Once in a while, even I have to look up a rule

Thursday night I had a three-game umpiring shift at Cap Hill. All three games were blowouts and all involved teams I generally like to draw on my schedule. Nevertheless, by the time we got into the third game I wasn't in the mood to be there anymore for whatever reason. It wasn't especially cold, wasn't raining, I hadn't skipped lunch, I wasn't on short sleep, nothing like that, it was just one of those things. Might have had something to do with getting some lip from a few different players about ball/strike calls. Or it might not. I don't know.

The questioned strike calls I actually have some sympathy for because they came on pitches that I absolutely hate to face myself as a batter. Both pitchers in the third game were partial to very high arc pitches, ones that scrape 12 feet off the ground before dropping back down. I hate these. They always, always look like they're going to be high. And sometimes they drop right into the strike zone.

After doing the ump thing for several years, I've gotten better at ignoring the high arc when calling the pitch. It's hard, though. You've got to focus as much as your attention as you can on watching just the strike zone and see if the ball crosses it or not, but you can't totally ignore what happens before that because an arc can be too high (or too low) to be legal and you've got to call that too.

As a batter I've gotten a number of strikes called on me from such pitches that I (internally) groused about, but mostly because I just hate them. I mean, yeah, in my playing league we sometimes get Seattle Parks & Rec's answer to C.B. Bucknor as our umpire and I'm less likely to give him the benefit of the doubt, but when I'm grousing it's not about the call so much as the super-high-arc pitch being legal. But it is, so you live with it.

Anyway, I called two batters out on strikes on such pitches. One, someone I see a lot of in this league, was cool about it even though she disagreed. We had a nice conversation about it when she came back out to catch the next inning and agreed that high-arc pitches suck. The other one was not cool about it and tried to start an argument. "How can that be a strike?!" I stopped short of being snarky and replying with, "well, you see, there's this thing called the 'strike zone,' and when the pitch crosses it..." and instead just said, in what I hope was a subdued manner, "really?" And she was ready to get into it until her teammates corralled her back to the dugout. (It's usually dudes that get in my face if anyone does, but hey, feminism.)

But those weren't the odd thing about that shift. The oddity came when, in a bases-loaded, two-out situation, the runner going from first to second base was hit by a batted ball; weird in and of itself because it was a high bouncer that took a few seconds to reach the basepaths, but she was still hit in the foot. By the time she was, though, the runner from third had already scored with time to spare. So, the runner is out for being hit, it's the third out so the inning is over, but does the run count? I did not know and just decided on the spot that it would. (It was a blowout, the run wasn't going to matter, and I had to decide, so...) But should it have?

I had to look it up later. And what I found in the rules was not helpful. Rule 5.09(b)(7): A runner is out when "touched by a fair [batted] ball in fair territory before the ball has gone by an infielder (other than the pitcher) and no other infielder has a chance to make a play on the ball. The ball is dead and no runner may score, nor runners advance, except runners forced to advance." (Italics mine)

The bases were loaded, so on a bouncer all runners were forced to try to advance. However, the runner from first was the one out when hit by the batted ball. In other circumstances, that runner being out (the third out) before reaching second base negates anything accomplished by other runners, but in runner-hit-by-fair-ball cases the batter is awarded a base hit rather than reaching on a fielder's choice, meaning s/he didn't hit into a force play. How does that come into play, if at all? Also, the rule says no runners may score except those forced to advance, and if we're using the any-other-circumstances force theory then in any case of a runner being hit by a batted ball there could never be a runner forced to advance. So why would the rule include that exception? Is it a convoluted way to say, well, if there are runners at first and second and the runner from second is hit by the batted ball, then obviously the runner from first gets second base because the batter gets a base hit and you can't have two runners at first? I guess that technically tracks, but it still isn't clear to me that "forced to advance" doesn't refer to where runners are at the start of the play, and the fact that the batter is not recorded as hitting into any kind of forceout but credited with a hit further screws it up.

If it happens again, I think I will rule differently—that such a run does not count and if not the third out then the runner must go back to third base (and runner going from second to third back to second) because the force would have been removed when the runner from first was declared out and therefore the runner from third isn't forced to advance.

But I still don't know if that's right or not.

Then there was something in tonight's game between Your Seattle Mariners and the Los Angeles Angels of Orange County Which Isn't Technically Los Angeles. Angel right fielder Jo Adell—who had already, by the way, robbed the M's of two homers—leaped into the right field seats to catch a fly ball that would otherwise be a home run. Adell went over the fence, tumbling into the first few rows of seats but did catch the ball. Still, he's off the field by that time. Is it a catch? I knew that it would be once Adell returned to the field never having lost or surrendered control of the ball, but since he took his sweet time doing so, and since there was a second or two that he was out of view of all cameras, it was questionable enough that the Mariners challenged the ruling of fair catch. In a search of the rules I didn't find any mention of catches by a fielder leaving the playing field other than as pertains to the dugouts, but I know from past occurrences that a fielder that makes a catch while one or both feet are on or directly above the field of play and falls into the seating area or a bullpen or whatnot has to maintain control of the ball and return to the field before the out is official, and since Adell stood there reveling in his catch for a bit before jumping back into right field it was a little murky. Or maybe the M's challenged on the chance that Adell only caught the ball after his whole body was past the field boundary?

In any case, the catch was ruled legal and thus Adell had accomplished the rare feat of catching three would-be home runs in one game. Incredible.

Tagged Baseball, Umping, Posted on April 4, 2026 at 10:58PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

First game of the year

Last night I attended my first in-person game of the year at the ballpark by Elliott Bay, a crisply-played 2-1 victory by Your Seattle Mariners over the New York Yankees, won in the bottom of the 9th when Cal Raleigh stopped swinging for the fences and chopped a base hit over the first baseman to drive in Leo Rivas from third base. 

I took Cal's base hit as a good sign, as in his previous AB Cal struck out with a runner at third and only one out, the very thing that had been the Mariners' bugaboo for years before Dan Wilson took over as manager and the kind of thing that, if I were in charge, would result in a sizeable kangaroo court fine. I may be grasping at straws looking for good signs, though. The M's again broke double digits with 11 strikeouts—against such vaunted pitchers as Ryan Weathers and Brent Headrick—matching their per game average so far. Last year they struck out an average of nine times per game, so it's not all that different (yet) but I still see it as a red flag. In general strikeouts are too prevalent in the majors, have been for quite some time now, and I would like the baseball culture to Make Strikeouts Embarrassing Again, if I may coin a phrase. Put it in play, my dudes.

There are some minor changes to be found at the ballpark this year. One, of course, is the new 2025 Division Champions banner:

Cool, cool, cool. Also, as is the case every year, concessions are more expensive. I got through the evening without partaking but only out of frugality. Anything I wanted to buy in the upper deck would have been at least $20. (Next time maybe I'll be early enough to detour to the lower level before the game and see if the vegan hot dogs are still available and still under $10.) Also, there's a large new Amazon ad under the main scoreboard, which I find distasteful:

I dislike the ever-expanding presence of advertising in our lives generally, not just at ballparks, and I loathe Amazon as an entity more than most other companies, so it's a bit of a double-whammy. On the other hand, thus far the Mariners have refrained from doing what many other teams have done and sold ad space on the field itself; a lot of parks now have ads on the grass in foul territory, a holdover from the COVID year of no fans in the stands and one of Rob Manfred's proudest accomplishments, I'm sure. Manfred would sell ad space or sponsorships on every surface and for every lame excuse for an event imaginable if he could, so despite my disapproval for the new under-the-scoreboard ad I am grateful the grass remains untainted.

Also notable on the scoreboard, at least to someone like me, is a new typeface on the graphics. It's narrower and slightly shorter, allowing for a new column alongside runs, hits, and errors for "ABS"—the number of automated-ball-strike challenges available for each team—and info on the batter/pitcher within the lineup columns without bumping anything from the main screen area or the allocated ad space.

Now, if they would just leave the game info up and not replace it with stupid "MAKE NOISE" garbage every ten seconds that would be great.

Hopefully, when I return to the ballpark in a couple of weeks it won't be 42 degrees out. It was chotto samui last night, I could have used gloves and a scarf.

Tagged Baseball, Seattle Mariners, Posted on March 31, 2026 at 5:47PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

No Kings, rainouts, and roboumps

I went to my local No Kings protest rally on Saturday. Like last time, I opted for the one just a couple of blocks from my house rather than go to the big one downtown, for good or ill. I was on my own, so it wasn't a social thing. Anyway, the turnout was pretty decent for an ancillary/satellite event and I'm glad to have participated. I threw together a quick-and-dirty (by my standard) sign and walked the length of the several blocks long designated area a few times, then across the street, then back again, for a couple of hours. Chatted with a few fellow protesters, mostly about the Mariners but also about our shared outrage at the modern Republican party, which is now basically the new American Bund.

Below are some of the signs people had at my local event.

Then yesterday I had a four-game umpiring shift that only lasted two games; the rains came and the infield became muddy and slippery, so I called the other two off and they'll be rescheduled. Hopefully for a warmer, sunnier day.

Meanwhile, baseball's opening weekend had some good games and also saw the introduction of ABS, the "automated ball-strike system," colloquially known as the "roboumps." In its present form, I actually kind of like ABS. How it works is, if the pitcher, catcher, or batter disagrees with an umpire's call of a pitch, he can tap his helmet and say "challenge." Then the technology which just recorded the pitch on camera replays it through it's computerized wizardry and notes where the pitch crossed the vertical plane matching the front of home plate. If by the system's boundaries—which are calibrated for each individual batter based on his height—it even nicks the edge of the strike zone, it is a strike, otherwise a ball, regardless of what the umpire said it was. Each team gets two failed challenges per game, after which they can't ask for any more.

The fact that it's limited to two unsuccessful challenges per team gives the system an element of strategy to it—do you challenge one early in the game? If it's an obvious miss, sure, but if it's close do you risk it? So I like that. Also, when you've been unlucky enough to draw C.B. Bucknor as your home-plate ump, at least you know you'll have an opportunity to show him he was wrong a few times. But when I really like it is when the challenges fail. That's obviously my bias as a rec league umpire, but I quite enjoyed when in Friday evening's Mariners/Guardians game, HP ump Will Little was proven right all four times he was challenged and the system was off the table for the rest of the game. Little's been one of the better umps for a while now and here's real evidence to back it up.

But I fear the current version of ABS will be short-lived. Things in the early going are trending more toward the C.B. Bucknor side of things than to the Will Little side, with the majority of challenges being successful. The great sportswriter Joe Posnanski has also opined that the day is coming soon when every pitch will be called by cameras and computer tech and the home-plate ump will be essentially just like the other base umpires, there for safe/out calls and random weirdnesses. That I won't appreciate. I like human frailties. I like having to know who your umpire is going to be so you can plan accordingly. I like that some umpires have a tight zone and some a more generous one. Ideally, they wouldn't be inconsistent with it, and that's where guys like Bucknor and Hunter Wendelstedt become frustrating.

One more positive hope I have is that with the challenge system, TV broadcasts will stop overlaying the approximate strike zone onto the camera shot for live pitches. It's become normal over the past several years, and I don't like it. I do like it on replays, but live I want to see the pitch unencumbered by overlays and distractions. On the close pitches especially.

I'll be at the game tonight live and in person, so no video overlays to worry about there. Temps in the low 40s, so I'll be layered up. Go M's.

Now, No Kings signage from Saturday:

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, Baseball, Umping, Posted on March 30, 2026 at 4:36PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

Analogies to Doug Fister and Lucille Bluth

A couple of topics today, starting with last night's umpiring.

As on Monday, we were joined at the field by Alfred the amateur photographer and former Army medic. Unlike on Monday, we had no need for his medic experience, though it was a close thing. This time I was the one that went down in a heap.

About midway through our first game of the night, a batter for the team that calls themselves...I want to say Pushing Bunts, but I think that's wrong; they're a new team and their name isn't on the official documentation yet. Anyway, their batter took a cut at a fat pitch right down the middle and juuust got under it a smidge and fouled it straight back. At speed. At me. I instinctively began to turn and duck away, but I was nevertheless struck flush on the temple. I hit the turf and stayed there for maybe 10 or 15 seconds, during which time half the players on both teams were rushing toward home plate. I got up with a painful impact reminder above my ear, but otherwise none the worse for wear. I was good to go after a minute or two and thankfully didn't need to prevail upon Alfred's Army expertise. But it wasn't fun, and I felt it a bit more painfully later in the night well after I'd gone home. I took a couple Tylenol caps and I could ignore it again. Today it's pretty much fine, though I can still feel a phantom sting.

In retrospect, this was not a bad thing for my ego. Because all those players were concerned and one of them—I don't know who, I was still down on the turf, but it was a guy—said, "shit, dude, you can't get hurt, you're the good ump." Anyway, the rest of the night when several of the players came to bat they checked in. "You still OK, man? Only one pitch coming in at a time, right?" I waved them off. "I'm good, no worries. Occupational hazzard." Which is true, but I may be losing a step, because even though I've taken several errant pitches or foul balls to the shins or the sternum, I'd until now always been quick enough to get out of the way of anything at my head. But I think it must have looked pretty bad from the perspective of, well, everyone else, because there seemed to be real concern that we'd have to stop the games. I was reminded of either a World Series or playoff game several years back wherein pitcher Doug Fister of the Detroit Tigers was hit on the side of his head with a line drive back through the box. Everyone was rightly worried, but Fister just waived off the training staff and his manager, or tried to anyway, and shrugged it off like it was nothing and went back to pitching. He seemed annoyed by the attention. Of course, I also thought of Billy Wagner getting similarly tagged with a hard liner to the side of the head and he had to be carried off the field on a stretcher, so...yeah, there's a range of possibilities. At least (a) this is softball, where the ball isn't so dense and the speeds it travels aren't extreme; and (b) this was a foul tip with no extra velocity added to it by the swing of the bat. Really, the time a pissed off soccer player kicked a soccer ball at me was worse.

So we moved on and finished out the games without much other drama. The second game featured less experienced teams, which meant more errors, more weird plays, and, interestingly, a walkoff comeback victory by the team I figured would lose handily at the outset. I had to explain both the infield fly and obstruction rules to newbies, but nothing outlandish.

Alfred again shared some of his photos with me, so I'm including some here. Sadly, he did not get any shots of my close encounter with a foul ball.

Stephen and Colin celebrate finally throwing different options in rock-paper-scissors to determine which would be the home team. I think it took five tries?

I don't recall what this was about, but I'm probably saying something like, “yeah, it's an out, what do you want me to do?"

Here is when I and one of her teammates had to explain to the inexperienced first-basewoman why I called obstruction on her and ruled a runner who appeared to have been forced out to be safe at second base.

This and the next are actually from Monday, but I like them in sequence because this one shows my usual move of running with the batter toward first base in order to be in better position to both see a play at first and hear the pop of the ball being caught...

...and this shows my usual move when Joel is batting; I know he's not only going to be safe at first, but if there's a play to be made on him it will be at third, so I'm hurrying there instead. Typically I can get there by the time Joel's around second. He's not Barry Allen, but he is faster than most.

Onward to topic number two, our demented president.

The felonious moron occupying the White House held one of his mock Cabinet meetings today, wherein nothing of consequence was discussed. In fact, Felon47 was so uninterested in discussing substance that at one point he meandered off into one of his stupid "sir" stories. You know, a story he tells in which some other person addresses him reverently as "sir," which is a sure tell that it never happened. This one was about, I kid you not, Sharpie pens.

Of all the many many things this pathetic excuse for a human being says and does that are horrifying and imbecilic, this rates near or at the bottom of the list, but it still sticks in my craw because what he did with this story was have a Lucille Bluth moment on camera.

Apropos of nothing, he complained that the pens presidents have generally used in signing ceremonies, the ceremonial pens that are then typically given away as souvenirs to people attending the signing, are "thousand dollar pens" and "don't write very well" and that he really prefers the Sharpies. So he found himself talking to someone at the Sharpie company (sure, Donny) and said he'd prefer to use the Sharpie for these things but couldn't possibly use a commercially branded pen in front of the press and so on (sure, Donny), so the imaginary Sharpie guy told him they could make special Sharpies just for him, ones that say "the White House" and even have his signature on them, and that he could have them free of charge. Ever magnanimous, Felon47 insisted on paying for them (I mean, it's not his money, right, it's our money, who gives a damn about our money?) and that he used his "art of the deal" skills to buy them for five dollars a pen. "Five dollars instead of a thousand dollars, and the pens are better."

OK, two things: The ceremonial pens were nice pens, probably a couple hundred bucks a pop, but not a grand per pen. That's one of the fictitious numbers he pulls out of nowhere like when he says there are 15 points in his peace plan (that has zero points because it doesn't exist). And, the retail price of a Sharpie pen, when bought in a box of 36, is sixty-four cents. Even if we factor in the custom branding of "The White House" and all that, you can buy them retail—as I'm sure some White House staffer actually did—for a little more than a dollar apiece if bought in bulk. Good deal-making skills, you idiot. It's no wonder you don't care about inflation and the affordability of goods to American consumers, you've never pumped gas or bought groceries.

Of course, the interaction never really occurred, which means that even in his made-up fantasies about his alleged great deal-making he still fucks up and doesn't know it.

Topic three: Opening Day!

I did not get tickets to this year's opening day game, but will be at the park in person to see your Seattle Mariners on Monday night. Tonight I watched on TV, and for the first time in years did it without having to resort to skirting the system. We now have a local streaming option for the M's, and it's not all that pricey given the nature of inflation and the current economy. Of course, one could argue that the current economy means you don't add new expenses no  matter how reasonable, but the difference between the MLB.TV package I'd been using for years and that plus the new Mariner streaming product is basically the cost of one in-person game. So I put my tickets for tomorrow night on StubHub and assuming they sell will pay for it with the proceeds. It's going to be cold out there tomorrow night anyway and everyone I asked to go with me either said no immediately or bailed later, so this seemed a good option.

Meantime, the M's did play tonight and lost to the Cleveland Guardians. Because the only way the Mariners could score tonight was to hit solo home runs. Jesus, guys, I thought we'd been over this already: There are other ways to score in baseball. Put runners on base and move them along. To be fair, none of the four homers hit by the M's appeared to be "on purpose," it wasn't a case of swinging for the fences, just happy accidents on well-struck liners. But they also struck out 14 times, and the combo of four solo shots and 14 Ks and nothing else (their only other hits were two-out doubles, and not in the same frame) is not a promising way to begin the season.

Well, there's time to turn it around. 161 more to go, after all.

Tagged Umping, Baseball, President VonClownstick, Politics, Softball, Posted on March 27, 2026 at 1:41AM   |   Permalink   |     |  

Jingoism and the WBC

Woalter and new acquaintance in Miami

This year's World Baseball Classic is not proceeding to my liking. Mostly because what I still maintain is the best baseball team on planet Earth, Team Japan, was bounced out in the quarterfinals the other night.

It wasn't a great game—the other four Japan played were better, or at least more entertaining, not just because Japan won them but because they were more evocative of the kind of well-balanced, multifaceted baseball favored in Japan. The quarterfinal against Venezuela turned out to be more USA/Latin America style ball, i.e. home-run dependent. 13 runs scored in the game, ten of them on homers. And one of them on a mind-blowing error by Japan pitcher Atsuki Taneichi (of the Chiba Marines in his day job), which really did Japan in even though the score remained relatively close.

Anyway, Japan's exit from the tournament would, you might expect, also end my interest in it; usually, you'd be right, but there are two mitigating circumstances: One, my young friend Woalter, the softball player I took to my last regular season game of the year, is from Venezuela and is attending the Miami games of the WBC. So he was in the stands, cheering on his guys, when I texted him to say, "your guys beat my guys and I am holding you personally responsible." Woalter replied by sending me video of the final play, Shohei Ohtani popping out to shallow right-center field, he'd taken on his phone. Sigh. Well, if I have to be disappointed, at least he is getting his money's worth down there. He's clearly having a blast, as evidenced by the photos he sent.

A lone Venezuelan surrounded by a pack of Dominicans and having a blast

Meanwhile, there's mitigating circumstance number two: Team USA, who will play for the title tomorrow against either Venezuela or "Italy." The members of Team USA are acting like assholes. On purpose. You've got pitcher Paul Skenes entirely missing the point and declaring, "We’re America. We’ve got to assert our dominance over everybody else." You've got team manager Mark DeRosa enforcing a sort of Bob Gibson-esque "no fraternizing" rule among the players, leading to guys who are teammates during the season snubbing each other on the field in the WBC. Seattle Mariner Cal Raleigh has been the most visible doing this because he's a catcher and everyone who comes to bat has a chance to greet him, so we saw his Mariner teammates Randy Arozarena and Josh Naylor both offer him a warm greeting only to be given the cold shoulder out of what appeared to be misplaced macho bullshit (which is indeed what it turned out to be, just teamwide rather than Raleigh-specific). You've got right-wing military asshats being brought into the clubhouse to give motivational pep talks. You've got a team of guys behaving like jingoistic ugly Americans you'd hate to cross paths with on a foreign vacation, behavior that embarrasses themselves and offends their peers, in a sporting tournament that is designed to promote and share the game of baseball with the international community. DeRosa and Team USA appear to be taking cues from our current despotic regime in their manner and attitude, and I find myself rooting hard for Venezuela to kick their asses tomorrow evening.

Here's how our pal Craig Calcaterra explained this yesterday:

While the other countries in the World Baseball Classic are celebrating their culture, engaging happily with their opponents, and appear to be having a wonderful and even joyous time, Mark De Rosa's squad has leaned into jingoism, militarism, and redass chumpfuckery. I suppose that's inevitable given that American culture and identity has increasingly become little more than an economy backed by a military. But Jesus, guys, you could do a hell of a lot better.

As I type this, though, Venezuela is losing 2-1 to "Italy" in their semifinal game. They've got three innings to come back and win it. Otherwise, the championship game will be Team USA vs. a Team Italy that is 90% American. "Italy" even getting this far is a tremendous upset, but since there are only three Italians on the roster it would be far less satisfying for them to take on Team USA tomorrow.

Plus, it would make Woalter sad. And we don't want that.

Tagged Baseball, WBC, Umping, Politics, Craig Calcaterra, Posted on March 16, 2026 at 7:05PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

Ump tales, WBC action, and a few links

I've been feeling pretty good lately—the Black Hole has been keeping its distance and there's been little to no slow-witted gauzy-brain to impede my thinking. So when I found myself making mistakes during last night's umpire shift I had nothing to blame it on; I was somehow off my game in some other way.

Nothing was seriously bad, the games were not close and no one took issue with me in any major way. But, being the perfectionist I am, I noted the mistakes even if no one else did (or no one else said anything, anyway).

The most egregious thing is one I don't even know if I got wrong: for the second time in the same game, a specific player slid into a close play at third base in a forceout situation. He beat the fielder to the bag, just as he did the first time, in a comical slide, just as he did the first time. But this second instance had people objecting to my call, and since the fielder did in fact have the ball ahead of the runner making it to third, it was more than conceivable that a tag had been made at an angle I couldn't see. So, I did what you're really not supposed to do as an umpire, and polled the players that were involved and/or had a better view; no one was willing to state firmly that they were right and I was wrong, but the runner himself was so wishy washy that I took it as a tell, he knew he'd been tagged. So I overturned myself and called him out. No objections. But I have no idea what the right call would have been. He was definitely not forced, but might have been tagged, and if we'd had a second ump it might have been a sure thing. Alas.

Also, on two occasions a batter hit a ball down the left field line that skirted the third-base bag and I called them both fair. In almost immediate retrospect, I knew that they weer actually foul, but too late to change the call. In these cases, though, I do have an excuse: the turf at Bobby Morris Field has been slowly and steadily migrating north over the years, which is most notable when placing the bases in their postholes because every now and then I have to take a knife and cut the turf a bit more to extend the hole in the turf for the base peg, which no longer lines up with the hole below the turf. Those holes began as squares, but are now rectangles of around five or six inches long. This also means that the third base/left field foul line, which is supposed to overlap the edge of third base, is several inches to the outside of third base. This is wrong. But in the split-second I have to make a fair/foul call as a ball skitters past the bag, my brain noted the line and said fair when it should have noted the base and said foul. Eh, at least in those cases I can shrug it off.

There were a few ball/strike calls I messed up too, which happens here and there, but when I called ball four on one batter on a pitch that did nick the top of the strike zone, it is not unreasonable for that batter to assume that will be the call the next time she gets that pitch. In her next at-bat, the same pitch came in and I called a strike on a 3-1 count, costing her a walk. It was correct, but she was annoyed at the inconsistency (and as I had just given Todd Tichenor crap for being all over the place with his zone in the WBC game the other night I sympathized). She grounded out to end the inning.

Anyway, for the most part we all had a good time despite the frigid temps and sporadic rain and I didn't make anyone too mad. Most of the players in the three games are league vets and knew me well enough to give me a pass. Or they didn't notice or care. (Like I said, the games weren't close.)

After the shift, I got home around midnight and then stayed up all night to watch the final World Baseball Classic game from Tokyo, which saw the Czech team shut out Team Japan—for my money the most well-balanced, fundamentally-sound, top-quality team on planet Earth—for seven innings before Japan realized, hey, we're the best team on planet Earth! and opened up some whoop-ass on the poor Czech relief pitchers. A nine-spot in the 8th and a 9-0 final score. But for those first seven innings it was really something; these Czech players are pros in their home country, but mostly on the order of what we'd think of as semi-pros; the starting pitcher, who was awesome in a Jamie Moyer slow-curves and changeups kind of way, earns his living as an electrician. They take vacation time from their jobs to do these tournaments. There is one (maybe two?) player on the team that is in American minor-league ball, but generally these guys play in a low-tier European pro league that pays next to nothing and keep day jobs. Their manager is a neurosurgeon. It's impressive as hell that they shut the Japanese out for seven frames. All four of Japan's games thus far in the WBC have been tremendous: the whomping and near no-hitting of Taiwan, the tightly contested game against Korea, the pitcher's duel with Australia, and then this one against Czechia. 4-0, undefeated going into the next round in Miami.

Some observations from these four Tokyo games relevant to the coming season: White Sox fans will be happy on balance with their new slugger, Munetaka Murakami, but he's streaky. Don't be surprised if he slumps here and there. Also, if the Sox are planning to use him at first base instead of third, don't expect any gold gloves. He's fine, but I've noticed a few times he's poorly positioned for a throw and wasn't reading the ball off the bat as well. But the grand slam last night was pretty. Meanwhile, Blue Jay fans will be ecstatic at the play of their new third-sacker, Kazuma Okamoto. Okamoto has gold gloves at both first and third, showed impressive range at the hot corner, and is going to draw lots of walks. Red Sox fans will probably continue to suffer at the underuse of Masataka Yoshida, who is a lot better than the Boston people think he is.

Meanwhile, Felon47’s regime of bigotry and authoritarianism has, for the moment, cost Cincinnati Reds (and former Seattle Mariners) third baseman Eugenio Suárez his chance at being a US citizen. Geno's citizenship application was cancelled even though the processing for it had already been scheduled for later this year. Why? "Because of the Venezuela thing," Suárez said, which is a slightly more polite way to say, "because I am a Latino guy and the people running this country are racist assholes." Most ballplayers don't pay much attention to politics, they don't understand how different things are today from two years ago or why, and Major League Baseball, in the person of Commissioner Idiot, is not doing anything substantive to help the scores of foreign players in the major and minor leagues. Suárez would like to be of help to his fellow would-be immigrants and other Latino players, as a source of information if nothing else. "[It's a] good platform for us as baseball players," said Suárez, "to be able to help people know [what's going on]. We need help with that." Don't expect any help from the Commissioner. Here's what he had to say when asked about Suárez's citizenship and the legitimate fear of arrest and worse from Felon47’s DHS brownshirts: “Look, obviously I worry about anything that could be disruptive to the very best players in the world being out on the field. But the prospect of that disruption, given that our players all had visas, it’s speculation at this point.” Is it really? Let me quote our pal Craig Calcaterra on this subject: "I don't know what makes anyone think that a ballplayer, even one carrying their visa, is immune from Trumpist brutality. ... How anyone could read the news over the past two or three months and think that the brutalization of Latin Americans in this country is the stuff of 'speculation' or that if someone has their paperwork in order they're all safe [is beyond me], but that's Rob Manfred for ya."

Stepping away from the diamonds to close this post out, here are some tidbits worth a link or a note:

• Paul Waldman wrote about the current White House Cabinet as "the worst in history" and at one point refers to them as "a kind of Bizarro World 1927 Yankees," thus combining three of my nerd spheres—baseball, politics, and comics—into one statement.
• Meanwhile, Dan Froomkin takes mainstream journalists to task for failing to adequately sound the alarm about Felon47 being loony-tunes and demented when it comes to his unconscionable and incoherent war on Iran. Addressing the press at large, he asks, "Doesn’t the fact that he is bombing the hell out of a country for no particular reason, endangering the region, and destabilizing the world make it incumbent upon you to be blunt about the problem, rather than dancing around it? Isn’t it time for clarity instead of euphemism? Isn’t it time to put aside your aloofness, your concerns about appearing partisan, and your fears of offending your corporate masters? Isn’t it time to tell the whole truth, in the best interests of the country and the world?" He goes on to detail what's not being reported, then continues: "When [an] obsessive pursuit of impartiality leads them to deny or obscure the objective truth, it’s gone too far. And the objective truth is that Trump is deranged. Choosing not to make that explicit doesn’t win over new readers. It doesn’t change MAGA minds. The people who think Trump is rational get their news elsewhere. It’s bad journalism. It normalizes something that is very alarming. And it pisses off their own readers."
• Jeff Tiedrich makes the observation that Felon47 accidentally told the truth in response to a reporter's question regarding the girls' school the US hit with a Tomohawk missile and the 160+ people killed in the strike:
  
  Reporter: “You just suggested that Iran somehow got its hands on a Tomahawk and bombed its own elementary school on the first day of the war. But you’re the only person in your government saying this. Even your defense secretary wouldn’t say that, when he was asked, standing over your shoulder, on your plane on Saturday. Why are you the only person saying this?"
  Felon47: “Because I just don’t know enough about it. I think it’s something that I was told is under investigation."
  Tiedrich: “'I’m insisting something is true even though I don’t know enough about it' just might be the most honest thing Donny’s ever said, even if he’s far too demented to realize that’s what he’s saying.”

That's all for now. I'm going to fix myself some dinner and watch some TV. New episode of Paradise is out.

Tagged Umping, WBC, Baseball, Politics, Republicans, President VonClownstick, Posted on March 10, 2026 at 11:06PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

New sketch, the WBC, SFA, and cabinet chaos

Masataka Yoshida homers against Korea, demonstrating that the Red Sox have criminally underused him the last two years

A few disparate things today...

• ITEM: I've Just Seen a Face! The sketch I was working on the other day is now finished and can be seen in the sketchbook.
• ITEM: Dig It! Kristi Noem got taken to the metaphorical gravel pit! May she be but the first of many to fall. Meanwhile, the nominee to replace her is quite possibly the dumbest person in either house of Congress.
• ITEM: I'm Only Sleeping! This week saw the start of the 2026 World Baseball Classic, which opened with games held in Puerto Rico, Miami, Houston, and Tokyo. Naturally, the ones I'm most interested in are being played in Tokyo and they start at 2:00am PST. So I've been even more nocturnal than usual, staying up to watch Team Japan live rather than wait and watch a recording of the game during normal waking hours like a sane person would do. And they've been really fun games, too! In the opener, Japan clobbered Taiwan in a fashion that was reminiscent of some softball games I've both played in and umpired in recent years: the 13-0 drubbing ended early by WBC mercy rule, and one 6th-inning single is all that kept Taiwan from being no-hit by the loaded Japanese squad. Last night/this morning was more of a fair fight, with the Koreans nearly matching Japan play-for-play until the home 7th, when Korea brought in Young Kyu Kim (one of their many Kims) to pitch with one on and two out and poor Kim couldn't find the strike zone. Which, to be fair, was rather variable. The home plate ump in that game—Todd Tichenor, who is generally well regarded as an MLB ump—was truly bad, not remotely consistent with high strikes, low strikes, edge strikes, pretty much nothing was certain unless it was down the middle. Even so, Kim was wild and walked Kensuke Kondoh and Seya Suzuki after intentionally walking Shohei Ohtani, forcing in the go-ahead run, then Masataka Yoshida delivered a 2-RBI hit to put Japan up by three. That was enough for closer Taisei Ota to seal the deal in the 9th with help from Ukyo Shuto, just into the game in center field after pinch-running in the home 8th, who made a leaping catch against the wall for the second out.
• ITEM: She Came in Through the Bathroom Window! Once again, the eligibility rules in the WBC are a little too lax for my taste, though I get the rationale. Players can be on a nation-team's roster not only if they're citizens or permanent residents of the country, but if one or both of their parents are/were citizens or were born in the country or if they would be granted citizenship if desired under the country's laws. That last one is mostly for Team Israel, basically if you're Jewish you can play for the land of King David. So we have, for example, three Americans playing for Korea (named Dunning, O'Brien, and Whitcomb) who have never lived in Korea but have Korean-born moms; a Great Britain team with only two British players; a Team Italy with only three Italians; 13 Americans playing for Mexico; and an entirely American Israeli team. The Latin American teams have no trouble filling out their squads (you'd think Mexico would be fine under stricter rules too), of course Japan is a baseball powerhouse, the Netherlands is well-stocked because of that kingdom's Caribbean territories, Canada has plenty of Canadians, Taiwan is stocked with their own pros, and, kind of a surprise, Team Australia is almost entirely Australian, save for a couple of guys born in South Africa to Australians. So it's improving, but between Team USA, Team Puerto Rico, Team Israel, Team Italy, and Team Great Britain, the tournament has basically five American squads out of 20. I'd say it feels like stacking the deck, but only USA and Puerto Rico have a prayer of moving on.
• ITEM: It's All Too Much! On a less pleasant topic, Kristi Noem may be out of a job, but ICE hasn't changed its ways. The new American Gestapo have a betting pool going at their El Paso area detention camp, but instead of picking winners of football games they're betting on which of the incarcerated will kill themselves. In addition to being unconscionable and cruel and spot-on emblematic of our current presidential regime, this is encouragement for these thugs to treat their prisoners—you can call them "detainees" if you want, but they're prisoners—even worse than they otherwise would. It's a low bar to begin with, but this is insane. More insane, I mean.
• ITEM: Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey! Alleged attorney general Pam Bondi has been subpoenaed to testify in Congress and there have been articles of impeachment filed against her over her coverup of the Epstein files. About fucking time. Bounce her ass out, then bring her up on charges. (I know it isn't likely to get anywhere real, but we've got to try anyway, repeatedly, and with many other Cabinet officials, preparatory to when we have a majority and can impeach Felon47 and his bearded bootlicker.)
• ITEM: Don't Let Me Down! Starfleet Academy has been surprisingly good, and dropped it's ninth episode this week. The season finale streams Wednesday night, and I'm looking forward to it—when the series started, I had no idea what to expect; could be good, could suck. But it's been largely excellent considering its target audience as a YA show. It's improved on the other streaming-era Star Trek series by having an apparent quality control process with scripts. The writing is better structured and when there are holes in the stories they're forgivable. Like in this week's penultimate episode, the villain's dastardly plan is revealed to be, essentially, a blockade of the reborn Federation of Planets; how this was accomplished stretches my suspension of disbelief, that's an enormous area of space to cover even with this post-Burn mini-Federation. But the twist worked, the story that plot point is in service of is valuable, the situation it sets up for next week's finale is compelling, so I forgive the implausibility. It helped that this week's ep was a Jonathan Frakes episode, Frakes in the director's chair always elevates the material. But, the real make-or-break for this new show will be episode ten. Will it continue to be solidly written and character-focused and maintain its themes, or will it take a page from Discovery or the first two seasons of Picard and completely drop the ball at the end of the season, wrapping things up in a sort of, "shit, we're out of time, I guess just shrug off what we did earlier and invent some deus ex machina that we can forget later?" I'd be more optimistic if Alex Kurtzman wasn't a credited writer on episode ten. At least he's just the co-scripter of the teleplay. (Am I too hard on Kurtzman? Is my bias against anyone involved with writing the JJ movies too strong? I guess we'll see next week.)
• ITEM: Get Back! Or, more accurately, go forward—we begin our annual 8-month-long social engineering trickery tonight, turning the clocks ahead an hour for no good reason. The tyranny of morning people continues, and we night owls are shoved to the ground in our grogginess and given the finger. Tonight's WBC game in Tokyo will now start at 3:00am, which is so much worse than 2:00am, because the Japanese are smarter than we are and don't do stupid Daylight Saving Time.

That's all I have for now. Umping this week was good, no highlights/lowlights to speak of. Back out there Monday evening.

Tagged Baseball, Sketches, Politics, Republicans, Star Trek, Daylight Saving Time, The Beatles, WBC, Posted on March 7, 2026 at 7:45PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

Priorities

Judging by the noise level outside, which for a time included quite a lot of firecrackers that surely freaked out every pet in the neighborhood, the hometown Seattle Seahawks won the Super Bowl a little bit ago. Good for them. Whatever.

I did not watch the game, I ran some errands and did some work instead, because I care not for football. But while I was out, wearing, as I tend to do, my Seattle Mariners baseball cap, a number of people at the grocery store wanted to know my opinion of the Super Bowl, whether I planned on watching the remainder of the game when I got home, that kind of thing. That's cool, striking up conversation and all, but my replies of "no opinion," "no," "I don't care," etc. were a letdown.

But there was one guy. He was stocking bananas in the Fred Meyer produce department. As I picked out a small bunch from his supply, he too struck up a conversation.

"You know what tomorrow is?" he asked.

"Tomorrow?" I said.

"Pitchers and catchers report," he declared, nodding slightly with a small smile.

Oh yeah.

We reach, Mr. banana-stocking dude. We reach.

Tagged Baseball, Posted on February 8, 2026 at 7:57PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

The Donovan trade

New Seattle Mariner Brendan Donovan

As the long offseason winds down and spring training fast approaches, Your Seattle Mariners have finally made a personnel move, trading for infielder/outfielder Brendan Donovan.

I'm of two minds about this trade. First, yay, I like Brendan Donovan. He's an outstanding defensive second baseman with a great eye at the plate and offers the sort of batting profile I want to see: solid on-base skills, not especially streaky over his career (though last year there were some good and bad months), not power-focused. He's not fast, he won't steal many bags, but he should be a solid presence in a lineup that needs it. Donovan is a good get, solid target for a trade.

Second, boo, I'm not happy with with who got traded away and how that affects the depth chart. The M's sent third baseman Ben Williamson to the Tampa Bay Rays in the convoluted three-team deal, which isn't great on two fronts: Firstly, Williamson is one of the best defensive third basemen I've ever seen play, and as I place more value on defense than does the baseball world generally I'd have been far more interested in keeping him and trading one of the other high-level prospects instead; and secondly, losing Williamson means there is no incumbent third baseman, thus Donovan will likely be asked to play there instead of at his customary second base position. You may recall the M's tried this sort of thing last year with Jorge Polanco, who did not last long at third base. Donovan is a good defender wherever he plays—he owns a Gold Gove as a utility player from 2022—but he is best at the keystone. The Mariners must feel like rookie second-sacker Cole Young is actually as good as his minor-league hype even though in a brief stay with the big club last year he was quite overmatched in his way-too-early promotion; I was also unimpressed with his defense.

The Mariners also gave up prospects Tai Peete and Jurrangelo Cijntje; aside from having a great name, Peete, as an outfielder, didn't hold a lot of value for the M's, so I don't mind that, but it's sad to give up Cijntje just because of the novelty—he's that rare breed known as a switch-pitcher, who can throw 90+ with either arm with an impressive degree of accuracy. Overall, of the three teams in the trade—Mariners, Rays, and St. Louis Cardinals—the M's may have done the worst. The Rays get an elite defensive third baseman who has shown hitting chops at the Triple-A level if not the bigs and all they gave up was a low-level OF prospect and a low competitive balance draft pick; while St. Louis gets those two prospects, another minor-league outfielder from the Rays, and two competitive balance draft selections in exchange for Donovan in a classic stock-the-farm rebuilding move.

Even if Williamson didn't hit much, the team could probably carry him in the lineup as a great-glove-weak-bat type. Young, not so much. He's going to have to hit or stay in the minors. The M's do have Ryan Bliss as a 2B option, he was the opening day starter last season before going down with injury and missing most of the year. So they might be OK. But I'd still have much rather seen Young go in the trade instead of Williamson, which would have given the M's an infield of Josh Naylor, Brendan Donovan, J.P. Crawford, and Ben Williamson first-to-third, a defensive quartet to rival that of the 1999 Mets in excellence. Naylor-Young-Crawford-Donovan is good, but not elite. Plus, there is no depth at the third base position now, none of the upper prospects on the farm have much experience at the position, whereas there are several decent second basemen.

So... short-term, this helps the Mariners' lineup (but not the defense), therefore, good trade, though it seems like it could easily have been better. Longer term, well, Donovan is a free agent after the ’27 season, by which time we'll have a better idea if Young can live up to his first-round-draftee status and how much we miss (or don't) Williamson. 

Tagged Baseball, Seattle Mariners, Posted on February 4, 2026 at 7:03PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

High-wage jobs

The rich get richer, with the Dodgers adding Kyle Tucker

Pro sports has been, at least since free agency became a thing, an industry that pays well. For the big leaguers, I mean. Minor league players toil in poverty, for the most part, excepting highly-touted prospects that got big signing bonuses or whatnot. But if you could make the Majors (or your sport's equivalent high rung), you'd get paid. And if you were a star player, well, then you could get seriously rich.

But such things are relative, and with today's announcement of some new Major League Baseball free agent contracts it got me going down a bit of an historical rabbit hole.

Outfielder Kyle Tucker, late of the Houston Astros and Chicago Cubs, is a really good baseball player. Any team would love to have him. Is he the best baseball player? No, I don't think anyone could credibly make that argument, though he is more well-rounded than most, good at several things rather than elite at one or two (looking at you, Aaron Judge). Nonetheless, the Los Angeles Dodgers just made him the highest-paid player in the game not named Shohei Ohtani (who is a special case and cannot be used as a comparison with anybody, not just for what he does on the field but because he is responsible for so much of his team's income). The annual average value of Tucker's new contract is a staggering $60,000,000. There's some creative structuring of when he'll be paid how much over time, but bottom line, it's $240 million for four years playing as a Dodger. The previous record-holder is the similarly-aged and similarly-skilled Juan Soto, who set the mark just a year ago when the New York Mets (who shelled out another high-dollar contract today for shortstop Bo Bichette) gave him $51,000,000 per annum. Before that it was Aaron Judge breaking the mark in 2023, getting $40,000,000 a year from the Yankees.

Don't get me wrong, I don't begrudge elite athletes getting paid. It's a comparable amount to what the star of a hit TV series would make (at least back in the days of 22-episode TV seasons), and it's all ultimately in the entertainment field. I'm just stunned at the rate of player-salary inflation versus the general rate. When Kirby Puckett got $5M in 1993, he was the top dog; adjusted for inflation, he was getting less than a fifth of Tucker's new paycheck, and no way is Kyle Tucker five times the player Kirby Puckett was.

Nolan Ryan got the first $1,000,000 per year contract in 1979. I remember clearly when Orel Hershiser became baseball's first $3,000,000 per year player ten years after that. I recall Ken Griffey Jr. breaking the $8,000,000 per year mark in 1996, and that his figure was eclipsed by Albert Belle's $11,000,000 annual contract later that year. Not too many years after, Manny Ramirez would top $20M and A-Fraud would top $30M and Mike Trout would top $35M. Then Judge, Soto, and now $60M with Tucker.

At first I assumed the sports fan was taking more of a hit every time the big contracts got way bigger. Though it's true that ticket prices have gone up more than the general rate of inflation would indicate, they haven't risen to the same degree, not even close. We pay about three times as much for a ticket today than we did back when Griffey signed his $8M-per-season deal, not the sixfold jump Soto sees over Junior's pay. (Though there's also the matter of having to pay for TV broadcasts we didn't used to have to pay for and ever-increasing cable fees—which, thankfully, are finally dying off in favor of more a la carte streaming options—so it's not quite apples-to-apples.)

What I haven't been able to research is how much increase there's been in the revenue the league and its teams bring in. It's likely that individual clubs have always been far more profitable than they've publicly acknowledged, and especially in the Rob Manfred era they sell ad space and naming rights on/for anything they can and have soaked television providers so heavily that some of them have gone bankrupt. Almost every team now has a stadium with luxury seating options that didn't exist in 20th century ballparks and that now account for most of the gameday revenues.

So in terms of percentage of the employer's income, these huge contracts probably have kept fairly consistent over the years? Maybe? At least through Trout's record-breaking 2019 deal?

Nevertheless, I remain stunned to consider these guys getting $50 and $60 million a year when I'd just gotten used to the top guys making $35M. It's psychologically jarring when the vast majority of us are seeing our buying power get smaller and smaller even though the scales and circumstances don't equate.

Also, it makes me nervous because Manfred and his bosses, the MLB club owners, are notoriously dishonest about their finances and unwilling to share anything even with each other, and the collective bargaining agreement MLB has with the players' union expires next December 1st. With the fat-cat teams like the Dodgers and Mets and Yankees and even the Cubs shelling out contracts like this, the rest of the owners are going to cry poor and Manfred will saber-rattle and we'll have a lockout come Spring Training time 2027. My faith in Manfred's ability to keep the peace is not quite absolute zero, but it's close.

Tagged Baseball, Rob Manfred, Posted on January 16, 2026 at 10:04PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

Mélange of miscellany

Kudos to the great people of Minnesota, who go out in the cold to document the fascism

Rather than pick a topic and dive in I'm going with a potpourri of assorted notes on various things today...

Dateline: Occupied Minnesota

• The campaign of state-sponsored terror continues in occupied Minneapolis, and thankfully the good people who live there are out documenting it. One video made it to the cablewaves of the Chicago-based allegedly-centrist-but-Republican-slanted station NewsNation, which showed it over an interview with Congresswoman Mary Miller (R–IL). Rep. Miller said the woman shown in the video being abducted out of her car while trying to drive to a medical appointment deserved to be manhandled and abused because "she's here illegally [and] probably getting free health care." She later admitted that she doesn't know who the woman is and thus has no earthly idea if she's here illegally or not, but she also says, "who cares? She's breaking the law and resisting arrest." For the record, the woman was later identified as a biracial U.S.-born software engineer and ICE had to release her.

  The video, which is all Rep. Miller had to go on, shows no lawbreaking whatsoever on the woman's part; it shows ICE acting illegally, though, breaking her car windows and abducting her rather than allowing her to move along her way. Was she being arrested for cause? Was she to be charged with something? Would the charge be, say, asking an ICE patrol why she was being hindered from traveling to her appointment? That's the "lawbreaking" Rep. Miller sees and says "who cares?" about? This interview is the first and thus far only time I've ever seen Rep. Mary Miller, I'd never heard of her before, but it's plenty sufficient to reveal her as a racist, authoritarian abettor of criminals with no respect for law or her oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. In a sane world, she would be censured, removed from committees, or even expelled from the House by her fellow Congresspeople for what she said in this interview.

  Miller represents a gerrymandered district created in the 2020 redistricting that moved Illinois 15 from the southeastern corner of the state to a rural expanse in the center that is nearly bisected by population centers. If you live in Decatur, Springfield, or Champaign, congratulations, you are not Miller's constituent, though you are completely surrounded by those who are. If you live in East St. Louis, Bloomington, or Peoria, you're less than 20 miles from IL–15. The 2020 census took a seat away from Illinois, necessitating a redistricting, and the state redrew its map to group cities together as much as possible in a "fight back" gerrymander. It gave the state three more Democratic seats in the House but eliminated toss-up districts and made the three remaining R districts deeply, deeply Republican. This new blood-red district had two incumbents, one holding the seat lost in the census, and its voters reelected Miller over the more moderate R and then overwhelmingly reelected her again. Congrats, IL–15, you people are batshit crazy. At best.

• In another incident on Monday, ICE agents kidnapped a black woman, a U.S. citizen, in occupied St. Paul. It wasn't clear if the damage to her car seen in the video was caused by ICE or not, but rather than assist someone after an automotive collision of some kind the agents abducted her, threw her into an unmarked vehicle, and drove off.
• Also Monday, ICE agents abducted two teenage employees of a Twin Cities area Target store, tackling one of them to the ground and beating him, only to dump them out of the unmarked vehicle, bloody and sobbing, eight miles away when they were satisfied that the teens were American citizens. (Video is on X, so I'm not linking it. Screw you, Elon.)
• Three Minnesota school districts (and counting?) are now accommodating remote classes as it is unsafe for students to attend school. ICE has abducted parents, tear-gassed playgrounds, and generally terrorized various Minnesota schools this month in their alleged quest to deport immigrants.
• A Minneapolis resident, abducted by ICE for following an ICE vehicle and alerting neighbors to ICE's presence—agents stopped her car, broke the driver and passenger side windows, and forced the two occupants from the car—said that while being forcibly taken in an unmarked vehicle to a nearby Federal building agents told her, "you guys have to stop obstructing us, that's why that lesbian bitch is dead." The threat, the misogyny, the bigotry, the callous disregard for law, the small-minded insecurity, all there in one quote from a government-sanctioned thug during an illegal arrest. Before being released, agents apparently offered at least one of the two abductees money if they would name or identify other protesters.
• Congresswoman Robin Kelly (D–IL 2, south Chicago suburbs) has spearheaded a move to impeach Kristi Noem over her use of ICE thugs in Minnesota and elsewhere. More power to you and your colleagues, Rep. Kelly. It won't succeed in this House, but I applaud the effort and want to see more of this. Just because Speaker Johnson won't allow such things to be voted on doesn't mean we shouldn't be doing them every damn day.
• An activist in the Netherlands was given a list of more than 4,000 names of people working as ICE agents or support personnel. He put it online. Since these people have no business trying to hide their identities in the first place, I'll link to it. The site is slow to load, I imagine it's getting a bit of strain put on its server.
• I look forward to the massive number of lawsuits that will eventually be filed against DHS, the least of which will be a plethora of demands for financial restitution for property damage to the various cars agents have rammed, broken windows of, sliced seatbelts in, and, you know, shot.

The hot stove league

• With the signing of free-agent third baseman Alex Bregman, the Chicago Cubs have bumped incumbent third-sacker Matt Shaw to the bench. Shaw is a MAGA ideologue who left the team to attend the funeral of Charlie Kirk and again during the pennant race to go to a MAGA rally in Arizona. Thus, when the Bregman signing became official we got this outstanding post on BlueSky:

  

  Our buddy Craig Calcaterra followed up on that with this sentiment:

  I suppose Shaw will now be a super utilityman. Which makes me REALLY want the Cubs to acquire a better utilityman such as Santiago Espinal or someone like him so Shaw can be replaced, in the same offseason, by both a Jew and a Latino guy. That'd probably break his fascist ass.

  Schadenfreude for the win.

• The Kansas City Royals are the latest team to do something stupid with their field dimensions. That's my bias, of course, that it's stupid. The Royals are moving the fences in at Kaufmann Stadium, shortening the alleys between the foul poles and dead-center field by ten feet. Not satisfied with that, they are also making the fence height 18 inches shorter. KC's general manager, J.J. Picollo, claimed he wasn't "trying to jump-start our offense," which is silly, of course he is. But the thing is, Kaufmann has always been a great hitters' park. It just hasn't been a great home run park. Especially in the days when it had AstroTurf, but even with grass, KC's was a terrific park to hit doubles and triples in. A big outfield means potentially fewer homers, but it also means more base hits—outfielders have more ground to cover, balls are going to fall short of their positioning or go over their heads more often than they would in smaller outfields. Also, a curved symmetrical outfield wall meant any roller that hit the wall had the opportunity to hug the wall as it rolled on rather than carom back to an outfielder. I haven't seen whether or not they're trying to keep the curvature of the wall, but no matter what it won't be as prevalent since the degree of curve will be lessened. This is a move intended to make home runs easier to hit and to thus encourage batters—Royals and opponents—to keep up the dumbness that has made for less interesting baseball since the post-strike 1990s. That is, the all or nothing, "three true outcome" style offense that has reduced balls in play, skyrocketed strikeouts, and massively devalued defensive skill, particularly for outfielders.

  I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Home runs are boring. Compared to most other ways to score, unless it's a walkoff ending a game, a homer is dull. It's a flash-in-the-pan event, a potential rally-killer, while a string of base hits keeps pressure on the pitcher and the defense. Other than a bases-loaded walk/hit batter, a balk, or, god forbid, a pitch timer violation, the home run is the least interesting way to score. Teams ought to be doing what the Orioles did a few years back and making their outfields bigger. Encourage more contact, encourage smart baserunning, make outfield defense important, and above all, make the game less reliant on brute force. Rob Deer was an interesting player because there just weren't very many Rob Deers. Nowadays every team has at least two of him. The world champion Los Angeles Dodgers had five players top 120 strikeouts in 2025. Five! (Your Seattle Mariners only had one, which is a big reason they were so much better in ’25 than in prior seasons.)

  I realize I'm never likely to see a team like my beloved 1985 Cardinals ever again, but can we stop trying to make baseball dumber? Please?

• The Washington Nationals are the latest team to ditch their cable television contract, leaving the Mid Atlantic Sports Network and turning over their TV rights to Major League Baseball. The cable TV model is quickly dying and I am here for it. What remains to be seen is how MLB is going to be handling the various teams (now including Your Seattle Mariners) they need to televise. Presumably they will find a cable outlet in each of the markets they can pipe feeds to, but really the need is in streaming. Because Commissioner Dumbass shot himself in the foot trying to extort a better playoff TV deal from ESPN, he ended up losing revenue and to try and make up for the loss in the short term sold ESPN the streaming rights for what had been MLB.TV. Until very recently, MLB.TV was only meant for subscribers to watch out-of-market teams and that's what ESPN now has control over; whether MLB will retain these individual teams' in-market streaming rights or lump them in with the ESPN deal is unclear. We'll find out in a couple of months. Regardless, the death of the cable model means an end to the stupidity of making it difficult/impossible for local fans to watch their own team without paying through the nose for a cable/satellite package. That stupidity remains for playoff games, though, so there's still a ways to go. But it's more evidence that Commander Data was right in Star Trek: TNG when he mentioned that broadcast television didn't last in any significant form beyond the year 2040.

Site tweaks and email issues

• I have succeeded (I think) in eliminating the duplicate email problem with the new daily update email subscription thing. However, I have in the process discovered that the emails being sent have a moderately high spam score. This is mostly because the system is intended for a lot more stuff to be in the emails than I want to include, and thus they go out with a lot of blank lines in the formatting. Lots of blank lines are suspicious to spam filtering algorithms. So I would ask any who like receiving the updates-via-email to add *@starshiptim.com to the whitelist in your spam filter of choice to prevent the emails from going into your junk folders unseen. If you don't know how to do that, just ask me, I'll walk you through it.
• I have always disliked WordPress as a platform, and these days, while I don't exactly hate it with the fire of a thousand suns, I heavily discourage anyone from using it unless there are mitigating circumstances of some sort. This site, obviously, has nothing to do with that platform and never will, and my reasons for eschewing it are many. One of them is that the WordPress platform has become ubiquitous, it's everywhere, and thus bad actors—hackers, phishers, malicious billionaires, etc.—target WordPress sites specifically to do their fuckery. They target other sites too, of course, but there's a reason an entire subindustry of WordPress repair and protection services has popped up over the years. Anyway, with that in mind it should not have surprised me to find in the data from my recent experiments in bot-fighting that many of the malicious bots attacking this site are specifically trying to find WordPress login pages and file structures. Shouldn't have, but it did. In a way, it's comforting—it reinforces the belief that bots and their operators don't do subtlety. They're kind of like Rob Deer, really; brute force, swing hard and either get the homer or strike out. So, another thing to cite in my ever-present recommendation that if you use WordPress you should move to something else (I'll help you, my rates are good!), and if you're thinking about starting a WP site to think again.

Tagged Politics, ICE, President VonClownstick, Republicans, Baseball, Site issues, Craig Calcaterra, Posted on January 14, 2026 at 9:29PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

Skeeters, extra innings, the ER, and Mexican food

Shohei reached base safely nine times in last night's game. Incredible.

I've been down here in greater Palm Springs for almost a week now, and it's been basically fine. I mean, the mosquitos are sure happy, they have a whole new buffet with me here. No mitigating actions seem to help dissuade them from my sweet, juicy A-pos. Which is a convoluted way of saying, "my feet itch."

Yesterday was my dad's 83rd birthday, and though we celebrated it the day before by driving over to LA to have an evening with my sister, bro-in-law, and nephew, he spent the day itself in the emergency room. As Marty put it, that wasn't on our collective bingo card for the day.

He's fine. There was an issue with vertigo that was concerning and in the end the docs gave him some dramamine and he's doing better. I used the time Dad & Marty were waiting around at the ER to visit my friend Mark, a newly-transplanted Seattleite to the area, and gape in awe at the house he bought that he decided was a massive fixer-upper and wonder at the expense of all the renovations he's planning. More power to you, Mark! Gotta make it your own. We got caught up a bit over lunch at a nice Mexican restaurant with a big outdoor patio before I made my way back to Dad & Marty's in time for the first pitch of World Series Game 3.

What a wild one that was.

The longest game in World Series history, the eventual 6-5 Dodger victory took nearly seven hours to play. It was the second 18-inning World Series game at Dodger Stadium this century. And boy, did it have drama. Great feats! Brain farts! Good umpiring! Not-so-good umpiring! Outstanding defensive plays! Lousy defensive plays! Future Hall of Famers pitching! Why-is-that-guy-even-on-the-roster types pitching! Celebrities in the stands! Marlins guy looking at his phone! Ridiculous managerial challenges! One sensible managerial challenge! Four intentional walks to one guy! (Well, five, really.) It had a lot going on, and by the end my friend Dave and I were musing about suspended-game potentials and crazy what-ifs on BlueSky in between my posting bits of #SmoltzWisdom, words of insight uttered on the air by Fox Sports commentator John Smoltz during the game.

Those bullpens are totally spent, so both teams better hope for complete-game-level performances out of their starters tonight.

Tagged Baseball, Traveling, Posted on October 28, 2025 at 3:55PM   |   Permalink   |     |