chasfh

Sure it's ridiculous, but let's play, anyway. If the guy in question were born decades later, raised in a very different era, growing to a different size, and having a completely different set of nutritional and developmental tools at his disposal—as well as completely different educational, social, sociological and broadly historical experiences, especially from a baseball perspective—I don't see how he could still be the Baseball Hall of Famer Ted Williams, even with similar familial experiences. He would develop in a completely different way and become a person with a completely different set of experiences and skills and points of view about practically everything, including the art of hitting. Ted Williams was a guy born in 1918, the "half-breed" son of a Mexican-American single mother who essentially abandoned him to his own devices in favor of a career in the Salvation Army. He was the unique product of his specific time and place and situation in history. Even if a person born eighty years later is named Ted Williams (and really, who in 1998 names their kid “Ted”, anyway?), I don't believe he could still the same person. Because of all the differences surrounding him, he’s a completely different person, because of the circumstances surrounding his time and place. Instead he’d be somebody like … oh, I don’t know … maybe Juan Soto. I think an only slightly less ridiculous but fun-to-contemplate hypothetical is to imagine transporting Ted Williams out of 1942 and plopping him into the middle of Major League Baseball 2022 and trying to imagine how he would do. That would definitely be the same guy, same background and experiences, same level of development, same skill set, same everything, just magically transported into another era, handed a bat, and told here you go, try to keep up—which I think he would struggle to do, since he'd be facing pitches he'd never seen before coming at speeds much faster than even Feller. He might figure out how to make a go of it in time, but I don't believe he would be performing anywhere near his Hall of Fame level.

If he would be bigger and stronger and taking advantage of nutrition and training and medical advances and analytics and all the rest of it, he wouldn’t be Ted Williams at all. He’d be somebody else.

It’s a mental health problem.

Wait, what? “The way (Hawley and the others like him) behave outside of the camera’s eye is very different”? I want some examples.

Liz killed it, too. This night is going to live on as providing some of the most memorable moments in the history of this nation.

Speaking of Kinzinger, hell of a finishing statement. Same for Luria.

Kinzinger could run for senator of Illinois and probably have a decent chance.

Cool. Now do smallpox.

Maybe we find out by asking Tampa to make an offer for him. If they do, we keep him. 😁

“Little Rick”. Play the hits.

We are just a few steps from the statement, “America is not a democratic republic, it’s a republic, period.”

Right, it’s not even a question of memory length. It’s a matter of you can’t tell me what I can or can’t do, and I can tell you what you can or can’t do.

Not a chance. Daddy paid for Miggy through 2023, and Miggy through 2023 is what we’re gonna get.

Out of nowhere, a word I never use in conversation for any reason. Wordle 397 4/6 ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜ ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜ ⬜🟨⬜⬜🟨 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Which also occurred under Ilitch ownership. No way we get Soto. No way we even try for Soto. Because if getting Soto is going to take, at minimum, TORK!, Greene, and Skubal—three pieces currently considered integral to the future fortunes of the team—then what exactly are we trying to accomplish here?

By the way, whatever happened to Idiot?

The Velvet Elvis Plan. Nice analogy! I think the kid might spend to support the franchise, which would mean he is incented to engage. He was willing to throw a decent chunk of money at those they thought would be key players. It's just that the jury is still out on Baez, but the rest of them are clunkers, except Chafin. That's a 1 in 4 success rate on key acquisitions from outside this winter. Ya need better than a 25% hit rate on that kind of thing if ya aim to win. But if the kid were to get the right GM in, one who knows how to lead an organization that's top of the class in talent evaluation, I would assume the money would be better spent, and with a better return, the kid might be talked into spending more if needed to win, or more exactly, it would yield better than breakeven on ROI. I'm not 100% on that opinion, but there's at least a puncher's chance he could be

God bless America.

“I’m not a f**, so what do I care?”

Supreme Court rules it unconstitutional?

The other problem with trading for Juan Soto is that to make the trade worthwhile to any degree, we would have to pony up minimum 15/450 to lock him down, and if he wasn’t willing to take that from his current team because they’re not close to competing for a ring any time soon, he won’t take it from the Tigers who would have decimated their chances just to get him on board for just this year.

It’s reasonable to hope for that.

I do see a sliver of a potential silver lining in this: I don't sense that Baby Doc is a hands-on owner to anywhere near the same degree that Papa Doc was. It wouldn't have mattered who the GM was—if Papa wanted to trade for Prince, or sign Jordan Zimmermann, or extend Miggy to enshrine his legacy as a Tiger, then gosh darn it, wasn't no one gonna stop him. In terms of fulfilling his wish to win a ring, in that specific way, Papa was his own worst enemy. But I could see a situation where Baby surprises us all by hiring a sharp, innovative, young GM out of a forward-thinking system, and then largely stays out of the way while he's gallivanting about looking for pennies-on-the-dollar real estate deals around town. If true, then worst case, Baby Doc puts his ugly thumbprint only on the Red Wings rebuild, in the belief that he knows at least as much about hockey as Stevie does.

Probably depends how knowledgeable those fans are. If all they're looking at is saves, period, those fans would probably conclude that Soto is within shouting distance of being the very best reliever in the league.

I'd be surprised to see Barnhart moved. He's not only having his worst year ever, it looks to me he's a candidate for a DFA before the season is over. Might as well give Ali Sanchez a month to show what he can do. What are the chances he would be worse than Barnhart?