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deletedSep 16, 2021Liked by Craig Calcaterra
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ESPN has learned Buster Olney is still an obsequious coward. In a related story, the Pope remains Catholic, the sun rose in the east, and Det. Holmes remains constipated.

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No one wants to win the nleast. Atlanta is now 4-8 in extra innings and 1-10 in games tied entering the 9th.

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Typically I think liberally about personal freedoms but let’s be clear here: there are vaccine mandated in numerous other contexts. I needed to get vaccinated to go to high school and college. I needed to get vaccinated to travel abroad to certain countries. Vaccine ‘mandates’ are a common and socially accepted part of life for pretty much every disease with a vaccine…besides Covid. The idea that this is about personal freedoms is absurd. I don’t see Republicans demanding schools stop requiring other basic vaccine requirements, which means this is entirely about making Biden look bad. It’s ridiculous.

Whine about getting the jab all you want. Just like the rest of us grumble when we have to go through an annoying process which inconveniences us briefly in our generally pleasant lives. Just whine after you get the damn vaccine.

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On a side note. It’s natural for reporters to talk about a players legacy at the time of his retirement. And Braun’s conduct WAS putrid, and given Buster’s comments towards A-Rod when HE retired I don’t see the comparison. If A-Rod just retired it would be fair to compare how Buster treats the two. Rodriguez retired years ago. Their cases aren’t the same.

As for treating players differently I find it infuriating if at least partially understandable. Clemens is likely a rapist and a complete jerk. Pettitte isn’t. Big Papi is a beloved star (who might have been screwed if Manfred can be trusted, a dubious prospect I know), while Sosa largely ended his career poorly. The only player I think is getting really poor treatment is Big Mac, who DID apologize and is among the few to have done so in the modern age.

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The process of that California recall vote never made any sense to me. Say Newsom lost the recall portion of the vote, getting only 48% of the vote for him to stay in office. Then Elder, winning, say, 30% of the vote, became governor.

What kind of election gives the win to a person with 30% support over one with 48% support?

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Sep 16, 2021Liked by Craig Calcaterra

I'm just here for the Smiths talk...

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*shrug* I kind of agree with Olney?

Not in those words (the counterfactual is bizarre), and it doesn't make anything you said less true, but, yeah, when I think Ryan Braun, I think "Guy who used PEDs, went on the offensive after he got caught, won his case, then got exposed anyway."

Does that take away from his talent or his on-field performance? No, not really. But it makes me think he's a jackass, just like you said.

Roberto Alomar is a hall of fame second baseman. His legacy is colored by him spitting on an umpire (with a dash of sexual assault thrown in, but MLB didn't start caring about that until later). Ugueth Urbina, same deal. Good relief pitcher, also a guy who attacked people with a machete. If Trevor Bauer's career ends now at age 30, the same age as Sandy Koufax, something tells me we won't look upon him with the same wistful "What could have been" frame.

Off-field stuff doesn't erase on-field stuff, but a player's "legacy" includes all of it. Rafael Palmeiro has 3,020 hits and 569 home runs, but MLB just set aside a date to recognize a guy who only had 3,000 hits and 240 home runs.

I'm not saying that everyone's treated fairly, especially when it comes to PEDs. But when it comes down to it, I strongly believe that the reason Nelson Cruz keeps getting signed and Ryan Braun can't play outside of Minnesota is due to the way they handled their PED incidents. And that absolutely affects their legacies.

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I saw Johnny Marr perform with Hans Zimmer back in 2016 -- one of the best concerts I've experienced. Definitely a more sophisticated and very dynamic form of mainstream music.

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There was a point when Jason Giambi was looking for that edge when steroids were no longer an option -- and, for a while at least, that edge was a gold thong. If my old mind serves me well (there's a lot of old minds here) he once explained that the slight discomfort helped him to focus. Maybe Robbie Ray's tight pants serve the same purpose lol.

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The Murdaugh case also puts me in the direction of the mighty Drive-By Truckers song "Goode's Field Road", off of "Brighter Than Creation's Dark". The version on the live record "It's Great to Be Alive!" with Patterson Hood's spoken interlude is definitive and connects that imagined case to this one. "The the s**t came down/and bodies started being found/floating down the Tennessee River/backing up against the locks of Wilson Dam/and people started going to jail/but he couldn't got to jail/he knew way too much/what would happen to the family?"

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The most classic example of over the top hysterics is the time that Bill Madden called A-Rod the “Whitey Bulger of baseball.” I hated that because not only was it a dumb line, but it actually made me sympathize with Rodriguez.

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Rock and Roll as in the 50s music genre? Those guys clearly don't listen to rock music because that's not how it's described.

As for the point about the nature of rock music, I think there's a lot of truth about the genre being centered around white young male angst. But there are bands that are devoid of angst -- Def Leppard, for example, or the David Lee Roth years of Van Halen.

And trying to claim Obama made Rock music culturally inappropriate is ridiculous. Obama has publicly criticized woke culture. I remember U2 performing at his inauguration.

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Sep 16, 2021Liked by Craig Calcaterra

Respectfully disagree/nitpick some of your points on the recall effort here in my home state, Craig. I moved to San Diego in 1995 for college. The RNC was held here in 1996. Since then, San Diego County has steadily turned more blue. There are, of course, always the north coastal affluent enclaves of Encinitas, Leucadia, Carlsbad, etc. AND, we’re certainly not, say, San Francisco, but, I believe SDC has been comfortably blue in the last handful of presidential elections.

Also, during the early returns (with the caveat that things could have changed 24 hours later and beyond) most of the counties reporting were in line - eerily so - with the percentages that voted for Biden and that orange shitbag supremacist. At last check, Newsom was expected to “win” by about 3-4 more percentage points than what he won with three years ago. I’m no Nate Silver (heh) but, when you factor in the inherently lower turnout for these special dealies…*shrug emoji*

In summary: if a judge hadn’t granted recall advocates an additional four months to procure signatures AND if our recall process wasn’t so goddam borked AND if aggrieved white folk in this state weren’t so fucking dumb about equating vaccine mandates with “segregation” and “masks” with “MAH FREEDOMS”, California could have avoided wasting $200-$300M on this whole abject fucking farce.

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Not sure if it's been shared in a previous comments section, but I really enjoyed the podcast Crushed by Joan Niesen from a few months back. For anyone who might've been a little young at the time (like myself), she digs into the details McGwire/Sosa race and fleshes it out with a lot of other reporting around the impact of PEDs on minor leaguers, etc. I definitely learned some stuff about the ins and outs of the story that I hadn't heard before.

https://www.religionofsports.com/crushed/

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