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It would be pretty hard to have baseball without players!

So much projection here. I think you misspelled William Barr.

Everything that is wrong with baseball right now is caused by the ball. Go back to the 1985 ball. (Not 1987).

you are missing the arg here. Current deer hunting guns may be semi-automatic. They don't need to be. You can hunt deer just fine with a bolt action 30-30. I love that so many gun owners claim sport as their motivation but then do all they can to take the 'sporting' part out of the process! Reminds me of a guy I used to ride with on bicycle tours. Always wanted to take a short cut on the route. WTF did you sign up for a scenic bike tour for if you don't want to ride the route?

not sure what "risk" the owners are taking? the Pirates turn a profit, and the value of the franchise has increased by more than 13 fold over 25 years

Who is anti-gun? I don't care if you own a deer rifle or a shotgun. You should actually read what other people write. Who said stop making guns? I said stop making semi automatics. There is no purpose for them in your society. Again, you should read more carefully and respond with more precision.

Also, it's a pretty ridiculous statement to say that players take no risk. Think about the guys on the bottom.... not the Carlos Correas of the world, but the guys who slug it out in the Minor Leagues making not much only to get to bigs. The sacrifices that these guys on the lower level are making *are* risks.... often times, people are deferring money they could be making doing normal jobs in order to pursue this line of work. Sometimes I just think these conversations ignore how many guys in the league actually had to make sacrifices in order to get to where they are. Not every player in baseball was drafted in the first round and had it handed to them.

This is Handmaid’s Tale level stuff.

If my parents gifted me a $1,200 gun, I would have sold it for weed.

The Ghost Of Ernie is a great Twitter feed. Question this teeet raises for me is, if you’re a career minor league named Aurelio and at the age of 33 an MLB teams offer you a September call-up, do you accept knowing this means you may only have another 15 years to live?

It should not end until Manfred is gone or in jail

I mostly see the side where people get killed. However, I understand that people like to hunt and some people even eat what they hunt. I understand that some like to protect their home. What I don't understand is people carrying guns around everywhere they go, people owning dozens of guns, people making guns the most important thing in their lives and won't even consider any regulations, people who think they need guns to protect them from our military, people who see a school of kindergartners get shot up and their only solution is more guns! I view that all of that as disturbing

BRANDON FOR THE WIN AGAIN! Are you tired of all this winning yet?

I never said even once that I understand the attitude to guns in the US. It is impossible, bewildering, for anyone who was not raised there. No one who lives in any other country in the world could even begin to understand it. There is no disagreement on that point.

then he should have taken the trade offers supposedly on the table. passed on mitchell for luke too, if you recall. van gundy's time as gm was an unmitigated disaster that set the franchise back a decade.

Maybe they were discussing adoption policy?

I'm still stuck in Brampton after kayaking over from Whitefish Point last year.

This is a flawed argument that is most often used by stupid people It should be very clear to anyone what the difference is between a gun and a car, knife, airplane, or whatever else you want to try to use in your stupid rationalization. A gun is a weapon. It is used to inflict bodily harm or physical damage. That Is what it was intended for and is its only use. Everything that you mentioned has a different primary use and multiple secondary uses of which doing harm or physical damage happens to be one.

This is wrong on a couple of levels. The idea that players are taking no risk is laughable because, again, baseball is the only source of income for most of them. As long as the game shuts down their income stops, and however long it stretches into the season--or seasons (!)--that eats into the short window of time they have to ply their trade and make any income at all. Plus, because players are well known and in the media all the time, every day the lockout stretches on, they're the ones who get blamed for the whole thing. That's the complete opposite of the owners' situation, since they are relatively unknown because they hardly ever appear in the media, and who all have multiple sources of non-baseball income. For a local example, consider the Ilitches, who own a pizza chain, a hockey team, arenas and theaters, and a casino hotel. Whether or not baseball is even played doesn't affect any of these businesses. It appears that you've misplaced the risk on the opposite end of the spectrum. Also, the idea that all players are millionaires. I can see why you believe this because the media, much of which is owner-controlled or at least sympathetic to them, lead you to believe that all players are millionaires. But this is true of only a small portion of major league players. Of the 1,374 players who stepped onto a major league field last year, about 30% were paid at least $1 million. That means 70% of players were not. Many of these players bounced up and down between the minors. Most of those guys scuffled for years at minor league money, which I guarantee is less than you make, before steeping into the sun for a brief moment. And many of those guys also came from impoverished circumstances from third-world countries. Unlike many of the men who own the teams, few if any players were born with the silver spoon. But ultimately, whether some players are millionaires is not even the issue. The issue is that revenue in the game has increased substantially, the share of that revenue going to players has dropped to historic lows, and as people working in an industry that generates the money, they have some leverage to improve their circumstances to at least what it was just a few years ago. This isn't like owning a restaurant, where it's the owner's world and the fungible employees just live in it. Players are connected to the game as people by the rest of us, so they are not mere employees.

Baez was added to MLB roster before it went dark

Baseball owners do not run baseball teams as a primary business. It's a toy to them, often part of a larger empire. It's a legal monopoly where labor is the very product and service being offered. Not really applicable to anything we do

The players take a risk with their health (and future earning potential) every time they step on the field. Not to mention that they are the ones that allow for fans to show up and make money for the teams.

when things are slanted to once side then of course that side will have fewer demands. Why wouldn't they?

I don't feel bad for either side, but I am on the labor side. I despise Manfred and don't trust the owners. They are all making a fortune and the players (who are the product) want a bigger piece. Also Manfred sucks.

If only the players would shut up and take what the owners decide to give them, this would not be difficult to resolve.

what's the rationale? There is none. Your take is like a guy pointing a guy at another's head and saying "Well he's being unreasonable" to the guy he's pointing the gun at. Revenues are up and player's salaries are down. MLB can't cry foul to the degree that they need to pull this stunt now. Manfred has no credibility.

yes... although the Fox Theater tweeted this:

There has never been a strike or lockout during the social media era. This is going to get brutal if it cause games to be missed. It might actually pressure them to get things done faster.

It's the digital equivalent of a Potemkim village. Everything is fine here, move along....

go to mlb.com and it's a ghosttown. All generic stories you would find on some website that is hosted on geocities and not updated since 2001. The team sites have no player pictures anymore. You can still buy season tickets though!

“Because we can’t eradicate all murders we shouldn’t eradicate any”

Until the careful people like Archie and Tigerholic and Romad come to the conclusion that despite the care they take they are still part of the problem, things in the US won't change.

I've always hated the shootout. But I have to admit I do hate them less since Jimmy Howard has retired.

well, 2 pts is 2 pts.

That tying goal by the Kraken was odd. Erne makes up for not taking advantage of his chance in OT. Wings win, 4 in a row!

Late to this thread but I enjoy the conversation. I retired in May of 2017. I invested without fail for over 30 years in a 401K. The 401K was still relatively new to the marketplace for the average investor when I began contributing. As I recall, I began contributing 6% of my salary initially. Then I moved to 10% and then 15%. For about 30 years I contributed 15% of my salary. If I were to offer advice…I would advise that 15% is a base to work off of, 20% if you possibly can. Everyone’s situation is different. This includes the options you may or may not have through your employer. Personally, and I do invest fairly conservatively, I would avoid individual stocks in a retirement account. If you want to buy a few stocks here and there, do it outside money you’re relying on for retirement. Be very aware of fees. Again, your employer is choosing the options you have but be very aware of what you’re paying in fees. A good S&P fund or ETF is fine. The S&P beats practically everything out there year in and year out. The yield is generally around 2%, historically speaking. If you’re relatively young, ignore the market and don’t stop contributing. Educate yourself on investing. I think most here have by reading the comments. Don’t make this complicated, it’s not. Lastly, the most under utilized investment vehicle in this country is the Roth IRA. If at all possible, and again everybody’s situation is different, try to max one of these out every year. I feel for younger investors in this country right now, my son included. SS may or may not be around and at the rate we’re going taxes are going to be a bear. Pensions are long gone. As a FWIW, I’m a Vanguard fan. I subscribe to Morningstar for dabbling in individual stocks now that I’m retired. They are a good resource if anyone is interested. A Premium annual subscription was $199 a few months back. They have a lot of good information for review. Apologies for getting long.

In terms of 5th starter options left on the market, does Grienke have enough left in the tank or is he spent at this point?

You know me so well.

Tyler Bertuzzi placed in Covid protocol. Shocking.

An Army Major killed 13 people at Fort Hood before he was stopped. I think they had guns.

I would like to know the statistics on how many good guys with guns thwarted potential murders? I feel like the number is very low. I also then wonder how many people, particularly children, got hold of said good guy's gun and accidentally killed someone? I can't imagine the net is very many lives saved and thousands of lives lost than didn't need to be.

SigSauer 9mm, what does that cost, about $1,200?

The "Field of Dreams" game was the one that looked off to me. Balls were just flying.

By the way, I really did get a mesh system on your recommendation.

I don’t expect Rasmussen to score much from regular play, but can we at least get the coaches to have him stay a few minutes after practice today to take half a dozen shots at an empty net.

The cozying up to gambling, the idiotic extra inning runner, two different baseballs deployed in the same season.....it's a lot of stupid stuff to absorb. These particular changes are not good signs at minimum, and in the case of gambling, I think the effects will be felt in ways that we cannot predict at this point. For example, I fear that gambling scandals won't taint the game so much as they will expose the public's evolving acceptance of cheating in sports as a way of life, and undermine the idea of sporting integrity as a principle.

As a non-trumper that would like good and transparent government with a media willing to hold elected officials accountable, I do want standards.

… can we try being a little less crude? I, for one, would appreciate it. Thanks.

There's a lot of difference between Hunter and Jared. Hunter is whore chasing drug addict that lives off of daddies name and was paid off by foreign companies to get daddies' influence. Jared is very successful and did a good job in his work in the WH achieving peace in the ME and working with other countries on foreign policy. The only thing Hunter did successfully while being overpaid in jobs he wasn't qualified was seducing his brothers wife. Sounds more like jealousy than corruption.