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No doubt. Utopian visions of a peaceful hand-holding society are beautiful, but they are also just visions. I may be anti-war in all but the most extreme circumstances—I was 100% against the Gulf War and the Iraq War from the word "go"—but I am also less utopian than I am pragmatist. There may be elements of utopianism we can work very, very, very hard to try to assimilate into our culture, and I'm all for that when- and wherever we can achieve it, but for the most part it's proven to be historically unworkable, and that goes double for a culture that celebrates the concepts of individualism over collectivism, self-determinism over interdependence, and competition over cooperation. A by-product of that kind of society is the requirement to field a standing military filled with people conditioned to kill without remorse, devoid of self-reflection and conflicting morals in the moment (that usually comes later, when the soldier-turned-civilian is left to their own devices). That part is never going to change, so the goal, from my point of view, should be for cool-headed civilian leaders to exercise control over the worst impulses of their more zealous counterparts in order to minimize the atrocities that a constant militaristic footing inevitably leads to. We could get into a discussion over how our society conditions entire classes of people of modest means and modest prospects to fulfill that role, but that would take us really far afield from the topic at hand.

That’s a different version of defense, that of a country we went on offense to help conquer, and hearts and minds of which citizens we eventually won over (to some degree). Given the circumstances of the world at the time—even though that country did not attack our homeland directly, it seemed an inevitability they would were they not stopped—I myself would have made the decision to do that one 100 times out of 100. I will spare you the long, long list of foreign lands our military invaded simply for territorial and capitalist gain.

Chafin is making less in guaranteed money with Arizona this year than he would have with Detroit, but he is also getting a club option in 2024 versus nothing for 2024 from us, and players want the security of staying employed for as many years as possible. So he did go to Arizona for a somewhat improved deal, although he has to earn the second year with performance to avoid making less with AZ than he would have with us, so it’s not quite as simple as Arizona offered him an extra dollar, which is what the “money talks” argument implies. I’m skeptical that even that was the whole reason, though. He made such a thing about coming home to the area that it’s weird he left for a completely different part of the country to possibly make less money. I’m guessing there are additional reasons why he left beyond just the money.

Although we claimed Wake Island, it was only to serve as an outpost for our burgeoning empire and no person has ever lived there as a native of it, so it was not an attack on the homeland, which is how people commonly perceive what it is that has to be “defended”, and in any event, we repaid the actual Japanese homeland and its civilians tens of thousands of times over for that.

The point is to break down the human being and remake them as a willing and remorseless killer of people, and the way to do that is to reprogram them to see breaking things and killing people as an honorable defense of their country, even though the United States military has been going on offense exclusively for the last 150 years.

Man, is FOX2Detroit ever a terrible website. It’s a clickbait farm.

Solid win on the road.

I think the rot started when Ilitch increasingly-desperate desire for a ring at any cost before he died led to DD liquidating our future for players to help us win now (by which I mean then) on his behalf. That Avila completed the crashing of this franchise into the rocks was less about him taking a successful franchise and single-handedly destroying it, and more about taking the helm of a ship already pointing toward the rocks.

You sure know how to welcome a guy.

He would have dismissed Jesus as a loser.

I agree that it’s inefficient to always suspend Occam’s Razor.

Seriously, does such a tape even have to exist? isn't just saying they have the tape good enough for their purposes? After all, it's not as though their loyal constituents are going to reply, "yeah, right, I'll believe it when I see it ..."

lol "got hard"

Also, please please please please please keep Judge Cannon on the case.

I think the only people who have lost respect for Hinch as Tigers manager are frustrated fans. It's possible Miggy doesn't look up to Hinch, but then, Miggy probably doesn't look up to anybody. Otherwise, I'm guessing it's a lot of fans basically wishing Tiger players didn't respect Hinch so he'd get fired and we'd hire a manager they like while keeping the PBO who's currently working very closely with Hinch who was consulted in the hiring of the PBO.

Welcome to the forum! Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter!

Lack of question mark is my favorite part

I think we already suspect Austin Meadows is never playing for us again, but that doesn’t mean we won’t pay him for another year next year via Baby Doc fiat.

This makes me wonder whether Austin Meadows will get a raise for his last arb year next year.

Comin’ in hot!

Which he's got a right to do, it's his business. And it's not even the money that bothers me—it's the reduction in functionality that galls me. The PC age has conditioned me to expect that functionality and options will increase, not decrease.

“Major allegations against the current president”

One key change they made a few years ago was to remove the functionality where you could run a query, then run a second query based on the results of the first query. For example, one run on all the players who played on the Tigers from, say, 2014-2022, and then a second run against the resulting list to see how they are all doing this season. I’ve been working on a research piece where I could use that capability, so I wrote to Sean and asked if I could get that kind of custom query. One of his staff replies, sure we can. Cost: $1,500. That’s fifteen hundred dollars. For a single, small custom query. You know, as though I am ESPN and I’m going to be trading off that information. I’ll see him at the Palmer House next month and make nice, but I’m a little sore that he’s taken the business in that direction.

I wouldn’t bet any money against that. I really don’t know who in the organization is responsible for it, but whatever the deal is, changing the broadcast situation is way way down the list.

I’m sure they will be keeping very close track of that and keeping us well-informed along the way.