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Remember those brave not DEI men who stopped the Texas schools shooter? /s

The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Well, because that's the way they built them in England, and English engineers designed the first US railroads. Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the wagon tramways, and that's the gauge they used. So, why did 'they' use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they had used for building wagons, which used that same wheel spacing. Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break more often on some of the old, long distance roads in England. You see, that's the spacing of the wheel ruts. So who built those old rutted roads? Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (including England) for their legions. Those roads have been used ever since. And what about the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match or run the risk of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. Therefore, the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. Bureaucracies live forever. So the next time you are handed a specification/procedure/process and wonder 'What horse's ass came up with this?', you may be exactly right. Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses. (Two horses' asses.) Now, the twist to the story: When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains, and the SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds. So, a major Space Shuttle design feature, of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system, was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass. And you thought being a horse's ass wasn't important? Ancient horse's asses control almost everything.

I forget if I have gripes about Stand Up To Cancer here, but it is a pet peeve and I feel like I am on an island there. It's just a giant ad for Mastercard and money being diverted from research to those stupid signs.

The only way they trade Skubal is if it’s the kind of deal where the pundits say “what were they thinking?” And ”they” refers to the other team.

The normalization of this man and his family by our national media has been the most disappointing thing in a long time. They ****ing attempted a coup and are horrible people and they just go about pretending like nothing happened. They got their corporate orders handed down.

who gives a flying **** about their outfits

I love the idea of drafting young bats that don’t speak English. Good chance they don’t understand the poor hitting instruction they are getting from the organization.

Cspan is getting flooded with calls about Project 2025.

Dodgers wont take on Baez's contract, it'd push them to the next tier in salary cap. Better for Tigers to eat it and maximize prospect return. The Dodgers just added a few kids in the draft this year that would be nice as well to be added to a package. The Dodgers Farm system has taken a beating though over the last few years and is probably in the 5-10 range now not the top 3. There's a big difference from that too. I still think the Orioles make the most sense. They have more prospects than places to put them and are in win now and Corbin Burnes only has this year and next. They won't sign him to a $300/$400 million contract so adding SKubal now is their best bet to make two really good runs at it. They can make the "stupid" offer, win a World Series and still be loaded for the foreseeable future.....

come on, 84's best posts are when he's amped up on dr pepper and telling us that the red wings/lions/tigers 6th round pick is a real sleeper and destined for the hall of fame. i'd rather have that than some sorry old man shaking his fist at a cloud and complaining about everything. 🙂 /s debbie downer.

The earth isn’t flat or a pretzel. That’s what they want you to think. What they are hiding from you is that earth is a cat.

This is amusing

Is Echoes overrating other teams prospects now too?

But in this situation we are talking about multi jurisdictions of responsibility between the feds and state and locals. I refuse to believe this happened because someone in the secret service “forgot” or “didn’t think about it”. Did some locals drop the ball? Wouldn’t surprise me especially given the aforementioned reference to the non DEI folks in Ulvade TX. Someone thought someone else was taking care of it. I will wait for the investigation before playing the “what they should have done” game.

lol. omg. So the narrative is to blame DEI hiring, more specifically, THE WOMEN. I suppose I should be surprised that some feel very comfortable to offer that supposition without even a modicum of embarrassment. I’m not. It’s rapidly becoming the new normal here in the future Gilead. Praise be, bitch-es.

This would be way, way too light of a package to trade Skubal.

Always appreciate your knowledge and opinions Mark

He was going to run for re-election as an Independent. He better ****ing pull that paperwork, too. Crooked entitled elitist bastard.

I would like to see the AL uniform fully sponsored by Draft Kings and the NL by FanDuel. Full company colors and logos across the front. Every dollar bet on the game gets a donation to Stand Up For Cancer and the Pete Rose Foundation. It’s the future.

Im hoping this was just you taking an opportunity to humble brag that you were at that game. Poor umpiring and the ump show that follows has gotten completely out of control. Way beyond just an accepted part of the game. These guys are TERRIBLE and miss multiple calls every game. It’s practically an EPIDEMIC. Make it stop please!!!!

The 8th rounder from Regis U signed for 27.5k after phoning a friend and realizing being a millionaire isn't in the cards. But seriously, the way the draft pools works it makes sense to lock in your under slot picks first. That way if something falls through with them, your savings and denominator aren't hosed.

The two first year JC guys toward the end and the catcher from Puerto Rico is committed to a JC. I'm assuming the JC sophomore won't be returning for his Junior year to stay eligible.

Related to my post from a couple days ago, if the media were to learn that the Trump campaign staged the entire thing, there is no way they could report that without looking completely unhinged, so completely has Trump checkmated them through sheer force of will.

Tee-Hee.

They are, that's the problem.

The Tigers are aiming for a top 30 prospect. Realistically it'd probably be closer to 50 and a throw in pitcher/lottery ticket. They should be able to get a top 100 prospect pretty easily.

Yeah.....but. It's still hard to compare the value of a hitter to a pitcher given the difference in injury risk. It actually easier with a pure short term rental like Flaherty - if you have to weight the actual value of Skubal under control for more years against the odds he goes down during that period it's anyone's guess.

Hopefully Holland spends a lot of time with the Cruze this year. Not sure why teams are so afraid to use the G-League to develop guys.

Yeah... This is why I felt I was "in the ballpark"; moreso than anything else they could add into the package. As for Vargas AND Rainer... Both of those guys look like they could fit at EITHER SS or 3B... So I wouldn't worry about having two high-level SS prospects as much as "Hmmm... Who plays 3rd and who plays SS...? Hmmm..." Bottom line being I think we would be pleased with the left side of our IF for years and years to come...

I figured you would get a kick out of the (No horse pun intended) NASA tie in!

The Tigers will spend when the time is right. The time is simply not yet right.

He had people going this week saying Trump made a mistake with Vance because he’s not 45 and therefore isn’t old enough to be President or Vice President. He also used a picture of Dan Crenshaw and played it off as Vance.

maybe. maybe not. even with Javy's contract, they are $50 under the ML midpoint for payroll, so "we can't do anything big until Javy's contract is over" is pure nonsense; they can spend if they wanted to, with or without his $ on the ledger IF - and that's a huge IF - getting rid of Javy's contract would lead to more FA spending, then great, but it currently should not be stopping them

The lack of secondary ball handlers is frightening. Who are you giving the ball to if not Cade? People will still say Ivey should be a PG. But he is a total disaster with the ball in his hands.

I think fan voting became the thing in about 1970...it was sponsored by Gillette and you could pick up ballots at any location that had a display or at the ball park. You could also buy an onion for a ha penny...them were the days

I'll guess ST next season will be it for Baez if he doesn't hit in rest of the way this season. The residual value will be firmly under 9 figures, and they'll wait until late so the odds of anyone picking him up are low to reduce the chance he shows up on the field with another team too soon.

This is absolutely true. If you want fully formed adults fighting in an army effectively the battle better be for their own homes and freedom (a la Ukraine).

I think the word you're looking for is criminal....

Remember when Whitaker forgot his uniform?

Ooh! Ooh! Do the one where the cop climbed to the roof, saw the shooter, then climbed back down!

Yes, that will be a thing, but window is open now and for the next several years

wait when that payroll explodes in a few years

I was reading an article where a former secret service agent was quoted talking about how the famous photo is itself possibly photo of a breakdown b/c their protocol is to basically completely cover him using their body as shield and many parts of the protectee's head and body are completely prone and unprotected from further shots in that photo. Unless the secret service knew and believed he was safe, but their subsequent actions do not suggest they believed that.

Complements the timing for the Biden court reform announcement pretty nicely.

I don’t think so, either. They’ll just eat the last 3 years of his deal. Probably would have done similar with Cabrera, but he still had some marketing value and they didn’t want to ruin the relationship. I suspect none of that is a concern with Baez.

I don't think that is smart at all.

Yes, they need to rest Holland to prepare for the gauntlet schedule the Pistons will be facing in August and September.

i'll say again, the deal would need to irrational. 5 or 6 guys from the top 15 of your system. Harris should not settle for a good return or a solid deal; needs to be a bat-sh** crazy offer (and i'll say this again: Skubal, Jobe, Flaherty, Olson, Mize/Manning/Montero/Maeda/Madden, is a pretty nice rotation going forward)