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Also, Sue, I ran out of likes for the day. I'll try to remember to give you one when I come back in another day. 🙂

I almost always get physical books, mainly because I don't like staring at a backlit screen for long stretches of time. Especially true on those nights I wake up in the middle of the night, can't fall right back to sleep, and then want to read something to lead me back to dreamland. Although, by sheer coincidence, I did get a library book today through Libby, first time in maybe over a year, because an e-version was available but the actual book has a lot of holds on it. The book is: Adrift America in 100 Charts

Maybe someone should start a What Are You Reading thread! 😀

Both books are excellent. My read along these lines right now is Freedom's Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power, which came out late last year. It's the history of exactly what it says it is, starting with the "Indian Removal" process of the 1820s and 30s, through the War Between the States, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, post-Civil Rights, on up to Trumpism today, through the perspective of a single county, Barbour County, Alabama, home of the city of Eufaula. Fascinating and insightful. I am fortunate to have the great Chicago Public Library system that makes just about any book I want to read available to me for the price of the tax dollars I'm already paying them anyway.

That's exactly why I crapped out of it.

Ahem ... good call ... https://twitter.com/UmpScorecards/status/1646884274820317184?s=20

That's some pathetic s***.

Yes, I have read about this in several sources. It's about controlling their labor by controlling their movement and, really, their whole lives, to such a degree that until shockingly recently, any white man could feel free to walk into any black family's house, uninvited and without knocking, to threaten and abuse anyone inside, and the family couldn't do a thing about it, because the law and everything attended to it belong to white men, and if they pushed back it would all come crashing down on them. That was the power of control by state violence, and just like the TN legislators passed down their ways of thinking about it, black folks passed down their strategies for dealing with it, and strategy #1 was always: never come off as even a little disrespectful to a white person. Never. Ever. Try to avoid white people wherever possible, but if there's no way you can do so, then always smile, be overly polite, be overly pleasant, to let them know you're "one of the good ones". This social strategy is also well-documented. You've posted this here before, and It's so memorable that I've never forgotten it, and I've shared it with another person or two since.

First of all, we don't hang out in small towns when we travel. I'm talking about places like Nashville, Memphis, Jackson, Birmingham, Montgomery, Atlanta. Secondly, white people in small towns or big cities, either up north or down south, wherever, never go out of their way to engage me, a stranger, and smile or say hi. Every once in a while here in the big city a black person, usually an older black guy, will engage me that way. It's slightly jarring because it's so out of place around here. But it's really common with black people in the south, and every time we go. Not always, and not every one. But enough do to lead me to believe that there's a specific cultural thing among those folks in that area, and for some reason.

I am knocked out by the very idea of a guy from the south named Crow sponsoring a black federal government official.

It is definitely culturally ingrained, in everybody. Every time I go anywhere down south, I am struck by just how cordial black people are to me, how they almost seem to go out of their way to engage me, smile, say hi. That's something you rarely, if ever, see up here in the big city. Based on my fairly extensive readings of 20th-century American cultural and social history, my hypothesis is that they want to proactively communicate to me that they are not a threat to me and then hopefully I won't use the power of the state to go rogue all over them.

Tigers can get out from under Baez the player any time they want, but they can never get out from under Baez the contract.

I think "Cam" is great, basically as good as Alex Avila is. I would be very happy to see him be the permanent analyst on radio. I would also be happy to see him become TV analyst once a new PxP guy, one who actually knows baseball, is hired.

Yeah, dumping an asset at its lowest point, while viscerally satisfying, is generally bad business.

Just testing to see if "****wad" still passes ... 😅 EDIT: Nope, it sure doesn't ... 🤣🤣

Soto was simply not a great asset to trade. He may have been our closer, beloved by some, but he was The Little Girl Who Had a Little Curl who has been slotted in as the #5 guy in their bullpen—that’s 5 with an “f”—so I think expecting championship linchpins in return would have been excessive. If we get a few years of two guys who can start and be moderately effective, even if they don’t make it all the way to the first playoff year, I think we will have won that trade.

I just think there's at least a 50-50 chance you'll hate the new guy even worse.

Maybe, but hardly any of them strikes me as having the kind of pedigree and track record that suggests they are building blocks for perennial contender. I could say two do for sure, and there are some fans who would like to run both of them down I-75 right now.

I like George Lombard and I can see him becoming manager of the team when A.J. gets moved to GM. But remember also that George was brought here by A.J. and he’s cut from the same cloth as A.J., so if you show A.J. the gate, expect a lot of the very same thing you’re hating right now.

Do you agree with that, bobrob? 😁

Are every one of those guys considered the future? I know two of them are. You could make an argument for the third.

Remember when the Nielsen rating for their broadcasts was reported to be 0.0? Ah, those were the days …

A.J. Hinch gets fired today. Who do you want to replace him?

Right. The idea is, put Foley in until he gets in trouble. If he never does, he finishes the inning and Lange starts the ninth. If he gives up a runner, or two as you suggest, then Lange comes in. Regardless of what the line of trouble is, point is, if Foley can handle the job, we don't burn the Lange option completely before the ninth, when he is most needed.

If Hinch just up and quit, it definitely would be.