chasfh

Eduardo Rodriguez and his camp deserved all the criticism they got for ghosting the team for those several weeks.

The comment was about the Tigers damn terrible luck. It would not have mattered to our season one way or the other anyway, but wouldn’t it have been nice to have him come back for the last month? But no, we can’t, because of course we can’t have even one goddamn good thing.

He’s out for the season because of course he’s out for the season.

We've all read the news stories along these lines: I think the only move Democrats have in response is to remind voters that Republicans are not scrubbing references to abortion on their sites because they are changing their minds on the issue. Republicans definitely want to make abortion illegal, and jail the women who get them and the doctors who perform them, and maybe even the legislators who go on record to support it, at minimum. They have to hammer home that point over and over and over again. Maybe even take a page out of the Trump playbook: they're not just going after doctors who perform abortions, the women who get them, and the Democrats who enable them. They're going to want to jail anyone who's even on record supporting choice, whether videoed at a pro-choice protest, posting support for choice in emails and Facebook posts, or overheard and turned in by Trump spies while whispering about it in public spaces. Is any of that true? Could any of that happen? Who knows? Wanna take that chance? 😏

I think we all knew that once Joe crossed this Rubicon, it was going to be an inflection point for the red hats: either they see it as a call to arms and coordinate attacks, or they just lip off like they're going to and then get their bluff called. Personally, I think the truth is in the middle: I doubt we will see full-scale militia attacks on gatherings in cities, college campuses, music festivals, tech companies, etc., in which they slaughter hundreds or thousands of people at a time. But I bet we do see a rise in lone wolf attacks in which dozens are murdered in an attempt to defend Trump's besmirched honor. We may even see two- or three-person coordinated attacks. Point is, if the choice is ignore Trump and let him do whatever he wants in the hopes he merely gets thwarted at the ballot box in a free and fair election at the risk that they just steal elections and destroy democracy completely in a bid for one-party control, which that might happen; or mobilize an effort to both discredit him and hold him accountable for his crimes at the risk of murderous uprisings that might not happen after all, I think we have to choose the latter and hope for the best. Preserving democracy is worth that risk.

It helps when Republicans run economies into the ground and make golden opportunities to create new jobs.

Devil We Know alert!

The Tigers have now been shut out 18 times this season. Even with only 131 games played, if the season ended today, that would make them one of 179 teams, out of 2,632 total teams in the modern era, to get shut out that much. If we look at just the first 131 games played in a season, the Tigers are one of 67 teams to have been shut out so often. That puts them in the 97th percentile for individual game scoring futility. That's actually not as bad as things were on July 21. After the second game of that day's doubleheader, in which we'd been shut out for the 14th time, we were one of 53 teams blanked so often in a season's first 94 games. #progress

One thing is for sure: Biden is all in now.

Front page:

Baseball writer with a Hall of Fame vote is salty.

They're a network O&O.

Given that the judge was sucked into the job by Trump himself, that totally tracks.

I tried one more episode last night and yeah, I’m definitely out. A little disappointing, but that’s OK. I’m pretty sure they didn’t want me watching it, anyway.

Trump and his MAGA cabal are focused on the classification level of the documents, either believing or trying to bullshit us into believing that is what the entire case turns on. It’s not.

Plus they are easy on the MAGA eye.

And I really wanted to like it, too. I'm all for including queer themes in the story mix, because queerness certainly existed in the actual league back then. After all, the reason the real players back then got charm school training, frankly, was to teach them how to not act like dykes in public while they were representing the league. It was considered crucial to the success of the league that they crush any hint of out lesbianism among the players. So directly tackling queerness as a challenge of the time in some detail would have definitely passed the smell test. What doesn't pass the smell test is all the anachronistic language, present-day speech patterns, and use of famous rock songs (e.g., "Piece of My Heart") as featured pieces. All of it yanks you right out of the era, forcing you to wonder why they make such choices instead of just being able to immerse yourself in the story. (Answer: because they're talking to a 2022 woke audience, not a 1943 wartime audience. Even if I understand that, it's still distracting as hell.) As for the concept of queer relationships, not only is it included, it actually constitutes the A story, above the baseball itself. The baseball serves as a mere conduit for bringing the characters together so they can discuss and otherwise explore their sexuality in their off-hours. There are long stretches of no baseball in this show. And worst of all, to me anyway, is that the baseball they do portray is just terrible quality, at least in the first couple of episodes. Outside of a couple of decent swings at the plate, and maybe one good infield throw, they're not even pretending to try to make it look realistic. Few of these actresses are decent athletes, at least in a ball-playing sense. The pitchers are especially bad, in particular the black girl they highlight. And the players and their play are so marginalized and insulted by coaches, PA announcers, and fans that I simply cannot believe it went down like that, even close to it. I guess they feel they need to lean into the victimhood to get you to care about these women while they are on the field. Again, I have seen only two episodes, and I may try to slog through at least one more, but it won't take much more to make me completely bail on it.

A League of Their Own. Anyone try this series yet? I’ve seen two episodes and I might give it one more chance before I bail. It is definitely not targeted to baseball fans, at least so far.

I just got over it on Saturday, and my wife finally tested negative just today.

Even if they are not being paid in actual money, they are being paid in media coverage, which will raise their profile and lead them to increase their list of scummy clients not named Trump who will not be able to get away with not paying them in actual money.

The main qualification Habba, Bobb, and Halligan all share is that they are LILFs.

What country are you going to make your children live in, Rob?

Grueskin deserves way more than 300 likes for that sweet joke.