151 Comments
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If I point out what you're doing, will it jinx it?

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I'm rooting for the Jays to overtake the jerks. Mum's the word.

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You're going to need to be more specific.

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All you need to know about what a generic phony Jete is can be summed up by his on-the-record "fav" Italian food to order at the best restaurants in NYC: chicken cutlet parm.

(pls! see my above rant on Jete for more!)

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agree.

also, in the FDNY kitchens during my career I learned some truly great Italian cooking. when I go out for Italian food I order things I generally don't make at home. chicken parm is the easiest food to cook at home. anyhoo IF it is his fav food he's a dope and if not, he's a phony. either way ...

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Great idea Luis Rojas had letting Diaz pitch to a guy hitting .340 while a guy hitting under .200 waited on deck.

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He’s been making great decisions like this all season

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According to the quiz, I'd be a member of the "New Liberal Party", which is basically rebranding establishment Democrats.

It feels correct but also disappointing...

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Will you serve Scotch eggs at this free breakfast? If so, I'm willing give your party a try.

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I feel like you should have other, different cool hair in the Paper Lions Party. Lion mane-like hairstyles, perhaps?

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Hello! Apparently, I'm the other New Liberal. But the results would be improved by a rating of "how good a fit" this party is...I would guess that none of them fit me very well. I'm really not trying to be on the left, although I seem to often end up there.

I'm also a bit disappointed, because what I really wanted was to be told "you're just picking answers at random, aren't you?" [note: I wasn't]

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It said I was closest to Progressive, but on the grid I wasn't too much farther from New Liberal than I was from Progressive. I can think of a few answers I gave that are the reason for the relative proximity to New Liberal.

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Like pat, my party assignment was "closest to", rather than "square in the middle of".

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New Liberal but closer to the Growth and Opportunity party on the graph. Was a Lowell Wicker Republican in my younger days. You grow. Marvin Miller bio was a great trip down memory lane. I was surprised that Lee just came down in Richmond.

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Same here...though, in the graph, it shows me being pretty much equidistant from the "New Liberal Party", the "American Labor Party" and the "Progressive Party" so idk.

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I think I was a bit too conservative economically to be classified as a Progressive or American Labor. Makes sense. I'm all for corporate regulation/taxation but want to be very careful regarding personal finance regulations/taxation, generally.

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It said I'd be a member of the Progressives, but I was strangely much closer to the New Liberal Party. The quiz was weird though. I think that I'm economically to the right of what a Progressive would consider, well, progressive.

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I was (like many) a "Progessive" but midway between New Liberal and Progressive...bit over half way to Progressive economically and right at New Liberal on the social axis.

But there were no foreign policy questions. If I had been asked about how to handle foreign competitors and adversaries, whether I blame America for everything wrong in the world everywhere, and what the right threshold was for use of military force, I'd have not been all that close to Progressives.

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It said I had used up all my free NYT articles. So cheapskate party maybe?

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As your Transplant Correspondent, and as someone who turned 10 and lived outside Bloomington in the magical year of .388, I am contractually obligated to note that Rod Carew is not only a heart transplant recipient, but a double heart-kidney recipient.

Oh yeah: register to be a donor via ChooseLife.org or your State’s website and tell your family of your intent. You don’t need ‘em when you’re gone!

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Organ donation should be something citizens opt out of, not in to.

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I’m sure Rod Carew could still single over the infielders’ heads.

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How dare you question Jete’s defense! His defense was so far ahead of advanced analytics the state department has the WOPR churning away furiously, deep underneath Cheyenne Mountain, working to create a neural network advanced enough to provide the *proper* context in which Jeter’s defense can be evaluated.

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JTper9? (How many jump throws he makes per 9 innings?)

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Robby Alomar could make that many jump throws while spitting on an umpire.

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I somehow managed to get into it in the Instagram comments about Jeter’s defense.

If I had a nickel for every time I got a, “but he made so many clutch plays,” my kid would go to college for free.

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“B-b-but, just watch the flip play to Jorge!”

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founding

still safe

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I’ve never seen a picture taken showing the tag applied before Jeremy’s foot touches home plate.

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Years ago the satire site Sports Pickle ran an article titled "Derek Jeter Leads Yankees to Victory with Dramatic Walk-Off Intangible." Always remember how that one made me laugh

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HUGE Yankees fan here.

Jete included in his memorable, tepid, incredible, perfect, bland, generic, emotional, defining HOF induction speech that "you can't fool NY fans."

This is probably the greatest troll of all time (which makes the speech that much greater!) ! The phoniest Yankee since Joe D. (another selfish guy with a long memory) fooled NY fans and had scribes eating out of his hand. The HOF wraps from these writers continued their fawning. Sad.

What that guy did on the field, as the 2nd best Yankees SS of his era (the other guy played 3B) was great, but his Captain of the Clique act is arguably greater still. Congrats Jete.

FWIW -- *his* team, the Marlins, won on Jete Day.

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I'm gonna "use" that.

I'm so fascinated by the media w him. I feel like they were certain he would freeze them out if they even intimated a critical remark, but now ... now he's the Marlins' "owner" (eye roll emoji) and they still tip toe about him like eejits.

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Wait, Marvin Miller, Larry Walker, and Ted Simmons were inducted into the Hall of Fame too? Because I just watched the CBS morning show lead in and all they said was Derek Jeter was inducted.

I guess the others weren't worthy of mention, like the warm-up band in a concert review.

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He sent them all a gift basket

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I saw Miller, Walker, and Simmons open for..oh, sorry, CB, I’m treading.

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I'm between New Liberal and Growth and Opportunity. I'm registered Libertarian and used to be much lower right then I am now. The last 6-8 years of the Republican Party, and also learning a lot more about the United States' history of systemic racism, have made me less economically conservative. I'm still very socially liberal.

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Kudos on expanding your knowledge of the US history that isn't typically covered in schools or media

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I've always registered "Independent" because I'm naturally a contrarian, but I did consider myself a libertarian in college. I never felt that the GOP was a libertarian party considering their relationship with the religious right, and I started to flirt with modern liberalism when Russ Feingold was the only vocal naysayer on civil liberties following 9/11. Traveling to 3rd-world countries also gave me some stronger perspective on what would happen in the absence of social safety nets, and I think I had a similar experience in learning about systemic racism. I'm still rather passionate about civil liberties, and I think Libertarians have something to offer in those discussions if they can get past being simply Republicans on Weed, but I've softened a ton on economic conservatism.

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My first-ever vote was in 1998 and I voted for Russ Feingold. Well after his loss to Ron "Stupidest Man In The Senate" Johnson in the sad election year of 2010, I had a Feingold bumper sticker on my car. He was the best that chamber has seen in awhile, him and perhaps even more, Paul Wellstone. To me, Bernie carries on that legacy.

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One thing I’ve thought about: I think life requires you to change your outlook based on where you’re at. The changes you made to your worldview weren’t because one was right and one was wrong. It was just what you needed in that moment and for that chapter of your life. And that chapter led to the next, and so on.

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The Boone comment about Jeter wanting the ball brings to mind the Lasorda story of Pedro Guerrero.

For you youngsters, Guerrero was a fearsome hitter. Powerful, quick wrists, patient. But as a fielder, he was a great hitter.

The Dodgers had great luck for many years making OFs into passible IFs. Russell and Lopes keyed their 70s run. So they tried with Guerrero too, moving him from LF to 3B. It didn’t go well.

Tommy Lasorda had his quirks and issues (see eg his son’s story) but at his best he was a master at positive thinking and preaching that to his team. He worked with Guerrero on his defense constantly.

“So what are you thinking in the field?”

“Don’t hit it to me,” replied Guerrero.

“No, no! You can’t say that. You can be a great fielder, just think you can! Now what are you really thinking?” said the rotund manager.

“Don’t hit it to Steve Sax either.”

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"Bench me or trade me" - Chico Ruiz

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chico_Ruiz

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I had to look it up, and according to BR Pedro lost about 1 win of value by butchering third. Looks like Lasorda had earlier experimented with putting him at second base. Weird.

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That assumes Guerrero hit as well as he would have had he continued to play the less demanding position, a necessary assumption built into bWAR. I can't prove it, but I believe that a player asked to do too much defensively will not progress as well as he otherwise would offensively.

I can see the thinking about trying to get Pedro into the game playing anywhere. The Dodgers had very good hitters at the corners in both IF (Penguin Cey and Paternity Suit Garvey) and OF (Dusty Baker and Reggie Smith) none of whom could really be moved to a more demanding position. Guerrero wasn't, at least as a young guy, very big. And he had above average speed. So what the heck.

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HA!! You got me with that stinger. Genuinely laughed out loud. That's a great story! Too bad Sax went to jail for all those murders.

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At least he wasn't a tonic abuser.

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Well, voting against Jeter could theoretically be defensible if there were ten other guys you wanted to vote for. On the premise of "Jeter's going to make it whether he gets my vote or not".

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As a parent it can be very difficult these days to raise kids in a hopeful environment. Between masks/mandates, extreme costs of higher education and not clear paths to careers that actually will hire them and pay them livable wage, parents are often left throwing their hands in the air. We had them, we raised them, and now we release them into this crazy world - hopeful they'll figure it out even if we didn't :) My kids are about the same ages as yours Craig - we hopefully did the best we could!

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Try stoicism, Craig. You’re already close.

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I came out a Progressive, which is somewhat surprising because I usually land to the right of most progressives I know and people like AOC. But that quiz didn't ask a thing about foreign policy, and I pretty sure that is where I might diverge in real life. Seriously, that quiz is sort of silly because it doesn't ask about not just foreign policy but things like the deficit or infrastructure.

Still annoyed that the HoF ceremony was moved to Rosh Hashanah, meaning observant Yankees fans - and there are a lot of them - couldn't watch the ceremony live. Not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but it feels culturally insensitive.

And it's probably the religious Jew in me, but I have never found anything appealing about existentialism, and it's often struck me as nihilistic in some ways. Not that Chabon and I will ever see eye to eye about anything. He's as far from me as a fellow Jew can get and still be a Jew.

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I can't fully articulate this at the moment, but yeah, that quiz was wildly blinkered. In addition to completely missing a number of things like you mention, it phrased a lot of questions that have a material basis with modern culture-war lingo, and the six new parties it created were...odd. Why would "labor" and "progressive" be distinct parties as they lay them out?

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As someone non-religious, I also find existentialism to at least be nihilism adjacent. Never really liked the classical existential novels in school and don't seek out that kind of stuff now. That level of pessimism doesn't jive with my world view.

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That was my silent gripe with the quiz, too. Nothing on foreign policy. But perhaps that's because foreign policy doesn't always match so well with the rest of the main issues of the day? I honestly don't know.

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Well, just as a for instance, there was a time not that long ago that you could be not only pro-Israel but pretty hawkish and still be liberal otherwise. So at that time, a single foreign policy matter was an outlier. These days, being an Israel hawk and being on the right about everything is the norm, but if that is the case, do you need to bother asking about foreign policy?

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Have you read David Lee Roth's autobiography? Somewhat incredibly, he's a very thoughtful, openminded, and clearly politally left wing... unless you consider a hawkish support for Israel a disqualifyer, because he's as pro-Israel as Netanyahu (if that analogy works anymore, what with the corruption scandal).

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Could say "as pro-Israel as any member of a ruling party in Israel." Though to be fair, members of the (almost extinct) Israeli Labor Party are also very pro-Israel, just not in the same way as the right.

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I should've gone with "as pro Israel as my fellow Milwaukee ex-pat Golda Meir", eh?

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As this space's median cynical attorney, I have to make a damning confession.

Hi. My name is Frank and I have a philosophy Ph.D. I actually wrote my thesis on the Camusian existentialism Chabon is espousing here. I spent most of undergrad & grad school battling Kierkegaard's kids (literally battling them as that was their intramural team). The underlying question of whether your diety or yourself gives meaning to your existence was the center of many a long weekend, but I can definitely say, God cannot give you the ability to play ultimate Frisbee. KIERKEGAARD'S KIDS SUCK. MAYBE GOD CAN FIND MEANING IN GETTING YOUR ASS KICKED! I mean sure, the rest of the department was basically smoking more weed than the average Cypress Hill concert so ultimate was probably an unfair way to judge but you still ate shit, dudes!

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Did you ever take on other philosophical schools?

"We learn from frisbee that we do not learn from frisbee."

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From the great philosopher Wham-O

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We tried to play the Ancient Greeks but every time they threw the Frisbee it never got there.

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Another pointy headed intellectual subscriber! I'm developing an inferiority complex.

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My favorite part of last night’s Nats-Barves game was storytelling hour afterwards: Nolin said it was humid and the ball slipped, Freeman said Smith told him Sotos’s plunking was an accident - and Soto said the kiss he blew after his HR was to the fans *behind* the bullpen. And they all lived happily ever after.

PS If you are a Jeter hagiographer, which I’m not, don’t last night results confirm his legend given that the Marlins are the ones currently the beneficiaries of his golden touch? (Ignore those season records behind the curtain.)

PPS Your musings on existentialism hit home for me … it’s been a tough few years at my house and the future is uncertain so I’ve needed a similar mindset. I’m constantly reminding myself of this mantra - which really helps:

Can’t fix yesterday

Can’t control tomorrow

Do what you can today

Godspeed and go Nats!

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NB that last line isn’t part of the mantra - just trying to end the comment on a slightly less existential note :-)

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well it oughta be!

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I've been leaning into compassion this year.

It's terrible so far. I will continue to grind.

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Setting aside the well deserved snark ... my favorite part of the HBPs was Freeman waiting near 1B after being stranded on base until Soto came in from RF at the end of the first, talking to him, then walking to the Nats dugout and talking with Martinez. None of it was hostile and all three did a good job of diffusing the situation.

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That comment, nearly word for word from Aaron Boone, is what Gavin Lux has said about Dodger pitcher Walker Buhler. It's not always a compliment.

I realize it takes a supreme belief in ones self to achieve at the MLB level, but a few may take it too far.

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