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I have nothing against the family. It's a critique of Fanduel for romancing the kid's mowing down our team that first inning by showing his family cheering every time he threw a strike or got the out. He's the other team's guy!

Reinstating Rose would exponentially increase the encouragement and amp up the brazenness. Unless what you’re saying is that the encouragement of players and managers to throw games is already at its zenith due to Baseball’s partnership with gambling companies, and that reinstating Pete couldn’t possibly do anything more to add to that, with which I couldn’t disagree more.

JAVY WITH THE SLAM! He is all the way BACK! Come on, Fanduel, let’s see the Blubaugh family in the stands now!

Get Nido some oxygen after that sprint home on the sac fly!

If we were to ever learn that players and managers were fixing plays and games and baseball knew about it, and either willingly turned a blind eye to it or even backchannel promoted it in order to make more gambling money, then yes, I would weep real tears as I turn my back on the major league game.

College > high school as a tiebreaker.

When Harris took Max and Mac as high schoolers in 2023, we were building for the long term and probably didn’t expect to be in the playoffs the following season. Now that we’re that team, we need to draft top players who get here a lot more quickly. So I am guessing top-end college players are at the top of his shopping list.

Why doesn’t Fanduel Detroit show the Blubaugh family now, after the home run he gave up?

Colt crushes the other minor leaguer! Because BASEBALL!

Blubaugh #69 really is an unfortunate combination.

I don’t agree that this is only about a guy who did a thing nobody cares about a long time ago so who gives a **** anymore. We’re talking about players gambling on a game they have a duty to perform in—even worse, a manager who can implement strategy in the service of his own bet. If they allow Pete to ultimately get away with it, how can they stop anyone else from doing it, fixing plays or games or even more, just to satisfy bad guys they’re in hock to? Maybe you think it’s no big deal, but I would be really surprised if it were to pass unnoticed by everyone except you and me and maybe six other people, and is forgotten within a single news cycle.

I’m annoyed that Fanduel Detroit has to show the family cheer after every strike the kid pitcher throws, as though he’s on our team and it’s not our team he’s mowing down.

He is one step from saying, “the stock market doesn’t matter.”

They can’t bring Garcia back, no matter how many Supreme Courts tell them they have to, because if they bring Garcia back, then they can never extradite anyone to a foreign supermax torture prison ever again, and their ability to do so to anyone they choose, including you and me, is THE key to imposing their will against the will of the American people, which is the objective to help them attain their goal, that being ultimate and discretionary power over everything and everyone in the entire world.

I see this episode is from 2010 … fifteen years ago. Cramer was very much in the public zeitgeist back then. I wonder whether, if a Mad Money spoof were to air as a first-run episode today, much of the audience would miss what the joke was supposed to be. I would guess a high percentage of the viewers would think the idea is original with South Park.

I’m pretty sure one of the goals of the regime is to foment rebellion in the ranks of the police within large cities that are governed by mostly elected Democrats.

There’s a precedent for this: in the South, both during slavery and Jim Crow, poor rural white people had it very, very hard, but at least they knew they had the quality of whiteness going for them, and that made them feel that at least they weren’t the ones at the bottom of the pecking order, and that was a very important status for them to maintain.

I believe there’s no point to reinstating Pete Rose if the Hall of Fame is going to still keep him out. When it comes to that, I gotta believe it’s going to be a love me, love my Pete situation between Baseball and the Hall. No way the two entities are going to war over that.

Yes, and not just the old guys who were banned, but also, they could never permanently ban anyone for betting on the game today or in the future. If they can’t manage and control gambling by players within the game itself, how are we, the fans, supposed to trust the outcome of any game or season ever again? Or does that not matter at all because money today? In the end, I’m having trouble seeing how Baseball makes a lot more money by letting Pete back into the game, versus all the extra nonsense they will have to manage by doing so. Even having a Pete Rose-only exception is a fraught decision for them to make, and I think that’s got to be the least likely outcome, because if they did that, no one would ever believe or trust or fear them on anything ever again, especially the people within the game.

But he and the game will also get bad press, lots of it, and it will set a bad precedent with players who may be more likely to believe that betting on a game in which they have a duty to perform isn’t as big a problem as that hypocritical organization that posts the don’t-you-dare poster in their locker rooms tries to bull**** them into believing it really is.

In the end, yes, it’s all about the money. No argument there. That being stipulated, there is a difference between going for one dollar now and only now regardless of the cost in public perception and goodwill and the future prospects of each, versus going for two dollars both now and later by paying attention to what their various target markets think of them. It’s not as though a principled, or even intelligent, organization would go for that single dollar now without giving a flying **** what their market thinks. Even a craven organization like MLB has to be concerned what the future prospects of the business are based on how their actions today affect the perceptions of their target audiences. The way I see it as an outsider with some education and experience in business, Baseball probably has three basic target audiences for the game itself that I can think of: one that loves the game and respects its history and its dedication to integrity of competition and wants to maintain that; one that likes the game on the field but doesn’t care so much about what goes on off of it or anything that went before this game, or this season, or these players; and one that doesn’t care much about or watch the games and use it only as a conduit for laying parlays and other action. The first one mostly hates Pete Rose and wants him to remain out; the last one mostly either doesn’t care or sees Pete as a martyr and wants him back in, if for no other reason than to justify their own approach to baseball; and the one in the middle mostly either doesn’t care, or maybe likes what they perceive about Pete’s grit and hustle and sure, let him back into the game, why not? There could be three other target audiences Baseball has to consider as well: one is the steward of their federal antitrust exemption, the federal government, which consists of shifting elements within who have different opinions about whether Baseball should even maintain this unique privilege; another that doesn’t care about baseball the game or Baseball the business, but who have an opinion about gambling in general and who may apply their pressure on government and maybe their votes based on that; and a third, the corporate community, upon whom Baseball relies on for billions in annual revenue and who care about the impact Baseball’s decision might have on the public perception of their own brands in relation to The Game’s dalliance with gambling in general. Baseball’s calculation, which they are surely noodling in a suite of spreadsheets somewhere, is how important each bucket is and how much revenue will be generated by each, both in and outside the ballpark, today and in both the near-term and long-term future? I guess we’ll have our answer when Manfred hands down his decree. If I had to … ahem … bet on it, I’d bet Pete will still be out. But at this point it’s got to be roughly 50/50.

Torres crushes a bomb. 6-4. Tying run on deck.

No runs given up. That’s a win. But every outing has the potential to be his last ever, including this one.

Kenta Maeda, because sure, why not.

There are a lot of reasons to not reinstate Pete Rose, and I have articulated several of them on MTS and MTF over the years. But one that occurred to me just recently is: if it turns out Baseball refused to reinstate him while he was alive but did so only now that he’s dead, they’re basically admitting that they were interested only in punishing the man rather than punishing the infraction. That’s something small, petty, vindictive organizations do, and it was be a very, very bad look for Major League Baseball to do this. When MLB punishes a player for any infraction, even this one, they have to separate the man from the infraction. The punishment must be equal for everyone, and should never turn on the personality of the convicted. It’s the infraction itself they have to remain focused on, irrespective of who committed it. That’s what principled organizations do, and this is yet one more reason why there is nothing in it for Baseball to reinstate Pete Rose.