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It’s always a mistake when I go on a Tigers-oriented Facebook page and read the blathering idiocy of ordinary fans. It makes me appreciate this place even though we are Morans. Two or three months ago, scores of ordinary fans on a Facebook Tigers page were venting their rage at Verlander claiming that he had left the team in free agency for more money and they could never forgive him. There were so many of them almost no one could be heard over their grunts that simulated reasoned discourse Just now it was white hot rage at the Jack Flaherty trade that anyone with brain tissue knew was inevitable. Even though we are fewer than we once were, I’m glad the few of us who remain are still together.

? Ever? I’ll take the series win against everyone.

This could go in several threads, dropping here.

It’s a win, and ugly or not, it’s a win and I’ll take it.

People argue about the greatest of all time in sports, music, or politics. There’s no debate over the GOAT of Con Men. Trump is the greatest there ever was and the greatest there ever will be.

Despite the odds I think anybody at this point expecting to make the playoffs is setting themselves up for disappointment. Yes, I think it's a success but that's due to the injuries and record despite them. I am disappointed in a few players that brings it down somewhat. But this season, despite a couple of bad weeks here and there in May and June, it's been an enjoyable run. Pretty consistent.

Through the first inning...WHERE'S MY 6 RUNS?!

To the tune of the Gilligan's Island theme song, a 3 year rehab.

Another good experience with Callaway pre-owned. They ran a sale, buy one hybrid and the second one was 50% off. Ordered a 3 and a 5. Both delivered in shrink wrap and not a scratch on them.

I understand what people do and how they define things. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm just saying, I don't believe the idea of people being inherently "good" or inherently "evil" really holds water. I agree with you there are people we refer to as "evil", and they can probably be fairly characterized as acting without consideration or regret. That's undeniable, and it's perfectly reasonable to refer to their behavior, their acts, as being evil. My question is: are these people actually "evil"? I mean, constitutionally, at their core. If so, then where does this evil actually come from? Why are these people evil, and what makes them like that? What is the nature of evil? I think it makes a great deal of difference which words we use to describe this and how we use them. A lot of people believe that "good" and "evil" come from supernatural beings that control our behavior. God makes us do good; Satan makes us do evil. Or maybe some people don't label it as "God" and "Satan", but at the same time, they still believe there's something inherent in a person's spirit, rather than their mind, that leads them to behave in a persistently good or evil fashion. But if that's the case, wouldn't such "evil" have to come from somewhere? Something must be leading people to this behavior, mustn't it? Because we can all see that the behavior is undeniably there. There must be something behind it—something in them is failing. My question is, what is the nature of the failure? Is it a spiritual failure, or a physical failure? You may not think it matters even a little. Most people don't. They just label people as "good" or "evil", mainly because it's simple and direct and then they don't have to think too deeply about it anymore. But I think it does matter a great deal, because this question affects the policies our society undertakes to deal with people who behave in dangerous and/or violent antisocial ways. And which policies get implemented depends a great deal on what policymakers believe about people, and that belief is almost certainly rooted in their childhood and what they were taught at home and in school. Here's why I think it's a policy consideration: If we believe in "evil"—if we believe that there is some supernatural being who is the source of all evil, a being that influences evil, and whose mission is to lead people to act in an evil manner—well, then, there's nothing we can do to stop it, is there? Our power as mere human beings pales against the power of this supernatural being, so all we can do to react to it is wait for the evil to happen, lock up the people influenced or otherwise overtaken by the evil, and trust that those people will eventually receive their true cosmic punishment after they die. That is, in fact, the exact policy that civilizations have been following for centuries, and that many—too many, I think—still employ today. On the other hand, if we believe that people act in a certain way for a reason—whether due to a systemic failure that creates an incentive to behave badly, or a learning at the knee of an authority figure where they learned an entire framework of bad behavior, or a physical problem such as brain damage or mental illness that leads people to do really bad things for no apparent reason—then we can embrace the idea that we can do something to stop this behavior, to change the systems, to undo damaged learning, to provide proper health services, and to undertake efforts to do so. The key difference is that in the former case, the only way to combat the "evil" is to petition really hard to the Supernatural Being of Good to defeat the Supernatural Being of Bad and touch the hearts of people to become "good". In the latter case, the way to combat it would be to apply scientific rigor and analysis to understand the systemic problems that lead to warped incentives, or to understand the physical problems that lead to inexplicable bad behavior, and then test and improve the methods to combat the factors leading to the behavior. In the former case, we push off the responsibility of change to beings we trust but cannot interact with, and simply wait and hope for results. In the latter case, we take on the responsibility for change unto ourselves and undertake the hard work to make results happen. That's the policy consideration at hand. And this is why I see it as a religious issue, or, if you prefer, an existential question, although that doesn't preclude it from being a practical consideration as well. So what is the problem? Is it that people who do bad things are simply evil? Or is it that people who do bad things are badly incentivized or poorly taught or mentally damaged?

John Kruk corrected a reporter once who called him an athlete with "I'm not an athlete, I'm a baseball player."

Had to happen. The ultimate grift for the ultimate grifter.

I think that’s better for Kamala. It doesn’t give him the chance to change the lingering impression of him that everyone who watched the debate took away from it.

Well, I don’t really buy into the concept of “good” and “evil”. Those are religious concepts that suggests some otherworldly spirit is involved. I think people’s behavior have more prosaic explanations than that. Trump is a ****ed-up person not because God or Satan caused that in him, but because of his upbringing and his experiences as they relate to whatever physiological issues he has in his brain. Whatever it is, he is constitutionally unable to change or otherwise control it, so he has to be dealt with as a bad actor based on his track record.

Now that's fascist.

Having Ken Burns flashbacks. His documentary on the Semiquincentennial should be very good from what I'm hearing. (If we get that far)

Kimberly Gargoyle says hello.

Tork delivers with a double.

That free ticket gesture Gibby did is awesome. Glad to see it was lots of kids going and not just greedy adults

Which in reality will be an incel kakistocracy.

JD Vance cannot be real with all these self-evidently asinine statements lately

That's not true. It's nothing like Project 2025. Presidents hire district attorneys and they are confirmed by the Senate. They serve during their term, like cabinet officials. https://news.utdallas.edu/social-sciences/political-science-study-questions-narrative-in-2006-u-s-attorney-dismissals/

I agree that Trump is a pathological liar, that he is fundamentally amoral and unethical, that his entire life revolves around himself to the exclusion of everyone else, and that he will say anything, true or untrue, to further his ends. I also believe it's likely that he truly believes whatever lie he is telling at any given moment, as opposed to holding both true thoughts and the lies based on them in his head at the same time. I think it's likely that he holds a single thought, true or not, in his head, and that this thought can be discarded and replaced with a different, opposing thought when it's convenient at the time. And further to this, I don't believe he deserves any kind of pass at any level for his behavior simply because he might actually believe the nonsense he spews.

I think this one is big in an "inside baseball" kind of way.

Sweeney has done enough in the minors to say that he could develop into a viable starter, but he also could be Zach McKinstry who also had a fantastic month in the Majors.

yeah - just for a recent example, Baddoo started out much better than Sweeney has and has flamed out. Trey is looking promising but he's got a ways to go to show you can start making plans around him.

The "it was staged" thing is bizarre. Here's what is required for that: 1) Find someone willing to die by getting shot in the head by a sniper 2) Arrange a location for an event that allows this person to set up (obviously this happened) 3) Get the buy in from local law enforcement and perhaps the USSS so that this person isn't dealt with sooner. Everybody has to keep quiet and not leak. 4) That someone has to be so good of a shot to only nick or barely miss the President without killing him. 5) All of these participants have to agree that innocent people can die 6) During the investigation this remains under wraps

Sweeneys 60ABs are encouraging….but it’s 60 ABs. I wouldn’t hate the idea of Sweeney as full time SS next year but only if we have a platoon/fallback option if he doesn’t hit like this over 500 ABs.

I find most facebook baseball groups are made up of old timers who complain about today's game. They want just two leagues with no divisions, no DH, no wild card teams, pitchers to throw 120+ pitches a game (back when pitchers were real men b/c Nolan Ryan), no batting gloves/sliding gloves/body armor, no shifts, Hank Aaron is the real HR champ, no flashy play (read: too many Mexicans), and you must pledge that Dale Murphy and Don Mattingly should be HOFers.

What took so long? What's with the lollygagging around getting today's game thread together? The boys are in a playoff push! A game efforts from everybody from here on out!

I was my parents' child. Ugly or not, they took me.

If the Tigers had been as healthy as the Royals have been all year I’m pretty sure they would have similar records. As it is, the difference is only 4.5 games. I still like the Tigers future better, although Detroit has no one like Bobby Witt.

Same with CJ Weins, the pitcher we got from the Red Sox for Trey Wingenter. PS: 1 inning tonight... nothing except 2 K's.

Nice play there by Jake Rogers, A seldom reported item from Jake's bio is that he ran away from home the summer he was 14 to join the circus, where he became a juggling sensation.

If you want to win next year, you can't go into the season needing Tork to be a core right handed bat. All he can be is a just a guy who has a chance to make the roster.

They are overcoming it right now. But going forward, they can't rely on the fact that either guy is a top pick. That status doesn't mean anything.

Meadows was not the only guy out of the lineup over most of that period and Maeda was still in the rotation etc.,

The best part of my day is when I come home and she comes outside, immediately runs over and jumps on that patio chair and waits for me and then gives me a great big hug. Even though I really love my job and rarely come home in a bad mood, but it just makes everything okay for a little bit.

one of enduring legacies of Western Civilization that has come down to use from the Greeks, re-enforced by another 2,000 yrs of Judeo-Christian ethos, is the idea that Truth has intrinsic value in and of itself. That to Trump and the people like him in the GOP, speech is a purely transactional act is a repudiation of all that. They live by a literally pre-historic morality, they are modern barbarians.

#1 with a bullet today

I still dont know what Bush was supposed to do at that moment that would have satisfied his critics. The criticism was the equivalent of Trump Deragement Syndrome. You have children reading to a President who probably practiced that for a couple of days. Let them have some final moments of peace before the world as they knew it changed forever. People were just piling on.

She told Hinch they might need some bunting but got an earful back "Heather, we don't bunt around here!"

I think your position player locks make sense unless Jung/Dingler bombs out from here on. Ibanez has been quite an asset as a RHH on the bench or starting vs LHP. I honestly didn't think much at all of his acquisition, but its been quite a boon. I wouldn't be surprised to see him dealt if a team wants to overpay for that. But that would be the only circumstance. Malloy and Torkelson need to hit because there's nothing defensively. I suspect using the DH as a partial rest day might need to be used by Greene more often than we want to admit to in order to keep him healthy. And this might be part of my bias speaking here, but I think Harris/Hinch legitimately want players that can field and hit.

Its WalMarts.