chasfh

OK, but what does Nostradamus say?

Trump is still a thing.

These are not the only choices, of course, but if the choice were between a Tampa situation in which they make the playoffs with constantly changing young players nearly every year and have well-known struggles winning in the playoffs, versus winning one ring with high-priced veterans and then dumping them for a seven-year rebuild during which they lose 100+ a year—I’d have to think a bit before making a choice between the two, but I’m leaning toward the former, as long as losing in the playoffs is not a guarantee, just more of a struggle.

Right. That’s a direct result of the systemic issue.

Stop the baseball season after 17 games and let’s see what the distribution of records are. As for basketball, that’s a sport designed in such a way in which one guy can make a team good, and two guys can make them champions. Not possible in the other big three sports.

It’s a difference in style that leads to the substance of parity between the sports. It’s OK to have good and bad franchises in a sport, I agree, and football has those too. (See Lions, Detroit.) But even beyond that, it’s a different animal when there are also systemic issues that lead to the lack of parity, versus merely competence differences among the individual franchises. One can point to Tampa and say, look, there’s a franchise that doesn’t spend big bucks on free agents and they’re winning. But do the people of Tampa love love love their team that recycles its entire roster every four or five seasons because they won’t bid to keep stars longer than that? The stadium is in a ****ty location, sure, but I’d bet unusually low roster stability must have something to do with the weak attendance, too. What I don’t know is whether there’s any causation between inability/disinclination to sign and keep big stars, and a team’s inability to finally win a ring. Many people might say that idea is ridiculous on its face, because the playoffs are a crapshoot 100%, but remember, Oakland had the same issue in the playoffs when they were winning 90+ every year, too. It’s only two anecdotes so I’m not fully subscribing to the hypothesis yet, but I also don’t think it can be rejected out of hand for lack of sample size.

Perhaps, but at least you know where the LIV blood comes from. No one knows where the bodies of the people the PGA murdered are. 😉

Yeah, I agree. cash out even if its for breakeven and go back to renting.

Ha haaaaa, good one! 🤣🤣🤣💀

In all this kerfuffle, I will never forget how excited I was to be taking a California coast driving trip in April 2018 to see ball games in all five stadia there, including the Angels’ Opening Day in Ohtani’s first season, and mother****ing Mike Sciosia SAT OHTANI FOR THE WHOLE GAME. On OPENING DAY. THAT’S how the Angels rewarded their best fans after signing one of the most impactful players of the free agent era. The Angels deserved to lose him. **** those guys.

That’s basically robbing certain states and cities of the income tax payments they deserve from Scherzer plying his lucrative trade in their jurisdictions during the season.

Karen. Yeah, I have a type.

It would be nice to have the luxury of dealing from strength. One day …

should’of stayed

Also: Betty Cooper over Veronica Lodge.

Betty seemed like she would get freaky with the night shift guy down the street.

I remember when I was a kid, Ginger was a scary grownup lady and Mary Ann was like a pretty girl in class. I took a close look at Ginger when I became a grownup and … awww, yeah.

i like Bailey’s vibe more than Loni.

I'm one of those rare people who started watching the Simpsons back when they were a Tracey Ullman short who didn't give up on the show in disgust after Season 4. I still watch it every week.

MLB Network, I mean the whole network, is kind of a general pet peeve for me because it is so obviously and offputtingly marketing-driven, although I do like the show MLB Now, but only when Brian Kenny is on it. In fact, if he were to leave the network, I might stop watching it for any reason altogether. But my specific peeve today is any MLB Network countdown show about top plays. They have these throughout the year: Top Plays of the Week and Top Plays of the Month, and in November, it's Top Plays of the Season. I had gotten about halfway through this year's Top Plays of the Season when I simply couldn't stand to watch another second, because fully 40% of the top "plays" they show are hits, with all but one of those being a home run. And a home run is not a play. A play involves decision-making. You have to decide how to react to the action, what route you take toward the action, and the specific response you make. That's why plays, in general, are defensive in nature. You have to make a series of decisions along the way: what direction to break in, what spot you're moving toward, what you do when you get the ball, where you throw it, maybe deking the runner along the way—all that goes into what makes a defensive play a play. A play is something you make happen. That's why a home run is not a play. You don't make a home run happen, because while a play is process-oriented, a home run is an outcome. And there's not too much process you can put into a swing, since you are usually reacting to how the ball is arriving to you. But a home run swing, really, isn't even a reaction—it's a decision to swing as hard as you can on whatever the next pitch is. That's why we see every player swing as hard as he can and miss the ball entirely a lot. If the player connects with the ball just right, it'll be a hone run. But miss the ball by just a centimeter, and it's a long flyout, and nobody would ever confuse a long flyout with a top play, even though it frequently results from the exact same kind of swing a home run does. But a defensive effort that fails to get the out can still be a great play if the defender does everything exactly right and still misses the runner by just a hair. I can prove to you that a home run is not a play: when was the last time you heard an announcer say something like, "Here's the pitch to Carpenter, and there's a loooong fly ball and it's outta here! Home run! What a great play by Carpenter! He made an outstanding play on that home run swing!" Don't bother, I'll answer for you: never. It has never happened. Because a home run is not a play. 😁 But, the offputting marketing-driven machine that is MLB Network will continue to include home runs in their top plays programs, because the majority of all the on-field events they market to us are home runs, because Chicks. They're never going to change that, but it's still going to bother me every time I see it, and I will complain about it every time, which makes this the platonic ideal of a pet peeve.

As I look at the most recent few episodes, they are not interviews with Lucy from the 60s, but modern-day personalities doing "re-imagined interviews" with Lucy, which is self-indulgent and just dumb. Dig a little further back into episodes actually recorded with Lucy at the time and hear her speak with people like Jack Warner, Frank Sinatra, Gene Kelly, Hedda Hopper and the like. Lucy here is nothing like her on-screen persona.

Matt Groening. The Simpsons changed the way comedies were written, and not just cartoons.

Jamie Lee Curtis apartment bathroom scene in "Trading Places".

Do you hate her personally or do you hate her comic persona? I ask because there was posted last year sometime a podcast consisting of her 15-minute radio talk shows from the 60s, I believe, and she is just brilliant in these. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lets-talk-to-lucy/id1579178174