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LOL "pull a Deuce". Sounds ... messy.

Is it weird, though? Back when the World Series was the only really sports championship, you really did the best teams in baseball, or at least one of them was based on the win-loss record (pythag and cume WAR aside). So America had a running start with the idea before the dilution of playoffs from other sports and, ultimately, from baseball itself. I think people are always going to believe a league's finals winners are really the best team, regardless of regular season record, if for no other reason than they were the best when it counted. And without looking too deeply into it, they may be right in some cases.

I did not imagine originally that Musk bought Twitter to amplify Russian propaganda, but I do now. I don't think Musk is necessarily in the pocket of Putin, per se, in the way many think of Trump as being so. I do think they are all fellow travelers with an interest in destroying democracy so they can destroy the need for competition in general and gather up all the money unto themselves. And if they were to somehow emerge victorious—I don't know how, but if so—it'll be a short honeymoon because they will then turn their guns on each other and ultimately destroy themselves, the way rival despots have throughout history. World keep turning.

I swear to god, when I clicked through to the article and saw the subhead, I thought it read, "People of color compromise two-thirds of GOP primary field". I had to re-read it a couple times to make sure I got it right. Anyhow, two things about this: It was America itself—in fact, the ideological forebears of the Washington Free Beacon—that came up with the one-drop rule in order to segregate people with any African "blood" whatsoever from polite white society. So it doesn't matter whether Obama's mother was white or not. If you're even partly black, the people around you identify you as black. Not white, or half-white, or Halfrican, or anything else along those lines. You're black. Period. I will bet you dollars to dimes that Tim Scott, whom the article acknowledges had ancestors who were brought to the United States as slaves, has at least a little cream in his coffee himself, basically because his ancestors were brought to the United States as slaves.

I found an even worse example than the 68 Bulls: the 1952-53 Baltimore Bullets, with a record of 16-54, made the playoffs, and that's only because they were in the same division as the 12-57 Philadelphia Warriors! The Bullets were in fourth place, 29.5 games behind the third-place Boston Celtics. That's gotta be close to a record spread between third and fourth-place teams. That may not have happened even in baseball, with double the games. So how could this happen? The NBA allowed eight of their ten teams to make the playoffs. Talk about the meaninglessness of regular season games.

One more for now: I love county-level US maps, and this one is super interesting to me: Macomb County is super Catholic, Oakland County is less so, and Wayne County is basically protestant.

I wouldn't have thought we would be tied with Russia, but there we are.

Now this is rather interesting. More on the concept here: https://hdr.undp.org/data-center/human-development-index#/indicies/HDI

Related to the above:

This is from a couple of years ago.

It's going to eventually be eight divisions with four teams each, which won't be all that much better. I get that the playoffs are a crapshoot and all, but I would prefer not to have sub-.500 teams making them in the first place. The 1987-88 San Antonio Spurs made the NBA playoffs with a 31-51 record. I wouldn't want MLB to become that.

I went to see "Damn Yankees" at the Marriott Theater in Lincolnshire, which is basically like AA ball for Broadway—it's that good. All the actors are card-holders and a few have screen credits, so the result is high-quality, tight, and generally excellent. And of course, when they sang the standard "You Gotta Have Heart" early on in the show, I, probably uniquely among the entire audience, couldn't stop thinking about the Detroit Institute of Arts. This is one of the greatest local commercials in history, perhaps for any TV market, and if you're of a certain age, you will probably have this running through your head for the rest of the day, to which I can say only: you're welcome.

I’m going off what Petzold wrote about him last night.

Alex Lange is establishing himself as a bullpen linchpin, and he’s practically free through next year and cheap for another three years after that. I think he would have to return a position player well into the top 100 who will be ready no later than next year, at minimum. It’s going to take a lot more than another Maton and/or Vierling to pry him from Harris’s warm, live hands.

That may happen too slowly for it to make a difference in time.

Hey, it wasn’t a slog.

Riiiiiight …

Come on, even Jose Cisnero can nail down a three-run save, right? Right?

Seriously, how fun is it to see this team score a bunch of runs. Something to dream on.

Whoa thunk it was even possible to criticize a three-run double! 💀

Baez just tattooed that one.

Man, Lange really is an elite reliever right now, isn’t he?

He’s basically organizational filler that we picked up in lieu of nothing. Davis had a clause in his contract that stipulated if he didn’t make the 40-man by a certain point, he had to be made available to any team who would tout him on theirs, so we could’ve gotten nothing in return. That’s fine, not everybody we pick up has to be shining prospect.

Plus, since we now have games against all 29 other teams, all those NL cities can be certain the Yankees, Red Sox, and Trout/Ohtani Angels will come to town at least every other year.

Ah, yes, yes yes. Let’s keep up the fight about trans kids and electric cars and library books and Hunter ****ing Biden. Just keep talking about those. Nothing to see over here. Remember, we’re on your side.