IdahoBert

The only thing worse than the class struggle in baseball between owners and players is a class struggle where there’s no news about it.

Baseball is like a vampire bite. You have to be bitten otherwise it tends to be so complex that it’s hard to appreciate the nuances that make the game fascinating; aside from the more obvious forms of excitement which can to the novice still seem repetitive.

Vermeer? As for Baez, don’t know much about her but Joe Hill is pretty good.

He did exactly what he said he was going to do like a ninja assassin who doesn’t waste time and terminates with extreme prejudice. There’s something comforting in the precision of it all.

I don’t think the Lindor contract signed in April is the gold standard going forward. One contract by one team doesn’t create the baseline for everyone else. Especially in a year when a new CBA is going to be negotiated. The owners are wily operatives of the class struggle of capital v labor. Although competitive to a fault, neither surreptitious collusion nor collective self-interest are beyond the owners when required. There’s a reason Correa did not get what he wanted right out of the gate. Ownership is fighting back.

A friend of mine was much less lucky. He was at a health club on a cycle and turned to speak to the person next to him and all that came out was gibberish. He went to the hospital which was nearby and they told him he had stage four brain cancer. They said if it went untreated he would be dead in 30 days and if they did chemo he would live six months and he lived almost exactly 6 months.

That is utterly visceral and amazing. I have a friend at work who is from Australia and I know that part of the world is really big into rugby and 30 years ago she borrowed my shortwave radio so she could listen to the rugby finals or whatever it’s called and it made her so happy and I didn’t realize why. Now I do.

Is anyone else as excited as I am that the Tigers inked a minor league deal with a pitcher from New Zealand?

I remember those. They were uncommonly short even for the time. I think he had his mom shorten those shorts for him or something like that. It was on purpose.

Has Andrew Romine, been universally known as “All 9 Romine” for a long time and I merely missed it or did Jason Beck just make this up? Have I been walking around for years unaware of this? I am not a ‘Sports Bro’ and don’t watch or listen to wall to wall sports shows or podcasts so I could’ve missed this if this is where it was proclaimed. I don’t go to a lot of bars either where drunk people are celebrating and screaming drunk people sorts of stuff which is the only other place it could’ve been slurred into common parlance and seared on to the surface of the collective unconscious . I’ve never heard it here which I think if it were actually a real thing is where I would’ve heard it.

You want to take your kids to a ball game but it lasts four hours. It’s an amenity for parents. I’ve only seen one game at Comerica because I live 2000 miles away so I don’t know how often those amenities, however, are actually used.

If anybody likes video games, Bailey is like Elena in Uncharted. and Jennifer is like Chloe. I like Elena even though she never kills as many people as Chloe.

Does anyone know how the MLB owners structure their bargaining team? Although the owners all are “haves“ in the largest sense, in the specific sense of their relation to each other there are definitely haves and have nots. The have nots can’t have the same exact interests as the huge big money teams. I tried to find something on the Internet explaining the structure of the ownership negotiating group in this regard and was unsuccessful. Does Manfred just end up making the decision and then he has to sell it to the other owners? Do they have a small representative group representing each fraction of the owners at large? Do they take a vote and the majority rules or do they need a super majority? I doubt if they are like the anarchists at Occupy Wall Street and feel compelled to achieve some form of consensus.

It’s much easier for the owners to use the “divide and conquer“ strategy than the players.

That’s why Al Gore invented steroids.

The World Series ended November 2 and could’ve gone longer. Adding more teams would make the season go even deeper into November. And there’s no way they’re going to shorten the season to accommodate expanded playoffs. And teams that are wild cards now would justifiably have to be bumped up to at least a three- or five-game series? A bunch of crappy one-game playoffs seems like a stupid “reward“ punishing better teams and rewarding worse ones. And you end up going until the middle of November? Every opportunity to generate more revenue isn’t always good. Amalgamated Puppy Grinders is not a good idea even though it may create jobs, and neither is playing halfway through November.

I think this whole thing could drag out for quite a while.

Now I’m serious again …

Me so happy. I can’t add anything that hasn’t already been said. This isn’t perfect but it’s extremely positive, and rooting for perfection is a waste of time. I just hope we have baseball this next year.

I am hoping for something big to happen so I keep checking my “sources” and it is such a letdown to see that instead of a headline about a big signing the main story right now on the Tigers mlb.com page is “Here’s One thing for every team to be thankful for.” Noooooooo! I’m like a kid who just wants to see his fancy shortstop package dressed out with a navy blue and orange ribbon under the Christmas tree even if it’s weeks before the big day and I’m being told instead to be “thankful” for whatever else it is I already have. @&$#! When DD and Mr. Ilitch managed Christmas the world was a better place.

This is like being promised to go out for ice cream and dad instead comes back from the IGA with monkey puke yellow Sealtest ice milk. I really liked the idea of a fancy, good hitting slick SS.

I think $341 million is clearly drunken sailor territory.

I will ultimately reveal the truth that I am Iron Man when I am darn good and ready.

Wherever he goes out the people always shout there goes … (oh heck I see everybody beat me to it).