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I’ll grant COVID was going to suck no matter who was president, but it wasn’t going to suck at the same level as when Trump was president, throwing every obstacle he could at people trying to get it under control, especially in the early days. I would like well-qualified health officials, like Dr Fauci, making public health decisions. Call me crazy.

All depends on bad we want to lock him up through age 32. I don’t know how well he’s gonna age, given how immobile he is right how at 27. I might give him three years with team options.

What I said is true. I neglected to add that it didn’t work so well.

At this point I’ll take anyone who will just show up, or not go dark after they tell you they’ll put a price quote together.

Trump did handle COVID seriously: i.e., serious about exploiting COVID for political advantage, not about fighting and defeating COVID itself. In fact, the difference is that in the first instance, keeping COVID alive and kicking is the goal.

I think the main issue with the call last night is that, left to its own devices, the ball would have bounced back into play. It’s not as though it one-bounced over the fence on its own. It went over because a player pushed it over. So I could envision Baseball revisiting the rule on that basis. On the other hand, when a ball bounces off a fielders head and over the fence, it’s ruled a home run, even though left to its own devices the ball would have bounced off the fence or warning track. So there’s that precedent, too. I don’t have a strong opinion on it either way. I’d be fine with it bring either 100% ground rule double or replay umpire discretion.

Jeimer deserves to get paid.

Abject collapse at the end, here.

I don’t see how allowing COVID to run wild by denying its very existence, shedding tens of millions of jobs from the economy, opening cozying up the foreign dictators, denying his own administration’s intelligence services, appointing obviously dangerously unqualified people (including family) to top jobs in his administration, openly encouraging violent racists to act, accepting emoluments because of his position as President, calling political opponents middle-school insult names, pitting states against each other for government relief, withdrawing from key international treaties, openly undermining an election still in progress, and promoting a general policy of maximizing cruelty toward people different from himself, qualifies him as being “the lesser of two evils”.

I believe moderate Republicans, such as they are, are looking for any way to excuse January 6 as a mere protest, so they can get on board and vote Trump with their consciences clear.

Not a problem for me. I have pretty long legs so I was never able to find shorts that went below the knee, even gym shorts when that was a thing.

I have a wedding reception to attend at a bar next Saturday. They’re are softball teammates of mine so there will be a few of us on the team there, mixing in with family and close friends. The couple say we can wear anything we want, although they will be dressed in their wedding garb. Since I will not have attended the ceremony itself, and I am not myself family, I’m thinking a suit and tie for a reception in a bar may be a little much, so I’m leaning towards button shirt and jacket, no tie, nice jeans, sensible black shoes. Sound right to you?

Best of everything to you and Mrs. Cruzer. Cancer is a bastard and I hope she beats it.

Granting that all this is correct, I still wonder whether this can be fixed by improved coaching, or whether this is necessarily as good as can be expected. Maybe Santiago is not the guy to fix them. Maybe there’s someone better at it who could fix them. And maybe, as you imply, they can’t be fixed no matter who works with them. Who knows. I do know this: we have to improve our defense enough so that we are not literally the worst offense in the league. Because if we remain so, we probably won’t go very far even with above average hitting and FIP.

They made the D grotesquely big one season, then reduced it about 2/3 the way back the next. Not quite all the way back.

Wow, reading this is a big flashback moment. Parliament Drive is part of what was called “Cigarette Sub”, a subdivision of streets in Sterling Heights explicitly named after cigarettes, like Winston, Salem, Pall Mall, Viceroy, Newport—and Parliament. I went to Catholic grade school with a bunch of kids who lived there. That was nearly half a century ago, which is about how long it’s been since I’ve thought of it. The memory of it is so hazy it feels like I dreamt it.

It occurs to me that these people predicting Trump’s imminent return to the White House are exactly the same kind of people who predicts the end of the world: specify a date, rile up the faithful, and when the date passes with nothing happening, specify another date and rile up the faithful.

I wonder how much of the defensive woes could be solved by better coaching and drills, versus how much is innate talent and simply cannot be significantly improved upon.

He was a 9th overall pick, so we had investment in him.

I would like the D on both caps to return to their previous smaller size.

I know Kevin Goldstein. I worked with his wife Margaret at a website downtown in the early 2000s. He came by to visit her once, I happened by her cube, and she introduced me. I told him I was a huge Tigers fan and had read his stuff on BP. He seemed generally unimpressed. That was my encounter with Kevin Goldstein.

I think the main problem with a best-of-3 wild card series is the delay you refer to. Right now Baseball has the season end on Sunday, with Monday open for tiebreakers. One league has their one-and-done on Tuesday and their LDS starts on Thursday, while the other league has their wild card game on Wednesday and they start theirLDS on Friday. In a wild card best-of-3 scenario, they would still need to keep Monday open for tiebreakers, so the first league’s series starts on Tuesday. If there’s a travel day built in, that means Tuesday through Friday would need to be set aside for the series. Then a day off on Saturday, then the LDS starts Sunday. That means all the division winners would have to sit for an entire week waiting to play their first LDS game. I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t start one LDS while the wild card series is going on at the same time. And that’s just for the first league that plays. The second league that plays would start a day later, on Wednesday, because TV, meaning their LDS wouldn’t start until a week from Monday after the season ended. We Tiger fans remember when OBT wiped out their opponents in the LCS in both 2006 and 2012, then had to wait seven days the first time and six days the other to play their opponents in the Series. Some blame the long layoff for our listless performance in each Series. I think the prospect of such a long waiting period for division winners cooling their jets will prevent a move to a wild card series.

Like I say, sounds great for us, but he’ll be able to do better than $20 million guaranteed.