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Hey, someone else is on board with me about Spaghetti! 💀 Seriously, he’s not genuinely bad like Shep—hardly anyone can be—and I could sit through a game he's calling and be OK. But on occasion, his too-clever-by-half commentary can get on my nerves a bit. I will always prefer Dan Dickerson to Jason Benetti.

Fire Harris.

Well, technically …

So-called.

Several on my softball team. Actually Tiger fans, which is a bonus here in Big Shoulders. I might poll them on the question Monday if I remember.

I agree with your principle, although I don't think it's Players that drove that change. Baseball concluded that it just looked bad, and focus groups revealed a lot of fans agreed with them.

So Players is going to demand the opener be outlawed because guys like Rhys Hoskins and Adolis Garcia aren't getting enough homers? I don't see a path to it happening like that.

I've re-read it a few times, and I still think it's pretty clear the whole sentence is about Pete. I led with "smart-sounding take", which clearly references Pete, and then asked the question how Trump talking about this is supposed to achieve a net gain, which seems to me to be clearly about why does Pete think this, not why does Trump do this. After all, I didn't say "why does Trump think talking about". If I had, then I would be in total agreement with you. Instead, the entire sentence is about the smart-sounding take, not two completely different ideas separated by a sloppily-placed comma. The "but how does Trump talking about" part does the work of linking them together. Nevertheless, you're the person I'm supposed to have understand what I'm writing, so I'll consider striving to be less conversational in my writing and more exact in the service of hewing closer to crystal clarity.

Counterpoint:

That wouldn't explain why your answer was 100% about Trump and 0% about Pete.

THANK you. It hasn't escaped my notice that everyone I've ever heard clamoring for legislating longer starting pitcher starts are over 50, mostly way over. I've never heard any young fans agitate for it. There's nothing I can see about the opener that is degrading the product on the field. One could fairly have made that case about extreme defensive shifts, and about pitchers and hitters dawdling around between pitches. I don't see the same five alarms going off about openers. As far as I can tell, the opener is just another pitcher being deployed to maximum advantage for a team, same as the closer which, if 50-ish-year-long memory serves, was also widely complained about since it (further) reduced complete games. Hell, the closer concept is still disparaged in some quarters. I love it when people cover my tunes.

A.J. (can we can him “A.J.” now?) won’t win it, but he’ll get votes.

All of a sudden, the Democrats don’t look like incompetent boobs. It’s a nice change in perception.

One of the things I like about this particular September run is that I have no real expectations that they will overtake the Twins and go to the playoffs. If they make it, it will be amazing; if they don’t, that’s fine. I won’t feel like that next year, I’m sure—it’ll be baseball in October or bust, and an actual disappointment if they don’t make it—but for now, for this year, I like the feeling of playing with house money.

That’s because he played all the hits they’ve been hearing on the radio and the TV.

The question is about Pete, not Trump.

It would be 2.5! Please don't make it any harder than it already is! 🤣 Also, go Rangers!

Another thing you see when no-hitters are achieved, or in tonight's case lost in the ninth: they interview the pitcher after the game and ask about the no-hitter, what the pitcher was thinking during the game, and most of the time, pitchers say, "I didn't know there was a no-hitter going, all I cared about was winning the game." Holton did that just tonight. We all know that's bull****. Pitchers always know it's going on. They have to know. It's their job to follow the game they're playing and know exactly what the situation is at every point during the game. If they honestly don't know there's a no-hitter in progress—that is, they're not really following the game—then they are in professional dereliction. Let's put it this way: are we supposed to believe that everyone in the ballpark, tens of thousands of people, know that a no-hitter is in progress during the ninth inning, every single person, except the guy pitching the game? Does that pass the smell test? So I think it's simply a sort of professional courtesy that everyone in baseball accepts, that the pitcher is usually going to say he didn't know the no-hitter was in progress when asked. And that makes sense, too: if he says he did know and was actively working toward getting it, he might come off looking like he's more concerned about his personal accomplishments than he is about the team winning, and that would be a breach of etiquette. It's a bad look to appear to put yourself above the team. So that's why pitchers usually say they don't know they have a no-hitter going on. But yeah, of course they know. I mean, come on. That was actually apparent in tonight's game because when Holton said that, Johnny Kane actually doubled over a little laughing and Holton replied with a sly chuckle. Yeah, we all know what the deal is, Tyler. Good on ya.

🤣

Of course they do. So do I. Some fans go so far as to reject combined no-hitters entirely, or even more inexplicably, get visibly angry about it. I don't get that.

I can see where it arose out of a sort of practicality. If a pitcher is twirling a no-no and teammates start coming up and talking to him about it, it probably makes him nervous, right? It gets him thinking. It gets in his head. So if he blows the no hitter, who does he blame? HImself? Hell no, he blames the guys who got in his head about it. It's not like that with al pitchers, of course, but it has to happen only once for guys to get the message about jinxing no-hitters.