chasfh

I totally get now what Oblong meant. 😏

Part of the uniform everyone else has as well.

I just looked it up, and pink bats on Mother’s Day were first used in 2006, which is even longer ago, and if I’m not mistaken, the only player in the majors today who also played in 2006 was Justin Verlander, who, either for nothing or not for nothing, is not sporting even a stitch of pink anywhere on his person. At least not visibly. 😁

Remember when they started sporting pink in ballgames on Mother’s Day? That was probably about, what, 2010 or so? Back then there was still enough of—to use a way of speaking contemporaneous to the times—the stink of gay around the color to suppress adoption of use, and I would say roughly two-thirds of players did not participate, and of those who did swing a pink bat their first time up, at least a third of them went back to their regular non-pink bats for subsequent trips to the plate. We do have a completely different generation of players in the game now, though, and a lot of them were familiar with female authority figures in the sports they grew up playing, like women coaches, umpires, girl players, and the like. There’s a lot that’s good about that in general, and one of them is the softening up toward use of the color pink as not being a commentary on your manliness.

I have no idea who that is, no, so I assume he must be just another bogeyman right-wingers bring up to scare red hats of modest worldliness.

Guns are in the Constitution, and not-babies are not.

They would argue that the Confederacy is more American than anyone or anything not wired in to Trump could ever be.

Southern culture in general rules America, whether it’s veneration of the military, or the ubiquity of country music, or the spread of evangelical religion, or the watching of Hallmark Channel movies. Also, practicing and/or wishing cruelty on those who don’t share their nativist culture, because we respect toughness projected proactively by those of modest means—which is another way of saying everyday bullying. Just another example of how the North won the war, but the South won the peace.

They did get an education—in the militarization of America society over the past two decades, and the normalization of our kids going overseas to become warriors in distant lands populated by people not like them who don’t want them there, and then they are praised when they get back and feted at places like every single ballgame you go to. No wonder Americans thinks of soldiers as benevolent gods on Earth appointed to protect them by raining death and hellfire on people they hate. That’s what they want here, because that’s what they’ve been trained to want here.

Maybe, but I don’t think we miss 33-year-old Buck Farmer all that much.

He had given up only a single run when taken out, but relievers walked in two inherited runners with the bases loaded. He also got a ****-ton of swing and miss and threw something like 17 pitches at 100+.

If you would have asked me that in 2019, I might have said yes, I’d be disappointed. I would have wanted more out of a 1/1, after all the losing done specifically to pick him, and despite whatever the averages say for 1/1s, I would have wanted something more than 13 wins out of Spork. Ask me that now, though, and I’m probably less disappointed, because if he ends up with 12.2 WAR when he leaves after the 2028 season, that would mean gets almost 14 WAR between now and then, in just short of five full seasons, which is pushing 3 per season, which would probably include a 4 or a 5 in there somewhere, which might entail an All-Star selection, and at that point, I’d have to say I’d be happy with that, just in time for him to leave us and go kill it in a DH-only role for somebody else. Which does bring up a question: if he were taken off the field completely, would his mind be freed up enough f-r-o-m the stress of worrying about his defense that he would become the hitter everyone assumed he would be? That would surely be the best outcome for him personally, and as things stand now that’s the kind of player we have no room for on this team.

There was no one else. Spork was the consensus #1 pick, and no one would have not picked him, including me. And the Orioles did have better luck picking during the drafts they did instead of during ours. I will still be disappointed if he ends up around replacement level for his career with the Tigers, because it’s disappointing versus the expectation we had. To Tiger337’s point, if the benchmark is that Spork ends up with a 13 win career, I would want those 13 wins to come with us, and not after he leaves, which would be a double disappointment. I think you know me well enough to know I had no expectations of a Hall of Fame career from the guy, given his already-well-known defensive liabilities, as well as the positional WAR ceiling first baseman already have. But he was considered practically a fully-formed hitter when we got him, and I did have a reasonable expectation that he would anchor our lineup at some point, and I would have expected him to at least start doing so by the early months of his third season. So maybe the disappointment at his inability to do even that is driving my fear that he will have thrown up a goose egg by the time Scott Boras takes him on the road.

That’s gonna put the hurt on the Pale Hosers’ chances of losing 120.

Canha Slamha Flhy!

Jason Benetti belongs to the world.

Who’s still complaining about Mark Canha!

I like Benetti all right, and I’ll tune in regardless of who he has with him, but Dickerson with his all-business approach is the only guy who can make Craig Monroe listenable.

I disagree that a 1/1 draft pick is no better than a lottery ticket. There have been disappointing and even spectacular failures at 1/1 for a lot of teams, not just the Tigers (Matt Anderson, anyone?), as at any other pick. But the hit rate on 1/1 picks is good enough that I think it’s reasonable to be disappointed if Tork craps out with a 0.0 WAR career—meaning, for the part of his career he spends with the Tigers. Now, the 9th pick in the 2018 draft? Definitely a lottery ticket that came through.

Almost certainly.

What’s Benetti doing today? Calling an Iowa State women’s spring volleyball game?

Red hats truly, honestly believe that The Trump administration will work for them and elevate them above their enemies, but it didn’t happen last time because the commie Democrat party thwarted them at every turn. This time it’ll be different, and that’s why they are jacked about Project 2025. The red hat rank-and-file doesn’t care about democracy because democracy is how black and brown (and red and yellow) people achieve equality with them. Red hats don’t want equality, whether under the law or in any other way—they want supremacy, like their grandaddies and great-grandaddies had when, you know, America was Great. And that’s why they are badmouthing democracy as a concept more and more. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/08/trump-maga-democracy-fraud.html

Players win games. A.J. Hinch loses them. 😏

I would be more than mildly disappointed because Tork was a consensus 1/1, and we all expected better, much better, than a coin flip career from him. I’m coming around to the idea that Tork may not amount to anything after all, and by now I won’t be surprised if that’s the outcome. But I would still be sorely disappointed because, after all, we tanked like a mother****ing anchor to get the guy in the first place.

I definitely remember Deano. Met him during Tigers Fantasy Camp in 2007. Great guy, salt of the earth. You can talk to him about anything, and we basically did.