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Well, people who believe in evangelical Christianity—and those cynical people who pretend so they can exploit it for votes and power—would argue that this is not a secular society, but a Christian nation. Also, evangelical Christianity was never a live-and-let-live religion, at least not as practiced in America. It is very much a I-get-to-tell-you-what-to-do-and-you'll-like-it-or-else religion. The only thing that's missing is enforcement at the point of a gun which, not for nothing, is what they unironically claim taxation literally is.

Don't look now, but: And this includes three straight losses to New York right smack in the middle of this stretch.

Let's see ... John 1:1 ... ah, yes, here it is: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Nope. Nothing about homosexuality.

It's super easy to see how the Constitution and the Bible, how the Founding Fathers and Jesus, can all be conflated. Call it Appeal to Invisible Authority, maybe. Whatever you call it, it's helpful to them to appeal to authorities who are unable to confirm or clarify any of their claims.

Maybe they could adopt elements of the BBC model, with less punditry and more long-form investigative pieces. But instead of Botswanan high school curriculum reforms, maybe they report on corruption in local and state governments. There’s no shortage of material available there. The $64 question is whether they could keep the eyeballs going that way. As conditioned as we Americans are to requiring our news be laced with dopamine, that’s a tall order that requires a long vision to succeed at. Because short-term, you’re gonna stumble trying to find the right formula.

Wily is super lucky. His RA9-WAR is 0.8 because it’s a results-oriented WAR that is influenced by his high strand rate (94%) and low BABIP (.246). Regress these to mean, and his fWAR, which is more predictive-oriented, is 0.1. The takeaway is that he is probably going to regress. As if we couldn’t tell by his stats anyway.

If I am interpreting it correctly, I believe what CNN is trying to accomplish is to be less pundit-y and opinion-based and more, for lack of a better term, fact-based. I understand there’s a fine line between presenting just the facts and their potential implications, versus either presenting the implications as hair-on-fire alarming from the one side versus completely normalizing it from the other side. I don’t think only those two extremes exist—there is probably some middle ground that can be trod that I think Chris Licht is aiming for, and if he can successfully find and navigate it, then I’m all for that. Given his track record, I’m willing to be hopeful about that, and sit back to see what he comes up with. I think using the broadcast networks’ approach as a blueprint is a good start.

If Joe McCarthy were in today’s Republican Party, there would be no hearings.

Good choice. You will be surprised often.

Looks like the last one is still hanging on by his fingernails: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Ruffin_Tyler

I like golf sports!

See? This is what happens when you legalize marihuana.

So to be clear, are you hoping it is a one-off situation and that other major retailers are not going to drop their prices in response to a self-imposed inventory glut? You prefer prices to be kept higher and inventory be kept tight? Am I understanding you right here?

The flip side of the whole debate is: why assign errors in the first place? As long as the batter puts the ball in play, hasn’t he done literally everything he needs to do to earn the hit? So as long as he reaches first base before he is put out, why shouldn’t he be awarded the hit? There are innumerable examples of plays in which nearly everyone agrees that the fielder should have given the error, yet the batter is give a hit instead. Miggy’s hit on Saturday is the perfect example: line drive right at Kiner-Falefa, it glances off his glove, Miggy gets the hit—which cost Severino the no-hitter, by the way. I mean, come on, the batter hit the ball right at the guy! Any minor leaguer could have made that play, let alone a major leaguer! You gonna tell me that was a hit!? We see that shit all the time. So in many, too many, cases, it really comes down only to official scorer fiat. So why not take the discretion out of that single person’s hands and treat all cases as equal by giving the batter the hit in every case? I know it sounds stupid the first time you hear it, but the more you think about it, the more there is some validity to the discussion. Or at least the more I think about it, there is for me. You and I are old enough to seem to remember official scorers being freer and easier with the assigning of errors, which perhaps is the idea you are channeling by suggesting that such plays be expanded to include non-physical errors born of bad decision-making. On a per game basis, teams average 25% fewer errors today than just 25 years ago; half the errors of 75 years ago; and one-third the errors of 100 years ago. How much of that is due to better fields and equipment, how much to players improving, but also, how much to the shifting vagaries of official scorer fiat through the generations? Is there any way to know, outside of the living memory of old geezers and their anecdotes? I don’t think there really is, is there? So why not just throw out the whole idea and just start giving every batter who puts the ball into play a hit and be done with it? Now, personally, I’m fine with the way they do it all now: it must be a physical miscue on a play requiring ordinary effort. But if we’re going to talk about changing the system in a dramatic way, might as well put all options on the table, right?

The difference is determining the fine line between error or not. If it’s only physical errors you’re counting, whether it clanks off the glove is a big determinant, and very clear. All you have to determine is whether it would have taken ordinary or extraordinary effort to make the catch, and experienced baseball people can fairly easily determine that. But if we include mental errors, where do we draw the line there?

Walks are Lange’s Achilles heel. If he licks that, he’ll be a consistent world beater. And just like that, double play!

The ball also bounced in front of Mitchell, who took a very ill-advised dive. The only error here was mental, and they don’t assign errors to those.

Idiotic decision by Mitchell, and two straight bad plays by him out there. Bad throws, too. Terrible play all around.

Monumentally stupid baserunning late in the game here. If we lose by one run now …

Good thing we match up pretty evenly with these guys.

Then again, maybe they won’t.

Maybe the Pirates will like what they see of Willi and offer us Ke’Bryan Hayes for him.

Tarik Skubal has fulfilled the requirement for quality start.