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For me it’s not about sympathy. It’s a business discussion. It’s a $9 Billion enterprise. I simply don’t buy into any thought that players should just be grateful for whatever the owners throws their way. Fans don’t watch the owners. The players are the product and the service being sold. They are not being selfish or greedy or spoiled. They want and deserve their fair share for the $9 billion enterprise. The owners didn’t build or create MLB. They were already rich and bought into it as franchise owners for the investment and prestige. Don’t act like they toiled and worked 80 hours a week to make it work. The vast majority of them, if not all of them, have other companies to run and baseball is just a hobby and tax convenience.

alternate Mueller report suppressed by Barr apparently is coming soon

The police are under no duty to protect the "public." This has been decided time and again by no less than the Supreme Court. https://mises.org/power-market/police-have-no-duty-protect-you-federal-court-affirms-yet-again

One of the things I've thought about after playing in APBA and other draft leagues is the teams that are regularly consistent in their records but more often than not miss the playoffs tend to get screwed compared to teams that tank every couple of years. I've always thought you should reward teams that just miss the playoff by giving them a higher pick over tanking teams. You want one of the top few picks, build your team better. TBH, not sure if it would work, but it adds incentive to spend a bit more money on building your team along the way.

Rob Manfred has made me a big fan of the players.

Closer to 175 than 125. I think .290/.330/.500 would be a reasonable optimistic outcome for him. Getting that from a strong defensive shortstop would be outstanding. Even if he is at his career averages though, he'd still be a huge upgrade.

The report I read is no knife was found. The wal mart security guy said he had one. And I strenuously disagree that the only way to disarm a person in a wheelchair is to shoot them 9 times from behind. The cop was immediately fired and will face charges. If you want to stick up for that behavior go ahead. But understand what you are defending. Unless you are in direct danger or dying you have no right to kill someone as a police officer. If you want to live life like that then move to North Korea.

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

My goal for them to win 90 games as many years as possible. If they do that, then it's usually an interesting season. 90 games also puts them in the post-season crap shoot which is additional entertainment.

I fully expect this to be a calm, logical, rational place for discussion.

This was similar to my first thought "Hey son, we obviously screwed you up more than we even realized leading to what you need, and you probably need us more than ever right now, but hey, just like we told you before, 'you have to learn not to get caught'. Good luck." ~ Mom and Dad. I don't want to say I have sympathy for that kid, but good lord, definitely provides some insight into how he was raised.

Iowa needed 4 INTs to beat PSU and lost to Wisc and Purdue. Cade is the most careful QB in the conference. On paper there is no game here. Of course 20 yr olds can come up flat for mysterious reasons, but aside from that always there underlying risk of them not showing up, there isn't any kind of football based analysis you can do to persuade yourself MI is likely to lose this game.

Pitchers and catchers generally report during the second week of February. If they miss that date I think everything starts getting pushed out. ST tickets always go on sale at 10:00 AM on the 2nd Saturday of January.

Manipulate the competitive balance: check Invite gambling into the sport on a massive scale: check Manfred: I see no reason why gamblers should see opportunities to control outcomes

This is why guns, in all forms, should be illegal and disposed of in volcanoes. Americans, and humans in general, are no where near responsible enough for guns to exist. They need to be banned from the world. There is no such thing as a responsible gun owner. All purchases and storage of guns only add to the problem.

1st a live round that magically appears and now a gun that magically fires itself?

yeah - I've seen that. I think if you insert a quote and then delete the entry cursor - for instance you put in a sentence and then delete it all the way back the beginning, you lose the cursor out side the quote box permanently, even though you can still edit in the quote box. The way out is to ctl-Z to reverse the deletion you made. Then edit what you want but sure not to delete the entry point again.

you know me, I'd do something more radical. How about a scheme were the league pays everyone's minimum at about 2 million, and the teams all pay a revenue based tax to the league to fund that. All the guys at the minimum would go into a draft every year, which would include all AAA guys with 5 yrs. You pick the guy, you get him for one year. If you like him, you can sign him to an 'extension' contract, say a minimum of 2yrs and 25% more than the minimum, but otherwise for as long and as much as you want and you leave the luxury tax in place. When contracts run out, guys with enough seniority (say 5 years at MLB) are FA. If a FA doesn't sign during the FA period, he can go back to the draft pool with the rest at the minimum salary. If you are at the min and don't get picked up, you are a minor league free agent. That would leave a lot of decent players as a performance floor for bad teams to turn around quickly with and you could weight the 'draft' rules even more heavily toward bad teams - say multiple picks in the 1st round to the worst teams. You 'own' your minor leaguers for a fixed number of option years much like now, but if you don't give them the 2yr +25% deal in 5 yrs, they go to the pool. just a sketch - but the idea is to increase minimums and give poor teams more options to turn over their rosters at moderate cost. Insulate players from cheapskate ownership since the league sets the floors. Let journeyman players move and maybe help keep good players with the same team. It doesn't address what to do about albatross contracts, but I think in the long run that is self correcting because the teams that give them out almost always do suffer in the end.

Absolutely agree with this.

But I also wonder. How many of those wealthy players are pro-union for other people? I doubt they are very supportive of teachers unions or auto workers unions unless it's for a photo-op. I agree with you on owners whining when most of them didn't even pay to build the ballparks that make them profits. All but 6 owners are billionaires, right? A million seconds is 11 days, A billion seconds is 31 years for a frame of reference there. But players annoy me if they start talking about 'How can I support my family?' So far, I haven't heard it with this lockout, but I think we will, we usually do. Most people would love to have their Per Diem alone. I don't like either side. Rookie salary is, what $570,000?. Most Americans aren't going to have a lot of sympathy when you complain. Both sides alienate the fans. Pretty dumb thing to do when there are so many other things vying for people's attention these days. Screw this up enough and they won't come back.

The governor in Pennsylvania vetoed a bill that would have allowed open carry anywhere in the state without permit or background check similar to Texas. This Republican legislature also passed restrictive election bills making it harder to vote. Republicans are literally making it easier to own and carry a gun than vote. I wonder if in Canada it is easier to vote or own a gun? What type of country, that calls itself a democracy, would make access to guns easier than voting?

The nuts that call themselves pro life and just anti women. They don’t want them having any control over their bodies or sex lives.

He could bat clean-up for any major college team right now, but he's a rebellious kid. He swears at the manager, takes days off whenever he feels like it, and is a bad influence on the toolsy sophomore shortstop. This kid is a real piece of work, but he can hit the ball a mile. He just needs the right coaches to talk some sense in to him.

Oh, its written by the child reporters of the Washington Examiner

They supposedly didn't do any counter-intelligence or financial stuff by design. If, this report has that material woah Nelly!

Romad just coming to post that!

How many years has the band conductor been longing to call in The Victors for such a triumphant moment as at the 30 second mark here:

We did passion fruit already. You know, in the early '70s that was the most absurd thing that the Pythons could think of, and that is really saying something. And let us remember the most prescient aspect of that skit. When Graham Chapman attacks with a banana, Cleese kills him with a 6-shooter. 50 years later, that is reality.

Johnson, Stafford and Suh, the last Lions players to be drafted 1 or 2 all eventually signed contracts that made them the highest paid players ever at the time at their respective positions. Poor them for having been drafted by the Lions.

One thing is for certain, though... they'd bring in the scabs and still charge the same rates for tickets, beer, merchandise, etc.

Nobody would watch it and TV wouldn’t pay to broadcast it at the rates they do now and nobody wins.

I have an interest as a fan in watching baseball, and having a system that self-perpetuates with a reasonable amount of competitiveness. If they harden the existing luxury tax system into more of a true salary cap, I guess I don't really care. I feel kind of connected to the players and to the Tigers and ownership (as well as all of the MLB and MiLB) in the broadest "corporate" sense - i.e., we share a common interest. Beyond that, I don't care at all how the spoils are split up. The vast majority of this discussion seems to involve the projection of posters' individual preference to identify with highly skilled non-management personnel vs. what is perceived to be largely unskilled management (in AAs case, I can see why one would feel this way 😉). I am not criticizing that attitude, but it is not one that I have an personal investment in one way or another. I don't really give a tinker's damn about the sharing of revenues between owners and players, or who is to blame, or the share of $$ among players. My entire interest as a fan is to keep the game on the field, and in reasonably good shape from a competitiveness standpoint, though I think salary caps can be overdone. Beyond that, the whole debate is too academic or personalistic to hold my interest.

Nobody would want to watch them though.

It should not end until Manfred is gone or in jail

https://mgoblog.com/content/upon-further-review-2021-offense-vs-ohio-state#read-more This UFR for the offense is a thing of wonder and beauty. The quotes at the end of the drive summaries are amazing. I wanted to go run up a hill and jump up and down just reading this.

You don't know how right you are. The Black Panthers led to immediate gun control. Who supported such a thing? None other than Republicans and the NRA. Mulford Act

The biggest flaw in that is that cars were built to transport people and goods and hammers were made to build things. Handguns are made for only one purpose - killing people (not killing deer). It's a ridiculous argument. I am not for banning guns. It's too late for that. There's too many of them out there. We don't have the resources to uphold it, but someone that uses a gun for something illegal - we need to be heavy on them....very heavy. And people who supply guns to someone who can't get them on their own should be charged with the same crime as the perp. Can we get serious about it? Fine, be a responsible gun owner. Good for you. But this case? 15 year olds can't buy handguns and they aren't supposed to even possess them without adult supervision. Sounds pretty clear to me. If this dad willingly bought this kid a 9mm handgun and did nothing to secure it, charge him with Accessory To Murder or charge him with murder. Yeah, your honor. I gave the guy the bomb. I showed him how to arm it. I didn't know he was gonna do something bad with it.

I have lived here my entire life and I have zero understanding of our gun culture.

I'm a business owner, too. The only thing we have in common with them is that we share the title of "business owner" with them. You and I have practically nothing else in common with the men who own baseball teams as part of their empire. They are a different breed of cat from you and me, and we are not in the same boat as they are. Even as business owners ourselves, we have to pay admission to even step foot on their boat.

This is an absolutely stupid thing to say and its so far from the truth.