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Or maybe you both are just throwing out wild ass, baseless assumptions.

Whoosh.

OK, I've been threatening to do this for a few days, notably here and here, but I just came up with another post that doesn't comfortably fit anywhere, so I'm starting a new thread. This thread for any random factoid, story, joke, poem, and assorted sundry detritus. That's the intent, anyway. The posts don't have to be about the Tigers, necessarily, but any of them could be. This first post is. Some or most of you guys may already know this, but the Detroit Tigers franchise were not founded in 1901. They were founded in 1895 and first played in the minor league Western League, which continued under that name through 1899. It was a league that looked a lot like the future American Association, with teams like the Minneapolis Millers, St. Paul Saints, Kansas City Blues, and the like. In 1900 they changed their name to the American League, still a minor league, and picked up the Chicago White Stockings and the Cleveland Lake Shores. The American League then declared war on the National League and forced their way into becoming a major league, rounding out into the eight-team configuration they would continue with unabated until 1954. The Tigers are one of two teams that started with the 1895 WL, the other being the Milwaukee Brewers, who made their way to St. Louis in 1902 before landing in Balitmore in that 1954 season. That means our Tigers are the one continuing franchise in the American League that has retained their city and identity the entire time. I'm kinda proud of that.

So Ezra Klein did an hour with Tim Walz (NYT Podcast) and Walz made one of the more perceptive observations about how people react to politicians, and it was that what people react to is whether the pol projects that he likes his voters, more so than whether the voter thinks he would like the pol. Which partly explains Trump's appeal. He may be unlikable, but his emotional neediness toward his fans comes through loud and clear. And it fits Hillary exactly as well. It wasn't her appeal as a person you might like as much as her dismissiveness toward other people, that if you met she wouldn't like/give you the time of day. That's what she couldn't hide. Which is why 'basket of deplorables' became so devastating for her - it confirmed an impression she already projected. And again, it may not be true of Hillary - I certainly don't know the woman, but it is how she comes across. This observation is probably also at the heart of why female candidates have so much more difficulty threading the needle with many male voters. When men judge other male pols, they don't have as much reaction to whether they think the pol would like them, men tolerate other men they don't like all that much relatively well. But if a man thinks a woman doesn't like him, then it become a judgement on his manhood, so the reaction level goes exponential.

I think it’s crazy to think the players don’t give a ****. Many of them don’t have solid careers (Villade, Madris, Ibanez, Brieske, etc) and are fighting for their professional lives. They just aren’t very good. The one guy who has a very high, guaranteed salary laid out twice last night to try and prevent a ground ball from getting to the outfield. Don’t conflate talent with effort.

just wanted to let everyone know that I've agreed to become a moderator of this forum

Real North Korea vibes...

There's a part of me that questions whether he made that up... Which seems even worse when you think about it lol

Not gonna happen but a funny idea

I took it as pretending to think he was Inge for a joke.

Great ceremony. Congrats skip!

The GOP right now is being shaped now by Kyle Rittenhouse. Let that sink in.

If you were a fan of the Tigers in 1975, you could imagine a team losing 18 games in a row.

If you aren't pure enough, you get purged... Who wants to be a part of that?

Bottom quadrant for far too long. Comtemplating writing a book of haiku to describe life as a Detroit sports fan over the past decade

Walz has been using the "weird" line for a long time as well... I remember seeing a clip of him from MSNBC from before Thanksgiving last year saying using that toward Trump. One of the criticisms is that this was some sort of work shopped/focus grouped line, and I don't think it's true. I think it went viral because JD Vance, in particular, gave it oxygen. I didn't hear him with Ezra Klein, but I did hear him talk to one of the Pod Bros and he made a good point (one that has probably been adopted by the campaign and should be adopted by supporters) of using it only toward the candidate or his surrogates, not supporters. I don't doubt what you are saying about part of how "basket of deplorables" backfired, but Walz' point is important: keep the focus on the candidate.

Supposed to be starting at 5 on Bally

Wait, has the Louvre been notified of these breaking developments?

so something I did notice looking at Tork's numbers (because I think someone here mentioned it!) is that his K rate is up significantly at Toledo. Now nobody goes down a league and strikes out more unless they are making a conscious effort to swing at more pitches, so to me that is evidence that Tork *is* working on stuff. I hope, that based how tiny his major league heat map was, they told him he had to learn to cover more of the zone and if he is K'ing more, that would be what you expect to see as he tries to learn to do that. Anyway, that's what I hope we are seeing.

That’s awesome I saw he has been the PBP guy since 1975 and never missed a single game. He lived his best life.

IDK - the ball boy in the RF corner made some nice plays this week.... 😉

I acknowledge I came back breathing fire at you, because honestly, hearing multiple posters here suggesting, or even flat out saying, that Harris and Hinch want to lose and players don't give a shĭt is just getting really, really, really tiresome. So it was the accumulation of my frustration at reading too much of that, and you happened to step into my line of fire. So I apologize for that. In my defense, "it's just human reality that a competitor with no reasonable chance to compete can't give you his best" still reads and re-reads to me as though you are saying that are players are laying up on effort because they're not playing on a winner, and I reject that premise. As TD said, most of the players you see on the field are fighting for their professional lives at any given moment, so the idea of them not giving their best strikes me as career suicide, and who does that after all the work they put in to get there in the first place? Do at least some guys do that? I suppose, although if they were wont to do so, they probably would have been found out and weeded out in the minors, if not before. But I do not think it's common at all.

Not at all! It's called Southern League: A True Story of Baseball, Civil Rights, and the Deep South's Most Compelling Pennant Race by Larry Colton. https://www.amazon.com/Southern-League-Baseball-Compelling-Pennant/dp/1455511889

This.

Related

In case you missed it last night and judging by the attendance you did. This was the most exciting part of the game.

Maybe ABC can provide an empty podium if he doesn't show up as well lol

White Sox released Corey Knebel despite him having a successful rehab in AAA. Go get him Harris, that’s a low risk high reward move to try and help the bullpen.

Dirks is definitely keying off the PxP guy. I think most color guys are like that anyway. Even Craig Monroe was better when he was on with Dan because Dan didn’t feed his worst instincts like Benetti did. By the way, i have to give props to Bobby Scales’s work last night. He seemed loose and informative most fo the broadcast with Dan, especially when they took a 30,000-foot view of the Tigers’ general situation, which happened a lot during last night’s broadcast.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that any single event (even Trump's NABJ debacle) is the *argument* against either of these guys, for what it's worth. But in order to make the latter argument, you have to take comments that they make to layer that argument. Some may matter more than others (I doubt JD Vance's story ranks highly as well), but I don't think we should lose sight of that either...

JD Vance yelling at his kid is a weak argument if true. It fits into the category of Trump is an asshole and that's not proven to be a politically successful argument for Democrats. Voters, swing voters in particular, already know Trump is an asshole but don't seem all that bothered by the cursing, name calling, and jerk behavior. Hillary's campaign focused a lot on the Trump is a mean jerk narrative and it didn't seem to work with swing voters nor motivating the base. The better arguments against Trump and Vance I believe is that they are phony working class populists who are out of touch and only care about themselves. People who are too radical and too extreme to be in the White House. Agents of chaos and calamity. Those are better arguments to be making than Vance was a jerk to his kid imo.

One of my first Tigers memories. I was 6 years old.

Like the thread idea. This is a really good watch.

I don't think we're going to see a complete overhaul. They have over 20 pitchers on the 40 man roster. I could see signing a starter and a closer and then the best 11 other guys make the team.

Let's hope he was right that it was the most important call of his political career because it ends it. ETTD.

so tonight he is 2/2 + a sac fly: singe and double. Pulled the double to left at 109 EV off a 94mph FB. Sac fly pulled to left at 99 EV against 95 mph FB. Single up the middle at 102 EV against a 92 mph FB. So it's not like the ability isn't there - it's a matter of developing consistency and keeping the aggressive approach where he's hunting FBs.

No that would be Al Avila: too slow and too late. Their competence is at a much higher rate though: akin to Harris. Now... if they could only match up well with Brad Holmes and Dan Campbell, etal... We'd (the economy) would be cookin'...!

For those of you without Apple TV you’re welcome

A competitive team wouldn't have the amount of question marks the Tigers did entering this season. They answered a lot of questions on players this year and still have time to answer more. Then we'll see what happens in the offseason. Does Harris add proven players or not? We have a pretty good idea about most of these guys at this point. I'm sure there will be some of them being evaluated next year but the majority will be expected to perform. I think it's time to compete next year or Harris should have traded Skubal.

We should probably change the subject. How about discussing the impotent offense?

No, the phrase was "I've made a boner of myself". Once the laughter died down and someone told him what it meant, he just dropped his head and said "Well now I've really made a boner of myself".

Shaprio said something folks didn't like when he was 20? JD Vance said stupid **** this morning. Kamala cheated in a 2nd grade Spelling Bee Trump cheated on every wife. There are subtitles, you know. Looking for a perfect human? Well, Nick Lidstrom was born in Sweden, so you're out of luck, becuase there is nobody else. Wait, you mean AOC danced in a music video in college? She DANCED? How dare she --- and to a song by a French band. Means that she hates America.

I feel pretty confident in saying that if Tork was both not producing results AND not putting in perceived effort to try and get better that he would’ve been demoted earlier in the season and they would’ve made an effort to deal him for something at the deadline. The reality is much more likely to be that we promoted him through the system quickly, he doesn’t have experience making a lot of adjustments as a result, struggled with timing and then pitch recognition trying to compensate, and lost confidence. He has since been trying to retool his approach in Toledo and there are obvious positives and some collateral negatives that still need to be ironed out. i wouldn’t give up on Tork at this point, but it would be responsible for the organization to both exercise some patience with him for the rest of this year and also come up with a contingency plan for 1B if he can’t recover to be what we need him to be.

Checkmate Don lemon said it

I was at the WM/Ft Wayne game last night. We sat right in front of Max Clark's parents. They saw we had Tigers gear on and chatted with them a bit.