes if I let it.
Nah, that's too much work. I don't even like using separate shampoo and conditioner which is why I love having the time to keep it short now. So much easier to take care of than when it was down to my waist.
Ha, I have never colored my hair for any reason, and it's the season of my life where the gray is starting to creep. Seems like SO MUCH EFFORT. Glad to see someone else as not into it as I am.
I never dyed mine, but I did play with Sun-In as my locks changed from golden to something vaguely mousy....
I talked to my parents about once a month when I was in college, and always after 8 PM when the long-distance rates went down. However given some of the choices I made, especially my first 3 semesters, a little extra parenting might not have been out of line.
I called my parents on Sundays at 5pm, rarely on other occasions. They gave me a calling card for this purpose. I still remember the calling card number. I graduated college in 1994.
I remember calling my then girlfriend now wife after 11pm because the long distance rates were even cheaper then. Which, in retrospect, must have been pretty disruptive to have the phone ringing at 11 when her younger siblings were presumably asleep.
My first year I'd call every weekend, sometimes to ask for advice on how to deal with an academic issue but I'd have been mortified if they inserted themselves into a conversation with my professors. Mostly just to say hi and tell them how things were going and when I'd be done with classes so they could pick me up for holiday breaks.
After that it was about every two or three weeks, maybe only 10 or 20 minutes, depending on how busy I was with classes and when I was expecting mail to be sent to my parents house since that was my permanent address. Enough to stay in touch so they knew I wasn't dead but not intrusive for either of us.
I called my parents every Sunday morning at 9. It became a pattern for us and after I moved to Texas (the first time) I added a Wednesday evening call. A pattern that lasted 35+ years.
I'm not that far removed from college, or at least I like to tell myself that. When I was deciding where to go, I thought about the hometown school. My mom said "Oh, if you do that you can live at home." My dad replied, "absolutely not."
Joke was on them, I moved back home for law school.
Frank, my dad died 16 years ago, two years after doctors found a large glioblastoma tumor on his brain. I am glad he didn’t die just days later, as he would have without that diagnosis, but the downside to the next 25 months is that a huge amount of my memories of my dad are from that time, and sometimes it’s hard for me to put earlier, more carefree times with my dad at the forefront of my mind, which I think is part of what you’re describing with your sister. My deepest condolences on this second sort of loss.
Also, on a far less significant side note, while I’m sure it didn’t invent the term, I believe “core memories” was brought into being a somewhat common concept by the 2015 Pixar movie, Inside Out, which takes place primarily inside the mind of an 11-year-old girl.
I’m absolutely sure Inside Out came out a couple years ago. And I agree that’s where I heard it first.
I am a huge fan of Pixar. While there have been some clunkers, they punch way above their weight. Inside Out was a good example of that.
My problem is that as a 50-something year old bearded grey haired old man who no longer has young kids at home and whose niece and nephews have aged out of Pixar, I can't just go to the theater. Especially since I enjoy my trench coat. The looks I get ...
Funny/sad story about that movie: The other year, after maybe our third or so viewing on Disney+, I found my son , then about 8, crying in bed. When I asked why, he said he didn’t want to forget about all his toys and (especially) stuffed animals when he grew up.
It’s a really good movie, but we haven’t watched it since.
His sadness sounds like an Inside Out/Toy Story Pixar mega-event!
Core memory is also a 50's computer term, to be annoyingly nerdy about it.
Yeah, as I said, I didn't think Inside Out came up with the term, just that it did the heaviest lifting in pushing the term into the popular lexicon.
I was thinking today driving into work about how much I miss my dad. He died 6 years ago but it doesn't matter, every day I feel the huge gap in my life where he was. It will never go away. His lungs and heart were never, ever good in my lifetime, and it only got worse until he couldn't breathe, and the cancer he had would have been a much bigger deal if the other 2 things hadn't gotten him first. Enjoy every day you can with your loved ones, I really regret all the stupid arguments I had with Dad now. Thank you, Frank, once again for an elegant post.
I am guilty of participating in a few parents facebook groups for my 2 college kids at 2 different schools (one of which is where I went). Honestly, I cringe at some of the parental behavior I see in them. I do think it's beneficial on some level especially that first year to participate, meet some other parents, help each other out - it definitely helped on some level. But most of the questions asked are ones that are easily look-up-able or google-able like "how will my bubby get home for thanksgiving" or "does anyone know the menu in the dining hall this week" or whatever other ridiculous thing parents should have nothing to do with at this point - like "does anyone know where DS can get an algebra tutor" (um, DS should be dealing w/that at this age, not you). But there are a few useful gems in there worth combing thru the dreck. One of the groups unfortunately has an admin who shares EVERYTHING posted by the college on their facebook page so I get to see it twice - lovely. It's not perfect but like any tool (he he he I said tool) if used responsibly for good it can be a positive.
Congrats to Blake Snell especially, winning 2 in different leagues puts him in very unique company, he's better than we think.
Last night I came home to put on... well, that's the problem. I'm not a huge hockey/nba guy and there was no baseball and no football. I got a ton of stuff on Netflix to comb thru. And I started Geddy Lee's excellent new autobiography and am thru the chapters about his family's experience in the holocaust -this should be required reading - it's difficult but necessary reading, we should never forget especially, as he mentions, the forces of fascism are rearing their ugly head again...
I come down on the opposite side on Snell. Because he has now won two CYAs, he is treated as better than he really is.
...
As someone with a truly rotten history with my father, I feel both envious of your relationship and lucky that I won't have the pangs of loss that society tells me must accompany the eventual passing of his 80-something year old drunk, abusive, sociopathic arse.
Unfortunately I suspect you have a very common experience with your dad as many others. I am lucky in that mine was none of those but he was far from perfect. We'd argue over what I now see as silly stuff. Mine actually rescued me from a potentially abusive situation that happened after I was born, for which I will be forever grateful. Unfortunately I know many very bad fathers even in my sons' friends groups...
Thanks. And I neither hold it against him that he wasn't perfect nor do I hope my kids think that I am. We can't all be George Brett; I would have been happy if he just cleared the Mario Mendoza line. Sounds like you got one of the good ones!
Your father sounds like my grandfather. I was the only person he was ever nice to. Gambled away his money and my grandma’s money.
My oldest memory is of him taking me to the bar (age 3!) to meet his friends. I got a cherry coke. This is not a normal first memory.
My mother mourns him not at all.
The more I read stories like this, the more I think we should operate in a society where kids finish school, thank their parents, then head into the world and have limited contact the rest of their lives.
Of course, I’m fresh off reading the Britney Spears book and she really does have the worst parents ever.
It’s a pretty solid idea for those who struggle with toxic parents.
My dad passed away 6 years ago too.
He was the best.
He was not a sports guy, didn’t really like baseball but played catch with me every day and coached me for years simply because •I• liked baseball and therefore he did too.
He spent his whole life doing things for other people.
I’m a lucky son of a bitch.
Not really defending these parents -- two wrongs don’t make a right -- but I feel like there’s so much pressure to do well and build a strong resume in high school to get INTO a good college these days that many kids don’t develop some basic skills we all did as teenagers. This in college, not only don’t they know how to find an Algebra tutor or what the lunch menu is, but they don’t even who or how to ask where they might find that info.
I agree that many kids in today's world haven't developed basic life skills. But I don't think it has anything to do with high school pressure. They seem incapable of having even the most basic phone conversation. This directly relates to their almost robotic all text, all the time day to day lives. They then continue this pattern all the way into early adulthood to a point in which they literally can't verbally communicate a thought/question/answer. You are hard pressed to get even a bit of eye contact when you do approach the brazen few who took the leap and got a job out in the wild. They have life coaches who teach kids things like how to talk on the phone and shop at grocery stores. Their parents should bear 95% of the burden in this.
Agree that the verbal communications skills of even the tail end Millennials is lacking. My wife has added a formal presentation to the battery of interviews for her department's hiring process. She's usually dealing with PhDs, so they will distill their dissertations down to a 15-20 minute overview. For others, it can be about literally anything. Career related or history of NASCAR just show her you can distill a large volume of information down to an understandable presentation without getting too deep in the weeds.
She needs to know that she can send a new hire to a meeting and not have them embarrass the entire department. Other hiring managers are adding this to their process as well.
I can believe it. Great idea by your wife. I make it a point to call the kids as much as possible as opposed to texting them. It seems silly. However, the way I see it, even the little things go a long way.
No football? There was MAC-tion. Including the school our esteemed newsletter writer sends money to.
I agree this time of year is tough. I do enjoy NHL but the Kraken are blacked out for me and the Red Wings play far too many 4pm starts for me to get to see them consistently.
Frank, that was so beautiful. You’ve made me wish I had known Heidi, even a little. Sometimes grief is the gift that keeps on giving, and for me at least it’s always stronger around the holidays. I love the idea to do something to help another, so thanks for a great reminder.
I work at a small two-year college and while I understand the parents' concern, seeing their level of involvement is just wild. The worst ones are the parents who make their students call them while we're discussing their next semester classes so they can listen in and ask questions.
Please don't be those parents.
Craig, I have a college kid too. I have avoided the trap of parent groups, thank goodness. I do feel for the parents (mostly moms, I’m guessing). You take on a bundle of almost incessant needs, and you slowly work yourself out of the job. Along the way you learn to feel needed, and on some levels it can feel really good. The flip side is that it sometimes feels very hard not to be needed anymore. I think those parents are struggling with that most of all. It’s hard to find substitutes that feel as purposeful as caring for people; it can take awhile to learn to put that energy somewhere else. It’s worth it, though, for our families and for our communities.
Then, assuming parents are far more involved with their college kids daily decisions now than in the past (which I think is truly the case), why is that the case? Presumably moms have always felt this way about the loss of being needed as much. (Though they still occasionally need your advice even at 35)
I guess the difference is always connected technology. In the distant past parents didn't have the means to follow every detail of their kid's lives. All they had was the occasional phone call, which pretty much had to be initiated by the kid because they sure as hell weren't hanging around their dorm room waiting for the phone to ring.
I wonder if some of it is generally smaller families, too. When I went to college even if I WANTED to come home every weekend it wasn't happening because my parents were busy not only with their own lives, but my four younger siblings. And by the time the youngest set off for college they were very experienced in setting them off on their own and being available for questions and advice and depositing a few extra bucks in the checking account, but since the older kids had made it okay they had no doubt the younger ones would too.
In a lot of primate species the first baby doesn't have a very good survival rate compared to later ones just because the mother is less experienced, so I wonder if parents are naturally more worried about an only child than an oldest child.
That sounds reasonable. Another way to look at the same thing is to say for only child families the parents have a lot more invested in that one child and that kid has always been the center of focus, unlike in bigger families.
I think there is a lot more societal pressure on mothers to be involved now than there used to be. Compare and contrast today’s family life with the “benign neglect” that was normal in our day.
And if you're a dude with kids and just do the bare fucken minimum, like watch them for an hour when your wife gets a haircut, there's a fucken ticker-tape parade.
Latch-key kid sounds much more empowering.
I’ve encountered parents who refresh their Life360 account to check on their kids’ whereabouts more frequently than I do Twitter on MLB’s trade deadline day. Felons on house arrest have more leniency than those poor kids. It’s just a bizarre way to waste time and creates problems where none exist.
I'm pretty sure I could trigger a Find my Phone on my kid's device but he'll also get a notification about it, so I've never done it. Don't plan to unless it's been like 4 days with my Signal read receipts still undarkened.
Last month, I found out he was traveling to Canada about 6 hours before he left. We joke that we never know what continent my in-laws are on. Maybe our family dynamic is weird but I can't imagine cyber-stalking my child to the degree some parents of adult children find acceptable.
I wrote about this above but basically I suspect parents are WAY more involved in their kids lives during high school for a number of reasons. When they scale it back a bit in college, it’s still way too involved for an adult child.
Our daughter graduated college last year, so this would have been about 5 years ago when she started college and moved away from Maine. She went to a college in New York and we thought joining the Facebook group for parents of the Class of 2022 was a good idea. We could see what was going on. That lasted about two weeks before I couldn't take it any longer. It was exactly as Craig illustrated and I got out!
You know Craig, you aren't required to keep the FB app on your phone. Or, for that matter, anything else by Meta. The only Meta product on my phone is WhatsApp, and if I could convince my European friends to switch to Signal I'd do it in a heartbeat. I don't miss the other stuff at all, and I'm counting the days until I can do the same with Xitter.
I dropped Xitter back in January. I have not missed it at all. Mastodon has been fine filling that void for idle short form chat, and I simply never see Nazis in my feed there.
Mastodon gets mentioned as being difficult to set up but it's not much more involved than creating a Twitter account.
If anyone's looking to check it out, this is a simple guide:
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/internet-culture/how-to-get-started-on-mastodon/
I set up a Mastodon account last year, went through all the growing pains, found people to follow, posted content, with alt text on pictures and everything. I even supported my instance. But not enough people did, so the admin shut down the server. Yeah, there were instructions on how to migrate. But I didn't feel enough of a sense of community to puzzle out those instructions and start over. The difference? Bluesky. Speaking of which: bsky-social-finxn-rl7rg still hasn't been cashed in.
I like Bluesky, it's virtually identical to Twitter, and thus far they don't seem to be gladhanding Nazis. That's all good!
But Jack Dorsey has a history and I do not trust him for a second, so I'm concerned that the federated aspect of Bluesky won't ever be fully workable. And then what happens when he decides to sell to another Nazi sympathizer like Space Karen?
I'm using both Mastodon and Bluesky for the time being and ditching Twitter.
I'm really liking Bluesky. I have noticed some obvious bot behavior creeping in. I have to imagine the wholesale posting of codes various places has allowed some bad actors to scoop up accounts. Still, I'd rather more people get access than try to police code posting here or anywhere else.
I haven't found Mastodon to be nearly as engaging. I don't miss Twitter at all.
I love Mastodon so much. It’s been nearly a year since I was part of the great migration--it was such a good decision. I’m on Bluesky now too, but it was jarring when I first got on there. I’m not used to that level of edgy dunking anymore I guess. But to each our own; we all like what we like. Mastodon has changed in the last year too; it’s not nearly as precious as it was, and of course new features have been rolled out.
I didn't load FB or X when I switched phones lately.
I use an app called Friendly on iOS. It's a web browser that allows you to set up independent instances of most web sites. I can use the mobile version of Facebook and it can't see what I'm doing on mobile Reddit.
I don't get notifications from FB Messenger but everyone I communicate with knows that's not the way to reach me if you need any kind of timely response.
Curious why you feel the need to have X.
Lists I've made still have value for me, especially for local traffic and weather and sports teams that I follow. I don't use "For You" any more, and any blue☑️ MAGATS in replies get blocked immediately. This cuts way down on RWNJ talking points that clog so many feeds. I won't post or reply any more, and as the journalists and public agencies on my lists migrate elsewhere I will follow them there (except for Threads. I have limits.).
I certainly don't rule out that Facebook is listening to your phone calls, is it not also possible that they know you two are married even without a shared IP address, and targeted you for the ad that way? Surely the internet knows much more intimate details about you than the publicly known fact that you two are married.
Yeah, Occam’s Razor applies here. Facebook probably knows that Craig & Allison are married because they’ve told them so in their Facebook profile. And even if that’s not the case, FB can figure it out based on all their shared friends, posts, and location data.
Allison googles a topic, Facebook gets that info from BIG DATA, and an ad gets fed to Allison and spouse…
This is what it is. I read an article or heard a podcast about this (that I can’t seem to find this morning) and the gist was, Facebook (probably) isn’t listening but it *is* spying on you in just about every other way. Yes, it knows Craig and Allison are married, but it also knows where precisely they were that day (did one of you go to the grocery store?), when and where they normally shop. Almost every website has what’s called a “Facebook pixel” that reports back your browsing, so it knows just about everything you search for and buy. If you use any of those cash back apps where you have to take a picture of your receipt, that’s purely data mining to advertise to you, and Facebook almost certainly gets that info as well.
All told, it knows Allison is interested in FODMAP stuff so it just goes “oh hey, they’re together now, and Allison usually searches for this around this time, let’s show this to Craig and maybe he can nudge her a bit.” Got you talking about that ad, didn’t it? That’s a win!
Here’s the podcast, from the always excellent Reply All: https://gimletmedia.com/amp/shows/reply-all/z3hlwr
This is why I don’t have the Facebook app on my phone and when I do check Facebook via web, I always log out when done. It doesn’t prevent all of the spying, but it helps.
Yep, came here to say this. Not sure if Craig has his "facebook relationship status" set, but I always sort of figured Facebook was running everything thru an algorithm to see if you're liking/commenting on each other's posts & messaging on Facebook. Even without a set relationship status, Zuckerburg probably feels pretty confident with regards to who is with who.
If it's going through the house's router, you have a partially sharable IP. InPrivate mode hides the browser from other apps, but your internet provider knows everything that's gone through the router.
Happy McRib season to all who celebrate.
Locals are panicking, asking WHICH McD's actually have it. Would any operator actually choose to opt-out on selling these bricks of sawdust slathered in supersweetsauce!?!?
They make a mint off it and many wish they could sell it year round. It’s not my jam but more like a seasonal harbinger.
Beautiful as usual, Frank. Thanks for sharing.
PS I loved being out of touch from my parents in college. That was part of the point - almost like a detox from childhood.
PPS Poor John Fisher. Said no one, EVER.
I hadn’t thought of it until I read your comment, but parental involvement is just another way the world is shrinking. When my sister went to college in NY, it was like she took a boat to Europe or something. We actually wrote letters to each other.
The fact that we are in basically constant contact with our kids in a way that is new to this generation, it makes it all harder to let go.
Remember going to the registrars office? It was possibly the first adult thing I had to do. To change a class. I didn’t want to do it. And now it’s all online. I could see my son (not my daughter) texting me to switch a class or whatever.
While I think we all agree helicopter parenting is lame, there is a chance we are sentimentalizing our own college experience.
And thanks for the kind words
I sentimentalize almost everything, so that tracks ;)
I very specifically didn't apply to what would have probably been a full ride at a better school because it would have been 10 minutes away. Not that I had any problems with my parents or that I thought they would interfere in any way, but I absolutely needed the 150 miles between us to be my own person.
Meanwhile, I have a cousin who met his daughter at least once a week in the library to help her study. Not surprisingly a good portion of that part of the family is a bit of a mess.
That like is a "yikes."
The funny thing is that I felt the same way about college when my kids went - I was looking forward to not being as involved in the day-to-day of parenting. My wife had a harder time but it was ultimately good for her as well.
Facebook is (probably) not listening to you. But your phone and everyone else’s phone’s locations are definitely being tracked, even if allegedly anonymously. Advertisers push ads to you about things that people around you searched for, assuming you would also likely be interested in it. Alison probably searched for foodmap with more frequency recently and her phone and yours were around each other a lot, so you got pushed the ad. It’s still dystopian even without the listening part.
I posted this as a standalone comment, but I'll respond here, too: Re: The Facebook spying thing. I went to get a few drinks with my parents last weekend (at a public bar) and had my phone sitting on the table facedown like I usually do when I'm out and about. Over the course of our drinks, they were telling me that my grandfather had to get a new sleeping chair (he has a back issue where he can't lay flat, so he sleeps in some kind of zero gravity chair thing). No brand names were said and nothing more descriptive than "We have to go to Wilmington to get him a new sleeping chair." and literally the next day, I started getting ads on Facebook for the actual chair that he uses despite not being on any wifi, public or private, or even searching on my phone for the chair they were talking about.
Right. The providers know what you're searching and where you are. They sell that (supposedly anonymized) data to companies that push ads. So these advertisers know that your phone spent a significant amount of time in the same location as a phone or phones that had searched the web for information on sleeping chairs. Their algorithm sees that your phone and your parents phones were in close proximity for an extended period of time, so they are making a guess that you know each other and are possibly interested in the same things, so they push ads to you that are related to searches on those phones
Ahem... Associate TO the manager...
*insert smug John Krasinski photo here*
Weird Thing I Noticed That Is Probably Meaningless But Stuck In My Mind As I Try To Find Patterns And Make Sense Of The Existential Chaos, Of The Day:
Both of the voters who didn't vote for Snell first placed him second. But the one who voted Webb first placed Gallen fifth, while the one who voted Gallen first placed Webb fifth.
[CloseEncountersMashedPotatoes.gif]
Frank, first, a bit of background, I donate to our church’s pantry (which gives out items that other pantries don’t and allows complete anonymity from anyone using the pantry) every month. We don’t proselytize is what I am saying (with too many words).
The next time I buy my regular pantry donation, I will do so in Heidi’s memory.
Thank you Sarah.