I suppose it will all depend on who dies.
Considering the recent spike in coronavirus cases across parts of America whose leadership early on decided to choose money over life, the odds of playing a successful baseball season today look worse than Colter Bean in 2005 closing both ends of a doubleheader.
It's hard to imagine the Yankees - or any team - surviving a 60-game schedule without a few outbreaks and maybe a tragedy. How will we react if and when one of our players gets sick and/or - God help us - dies?
For the last three months, the real question was never whether the owners and players could negotiate a plan: Commissioner Rob Manfred always possessed the power to gavel everybody into a "season."
The question was whether MLB can play one without funerals, or players suffering career-ending scars to lungs or internal organs. That question has yet to be answered in states that - because of rancid politics from the top of our government - still won't even tell people to fucking wear fucking masks in fucking public. If my son were a player, I would tell him to stay home, rather than travel to such locations. And I strongly believe we must accept that some players will do just that: They will choose not to go. And when the media takes shots at them, I say we must fire back.
As a nattering nabob in a Yankee fan blog, I suppose I speak blaspheme, saying I do not look forward to a 2020 baseball season. But America has shown no discipline, no smarts, and no willingness to battle this virus, when it comes to the God-almighty pocketbook. Instead, our country has thrown in the towel, so dollar beer nights can reign. Now, forcing players into a made-for-TV league, merely to create a diversion, and to keep the owners' Snowpiercer money train rolling for years to come - long after this generation of players is gone - it is a wretched idea.
But, hey, aren't we fans supposed to be hopeful? Okay, here's a happy nugget from today's NY Times. (Emphasis mine.)
The union’s rejection, Manfred said, means that many items included in the proposal — expanded playoffs, a universal designated hitter, 104 percent of prorated salaries, $25 million from a playoff pool and $33 million in forgiven salary advances — would not be in place in 2020. There also will be no advertising patches on uniforms, a provision that was also in the proposal.
Yep. The owners wanted to use the pandemic to allow advertising patches on uniforms. Exxon? Mobil? Facebook? MAGA? The union said no. I'm reminded of Bud Selig's proposal to install Spider-Man 2 logos on the bases, a plan that was scuttled by none other than Old George himself. So... no ads on uniforms? A small victory in a tidal wave of feces. God save us from these fools.
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This made me think of the line, "These are the times that try men's souls."
My first creative director at a hometown ad agency loved words and wordplay (still does, as far as I know). I forget where it came from, but he had a list of famous quotes hilariously rewritten as examples of lousy writing.
That one came out as, "Soulwise, these are trying times."
Still cracks me up.
The same boss also was very fond of paraphrasing a quote from Mark Twain (which Twain said was actually by Josh Billings, I think it was): "The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and lightning bug."
Twain's actual quote is a bit different, but as he so often did with my writing, my boss's version actually made it better.
Amen, Duque, amen! And a shout out to the players for displaying at least some integrity. No doubt, that will change and they will sell out for a few extra bucks to the pension fund. But for now, at least, it's good to know the pinstripes will still be the pinstripes.
I believe when the same proposal was broached, 25 years ago or so, Albert Belle—ALBERT BELLE!—said, "Aren't we all making enough money?"
These lizard men who run our national game are not even up to the moral sensibility of Albert Belle...
..It bewilders me. I mean, if you already have all the money you can possibly eat, and you are still looking to make more money, why are you in baseball?
Since baseball itself means nothing to you, why not just go into banking or stock jobbing, some profession that is about nothing BUT money? Plenty of jobs in those fields. Why not just sit home and E-Trade all the live long day? Why inflict your money-obsessed ways on our pathetic diversion?
This is where, I think, you see the real cultural rot of modern America. There is not even the tiniest space allotted for anything that is not designed to maximize money. Used to be, you had Hollywood blockbusters and "little" Hollywood movies that usually ended up in the black and sopped up awards, but didn't make the same money as the blockbusters. Now, every movie has to be about a comic book hero.
What also amazes me is that this sort of advertising actually works. I guarantee you, any product that appears on a baseball uniform patch, I will go out of my way never to use it again, and to badmouth it to everyone I can. Hell, every time I see it in a store, I will go out of my way to spoil its preferred display and hide it behind a pile of Tam-Tam boxes.
That is my pledge to you. Thank you, and God bless America.
Extra time in baseball? Surely you jest. Time is money and don't you ever forget that! Can't start the post-game too late because the viewers will be asleep. Viewers asleep=less add revenue. Cant have that. Okay....3 years ago, start the clock on the pitcher's next delivery. Last year, cut out the extra catcher-to-the-mound visits. Hurry it up, Bub. No OCD routine in the batter's box between each twitch....errr, pitch. And now.....to get to the playoffs before the player in center field wearing that hooded black robe and carrying a scythe leaves several more scarred lungs lying on the clubhouse floor, the perfect Mach Schnell: Starting in the 10th inning until the game is won, the batter who made last out starts on second base! What genius!!! With any luck, the pitcher will give up a single before the next Jan of Toyota commercial can be queued up.
Well fuck MLB and fuck every owner who pushed a 60 game schedule with extra innings that start with a runner on second. I hear next year the owners want to have a designated runner who stands to the first base side of the batter and runs for him on the bases. His uniform with have a advertising patch sponsored by NutraSystem weight loss program.
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