Laugh when you can while depression abounds

Hiya, netizens. It's been a few weeks. I've had a couple of folks check in with me to see if all was well, given my brain chemistry issues, so I figured a new post was in order.

The lack of posts hasn't entirely been black-hole related, but I have been fighting the gravity a bit. Not in a really dark, can't-get-out-of-bed sort of way, more in a mild ennui kind of way. Weary. Lethargic. Spurred on by the continual descent of the country into dictatorship and the corresponding frustration and anger with all the idiots who voted Republican despite having seen the sneak preview version of this play from 2017-2021.

Anyway. I won't turn this into a political rant today, at least not yet, because coherence when thinking about it is elusive. There's too much. Which atrocity to focus on? What can be said that hasn't been said already elsewhere? So I'll save that for later.

Instead, I'll just share something that amused me greatly when watching the baseball game from last Saturday between Your Seattle Mariners and the visiting Texas Rangers. There were two outs in the inning, M's at bat, Julio Rodríguez on 2nd base. Batter Josh Naylor taps a comebacker to the pitcher, who has a brain cramp and throws to third base trying to get the lead runner out even though he had an easy play at first which would have ended the inning. The throw gets past the third baseman because he wasn't expecting to be thrown to, Julio scores the tying run, Naylor safe at first, the inning continues.

This is something I had never seen in a big-league game but see all the frickin' time as a softball umpire. It has become kind of an inside joke just for me, one that I have stated out loud on occasion to the next batter in such a softball game, that one day, sometime before the heat death of the universe, I will be umpiring a game wherein the score is tight in a late inning and the defensive team takes the easy out at first to end an inning rather than attempt to get a lead runner instead. (To be fair, teams do take the easy out now and then, but never in a tense situation.) So when seven-year Major League veteran Merrill Kelly of the Texas Rangers did it I laughed very hard.

The M's still lost, though. Oh well.

Tagged Baseball, Seattle Mariners, The Black Hole, Politics, Umping, Posted on August 5, 2025 at 8:58PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

No Comments yet

Attention Overload!

Wow, is there a lot going on right now. Big things, little things, consequential things, trivial things, nerd things, political things, sporty things, personal things, many combinations thereof.

Now, the personal things tend toward the nerdy and trivial. Don't want to get anyone's hopes up. But between the news, pop culture, and baseball/softball, my brain is jam-packed with musings.

Some, about the latest debasing of Major League Baseball by its own commissioner, were posted yesterday, so no need to rehash that except to just say once again—because there's never a bad time to say it—that Rob Manfred is horrible. But related to the All-Star Game are musings about the gathering I hosted here for it; I invited a bazillion people, but knowing it was for an event that has lost its luster and that started at 5:00pm on a weekday, I figured maybe seven or eight people might show. I overestimated by a few, but we had fun and I ate way too much junk food, including some oddly-made pizza from Spiro Not-Agnew's down the street and so-so store-bought guac. (Always worth it to make your own guac, dummy.) Thanks to Abe, the one person from my umping world to pop by for a while, and Mack and Erik for bringing some of the junk food. (Abe didn't know my dietary preferences, so I skipped his, but still thoughtful.)

That was Tuesday night. Last night was my softball team's final game of the year—we play a really short season, for better or worse—which was typical: We lost by a lot, only got to play a little over half a game because of the enforced mercy rule, and in my one at-bat I swung blind as the sunset was happening right behind the pitcher and tapped out 1-3 but still managed to tweak my ankle running to first. Kind of fitting, really.

Meanwhile, I went to see the new Superman film and enjoyed it. If you want a good rundown on it, I recommend Erik's review, I basically agree with everything he says there. I now want to see it a second time to better gauge my feeling abut it as it was somehow both really good and kind of a drag and I can't quite put my finger on why. It's very comic-booky, for lack of a better description, as opposed to the gritty/angsty Zach Snyder version of Superman or even the operatic Richard Donner Superman; in some ways, that's great, kind of my wheelhouse, there was a lot of funny stuff in it that required that sensibility. In other ways I thought it was maybe too fast-and-loose with conceptual reality with its "pocket universe" and off-hand inclusions of semi-intelligent "troll monkeys" (though that made for one of the biggest laughs) and an unexplained kaiju-like giant monster that was the least effective sequence for me. But on first viewing, I'd say Superman (2025) ranks below Superman (1978) and Superman Returns (2006) but way ahead of Man of Steel (2013).

Also, the long-awaited season three of Strange New Worlds premiered last night with two episodes. Both eps were good, neither was great, and there was plenty of good character stuff and smart dialogue to meet my high Trek standards.

Those all fall in the pop-culture/trivial/personal buckets. As for the big political world-affecting stuff, I find myself navigating a mix of outrage, hopefulness, hostility, schadenfreude, anxiety, callousness, and trepidation. Which is, let's face it, the new normal, but with new dimensions given the latest info:

• The MAGA civil war is fascinating as some of the cultists belatedly realize that their champion actually is a lying garbage person who gaslights them and thinks they're stupid. The fact that they see this only because they bought into a conspiracy theory he and they promulgated for years that he is now denying hasn't sunk in yet, but hey, baby steps.
• Today's publication of an article in the Wall Street Journal, of all places, that reinforces what most of us already knew—that Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein were two peas in a pod in their depravity and criminality—is outstanding, as it is causing the wannabe dictator and his minions to panic and dig themselves deeper into the hole they're in with the cultists. I've oft wondered what it would take to get the cult to turn on this subhuman stain when none of the prior atrocities seemed to make a dent, and it figures that the answer is apparently reneging on an implied promise to inflict cruelty on people they don't like.

• With all that creating chaos for the White House, official spokesmodel Karoline Leavitt told the press corps that our wannabe-dictator has health issues—which, again, duh—that she plays down as minor but actually might well prevent him from finishing his term of office.

  The demented occupant of the Oval Office has Chronic Venous Insufficiency, which in and of itself is not a big deal. Lots of senior citizens deal with it. But the patient in question is not "lots of senior citizens," he's an obese rage factory who doesn't believe in exercise and maintains a fast-food diet. And this has progressed enough to include Stage 5 or 6 elements, e.g. venous ulcers (evident from photos of POTUS47’s hand and the lie from his press secretary that he was bruised from aspirin and an overabundance of handshakes). Whether the hand wound is from the CVI directly, a complication of it, or from something else, it indicates something more serious than swollen ankles. Add to this the daily evidence of cognitive decline and one has to wonder if the CVI is severe enough to have hindered blood not just to the extremities but to the brain.

  What makes this especially hinky is that the White House—in the first term and in this one—never reveals anything about Dear Leader's health. They give bogus doctor notes from their very own Dr. Nick that say he's the healthiest person that ever lived. We got no information when he had COVID. We got no information after he was mildly wounded when someone took a shot at him last summer. They never reveal anything about his health, yet today Leavitt said he has CVI, probably the most innocuous explanation for the photo of his swollen ankles.

  It's probably true as far as the CVI goes, but what's not being said? Is he looking at heart failure? What about vascular dementia? Has he had a stroke? It sure fits the observable circumstantial evidence that long-standing CVI (pun not intended) correlated with lack of circulation to the brain begetting vascular dementia accounts for a lot of his nonsensical rants and wandering tangents and inappropriate dozing off. (Then again, this is the laziest, stupidest, most emotionally stunted public figure in the world, so all that crap might have nothing to do with his blood flow.)

  Might this health admission be the first step in a soft coup by the oligarchs that want JD Vance to be emperor? Might it be a first move in a fallback contingency should the Epstein mess actually catch up with him—he could resign for health reasons, get pardoned by Vance, and completely avoid any accountability for anything?

  And why am I conflicted about the prospect of PseudoPresident Convicted Felon dying of heart failure soon? Frankly, that's a better scenario than a pardon.

Oh, and CBS canceled Colbert because they need to not piss off the regime in order to get FCC approval on their corporate merger with SkyDance. That's just lovely. (Skip the below video to about the two minute mark for more context.)

 

Tagged Politics, Movies, Star Trek, President VonClownstick, Baseball, Softball, Posted on July 17, 2025 at 9:02PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

1 Comment

All-Star circus

All-Star Game so-called MVP

The baseball All-Star Game has been a shadow of its former self for a long time now. For several years running the games themselves have been dull, assisted in their dullness by a circus atmosphere generated by the tandem producers of Bud Selig/Rob Manfred (commissioners) and Fox Sports (broadcasters).

There are several reasons why they've been dull, most of them not related to the generally low scores; low scores can be great under other circumstances (see below, 1987). They've been dull because the game itself has become kind of a sideshow. No one is trying to win beyond a perfunctory measure, strategy is limited to things like "when should so-and-so be put in to replace starter X" and "how can we generate a fake applause moment for a guy by taking him out of the game mid-inning." The powers-that-be (i.e. Selig/Manfred and Fox) have made it a regular thing to interrupt the game more than once for some sort of ceremony that would be better done pregame. Managers care more about using all/nearly all of their rosters than scoring runs. Broadcasters care more about having inane banter with players actively in the game than actually, you know, covering the game.

(The principal mid-game interruption this time was for a tribute to the late Hank Aaron, which was a fine subject, but Manfred/Fox blew it anyway. As Craig Calcaterra put it:

In an otherwise nifty tribute to Henry Aaron's 715th home run, they played the audio of Vin Scully calling the shot from back in 1974, but cut it off the last bit. Here was Scully's whole call back in the day:

"What a marvelous moment for baseball. What a marvelous moment for Atlanta and the state of Georgia. What a marvelous moment for the country and the world. A Black man is getting a standing ovation in the Deep South for breaking a record of an all-time baseball idol.”

Except, during the Aaron tribute last night, MLB decided to cut it off after “. . . for the country and the world." Which is awful, because when you omit "A Black man is getting a standing ovation in the Deep South for breaking a record of an all-time baseball idol" from Scully's call you completely alter what he was describing as "marvelous." Scully was NOT just broadly marveling. He was marveling at a very specific, very important thing.

But MLB didn't care about that. They no doubt cut off that sentence specifically because they didn't want to anger the white supremacists who run our country and of whom Rob Manfred is an ardent supporter by making note of an important moment in the racial history of the United States. It's the same reason MLB nuked its diversity and inclusion initiatives earlier this year and why so many other businesses and institutions have done the same.

It was an utter disgrace and everyone involved in that decision, be they with Major League Baseball or the Fox network, should be absolutely ashamed of themselves.

Craig noticed this in real time while I did not, as I was too busy talking with friends to pay strict attention to a clip I'd seen many times before.)

I'm not saying the players and even the TV crew shouldn't have fun with the ASG. It's an exhibition game, after all. But instead of the game itself being the showcase focus of a break in the regular season, Home Run Derby has become the thing that gets most of the attention, so much so that, for the first time since Manfred instituted yet another stupid change to the game, the ASG itself was decided by a home-run-hitting contest.

People seemed to like it. Social media posts on it were largely favorable.

I hated it.

Up until the farce of home-run-derby, last night's All-Star Game was easily the most interesting one to take place in at least 15 years. In fact, I'd take it back to 2008, another time when the game was tied after nine innings. But that just meant you kept playing, so the game went on, with drama in ensuing innings and an eventual win for the American League in the 15th. And managers were prepared for extras thanks to the debacle of 2002, when the game was tied after nine, continued for two relatively quick innings, and then abruptly halted because both teams were on their last pitcher (both starters in their regular jobs) and didn't want to make them throw a third inning. That was the game that gave us the iconic image of Commissioner Bud Selig just throwing his hands up in the air in a "well, I guess there's nothing to be done about it" show of utter impotence.

Subsequent to 2002, more pitchers were required (minimum 12 now) and managers re-learned to keep two or so pitchers capable of more than one inning in reserve in case of extras. No need for that now.

Because now any tied ASG is 2002 with a mini-derby to cap thigs off, completely erasing anything from the game itself from memory.

When thinking back on the 2025 ASG will anyone remember Ketel Marte's first-inning double off of Tarik Skubal to plate two? Or Pete Alonso's three-run blast that was a real home run off a real pitch from a real All-Star pitcher? Or Steven Kwan running out an infield chopper to plate the tying run with two out in the ninth? Eh, not many.

What people will recall is Kyle Schwarber hitting three balls over the fence in the "tiebreaker" that were lobbed to him from 35 feet away by a third-base coach.

Tied All-Star Games were the best in my mind because in extra innings they became more real. Rosters had been pared down to normal size, there weren't wholesale substitutions going on any more, strategy came back. My favorite ASG is probably 1987’s, played in Oakland for the first and only time. That game was a pitchers' duel, scoreless through 12 innings with pitchers going multiple frames; of 15 pitchers used, only five of them pitched one inning or less and Lee Smith—closer for the Cubs, used to stints of one-frame-and-done—pitched three innings before giving way to Sid Fernandez, who usually started games, for the 13th. The National League won after one of my favorites, Tim Raines, in his third at-bat since coming up for the first time in the 9th, tripled in two for his third hit of the game with two out in the top of the 13th after Willie McGee lined out in what appeared to be a rally-killing running catch by Dave Winfield. Fernandez would walk his first batter (current Mariner batting coach Kevin Seitzer) and then shut down the next three to lock up a 2-0 NL victory. 

1994 was also good, a ten-inning affair that saw the NL come from behind to tie it at 7-7 in the ninth, survive a 2-on, 1-out threat in the 10th, and win it in the next half when Moises Alou doubled on Pittsburgh's then-Astroturf to drive in Tony Gwynn from first base.

Before 2002, there was some emphasis on actually winning the game; it was minor, but there. Prior to that, through the early 1990s, it was a really big deal who won, at least for many. Back then, of course, the leagues were separate entities. They had their own presidents, their own rules, and were in a loose affiliation with each other as "the major leagues." There was no interleague play except for the World Series and ASG, which contributed to the ASG's specialness.

Now it's just a party that no one remembers any details of the next day, still in a home-run-derby hangover.

Alas.

This concludes today's Grumpy Old Man post.

 

Tagged Baseball, Rob Manfred, Posted on July 16, 2025 at 6:11PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

2 Comments

Civil disobedience (baseball edition)

I have new respect for Jorge Polanco.

The infielder/DH of this year's Seattle Mariners has had a Jeckyll-and-Hyde kind of season, with a scalding-hot .395/.434/.816 line in the first five weeks or so, then .173/.236/.240 over the next two months, then .333/.375/.733 in the last week. He's been a questionable presence in the lineup, to say the least.

But in today's game against the Pittsburgh Pirates, Jorge showed me something.

Not with the bat, though he did notch his 1,000th career hit today (congrats). But with his sleeve.

One of Commissioner of Baseball Rob Manfred's goals in life, apparently, is to put advertising on as much space as he can within the game of baseball. It's truly disgusting how much ad space has proliferated since he assumed the role of Commissioner from the previous guy to hold the title of Worst Commissioner Ever. Ads on the outfield walls are as old as outfield walls, ads on stadium deck facings are somehow not terribly obtrusive. But since Manfred they're everywhere, including on the field itself and the ballplayers' uniforms.

The Mariners were slow to adopt the sleeve ads—this is the first year we've been subject to them—but there they are, bright orange to make them difficult to ignore, on the sleeve facing the center-field camera when one is up to bat (right sleeve for left-hand batters, left sleeve for righty batters).

Today Jorge rolled up his sleeve, obscuring the ad from view.

And why not? I don't know for sure that Polanco was defying the practice for philosophical or political reasons, or indeed making a statement of any kind, but I assume he was. He likely doesn't have anything against the sponsor company, which I will not name because, among other reasons, they aren't paying me anything.

Maybe Polanco figured they weren't paying him anything either, so why show the logo? Except they are paying him something indirectly, sort of, as his employer pays him out of revenue they collect from whatever sources, including sleeve ads. Which is perhaps why he rolled the sleeve down later in the game. Someone probably told him he was going to get in trouble with the team or the Commissioner or something.

What the Mariners get from the sponsor company for this defacement isn't widely known, but it's likely similar to the fee [other sponsor] paid for the naming rights to the ballpark, which is less than the typical salary of a middle reliever. (Most are undisclosed, but the top payment for a team is evidently the $25 million paid annually to the Yankees by their sleeve sponsor. The Cincinnati Reds and Miami Marlins each get $5 million a year for theirs. The average is reportedly around $8 million.) It's peanuts in the grand scheme of things for a Major League club's revenue, making the whole endeavor seem even pettier. Not even counting ad sponsorships, merchandise sales, or any other revenue, the Mariners—a middle-tier club in this regard—reportedly took in $70 million last year in ticket sales + TV and broadcast fees – player payroll. (What do you want to bet Manfred and the team owners start crying poor despite this when it's time to negotiate with the players' union again next year.)

I don't know what Polanco's thinking was either way, on rolling up the sleeve or rolling it down again later, but I was both amused and supportive when I saw the blocking of the ad.

Good on you, Jorge Polanco. Stick it to the Man(fred).

Tagged Baseball, Rob Manfred, Seattle Mariners, Posted on July 6, 2025 at 9:02PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

No Comments yet

Order in the time of chaos

The new basis for law and order

As is my wont, I spent some time today reading the latest missive from fellow baseball and politics nerd Craig Calcaterra. On many things, as you know if you've been here before, Craig and I, we reach. (Not on everything. I could not care less about European football and I have never been into indie bands like so many of my generational peers are/have been.)

Anyway, Craig devoted some of his newsletter today to his emotional state of mind regarding, well, the world, and in the wake of my Saturday rant I've been feeling much the same way. As Craig put it, "I do not believe it is hyperbole to say that America's 249-year old legal, political, and philosophical order has been effectively destroyed in a little over five months and whatever is left of it is severely wounded." I do quibble about the "five months" part, as the five months in question are in actuality a resumption of the destruction that started at a much slower pace in 2017 and was suspended in 2021, but the point is spot-on.

I don't think Craig is unique in this, I think a great many of us are freaking out to one degree or another as the POTUS47 regime and its compliant agents on the Supreme Court take a blowtorch to the Constitution without a peep of resistance from the majority party in Congress. I mean, there were big marches and stuff just a couple weeks ago. But the fact that despite the protests in the streets, despite the outrage and the lawsuits, despite the blatant betrayal of oaths, nothing seems to matter—at least, on a short- or medium-term scale.

In my latest spiral, my mind went where it most likes to go, to the universe of Star Trek; in this case, though, it wasn't uplifting at all. The Trek canon has been prescient in a lot of ways despite missing the mark on the eugenics wars of the 1990s (which has been suitably retconned to a few decades later). But ever since 1967 the shows were telling their audience that to get where we needed to go, we were going to hit the skids in a big way in the 21st century. Now that we're actually in the 21st century, the accuracy of some of the future history details is less impressive and more frightful. 

Craig is less of a nerd than I am in that regard, but he got to a similar place without the Trek references, living with anger and depression over the utter chaos being wrought. Order and the predictability of cause-and-effect, of action-and-consequence, are out the window because, again quoting Craig (who is a better writer than I), "we're living in an era of legal Calvinball." It used to mean something profound to be American, but now "even the most basic and explicit Constitutional rights mean nothing to this Court or this regime and that there is little if anything that can be done about it, at least any time soon."

Baseball is where Craig's and my nerddom intersect most completely, so when he discussed how attending a couple of games over the weekend provided a kind of therapy I completely understood. "Those games helped me feel like I was living in an orderly world," he wrote, continuing:

[I]t was worthy effort, because baseball is rooted in order. There are rules. They are enforced. There is a mathematical logic to how the proceedings in a baseball game unfold and following those proceedings required that I assume a logical and ordered mindset. There's nothing I know better or that I have known longer than how baseball works and retreating into a headspace where nothing was happening other than the baseball game in front of me had the same effect as reciting a mantra. It quieted my mind. It banished the chaos, at least for a while. It made me feel connected to something in ways I've not felt connected to anything for what feels like ages.

...  I felt more calm and centered than I've felt in several months. I know that feeling won't last because we live in an age of fresh daily horrors. I know that my disorientation at the lack of order and predictability of these times and my attendant depression will return the moment I begin reading the news once again. But any reprieve is a welcome one and the two ballgames I took in while in Detroit were just what the doctor ordered. They served as a reminder that, if I try hard enough, I can probably find my way through this shit.

 We can't take our eye off the ball, if you'll excuse the metaphor, but these reprieves are essential. We need to keep sane so we can eventually recover from the wreckage of the regime. If for you it's not baseball but something else, have at it. But take the break, clear your mind of existential dread, and come back fighting.

Because in the words of Captain Pike, "the future is what we make it."

Tagged Politics, Baseball, Craig Calcaterra, Posted on June 30, 2025 at 4:16PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

2 Comments

Patriot Day: Protests and baseball

I frequent this place a lot as an umpire. Today the fields were swarmed by protesters, eventually reaching 70,000 strong

A lot happened today. Most of which I didn't actively participate in, but it still deserves some mention here, I think.

I fully intended to attend one of the smaller No Kings protests this afternoon; one took place not far from my home, I was planning to at least go and take photos and add my voice for a little while. I'd intended to, but my nocturnal ways caught up with me and I failed. I was umpiring last night until almost 11:30, got home well after midnight, then watched the full Mariner game from earlier in the evening, then had trouble falling asleep... anyway, when my alarm went off at 10:30am I had only been asleep for maybe three hours. Still, I got up and fed the cats, but then plopped back down to check in with things on my phone and before I knew it I had fallen asleep again. (In a rather awkward position, to, leaving me with a nasty kink in my neck that is still annoying me.) I re-awoke around 2:30. A quick shower and I moseyed out to the protest site, but it had mostly dispersed by then. Alas.

But even without me, Seattle showed up in style, with over 70,000 people congregating at Cal Anderson park (often the site of my umpiring adventures) before marching to Seattle Center. Along with several smaller events around town, the greater metro area represented well in the nationwide protests today and I am most gratified to see the great masses of Americans giving POTUS47 a metaphorical (and occasionally literal) middle-finger salute on his birthday. It's especially gratifying to see the split-screen, as it were, of protest turnout on one side and the "crowd" at Donny's multimillion-dollar ego parade in DC on the other. I hope he's seething about it.

Seems the vast majority of the events were civil and trouble-free, but there were bound to be a few exceptions, like the Virginia MAGAt who drove his SUV into protesters and someone in Salt Lake City shooting a protester. The forces deployed to LA unsurprisingly escalated things there, but not until after the No Kings event had ended; I wasn't there, I have no way to really know if the violence perpetrated by law enforcement/Federal forces was appropriate or not, but my instinct is to believe it was at best an overreaction. I know the elderly veterans being arrested in DC for nothing more than protesting Donny's ego parade will have quite the case when they sue, though.

Anyway, I did not attend but fully support the No Kings events. After my abortive look at the remains of the small suburban one, I came back and fixed a sandwich and started to clean up a bit before heading down to the ballpark. Not knowing what traffic would be like after today's disruptions, I left pretty early but getting downtown turned out to be a breeze and I was over an hour early to the game. Still didn't get a giveaway Steelheads cap, though, that was a small bummer. (I'm over it.)

Turned out to be a fun evening. One of my umpees (hi, Neal) was there and had free seats near him down low, so my Spuds teammate Mona and I ended up taking in the whole game from pretty close in, which was pretty cool. I am still very much used to my perspective from 327, so tracking the ball was a little tough from the more expensive seats. It's a nice change of pace, though, and the opportunity was much appreciated.

It was a great game, too, with the hometown M's staging a 9th-inning comeback to win in walkoff fashion. One dude sitting in the row behind me struck up some conversation here and there during the game, first about my scorekeeping then about ballparks and then about game strategy. Always fun. Nice to talk with Neal a bit off the softball diamond, too, though the PA onslaught at the game makes for a less than stellar discussion venue.

All in all a good Saturday. (Edit: Events in Minnesota notwithstanding—I just read about that a few minutes ago. Jesus.)

Below are a few of my favorite photos/signs from the nationwide protests today. Please to enjoy.

 

From Los Angeles. The Constitution is a perfect prop for today, but I also really enjoy the sign held up by the guy in the lower left corner.

Handmaid's Tale imagery has been used a lot, but hey, cliches are cliches for a reason. The sign is great, too.

From Florida. Glad to see the rest of the GOP get a mention, but mostly I like rooting for gators here.

A little hard to read, but it says "You don't get to talk about what's illegal when you voted for a felon."

Truly inspired to use "Schoolhouse Rock" here.

No notes. 100%.

And, just for fun, the celebration after the win at the ballpark. J.P. Crawford (2nd form left) had a perfect night, going 3-for-3 with two walks
(though he did get picked off 2nd base).

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick, Baseball, Society, Posted on June 15, 2025 at 12:49AM   |   Permalink   |     |  

No Comments yet

Extortion of the press

I've always been a fan of Bob Costas, the legendary sportscaster that wrote a book on baseball back in the early 2000s that made me think he is the one guy in the world who could solve all of MLB's problems if he became baseball commissioner. He might be a little too Yankee-centric, but he's a pro's pro and he always knows what he's talking about when he's on screen.

Costas was awarded the Mirror Award for “distinct, consistent and unique contributions to the public’s understanding of the media” last Monday and used the platform of his acceptance speech to scold the news media in general and several media outlets in particular for failing to commit journalism.

Most of his address surrounded the sports news business, which included this beauty: "Network TV sports is the only business I can think of where the buyer must continually flatter the seller. 'Here's your billion dollars or more, and if we pulled the Brinks armored truck up to Park Avenue and haven't delivered it in the proper denominations, we apologize profusely and we'll be right back.'" Broadening his focus to news generally, he deplored the reluctance of (primarily) TV news from "identifying and acknowledging the elephants in the room."

"Beyond sports," he went on, "the free press is under attack." Excoriating ABC and CBS for "paying ransom" in the form of settlements to frivolous lawsuits brought against them by President Convicted Felon, Costas articulated what to most of us is the blindingly obvious but to news organizations apparently a novel concept: Journalism is about reporting fact, not propagating two sides of an argument. Especially when one side is completely nonsensical BS.

“What’s happening now are not matters of small degree,” Costas said, citing "ongoing assaults on the basic idea of a free press."

Costas approached the close of his speech with this:

Donald Trump’s view of the world ... is through a prism of what benefits him, there are no higher ideals. There are no principles at work other than what benefits him.

...Because he is the president, what he does and what is done in his name has been normalized so that "responsible journalists" have to pretend that there’s always two sides to this. There really isn’t two sides to much of what Donald Trump represents.... If someone is contending that the Earth is flat, in order to appear objective, you are not required to say, “Well, maybe it might be oblong.” No, it’s not. Certain things are just true.

And regrettably, something that’s true in America right now is that the President of the United States has absolutely no regard, and in fact has contempt, for basic American principles and basic common decency.

Seems like a good place to close this post as well.

Tagged Baseball, Politics, President VonClownstick, Bob Costas, Posted on June 12, 2025 at 5:28PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

No Comments yet

History break

Society continues to crumble around us, as Secretary of Terrorism Kristi Noem considers Hunger Games-style reality TV competitions for immigrants and the Speaker of the House says crime is OK so long as it's done openly. What a time to be alive, eh?

With all this happening one has to find other things to occupy one's mind or else go utterly mad, so I've been reading a book about baseball in the 1970s. My personal baseball fandom didn't really begin until maybe 1978—that's the first World Series I think I watched any of (Yankees-Dodgers, FWIW)—so most of what I've been reading so far is new-to-me anecdotes and bits of history along with more details to things I sort of knew about already in the broad strokes.

Like Astroturf. Though the synthetic green grass substitute was basically created for the Astrodome after the newly-rechristened Houston Astros moved into the world's first indoor baseball facility and discovered that a) a ceiling made of clear lucite panels makes for a great deal of glare and heat during the day; and b) remedying that by painting the lucite panels gray meant grass won't grow on the field. Hence, Astroturf. They incidentally also discovered that plastic grass was way cheaper to maintain than real grass, so when the plethora of new, multipurpose municipal stadiums started opening up they all featured Astroturf. Even the nice one—Royals Stadium in Kansas City, still in use today despite misguided efforts by some to fund a replacement—used the fake stuff, at least until 1995 (when the trend was moving to the retro-style baseball-only ballparks in fashion today). Candlestick Park in San Francisco wasn't one of these new behemoths, having opened in 1960, but it too converted to Astroturf for ten years. Horrible surface to play on. Well, "surface"; the surface was not terrible—though watch out for rug burns if you dove for a fly ball on it—it was the concrete underneath that made it truly unpleasant. Hard, unforgiving on knees and ankles, and then the extra fun of playing on it on a summer afternoon when it just reflected all the heat back up and made for field temps of 140 degrees (often in Midwest humidity). Thankfully bean-counters were ultimately defeated by players and aesthetics. Nowadays there are five teams that use artificial grass (oddly, the Astros are not among them) in their parks—all indoor or convertible facilities—but it's not the Astroturf of old, it's a rubbery grass-like surface atop a sandy subsurface that promotes drainage and doesn't feel like running on stone, and it's only used because growing grass is a challenge/impossibility in those stadia.

Anyway, the Astroturf train of thought brought me to the Philadelphia Phillies, who moved into their concrete and Astroturf home of Veterans stadium in 1971. That I knew. What I hadn't known was that they were desperate to do so because of their prior digs in Connie Mack Stadium, which the Phils had shared with and rented from the Philadelphia Athletics until the A's moved to Kansas City and which was apparently a nightmare of sunk costs. But it was the tale of the last game at Connie Mack that I wanted to share here today. Construction of Vet Stadium had been delayed a year, so the Phils had to tough out a final season at Connie Mack in 1970, the final game of which was marketed to fans with lots of promotions, giveaways, parts of the ballpark would be raffled off, and a helicopter was to fly down, pick up home plate, and fly it to The Vet at the end of the postgame ceremonies.

However, this was in Philadelphia.

It may be known as "the city of brotherly love," but Philadelphia sports fans are ruthless. (Go to any Phillies game and you'll see.) Throughout the game, fans could be heard hammering things, prying stuff out of foundations, basically stealing anything they could get their hands on as souvenirs of Connie Mack Stadium. When the game ended fans overwhelmed the field to take sod, dirt, the pitching rubber, advertising signs, pieces of the outfield wall, bullpen rosin, anything not bolted down and quite a few things that were bolted down. (After Oscar Gamble singled in Tim McCarver to win the game in the bottom of the tenth, he saw the crowd coming and yelled to his teammates, "Run, man, run like hell. We’ll be happy later.") Only home plate was spared since it was surrounded by officials who still needed to take it to Veterans Stadium. No postgame ceremonies happened, the stuff that was to be raffled off had all been stolen, the giveaway seat-slat replicas had been used as prybars and bludgeons, the emergency room at Temple University hospital was filled with Connie Mack Stadium chaos injuries, and the ballpark was in shambles.

It's a fun story, detailed here as "a day that would live in infamy."

A section of Connie Mack Stadium post-carnage

Tagged Baseball, History, Posted on May 19, 2025 at 7:24PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

No Comments yet

Worst. Commissioner. Ever.

The baseball commissioner is a corporate right-wing toady who doesn't give a damn about baseball

As if we needed more reasons to despise Commissioner of Baseball Robert D. Manfred Jr.—and former Commissioner Bud Selig, for that matter—he provided us with one by reinstating Pete Rose and all other permanently-banned-from-the-game individuals under the fig leaf excuse of, "well, they're dead, so let's say permanent bans end at death."

This action pulls the neat trick of both being wholly about Pete Rose and not really being about Pete Rose at all. It's about Rose because a comment about Rose was the impetus for this, it's not about Rose because of who the comment came from. It came from the cruel, corrupt, and incompetent fascist now occupying the office of President of the United States.

POTUS47 wants Pete Rose in the Hall of Fame for some reason. Why? Far as I know, POTUS47 is not particularly fond of baseball or versed in its history. But he does know the name Pete Rose, knows that Pete Rose was a supporter of his in 2016 and 2020, and he very likely knows that Pete Rose was the kind of man he likes best: selfish, criminal, and in love with his own "greatness."

I don't know if Rose and POTUS47 ever met personally or not, but since they're totally birds of a feather—well, except for one of them being a professional athlete with a standout career and the other being a failure in every business venture he ever undertook—it totally tracks that President Convicted Felon would stick his nose into this comparatively trivial matter.

There are a lot of horrible things among the autocratic agenda of the present administration, many of them shared by the Republican party as a whole, many of which have been on display over the past couple of weeks, many of which deserve far more attention than they're getting. But one of the underlying foundational elements of the POTUS47 mindset is not just racism and misogyny, but their corollary: glorification of despicable behavior by white dudes.

POTUS47 is himself a despicable white dude guilty of some of the worst behavior humanity has to offer, so he needs society to approve of other despicable white dudes guilty of terrible behavior so he doesn't stand out as the festering boil on America's face that he is. So all the January 6 insurrectionists get pardons (and perhaps get called upon to be thugs for him again), Jeffrey Epstein was "a terrific guy," Pete Hegseth gets to be Secretary of Defense, neo-Nazis are "very fine people," RFK Jr. and Elon Musk are "genius" level specimens, and Pete Rose should be idolized on and off the field.

Pete Rose was banned form baseball in 1989 by then-commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti (otherwise known as the last commissioner worth the title, apologies to Fay Vincent who let himself get steamrolled by Selig and company). Not for general assholishness (or for being a statutory rapist or for tax crimes, both of which were still not widely known about), but for specific affronts to the integrity of the game by way of gambling. Rose denied at the time but later admitted that he not only bet on big-league baseball games regularly, but that he also bet on his own team, the Cincinnati Reds, for whom he was player-manager. This violated baseball's Rule 21(d), misconduct through gambling, which mandates a year's suspension for betting on games the bettor has no part in and a permanent ban for betting on games he participates in.

There have been arguments ever since over whether or not Rose's punishment was appropriate; of late, the arguments favoring his reinstatement center around how gambling has become normalized to the point of offensiveness, with sponsorships galore from gambling enterprises throughout the game. There have also been debates about others that are now, thanks to Rob Manfred's capitulation to one of the most heinous people on Earth, also re-eligible for the Hall, particularly Shoeless Joe Jackson, who was swept up in the Black Sox scandal of 1919 that ended up creating the position of commissioner in the first place (those unfamiliar should immediately go see the fine John Sayles film Eight Men Out). At first I sided with the pro-reinstate Jackson crowd, but upon reflection I will instead side with Bart Giamatti.

Giamatti was asked about reinstating Jackson shortly before he died later in ’89, and his reply was that the 1919 Series "and its aftermath cannot be recreated . . . I, for one, do not wish to play God with history. The Jackson case is now best given to historical analysis and debate as opposed to a present-day review with an eye to reinstatement." In other words, applying present-day judgments to events that occurred within their own historical contexts will inevitably miss key nuances and/or taint or sanitize history in ways that can't be predicted.

I would apply the same to Pete Rose now, particularly since we now know about some of his other gross behavior. I expect Giamatti would too, despite the idiotic remark by the guy who previously held the title of Worst Commissioner Ever, Bud Selig, who said, "I believe Bart would understand and respect the decision [to reinstate Rose] as well." Fuck you, Bud, Giamatti said he would only consider reinstating Rose if Rose worked toward living "a redirected, reconfigured, rehabilitated life," which he never did; Rose was unrepentant until the day he died last September. As Stephanie Apstein wrote in Sports Illustrated, "It’s hard to imagine a less savory character to whom to extend this grace. Rose agreed to the ban in the first place, then spent the rest of his life insisting he'd been wronged. He lied about betting on baseball until it became profitable to tell the truth."

Manfred, of course, isn't fit to lick Giamatti's loafers. The Rob Manfred era has been a nightmare of rule fuckery and greed and labor strife and greed and scandals and greed and, yes, more greed. Integrity of the game doesn't even make the top 20 in Manfred's list of priorities, all he wants to do is make more and more surfaces available for ad space (we now have ads on uniforms, ads on pitcher's mounds, ads on the grass in foul ground...), bully TV providers, and, yes, mingle with gamblers. When asked about Rose and gambling and the changes in baseball's attitude, Manfred tried to defend his office's relationship with gambling by saying "we sell data and/or sponsorships, which is essentially all we do, to sports betting enterprises." I leave it to the reader to decide if he meant, "we don't do any betting, we just encourage others to bet," or if he meant, "my job is first and foremost to sell data and ads to gambling outfits." No reason it can't be both, I guess.

But his job also, apparently, includes kowtowing to wannabe autocrats. I've seen one take that actually reflects well on Manfred, relatively speaking—that he reinstated Pete Rose as a sop to POTUS47 in hopes that it would get MLB some goodwill when it comes to immigration/deportations/renditioning of foreigners, that Major and minor-league ballplayers would be spared from ICE and HSI gestapo goons kidnapping them off the street or arresting them at airports. Maybe. I kind of doubt it, though. Even if that was the calculus it just means Manfred is as stupid as we all think he is, since you cannot appease the Bully-in-Chief, if you give him an inch he will take a parsec. Just ask Columbia U or the law firm of Paul, Weiss.

Pete Rose may or may not be bad for the Hall, depending on your metrics, but Rob Manfred is surely bad for baseball. Just as POTUS47 is bad for America and the world. All three deserve plaques in the Hall of Human Stains and Horrors.

 

Tagged Baseball, Politics, President VonClownstick, Rob Manfred, Posted on May 15, 2025 at 9:31PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

No Comments yet

Signal to noise ratio

This post's headline could easily apply to other things going on in the world, some of which I've been meaning to write about but haven't yet, but right now I'm just on about a smaller-scale annoyance than the unfolding destruction of the United States.

This is about the slow destruction of our eardrums.

I've been to a couple of Mariner games this past week, and for whatever reason, I was even more irritated by the inexcusably high volume used by the stadium sound system.

I wish this was something unique to the Mariners and the ballpark by Elliott Bay, but it isn't; pretty much any large-scale PA system is like this, and I don't remember it being this way back in the Kingdome days. Maybe I'm wrong and it was just as bad, but I don't think so; almost nothing about the Kingdome was superior to the current facility, but the one thing I can think of was is the ability to hold a conversation with your seatmates. You just can't do it in the current place without shouting unless you're seated in the first few rows near the field. Even out in the bleachers the speakers drown out normal conversation.

Between innings is the natural point in the game to focus on your conversations, but that's also the point when the PA blasts music, goofy scoreboard antics, and so on. Which would be fine—if it was at a volume that didn't feel like an assault. It's so loud that it even drowns out the PA announcer him/herself—without fail, any announcement made at the beginning of a half-inning cannot be understood because it is made while music is still blasting. During the action, there will sometimes be sound effects, implorations from Pavlov's Scoreboard to "get loud," or other gimcrackery that is at the same level of attack that between-inning music is.

Makes me crazy.

It's always been like this for things like rock concerts, at least if we confine "always" to the last four or five decades (no way for me to know about earlier, but I suspect you could go back further), and that may be the reason everything is too fucking loud now.

The generation of kids in the ’70s and ’80s that not only went to lots of concerts and music clubs wherein the standard operating procedure was to deafen the audience, that pioneered headphones and used them to drown out arguments their parents were having or ambient noise on the bus, that made big hits out of album tracks with titles like "Come on Feel the Noize" and "Bring the Noise" and "Rock and Roll Ain't Noise Pollution" that are designed to be overwhelmingly loud are today running the facilities that use these sound systems. And those habits as kids means they have hearing loss as adults.

That's my working theory, anyway, that we have to endure these ridiculously loud sound systems in arenas, stadiums, anywhere really, because they're run by people who don't understand how terrible it is because they themselves have already significantly damaged their hearing. Not being able to converse with the person sitting next to them because the sound system is drowning them out is just life to them.

So now we're all subjected to the assaults, we're all at risk for hearing damage, because of what came before in our society. Which, not for the first time, makes me wonder:

Who originally thought, in their infinite wisdom, that when setting up a venue for an event to be mainly enjoyed as an auditory experience, such as a concert in a club or arena, that best practice would be to make it so loud that the audience would be expected to bring and use earplugs? That's the way it is, and why I have never enjoyed such shows, regardless of the band. My first such concert was the band Yes, at the Tucson Community Center Arena (admittedly not a good accoustical venue), which I came away from absolutely befuddled because the whole setup made it impossible to enjoy the band's performance. I saw the Jayhawks in a club once; couldn't wait to get out of the place. Even when I went to see/hear one of my favorite bands, Fountains of Wayne (RIP Adam Schlessinger), I absolutely hated it, both with and without earplugs, because though the assault might be lessened with the earplugs, so is the ability to discern the music. Makes. Zero. Sense.

I've had tinnitus for as long as I can remember, I don't know if there was some event that caused it or not. But I do know it feels worse when I come out of a baseball game, which is a damn shame because I love going to baseball games. And apparently society is going to continue like this in perpetuity since the half-deaf folks are running the systems which will in turn encourage more people to go half-deaf and so on and so on.

Yay.

Rant over. Go M's.

Tagged Baseball, Seattle Mariners, Society, Health, Posted on May 1, 2025 at 8:45PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

No Comments yet

野球を見ます

As mentioned the other day, I've been under the weather for a while. Today was the first day in over a week that I've felt relatively normal, that after losing most of yesterday to sleep. I mean, I know I'm wont to stay up late and sleep late, but going to bed at 1:00am and sleeping until 5:00pm is a bit much even for me. I guess I needed it, though "sleep-deprived" is not something I'd ever claim to be these days. It's likely that I set my fight against this whatever virus back a ways by trying to work three games Monday night.

Anyway, the upshot of that for these purposes is that I've spent even more time than usual watching TV. Handmaid's Tale is back, Black Mirror did a follow-up to their great USS Callister episode, and I'm going to do a whole post on Daredevil: Born Again at some point. But mostly it's been more Japanese shows and, of course, baseball. (Hence the title above.)

Before getting to my early-season take on Your Seattle Mariners, a few random observations from around MLB:

• Jon Miller is the best. When you're feeling listless and doped up on NyQuil and just want to escape into a ballfield, I recommend tuning into a San Francisco Giants game. Giants play-by-play man Miller makes even the dullest game interesting and enjoyable. I had the Giants-Yankees game on the other day when it was pouring rain at Yankee Stadium and the Giants were winning handily, but Miller gave us drama by creating tension around the rain and whether the game would get enough innings to be official before the umpires stopped play. Doesn't really matter what the circumstance, Jon Miller is the best in the business in the post-Vin Scully broadcaster world.
• When watching games I like to sample the various teams' broadcasters, but now that many of the teams that used to be on the now-defunct Diamond Sports Group cable stations are on the now-rebranded FanDuel networks, it isn't worth it. I'd like to check out the Cincinnati Reds' announcers, but when the on-screen graphics are inundating us with gambling odds and prompts to throw away your money on bets I'll take any other option, even if it's Joe Buck and drunk Harry Caray.
• How have the Dodgers lost six games? They're on a pace to end the year with a record of 113-49, a whole three wins shy of the big-league record for victories in a season. I mean, I thought they were supposed to be good. (That was sarcasm, for those who missed it.)
• How have the White Sox won four games? Yeah, sure, they're still on a pace to lose more games than they did in their record-breaking 2024 campaign, but come on, the Rockies are outdoing you guys for futility! Where's that Chicago pride? (Only some sarcasm there.)
• Those same Colorado Rockies have a run differential of -51, and they've only played six games so far at altitude. The White Sox are really going to have to work hard to repeat as worst of the worst.

OK, the M's. At this moment, the Mariners are 10-9 after taking two of three in Cincinnati (and doing it in very entertaining fashion, at that). They may have started out in the first week looking like the 2023-early 2024 version of the Mariners, but maybe we can chalk that up to rust in the opening week. March is too early to start the season anyway, right?

It's still super early and no definitive conclusions can be reached yet, but new manager Dan Wilson has changed the character of this team and I am here for it, y'all. This bunch still clouts homers, yes, but the home runs are coming incidentally—I'm not seeing anyone step into the box looking to hit one out, I'm not seeing the Joaquin Andujar school of hitting ("swing hard in case you hit it") from them anymore. I see guys going with the pitch, using the opposite field, taking their walks, making productive outs. It's so refreshing after years and years of Scott Servais-led lineups going for optimal "launch angles" and crap like that.

I'm also seeing small ball when it makes sense. The M's have more sacrifice bunts three weeks into the season than I'd bet they had in an entire Scott Servais year (pause while I check that on baseball-reference ... almost: in 2023 the M's had four successful sac bunts, the same number they have so far in 2025). And my favorite thing, Dan Wilson has a running game.

The Seattle Mariners are second only to the Chicago Cubs in stolen bases thus far this year, and that's because the Cubs have played three more games. By steals per game, the M's lead the big leagues! This time last year, only two Mariners, Dylan Moore and Julio Rodríguez, had any stolen bases. This year almost everyone has one, even the catchers have four between them. The M's are on pace to steal 264 bags as a team for the year. They're a long way from being my 1985 Cardinals (that team had 314, with three guys combining for 200 bags all by themselves), but by modern standards this is awesome.

The ’25 Mariners are fun, even when they lose, because they're never out of it. The only game they've played so far that was a snoozer happens to be the only one I've been to in person, game two of the season, which they dropped 7-0. Otherwise, it's been exciting. The starting pitchers continue to be terrific, Luis M. Castillo's bad inning the other day notwithstanding, and Dan's making things happen at bat. It's only the bullpen that seems shaky: The middle relievers have been pretty sad, save for Principal Snider and maybe Gabe Speier. We've already had increasing traffic on the Tacoma Shuttle and there figures to be a lot more as more relievers get tried out. That worries me more than the low batting averages do; the averages will tick up, particularly for Julio, Luke Raley, and Randy Arozarena. Arozarena especially looks like a new man in the early season, that .212 average is not telling the story.

It's a good year for the M's to be fun. We need something to balance out the nightmare of the rest of the news.

Tagged Baseball, Seattle Mariners, Posted on April 17, 2025 at 11:26PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

1 Comment

Free radicals

I've been having a pretty good week, which is unusual for post-January 20, 2025. I think the huge turnout at the protests last Saturday (I went to a small suburban one for a short while) and the apparent impact they're having in DC has helped a lot, and my general attitude has been more free and easy, as it were.

I'm also buoyed somewhat by the actual good-if-not-ideal news out of the Roberts Court today—the ruling that Secretary Noem, DHS, and ICE must "facilitate the release" of Kilmar Abrego Garcia from the El Salvadoran torture prison he was rendered to by ICE without even the patina of due process of law. It remains to be seen if President Convicted Felon's regime will obey that court order, which has to go back to the originating court for "clarification" of the term "effectuate," as that court's order called on the government to "facilitate and effectuate" Garcia's release and return to the United States. That seems like a stupid delay tactic on Roberts' part, but fine, OK.

This should have been a foregone conclusion, but then it also should have been so obvious a call that the Supreme Court should have opted to not even hear the argument and say the prior order stands well and good. It's also on the heels of Roberts and company declaring that class actions against ICE for their illegal and extrajudicial kidnappings of people off the street are not allowed and that each of the kidnappees can have their due process only if they each get a lawyer (from detention/foreign prison?!) and file a habeus petition within the local jurisdiction that they were abducted in. So you can't predict how far the Roberts Court will go to protect the man they already granted immunity for "official acts" or criminality and his staff of thugs and goons.

Anyway, I bring up the Garcia case mostly because I kind of hope my uncle is reading this. You may have noticed that he left a comment on my post about the Dodgers tarnishing their reputation by visiting the White House.

Bob, I know that your comment was at least partly tongue-in-cheek, and I do take it in that fashion (though it's often difficult to parse MAGA attempts at humor, there's always an element of cruelty in them) but really, man, I do hope you poke your head up from the right-wing propaganda bubble and see what's really going on every now and then.

Anyone who thinks opposing this POTUS47 regime is something "radical" needs a remedial vocabulary lesson:

Radical (rad•i•cal): A person advocating thorough or complete political or social reform; a member of a political party or bloc that pursues such aims.

We are living under a regime now that is literally criminal. The president himself is a convicted felon, an adjudicated rapist and fraudster, has admitted to being a tax cheat, has gotten away with violations of the espionage act only because he has a corrupt Florida judge in his pocket, has a history—which may well include this week—of securities fraud, and uses extortion as a primary means of "negotiating." His cabinet of corrupt incompetents is also a mass of humanity steeped in moral, ethical, and intellectual deficiencies.

And that's just the criminal aspect. Then there's the un-American aspect. The despotic aspect. 

The Department of Justice is being reorganized to be, essentially, a base for the Joker's henchmen to operate from. Congress is a thing to be circumvented. Treaties are for suckers.

In a mere three months—not even, in fact—this criminal regime has not only done the typical Republican stuff of trying to destroy Social Security, Medicare, and make middle-class and poor folks pay more taxes so the filthy rich can hoard more money; demonizing immigrants and making policy based in racism and misogyny; and rhapsodizing about how government is by its nature bad. They've also gone out of their way to decimate public health infrastructure—on the heels of a global pandemic!!—and utterly destroy the United States' standing and reputation in the world, alienating (former?) allies and perhaps intentionally wrecking the global economy. 

All of it—ALL OF IT—illegally.

On this matter in isolation, my position is conservative while the regime's position—and that of the Republican party writ large, at least so far—is radical. A radical attempt to fundamentally alter the nature of the United States, to take it from a representative democracy revering freedom and the rule of law to an autocratic dictatorship ruled by a small cadre of oligarchs and the whims of one idiotic pathological liar.

I support retaining the societal adherence to equal justice under the law and the protections of the U.S. Constitution. The regime supports decimating the rule of law and trampling the Constitution.

There are other areas where you might call me radical, depending on your interpretation of normal. For instance, I support national health insurance (e.g. Medicare for All), strict gun control measures, a return to an 80+% marginal tax rate, and substantial reforms to our election laws that ban the unfettered influence corporate wealth. Personally, I think that's pretty mainstream and I think polling would back me up, but I can see were even a 20th-century version of a rightward Republican would consider those things somewhat radical. But none of those things defy the basic tenets of American society. President Convicted Felon's regime defies those tenets multiple times every day.

Regarding the Dodgers and their contributions to normalizing this in-progress fascist takeover, I can make some allowances for many of the guys that made the trip. Because (a) they are largely quite young men, (b) living the lives of professional athletes and thus paying scant if any attention to any news outside the sports press, and (c) the duration thus far of this administration has been while they were busy with Spring Training and concerned about making the team and traveling to Tokyo. Plus, (d) they travel in their own bubble of protection and do not have to worry about the harassment and other dangers the general public—especially brown-skinned and non-English speaking members of the public, like many of the Dodgers—does now when traveling in this country. So there is an ignorance that can be assumed. Non-players, though, should know better. Including manager Dave Roberts, who has studied history and is smarter than this. Owner Fred Wilpon is filthy rich and probably hasn't figured out yet that the leopards will eventually eat his face too, but there are plenty of people involved in the decision to go to the White House and shake the hand of the man who let Los Angeles burn not so long ago and who would happily rendition a bunch of them to a Salvadoran gulag who knew better.

Opposing this regime is not radical. It's at its core what this country was founded upon.

Tagged Politics, Baseball, President VonClownstick, Posted on April 10, 2025 at 11:58PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

No Comments yet