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Yup.

What the hell are you even talking about??

How do progressives support Eminem?

“Hoodlums”. Huh. He might as well have called them n-bombs.

…

Perhaps the investigators have started banging on their door so now they’re preparing to cooperate.

If it's baseball you want to watch, ESPN+ is going to have dozens of college games every day available to watch starting on Thursday.

They were relied upon?

Uh huh

Baseball won't lose me over this, or over the lockout. The only way Baseball can lose me is through a game-fixing scandal. Were it to ever become clear that Baseball has fixed, or does fix, games for who cares what reason, that's the one way they can lose me. As far as diehards like me are concerned, since Baseball knows they can't lose us so easily, they know they can do basically anything they want to the game and we'll stick around. We might not be happy with the changes, but we'll still watch. That's why they call us "diehards". I don't think casual fans care enough about the game to get into a snit about dramatic changes like two-month playoffs or shortened seasons or things like that. Those things are an affront only to baseball history, which they have no sense of. I think a lot of them like baseball because of its romantic nature as America's summer pastime, so I think what puts those fans off is the very lockout we are experiencing, since it is undermining their romantic ideal about the game with business concerns they couldn't possibly care less about. I think those kinds of fans will peel off in great numbers if the season is severely shortened or canceled, just like they did after 1994-95. As for the gamblers, the constituency Baseball appears to be catering to the most anymore, they basically couldn't care less about the game except as a betting opportunity. They'll come to baseball to bet on it when it's available, and when it's not, they'll just go and bet on other things until it comes back. I suspect Baseball could reduce itself to nine rounds of Home Run Derby and they'd still come around to bet on it.

Neither have I seen anyone here say that.

I'm starting to wonder whether Baseball's true goal is to reduce the regular season and expand the playoffs. Maybe start late in April, end in late August after 120 or so games, then have a two-month playoff extravaganza among 16 teams. They could make each round stretch out across two weeks by having more off days. They might be able to talk down teams like the Pirates and Rockies into giving up 21 late-season home dates, with all its attendant expenses spent to draw sparse crowds, in exchange for a commensurate cut of the playoff money even for Or maybe they could make it like college basketball conference tournaments, where every team makes it to the playoffs and they have March Madness-like seeding: #1 plays #32, #2 plays #31, etc. Maybe give the top seed a 1-0 pre-play series lead and still go best-of-seven. This would add an extra round and make it easier to fill two months without stretching out the off days. I would not care to see anything like this. I could see Manfred and the owners doing something like this.

I prefer position players both hit and field.

But only one of whom pitches.

But ... but ... double switch!

Tired and widowed though she may be, since there’s an entire medical bureaucracy dedicated to keeping her alive at all costs, there’s a good chance she outlives her mother.

I like that they are doing “America the Beautiful”. I wish that were our national anthem.

I don't agree with everything you write here, but I think it's OK not to care about one side or the other and just want there to be baseball, and who cares how the negotiation comes out. Most fans feel that. I myself am getting closer to the point now of, "I don't care how the contract comes out, just let there be baseball", since we're up against crunch time, and that's why I posted what I did. I'd prefer an equitable solution for both sides, including the players, and I think many here would like that as well. I don't think that's a controversial idea. These guys are the very basis for why Baseball is awash in money, and there's been a lot of new money that's flowed in since the last CBA, so I think it's reasonable for them to get a fairer share of that. But like everyone else, I'd like to see the season start on time, too. In the end, none of us (I don't think?) have a direct stake in the disputes at hand, so I'd bet some of those here who declared early as being on Players' side might be getting closer to that "I don't care anymore how it comes out" feeling as well.

That idea must be buried so deep in that post that I re-read it and still can't find it in there. 😅

I did not say anything like "people with a conscious are rooting for the players".

My mistake, I thought you were talking about Torkelson and Greene.

Good thing, because we will definitely need them to get plate reps in Toledo.

It's too bad we don't have access to the other board anymore, but toward the end there I think I'd posted that had Miggy had not hit a wall after 2016, when he already had 78.2 offensive WAR, that had he had a gradual decline, he could have ended up close to the top 20 of all time (around Eddie Mathews and Mike Schmidt), but instead he's going to end up around 40th, which is where he is right now, around Al Kaline. Kaline was a great hitter, there can be no doubt, but when you start talking about THE greatest hitters in history, you will get around to Matthews and Schmidt fairly quickly, but you have to go a lot farther down the list to get to Kaline, and unfortunately, it's going to be that way for Miggy's legacy, too. Five years ago today, we wouldn't have thought that about MIggy.

That's true for guys like Torkelson and Greene, for sure. I wonder how many 40-man roster players who have played less than a year in the majors got at least $1 million in either draft or international signing bonus? Seems like it would take a lot of legwork to get that one.

OK, then I don't know what you were trying to put across.