So is there a benefit to covering the eyes of premies, so they aren't exposed to light too early? I don't know if you could do anything about the exposure to oxygen though.
I guess that depends on how low a level of that feeling you're willing to label anxiety. Is being nervous about an upcoming public speaking event, or your wedding, for example, anxiety? If yes, I agree that most everyone has it to some degree. But I don't think of it as true anxiety until it becomes debilitating in some way. Which is still very common, but I wouldn't go so far to say it's nearly universal or anything.
You know that saying about conservatism, how the law binds some but doesn't protect them and for others it protects but doesn't bind? I think any mental illness is like that. We love the idea of the neurotic genius, autism as superpower, vs the dumb happy sweet idiot. I wonder a lot about what it means that we romanticise mental illness, and associate happy with naive and stupid. But only for some.
I teach majors' bio courses (so a pretty high-stress intense student population to start with) and it's been fascinating to see how open people have been, both in the chat and in the main Zoom room, about their worry and tension. I've wondered if the fact that often their faces are hidden makes a difference? (FWIW, I've also talked about how stressed and overwhelmed I've been feeling - that it's natural to be feeling this way especially in these times.) To bring this back around... watching baseball is one of my big stress reducers, and how I'm going to make it to next week I do not know! Craig - maybe you could do a few special edition CsoC to get us through the weekend?
What a weird and sad thing to say. It's certainly fair to criticise Turner's behaviour (although as this newsletter notes some focus should also be spared for MLB), but to take personal joy in institutional and individual neglect for public health because it changed the short-term discussion away from the accomplishments of a team you don't like? That's kind of pathetic man. Fortunately for you, this is both the wealthiest and best-run team in the game, and they'll continue to be there to succeed for years to come.
I doubt it. Go back and look at how often great or important sports moments are claimed to have been "tainted" or "asterisked" by stuff. It usually doesn't work that way.
Most sports fans in the country of a certain age thrilled to a Michael Jordan-financed Michael Jordan documentary this spring. It did not mention his time with the Wizards; time that supposedly scarred his legacy. No one cared.
They are making Turner the scapegoat, and it's working. I saw plenty in the news media yesterday questioning Turner being on the field, but other than our man Craig I saw nothing questioning why he was playing in the first place.
Not that he doesn't deserve the blame. I saw a clip of him holding the trophy and kissing his wife. Seriously? You're so dismissive of Covid's dangers that you're kissing your wife when you know you're infected. Even if you're a Covid denier and think it's "just the flu", you should be trying to keep your wife from catching your flu. And it's far more dangerous than the flu.
Perhaps you didn't read what Craig wrote--there's plenty of blame to spread around. To put it all on Turner seems mighty...neoliberal.
On your specific points:
1) Yes, this part of the story needs illumination. Was there a bubble or was there not? If there was, WTF happened? If there wasn't, WTF?
2) The decision was not Turner's to make. That's what the protocols were for, and they said that a player with an inconclusive test result gets pulled. Period.
3) Yup, muy irresponsible. As Craig says, that poor decision led directly from someone as yet unnamed making the earlier poor decision not to pull him in the second inning. Sure, he maybe/probably acts the same after the game, but it doesn't erase the first bad decision.
Based on his actions, I'll take a wild, unsubstantiated guess that Turner is a Covid denier. Which is dumb of course. But if you assume that, his other actions make a lot more sense from that point of view. He thought he wasn't endangering anyone in reality because the whole thing is a hoax.
#2 is not BS; it's at most incomplete. The decision was not entirely Turner's to make; it was not "100% up to him to decide to play or not."
Yes, he could have taken himself out. But MLB and/or the Dodgers could have prevented him from playing. The fact that he continued to play is at least as much MLB's fault and the fault of anyone in the Dodgers' organization who knew about the test as it is Turner's if not more so.
I am not going to blame turner for the infection. He was not john travolta. this was a bubble in the same way the titanic was unsinkable. the rest, yeah, what a dick.
Did I not begin my second paragraph with "Not that he [Turner] doesn't deserve the blame"?
I can't really blame #2 on him though. You can't trust ballplayers to make objective decisions like that. They'll always stupidly say they want to play. Whether it's a pitcher arguing to stay in, or a hurt guy saying he can still play. This had far more serious implications, but it's the same idea. The team and MLB certainly had to be the grownups in the room to stop him.
My point was it’s not fair to have him make that decision. I think there needed to be a stricter lockdown across the board, but I don’t judge nail salon owners for staying open when they have families to feed. In the absence of real leadership it’s not right to ask ordinary people to make an impossible choice. MLB should have had rules in place. An inconclusive test means they physically take you out and separate you, not leave you in this limbo where you have to pull the trigger on yourself and know that whatever you do you’re hurting your team and they’ll hate you. It’s cruel.
Has anyone seen a statement from the Players Association or the Umpires Association? I imagine both could have legitimate claims against MLB for putting their members in harm’s way, especially if MLB broke agreed-upon protocols.
The players union might write off this complaint as bad optics. And, 90% of their members likely sympathize with the "But it's Game 6 of the World Series, he's got to be able to play" mindset. Which is shortsighted and misguided, but I could see that mindset being prevalent with them.
I don’t think the union would be going against Turner. As you said, going after the owners for their in-game decisions helps them defend Turner’s post-game actions. The assumption is that Turner (and possibly even the Dodgers) didn’t know anything until late in the game.
Of course, if Turner knew about the first test early in the game, then I’d say you’re right and the union might have to stay relatively quiet.
The union frequently takes different sides of the same issue, to protect their membership in different ways. If anything, they could (should?) be jumping at the chance to discredit Manfred if MLB knowingly broke an agreement
TurnerGate will forever shadow the Dodgers’ 2020 accomplishments & rings. Manfred, singularly, and MLB have put the simple expediency of normalcy above the safety of players and fans. $$$. Shame
de Blasio is apparently anti-Cohen because of Cohen’s insider trading conviction. As maybe the only Mets fan who still feels itchy about Cohen because of that (and because I abhor hedge fund tycoons), I can’t be too down on de Blasio for this. But he really shouldn’t veto the sale anyway.
I found that Post column to be funny in that it gets righteously indignant over A-Rod cheating at sports and simultaneously hand-waves away Cohen's oversight of massive financial crimes. It's probably true that Cohen will be a better owner in terms of baseball success for the Mets than a debt-strapped A-Rod group, but one can acknowledge that while still being honest about the fact that Cohen is a scumbag who's caused more harm than A-Rod ever has.
But there are levels of bad behavior. Someone who gets rich owning hotels or parking lots is less likely to be shady in the way a hedge fund manager can. Though it’s not like any of them pay taxes.
I'm surprised the Nats declined Howie Kendrick's option. Yeah, this year, while not terrible, wasn't as good as his previous 3 years with the Nats. But it was a small sample size due to the short season. He is getting old (37), and they would have had to give him a $2.5M raise. But before this year he hadn't hit below .300 since 2016.
I guess it's good policy not to bet on bounce back seasons for guys in their late 30s. But Kendrick at least had a reasonable excuse in that he only had 91 ABs this year. It wouldn't surprise me if he did bounce back. But I guess it wouldn't surprise me if he didn't either.
To me, the saddest part of all these Nats transactions is that we as fans never got a chance to give the team a season-long victory lap to say thank you - and now, as it turns out for some of them, goodbye. 2019 seems so long ago.
That’s what really sucks. I was an A’s fan living in Southern California when they won the WS in 1989. The following season, my high school buddy and I were gloriously obnoxious fans basking in the glow of being champions and rubbing it in the faces of Angels fans when we’d see the A’s in Anaheim. (As far as I know, the 1990 season ended without a World Series that year.) Anywho, sad that Nats fans didn’t get that victory lap. (Yes, there are sadder things in the world right now. Jeez.)
August/September of 2011 is also a time I have absolutely no memory of due to depression issues which is sad because it was the last time the Phillies were good.
I second that. I'll add that I admire the hell out of the courage it takes to write about dark times that a person experiences during his/her life. Personal experience has taught me that reliving those times, even if therapeutic, can sometimes drag you back into them. Everyone is going through something, so empathy is important (although it's pretty damned difficult for many of these MAGA people).
I just read something a wise man, hey it was Craig, linked about empathy. All people are empathetic, but some are just less empathetic to those outside their "group." Ok, my tl;dr butchered that article but you get the point, maybe
My understanding was that it wasn’t a quickie follow-up test. The original inconclusive test was from Monday, and the follow-up test was rushing to process the one from Tuesday morning. (Pretty sure I got that from Passan’s article.)
If that’s correct it’s likely that Turner and the Dodgers didn’t even know about the inconclusive test. It’s unfortunate that Turner coming out of the clubhouse for a celebration for now is overshadowing the Dodgers actually winning the World Series. I get it, it’s just a shame.
Maybe you’re right. I’m not as confident that MLB has been as forthcoming and transparent with protocols and health. Does MLB tell everyone in the 2nd inning that they received a negative result as well?
It makes one wonder were there other inconclusive tests for other players in the playoffs where the player played and the second test came back negative. We never would have heard about it as long as the second test was negative. For all we know MLB blew off their Covid protocols multiple times and it only burned them this once.
It is hilarious, sad, and telling that it's not enough for Rob Manfred to be powerful, massively wealthy, and in circles that matter to him very famous. He also has to be adored.
I think every commissioner has to deal with this nowadays. I seem to remember David Stern putting on his trademark shit-eating-grin while the boos rained down. Roger Goodell gets booed every Super Bowl. The fact that Manfred was so unprepared for and bothered by the boos is really something.
Eh, I think he doesn't care. He's rich. He's successful. He gets paid a lot to do nothing. He's ruining the sport but who cares, right? I bet most owners see baseball as a dying industry anyway, just cash out while you still can before the fans die.
I was a teenager when Columbo was in first run, and the class element was obvious even then, but, thinking about it now, I think there was also a more subtle class element, but running in the other direction, namely, that murder, at least in the murder mystery milieu, isn’t really that interesting unless the murderer and the setting are elite or at least exotic: you don’t get Columbo solving gas-station shootouts.
Different point: Columbo ran in rotation with one or two other mystery franchises, of which McMillan & Wife — Rock Hudson and Susan St. James — was also a pretty strong, or at least entertaining, show, although you don’t hear much about it anymore.
Fun fact: when NBC hired me, Dick Ebersol was still the head of NBC Sports. Ebersol is married to Susan St. James. For reasons that make me look like even more of an out-of-time weirdo than I already am, I have long had something of a crush on "McMillan and Wife"-era Susan St. James. Just a type I have, I guess.
Not long after I get hired, I was asked to come to New York to meet Ebersol and get the general "hi, this is Craig" treatment around NBC. My boss worked in Stamford, Connecticut, so he and I rode the train down to Manhattan where he was to take me to Rockefeller Center, where Ebersol's office was. On the ride down, I keep telling him "I'm gonna tell Ebersol that I think his wife's hot and then keep steering the conversation back to McMillan and wife." My boss, who already thought I was a loon, just rolled his eyes at me, with an occasional "yeah, you don't want to do that."
In the event, of course, I did not, because I'm all talk. And I actually found Ebersol to be a pretty interesting guy. Very different than I had imagined based on his reputation. And he's a big baseball fan. Even after he ceased running NBC Sports, he'd occasionally shoot me an email about an article I wrote on HardballTalk. I never did tell him that I was into the early 70s version of his wife, though.
The third NBC Mystery Movie was McCloud, starring Dennis Weaver. Wikipedia tells me there were various 4th shows, but none of them lasted too long. It said Quincy M.E. starring Jack Klugman was one of them, which I actually remember. But I remember it as a standalone show. I assume it was spun off that way.
I probably don't have enough of a knowledge base. I'm strong on Columbo and Rockford (not a mystery, but still), but there's a ton of those I have only seen a couple of times.
Banacek was sort of one. It wasn't part of the original group with Columbo et al that aired on Sundays. But after that was successful they added another rotating mystery movie on Wednesdays, the NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie. Banacek was one of them.
Traditional cop shows make us believe there is order in the universe. The good guy gets rewarded, the bad guy gets punished, everyone gets what they deserve.
I would really appreciate that. Lean in! Owners would love it (keeps them away from being the bad guy), and fans love nothing more than being outraged. Every ceremony he goes to, every time he's shown on the big screen--stand up. If they boo him, he laughs and feints at an obscene gesture. The Million Dollar Man for (non-scripted) sports!
I could also see how he could have used “piece of metal” to make fun of himself. Sort of a mea culpa on the original quote. Which probably would have helped his image a little.
Re: Turnergate ... I think the big issue is the timing of the tests. If it was 3 hours before gametime when he got a result they'd be able to retest up to game time and not let him dress at all if he was positive. So, to me the blame lands on the MLB COVID rules and timing. I understand Turner's actions completely, but I'm just SO disappointed that it could have been averted by not having him anywhere near the stadium. I feel for the guy, I rooted for him in Dodger Blue even as a Met fan. But who wouldn't want to celebrate winning a World Series? MLB enabled this completely.
So is there a benefit to covering the eyes of premies, so they aren't exposed to light too early? I don't know if you could do anything about the exposure to oxygen though.
Agreed. It is now part of my lexicon
I guess that depends on how low a level of that feeling you're willing to label anxiety. Is being nervous about an upcoming public speaking event, or your wedding, for example, anxiety? If yes, I agree that most everyone has it to some degree. But I don't think of it as true anxiety until it becomes debilitating in some way. Which is still very common, but I wouldn't go so far to say it's nearly universal or anything.
You know that saying about conservatism, how the law binds some but doesn't protect them and for others it protects but doesn't bind? I think any mental illness is like that. We love the idea of the neurotic genius, autism as superpower, vs the dumb happy sweet idiot. I wonder a lot about what it means that we romanticise mental illness, and associate happy with naive and stupid. But only for some.
I teach majors' bio courses (so a pretty high-stress intense student population to start with) and it's been fascinating to see how open people have been, both in the chat and in the main Zoom room, about their worry and tension. I've wondered if the fact that often their faces are hidden makes a difference? (FWIW, I've also talked about how stressed and overwhelmed I've been feeling - that it's natural to be feeling this way especially in these times.) To bring this back around... watching baseball is one of my big stress reducers, and how I'm going to make it to next week I do not know! Craig - maybe you could do a few special edition CsoC to get us through the weekend?
Yeah, Turner's thought was likely no deeper than "What are they going to do, fine me? I'll pay the fine. This is worth it."
What a weird and sad thing to say. It's certainly fair to criticise Turner's behaviour (although as this newsletter notes some focus should also be spared for MLB), but to take personal joy in institutional and individual neglect for public health because it changed the short-term discussion away from the accomplishments of a team you don't like? That's kind of pathetic man. Fortunately for you, this is both the wealthiest and best-run team in the game, and they'll continue to be there to succeed for years to come.
I doubt it. Go back and look at how often great or important sports moments are claimed to have been "tainted" or "asterisked" by stuff. It usually doesn't work that way.
Most sports fans in the country of a certain age thrilled to a Michael Jordan-financed Michael Jordan documentary this spring. It did not mention his time with the Wizards; time that supposedly scarred his legacy. No one cared.
They are making Turner the scapegoat, and it's working. I saw plenty in the news media yesterday questioning Turner being on the field, but other than our man Craig I saw nothing questioning why he was playing in the first place.
Not that he doesn't deserve the blame. I saw a clip of him holding the trophy and kissing his wife. Seriously? You're so dismissive of Covid's dangers that you're kissing your wife when you know you're infected. Even if you're a Covid denier and think it's "just the flu", you should be trying to keep your wife from catching your flu. And it's far more dangerous than the flu.
Perhaps you didn't read what Craig wrote--there's plenty of blame to spread around. To put it all on Turner seems mighty...neoliberal.
On your specific points:
1) Yes, this part of the story needs illumination. Was there a bubble or was there not? If there was, WTF happened? If there wasn't, WTF?
2) The decision was not Turner's to make. That's what the protocols were for, and they said that a player with an inconclusive test result gets pulled. Period.
3) Yup, muy irresponsible. As Craig says, that poor decision led directly from someone as yet unnamed making the earlier poor decision not to pull him in the second inning. Sure, he maybe/probably acts the same after the game, but it doesn't erase the first bad decision.
Based on his actions, I'll take a wild, unsubstantiated guess that Turner is a Covid denier. Which is dumb of course. But if you assume that, his other actions make a lot more sense from that point of view. He thought he wasn't endangering anyone in reality because the whole thing is a hoax.
#2 is not BS; it's at most incomplete. The decision was not entirely Turner's to make; it was not "100% up to him to decide to play or not."
Yes, he could have taken himself out. But MLB and/or the Dodgers could have prevented him from playing. The fact that he continued to play is at least as much MLB's fault and the fault of anyone in the Dodgers' organization who knew about the test as it is Turner's if not more so.
I am not going to blame turner for the infection. He was not john travolta. this was a bubble in the same way the titanic was unsinkable. the rest, yeah, what a dick.
Did I not begin my second paragraph with "Not that he [Turner] doesn't deserve the blame"?
I can't really blame #2 on him though. You can't trust ballplayers to make objective decisions like that. They'll always stupidly say they want to play. Whether it's a pitcher arguing to stay in, or a hurt guy saying he can still play. This had far more serious implications, but it's the same idea. The team and MLB certainly had to be the grownups in the room to stop him.
It's not fair to put that on him. Protect his team and they lose? Play for them and bring home a ring? Which would his teammates have wanted?
My point was it’s not fair to have him make that decision. I think there needed to be a stricter lockdown across the board, but I don’t judge nail salon owners for staying open when they have families to feed. In the absence of real leadership it’s not right to ask ordinary people to make an impossible choice. MLB should have had rules in place. An inconclusive test means they physically take you out and separate you, not leave you in this limbo where you have to pull the trigger on yourself and know that whatever you do you’re hurting your team and they’ll hate you. It’s cruel.
Has anyone seen a statement from the Players Association or the Umpires Association? I imagine both could have legitimate claims against MLB for putting their members in harm’s way, especially if MLB broke agreed-upon protocols.
Richie Phillips would have been on top of this for the Umps, tout de suite.
The players union might write off this complaint as bad optics. And, 90% of their members likely sympathize with the "But it's Game 6 of the World Series, he's got to be able to play" mindset. Which is shortsighted and misguided, but I could see that mindset being prevalent with them.
I don’t think the union would be going against Turner. As you said, going after the owners for their in-game decisions helps them defend Turner’s post-game actions. The assumption is that Turner (and possibly even the Dodgers) didn’t know anything until late in the game.
Of course, if Turner knew about the first test early in the game, then I’d say you’re right and the union might have to stay relatively quiet.
The union frequently takes different sides of the same issue, to protect their membership in different ways. If anything, they could (should?) be jumping at the chance to discredit Manfred if MLB knowingly broke an agreement
TurnerGate will forever shadow the Dodgers’ 2020 accomplishments & rings. Manfred, singularly, and MLB have put the simple expediency of normalcy above the safety of players and fans. $$$. Shame
Except for a fluke in 2019 when the underdog team surprised everyone, every WS winner comes with a scandal now.
Go Nats.
de Blasio is apparently anti-Cohen because of Cohen’s insider trading conviction. As maybe the only Mets fan who still feels itchy about Cohen because of that (and because I abhor hedge fund tycoons), I can’t be too down on de Blasio for this. But he really shouldn’t veto the sale anyway.
I found that Post column to be funny in that it gets righteously indignant over A-Rod cheating at sports and simultaneously hand-waves away Cohen's oversight of massive financial crimes. It's probably true that Cohen will be a better owner in terms of baseball success for the Mets than a debt-strapped A-Rod group, but one can acknowledge that while still being honest about the fact that Cohen is a scumbag who's caused more harm than A-Rod ever has.
If we only let good guys own sports teams we'd have like 4 owners
But there are levels of bad behavior. Someone who gets rich owning hotels or parking lots is less likely to be shady in the way a hedge fund manager can. Though it’s not like any of them pay taxes.
Not giving the post a click, I am guessing its going to end up with getting a rehabbed baseball field in queens of something
If you can afford a baseball team, you or someone you associate with is financially gross.
I'm surprised the Nats declined Howie Kendrick's option. Yeah, this year, while not terrible, wasn't as good as his previous 3 years with the Nats. But it was a small sample size due to the short season. He is getting old (37), and they would have had to give him a $2.5M raise. But before this year he hadn't hit below .300 since 2016.
I guess it's good policy not to bet on bounce back seasons for guys in their late 30s. But Kendrick at least had a reasonable excuse in that he only had 91 ABs this year. It wouldn't surprise me if he did bounce back. But I guess it wouldn't surprise me if he didn't either.
To me, the saddest part of all these Nats transactions is that we as fans never got a chance to give the team a season-long victory lap to say thank you - and now, as it turns out for some of them, goodbye. 2019 seems so long ago.
That’s what really sucks. I was an A’s fan living in Southern California when they won the WS in 1989. The following season, my high school buddy and I were gloriously obnoxious fans basking in the glow of being champions and rubbing it in the faces of Angels fans when we’d see the A’s in Anaheim. (As far as I know, the 1990 season ended without a World Series that year.) Anywho, sad that Nats fans didn’t get that victory lap. (Yes, there are sadder things in the world right now. Jeez.)
Weird how there was only one world series after 87 and before 91.
This guy gets it.
August/September of 2011 is also a time I have absolutely no memory of due to depression issues which is sad because it was the last time the Phillies were good.
I'm glad you're still here, Craig.
That's it - that's the comment.
I second that. I'll add that I admire the hell out of the courage it takes to write about dark times that a person experiences during his/her life. Personal experience has taught me that reliving those times, even if therapeutic, can sometimes drag you back into them. Everyone is going through something, so empathy is important (although it's pretty damned difficult for many of these MAGA people).
I just read something a wise man, hey it was Craig, linked about empathy. All people are empathetic, but some are just less empathetic to those outside their "group." Ok, my tl;dr butchered that article but you get the point, maybe
Is it established fact that Turner and the Dodgers knew about the inconclusive test in the second inning?
They would have to know because if it was a negative Turner would not have had to take the quickie followup test that resulted in the later positive.
My understanding was that it wasn’t a quickie follow-up test. The original inconclusive test was from Monday, and the follow-up test was rushing to process the one from Tuesday morning. (Pretty sure I got that from Passan’s article.)
Was the inconclusive test the Monday test and the positive test the Tuesday test?
I believe that is correct.
If that’s correct it’s likely that Turner and the Dodgers didn’t even know about the inconclusive test. It’s unfortunate that Turner coming out of the clubhouse for a celebration for now is overshadowing the Dodgers actually winning the World Series. I get it, it’s just a shame.
Maybe you’re right. I’m not as confident that MLB has been as forthcoming and transparent with protocols and health. Does MLB tell everyone in the 2nd inning that they received a negative result as well?
It makes one wonder were there other inconclusive tests for other players in the playoffs where the player played and the second test came back negative. We never would have heard about it as long as the second test was negative. For all we know MLB blew off their Covid protocols multiple times and it only burned them this once.
It is hilarious, sad, and telling that it's not enough for Rob Manfred to be powerful, massively wealthy, and in circles that matter to him very famous. He also has to be adored.
John Squire and Ian Brown had it right, of course. https://youtu.be/4D2qcbu26gs
Bettman has lasted much longer in his job than I thought he would, to his credit.
I think every commissioner has to deal with this nowadays. I seem to remember David Stern putting on his trademark shit-eating-grin while the boos rained down. Roger Goodell gets booed every Super Bowl. The fact that Manfred was so unprepared for and bothered by the boos is really something.
Eh, I think he doesn't care. He's rich. He's successful. He gets paid a lot to do nothing. He's ruining the sport but who cares, right? I bet most owners see baseball as a dying industry anyway, just cash out while you still can before the fans die.
I was a teenager when Columbo was in first run, and the class element was obvious even then, but, thinking about it now, I think there was also a more subtle class element, but running in the other direction, namely, that murder, at least in the murder mystery milieu, isn’t really that interesting unless the murderer and the setting are elite or at least exotic: you don’t get Columbo solving gas-station shootouts.
Different point: Columbo ran in rotation with one or two other mystery franchises, of which McMillan & Wife — Rock Hudson and Susan St. James — was also a pretty strong, or at least entertaining, show, although you don’t hear much about it anymore.
Fun fact: when NBC hired me, Dick Ebersol was still the head of NBC Sports. Ebersol is married to Susan St. James. For reasons that make me look like even more of an out-of-time weirdo than I already am, I have long had something of a crush on "McMillan and Wife"-era Susan St. James. Just a type I have, I guess.
Not long after I get hired, I was asked to come to New York to meet Ebersol and get the general "hi, this is Craig" treatment around NBC. My boss worked in Stamford, Connecticut, so he and I rode the train down to Manhattan where he was to take me to Rockefeller Center, where Ebersol's office was. On the ride down, I keep telling him "I'm gonna tell Ebersol that I think his wife's hot and then keep steering the conversation back to McMillan and wife." My boss, who already thought I was a loon, just rolled his eyes at me, with an occasional "yeah, you don't want to do that."
In the event, of course, I did not, because I'm all talk. And I actually found Ebersol to be a pretty interesting guy. Very different than I had imagined based on his reputation. And he's a big baseball fan. Even after he ceased running NBC Sports, he'd occasionally shoot me an email about an article I wrote on HardballTalk. I never did tell him that I was into the early 70s version of his wife, though.
+1 on early 70s Susan St. James
Barbara Eden, I Dream Of Jeannie. The rest of you are monsters.
You may have just now, if he's subscribing to this incognito.
(No, I'm not Dick Ebersol.)
we should gift him a subscription.
Waiting for the Dick Ebersol Cup of Coffee guest post.
I always dreaded the McCloud week. I just wanted to be Sally McMillan and live in that house. I still remember that house!
Dennis Weaver and that affect he takes, well they both rocked. :)
I suspect now, as an adult of a certain age, I would be much more appreciative of Dennis Weaver's contribution to the NBC Mystery Movie.
The third NBC Mystery Movie was McCloud, starring Dennis Weaver. Wikipedia tells me there were various 4th shows, but none of them lasted too long. It said Quincy M.E. starring Jack Klugman was one of them, which I actually remember. But I remember it as a standalone show. I assume it was spun off that way.
I feel like Bancek was one.
Is this going to lead to an off-season post where you rank the different mystery shows of the 70s? :)
I probably don't have enough of a knowledge base. I'm strong on Columbo and Rockford (not a mystery, but still), but there's a ton of those I have only seen a couple of times.
I'd approve of more Rockford content. Never really got into Columbo.
""don't have enough of a knowledge base"
When has that stopped any of us?
Banacek was sort of one. It wasn't part of the original group with Columbo et al that aired on Sundays. But after that was successful they added another rotating mystery movie on Wednesdays, the NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie. Banacek was one of them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_NBC_Mystery_Movie
Traditional cop shows make us believe there is order in the universe. The good guy gets rewarded, the bad guy gets punished, everyone gets what they deserve.
A true heel commissioner would have used the phrase “piece of metal” in his remarks after the game.
Being truly great as the heel requires self-awareness Manfred clearly lacks.
I would really appreciate that. Lean in! Owners would love it (keeps them away from being the bad guy), and fans love nothing more than being outraged. Every ceremony he goes to, every time he's shown on the big screen--stand up. If they boo him, he laughs and feints at an obscene gesture. The Million Dollar Man for (non-scripted) sports!
I could also see how he could have used “piece of metal” to make fun of himself. Sort of a mea culpa on the original quote. Which probably would have helped his image a little.
Re: Turnergate ... I think the big issue is the timing of the tests. If it was 3 hours before gametime when he got a result they'd be able to retest up to game time and not let him dress at all if he was positive. So, to me the blame lands on the MLB COVID rules and timing. I understand Turner's actions completely, but I'm just SO disappointed that it could have been averted by not having him anywhere near the stadium. I feel for the guy, I rooted for him in Dodger Blue even as a Met fan. But who wouldn't want to celebrate winning a World Series? MLB enabled this completely.