And we opened against the Rays, Astros, and Red Sox, and will face the Blue Jays, Giants, Guardians, Orioles, Brewers, and then Orioles again to wind up the month. No rest for the weary.
I wish all the best to Austin Meadows and his family as he continues to deal with this difficult problem. As Tigers fans, we should probably get used to the idea that this will be a recurring situation as long as he's here. That's merely a basebal concern, though. The life concern is that he continues to improve and have success in overcoming the debilitating parts of his disorder.
That’s a bit reductive—but only just a bit.
Home runs is the main driver of the highlights marketing machine. So yes, I think Baseball routinely makes decisions with maintaining a certain level of home runs in mind, and that level is probably 2000. (The year, not the homer total.)
Strikeouts is a secondary driver, which I believe is why they are OK with strikeouts as the by-product of high homer totals.
For these reasons, I believe Baseball may never deaden the ball to encourage more balls in play. And hey, fun fact: there are fewer balls in play per game in 2023 so far than in 2022.
I believe they’re getting hurt because they are trying to twist their arms and elbows into unnatural contortions to try to get swing-and-miss because any of the nine batters in any batting order can take pitchers out of the ballpark because the ball is juiced.
Who said I don't like Detroit? I didn't. I like it fine. I'm from there. Best pizza in the world, for one thing. Best potato chips on the planet for another.
Also, I wasn't talking about the city.
Literally all those Confederate states developed fascist Jim Crow societies post-Civil War for the expressed purpose of maintaining the social order they enjoyed under two-plus centuries of slavery, and the upper South weren’t remarkably better about it than the Deep South. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 removed the federal imprimatur on this system, but they’ve been fighting it in their own inimical way ever since. This fascism doesn’t apply only to black people, of course, but they do bear the brunt of it.
Maybe MGT is right after all. They can have their own country if they want it and they are free to slip into literal second world status if they desire, but we get to keep all the military bases Gitmo-style.
Imagine this is Illinois and the state legislature expels a Republican lawmaker for taking to the floor with a bullhorn shouting pro-life slogans. Fox News would practically jizz their pants at the gift, then direct their hosts to have a non-stop harry conniption over it indefinitely. And rightfully so, to a point.