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They call that a winning election strategy. We call that a cult.

How’s this for a kickoff post?

You’d think that, wouldn’t you? Sometimes the world just changes, dramatically and suddenly.

Here's a paragraph from the MLB.com story: Garko joins the Tigers organization after spending the previous two seasons on the Major League coaching staff of the Los Angeles Angels, serving as a Coaching Assistant/Instant Replay Coordinator. While with the Angels, Garko focused on the integration of analytics in the clubhouse and dugout, and offensive game planning. Prior to his time with the Angels, Garko was the head coach at the University of the Pacific from 2018-19, where he saw six of his players sign professional contracts during his tenure. He also has experience managing in professional baseball, leading Double A Tulsa for parts of the 2016 and 2017 season. Garko began his coaching career in 2013 as an assistant coach at his alma mater, Stanford University. I like his background in implementing analytics, and Stanford is a nice bonus. It also seems to be a departure from Tiger hiring practice to get guys who have long-time experience in the discipline they are hiring for, since Garko doesn't seem to have any executive or managerial experience in player development at the pro level at all. He did have a great deal of success at the college level though—same as Chris Fetter. I'm not at all unhappy with the hire, and am in fact intrigued. This is quickly becoming the 180 Degree Tigers.

I'm gonna take a swing at your age here: you are between 36 and 40 years of age. If I had to settle on one number, I would guess 38. How close am I?

who gives a **** what football players do

How long until those people reclaim the swastika and use it in white power demonstrations, just like their Greatest Generation forebears did?

"Because" sounds right on in terms of harmonies, which makes me wonder whether the Beatles used five vocal tracks on the recording.

My understanding is that flu shots are generally effective for six months, so I wait until October or even November to get mine. Once we get into baseball season, I figure we're basically in the clear.

I see a spring training invite to Lakeland in somebody's immediate future.

I think it might be hard to get the union to agree to the Amish baseball idea, basically because players like it and it gives them a competitive advantage, or at least not put them at a competitive disadvantage. I'm sympathetic to the hypothesis that one of the reasons that pace has slowed to a crawl is the introduction of analytical information during the game. Pitchers and catchers especially seem to be taking extra time sorting through and deciding from among all the options before making the next pitch. It wouldn't surprise me if banning cards shaved several minutes off average game time.

I think there’s a professional courtesy issue at hand here, in which all teams freely use the cards and no teams want their use of them to be questioned or put in danger, so they allow each other to use them without publicly threatening to undermine the practice. This may exist in the same vein as sticky substances or spider tack earlier this year: managers were loathe to call other teams on its use because their own pitchers used it to good effect. Professional courtesy. There may also be the very public act of Kiermaier picking it up and simply walking back to his own dugout with it. He publicly disrespected the Jays when he did that. That’s the kind of thing that just doesn’t go unpunished. I would like it if the incident were to spur a discussion inside The Game about whether the use of cards during play should even be appropriate, and whether they should move to a sort of “Amish baseball”, in which all the technology you want to use is fine while prepping for the game, but once you cross the white lines, no cards, no tablets, no smartwatches, nothing but printouts in the dugout. Maybe make players actually memorize tendencies about the other team while they are out on the field. Wouldn’t that be a kick.

Indeed he did. According to his card, it looks like he pitched 43 innings as a junior without giving up any runs, any hits, walking anyone or striking anyone out. Just all BIP outs. Talk about living on the edge … 😜

Baseball Cube does: http://www.thebaseballcube.com/players/profile.asp?ID=144 They have him listed as 2B and 3B there.

I hope they don’t use this as permission to go to solid colored tops. I mean, I won’t abandon the team over it, of course, but I sure would like them to stick to whites and grays. Just personal preference.

I’m just praying to stay healthy and not need anything like this anytime soon.

This is as good a story as any to kick this one off.

Either way, it works.

Let It Bleed is the other side of Beggars Banquet, so you gotta do that. My all-time favorite:

This is definitely clean. Or at least cleaning.

Battle lines are being drawn.

This is not a giveaway to “shithole” countries out of the goodness of our bleeding hearts. This is the most powerful country in the world doing its part to stop a worldwide pandemic from continuing to threaten the planet and kill millions more people, including here. You can’t build a wall to stop a disease.

Well, yes, it is segregation—they’re segregating the sick from the vulnerable in order to defeat a deadly disease.

But will they be competent and effective? Those are the adjective that worries me more than the others listed here.