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Was it this one? Or this one? We had both of them in our house. We called one Upstairs Jesus and the other Downstairs Jesus.

Nothing has happened in the past couple of days to push me off my prediction of a 162-game season starting two weeks late, although Baseball leaked that they would accept canceled games. After having reduced the season to 60 games just two years ago, and considering the negative reaction to the shortening of the 1994 and 1995 seasons, one might expect Baseball to do everything possible to avoid any cancellations. But I do think that one big difference this time around is that a high percentage of new followers of the game are in it for the gambling and not because they love baseball, so they won't mind at all if games are canceled. They'll just go gamble on something else, like basketball or soccer or crypto or NFTs, and simply come back to baseball when games are available to bet on. As for hardcore fans like us, we will come back to the game no matter how long the lockout lasts. So Baseball may be thinking they can weather any blowback that comes primarily from causal fans, many of whom probably spend no money on anything baseball-related at all. If that's true, then is there any real loss?

Not surprising. Baseball’s response yesterday was a really tepid since players wanted a much higher minimum salary for rookies. The other major “concession” i saw was Baseball dropping its demand to eliminate salary arbitration for anyone, which is a ridiculous and insulting non-starter. Basically, if Baseball can’t get the players to give up money and benefits they had in the prior CBA and take an qualified L, then their goal would be to keep things as close as possible to the way they were in the last CBA. Raising the minimum salary a couple thousand, the CBT a couple MM, and fiddling with the draft order system while changing nothing else would qualify, I believe, as a win for Baseball and a loss for Players.

I admit I find this logo weirdly charming and have it on my car as a window sticker. EDIT: Sorry, I mean had it on my prior car as a window sticker. My current car has the two 1960’s action Tigers, one batting on one side and the other pitching on the other side.

It affects only major league teams and organizations’ 40-man rosters, who are dues-paying major leaguers. Everyone else is outside of that and are free to play this year even if the big leagues shuts down for the whole season.

I wonder whether Tucker is thinking about Pete. He did play in Cincinnati so probably heard a lot more positive spin than most do. An institution that purports to honor the greatest players of all time but purposely keeps out some who are at the top of the list on a discretionary basis for squishy moral reasons, while letting in others who have the same squishy moral issues, has a credibility problem. But hey, isn’t that Baseball in spades over the past couple decades or so?

One of my good buddies here in Chicago is from Boston and is totally jacked that Ortiz got voted in. He’s going to Cooperstown for it.

A lot of baseball fans think that’s charming.

I guess that depends on how much the performance record should factor, and how much the baseball-related fame part should factor. Because based on the fame all the stolen base records, plus the two rings, conferred on him, he's still got a case. Someone's got to be the worst BBWAA-elected Hall of Famer, after all. Brock's not quite that but he's close.

I wonder when the term "fifth column" is going to become a common descriptor of these people, because that's how they look to me. Russia or China couldn't have planned all this any better. Starting to look like the killer was inside the house the whole time.

I'm wondering if the jail time and prison time these people are getting for 1/6 is doing little more than burnishing their cred with the red hats as they plan to take it all up another notch. There's not a half-bad chance they walk out heroes to welcoming arms.

That's what she gets for not vetting her Kennedy better.

He also has the lowest oWAR of all of them. He did make a shit-ton more money than the others, though.

Better than Tim Raines or Lou Brock. I'd vote Sammy in.

True. Well, there's a lot more than just that, but yes, that's a big one.

If Baseball started allowing players to lay down money on games in which they have a duty to perform, there's a good chance I would just stop following the game at that point. The one and only thing that keeps me interested in sports is the idea that everyone involved is trying their best to win, and I couldn't assume that anymore if those with a duty to perform in a game were laying money on games.

I definitely believe Sheffield is getting jobbed out of the Hall. Every eligible batter above him with a higher oWAR than his 80.7 and who's not being kept out because of PED moralizing or gambling is in, and the next highest eligible player who's not in is Dick Allen, and he's over 10 oWAR behind Sheff. As far as I'm concerned, there is nothing borderline about Gary Sheffield. Anyone who believes he doesn't belong in the Hall does so for reasons other than his performance.

Here's what I think is a really interesting trivial factoid about Sammy Sosa: he hit 60+ home runs three times and led the NL in home runs twice, and yet none of those seasons intersect with one another.

I don't know, 600+ homers and three years of 60+ bombs is a pretty big deal. Plus he's got really favorable Hall of Fame standard numbers and JAWS. The only real thing about him that's borderline is his bWAR is 58, although his fWAR is 60. I'd vote him in. But then, I'd've voted in McGwire, too, who had even better numbers, and when was the last time anyone talked about him and the Hall?

I believe they culled the voter list for the Hall a few years ago, removing those writers who'd been tenured into a voting position even if they hadn't covered baseball for many decades. Now I believe if you haven't covered the game for more than ten years, out you go.

A lot of a certain type of Cub fan will never abandon Mark Grace.

In all seriousness, I think Sammy's star started to plummet once he got busted for the bat breaking open in that Rays game, and it finally hit the ground after he walked out early on the team in the last game of the 2004 season, leading fan favorite Mark Grace to smash his boombox.

Maybe because Sammy isn't black anymore? 😏

Besides his legitimately great performance in playoff situations, Ortiz has the advantage of being, as you say, jolly. If he were a lippy black man with the same stat line, no way he gets in even with the postseason performances. But "beisbol been berry berry good" to him, so in he goes. Never mind that he never paid any price for his poorly-excused usage, but woe to the guy with almost 700 career homers who, when caught, quietly served his time, didn't lip off about any injustice or anything, then came back and just went right back to work. He did it right. And he'll never get in as long as this generation has a say in it.

Agree. Regardless of how much PED smoke or fire there is around the guy, they were always going to find a way to get David Ortiz into the Hall.