Random Thoughts On A Sunday Morning Updated To 11-24

[Yankee4Life]

Updated to 10-22

 

...Emily Dickinson once said that she liked the look of agony because she knew it was true. She wrote these words back in the 19th century but they can easily be used to describe the 2023 edition of the New York Yankees. The Yankees proved that their collapse during the second half of 2022 was no fluke because once Aaron Judge got hurt in the beginning of June nothing was the same. Last year they showed they could fall apart with Judge in the lineup as he raced towards a home run record. This year they showed they could do the same thing with him being injured.

 

Spring training is for hope, autumn is for reality: Every year Yankee fans fall for this and I used to be just as bad. Remember the off season when they signed Gerrit Cole? They said that was all that they needed and they predicted a trip to the World Series before spring training even started. That worked out well. The New York tabloids are all about generating interest so people can read their columnists. They over hype everything and fans believe it all while the faults of each player are glossed over except when you read that “so-and-so” plans on having a bounce back year and has really been hitting the ball well. Expect to read that over and over about Stanton when February rolls around. As soon as the season starts you begin to see that the optimism and expectation that you saw in Florida fades away quickly and the real world starts to settle in and with that the sensibility about who and what this team really is.

 

What happened to this team? What happened to a Yankee team that would take pitches and work the count and actually make the opposing pitcher labor out there? These guys go up there with one intent and that’s to hit the ball out of the park so their launch angle and home run distance get attention. How did the Yankees become so right-handed and so slow and unathletic? It happened right before our eyes and here is what we have. I’ve been part of the group of fans that want to see Cashman and Boone gone and never to return but I don’t expect that to take place.

 

It’s going to take awhile to fix this mess. I’m talking about a few years. Baltimore and Tampa Bay are way ahead of them in every aspect of the game. They know how to play winning baseball and it shows. You may joke that winning baseball did not help them in the playoffs but when you win 101 games like Baltimore did and 99 like the Rays you can go into spring training with real optimism and not some that is generated by the New York Post and Daily News.

 

...A Phillies fan was denied entry into Citizens Bank Park not long ago when he attempted to get in with an emotional support alligator. The man tried to tell the Phils that the reptile has helped him in his battle with depression. For example when he goes grocery shopping all the aisles miraculously clear when he walks down them and when he is ready to check out a register opens up just to take care of him. He does admit though that it is hard for him to have a pizza delivered to his home because the alligator has become partial to pepperoni. The Phillies had a few reasons not to allow the alligator in beginning with common sense and secondly the game was a sellout that night so where was he going to sit? If this was in Tampa they could have given him a half section on the first base side and no one would have got near him but the Phillies were playing good ball and even if they weren’t there is the common sense thing again. Now they were tempted to have him sit in a fenced off section down the right field line and in case a call went against the Phillies the guy could have let the alligator loose on the umpires.

 

...Only the Yankees could have a pitcher throw a perfect game and then get thrown off the team before the season is over. The story was that Domingo German was so intoxicated that he caused a disturbance in the clubhouse. After that he was gone faster than a Giancarlo Stanton at-bat. You know, three pitches and back to the dugout. I understand that drinking too much is a serious issue but after watching almost every Yankees game this season I was considering hitting the bottle too.

...Hold your Bets, Dept: On September 1st through the 3rd the Yankees traveled to Houston for a three game set with the Astros and as a shock to everyone (including themselves) they won all three games. New York was going nowhere and in dead last in the American League Eastern division but you could have fooled anyone that watched those games because they played like anything but a last-place team.

 

Houston must have been really upset when they landed in Dallas to play the Rangers to play Texas on September 4th through the 6th because all they did in those three games besides making all of them a one-sided affair was to score a total of thirty-nine runs and pound an incredible sixteen home runs. The sweep put them back in first place when they left town. With the way they were playing they wanted to stay right there. After beating the Padres two out of three when they returned home to Houston they had to play the last place Oakland Athletics next on September 11th through the 13th. The Athletics were well on their way to losing over one hundred games in 2023 but that didn’t prevent them from beating Houston in two out of the three games they played them.

 

This one example from one team from just a thirteen-game span in their schedule is all the reasoning why I never bet on baseball. I don’t bet on other sports but since baseball is the one sport I am most involved in daily I see how betting places like Fan Duel, Draft Kings and Bet365 are always advertising and making it so easy to bet on baseball every night. You can just guess how much money those bookies won when the Athletics beat the Astros two games in a row because they knew that everyone who bet had their money on Houston. They cleaned up so much those two games they never had to use a broom. They made money on the Yankees too because who expected to see a sweep? But no where near as compared to Oakland. Well, they won their money and all the amateur Jimmy the Greeks out there are poorer. What are the odds of me betting next year? If you put your money on 0% you’re a winner.

 

...I was going to write about my contempt for analytics in baseball but I did not know how to start it until the Toronto Blue Jays provided me with the perfect example that I am sure everyone saw because it happened during a post-season playoff game. To me analytics is something that makes managers have to keep changing pitchers until they find one to lose the game. Blue Jay fans will agree and for Yankee fans this is old news after watching Aaron Boone do this as he continually managed the Yankees to a loss instead of a victory.

 

But the Yankees are dead and gone for 2023 so this really is not focused on them. They’re part of the problem but not the whole problem. Toronto was playing in an elimination game after losing the first game to Minnesota and the score was 0-0 in the bottom of the fourth inning. Forget that pickoff play that nabbed Guerrero because it had not happened yet. This right here is what really cost the game and the season for Toronto. Toronto starter Jose Berrios was pitching well but he walked Royce Lewis to open the fourth. After Lewis two left-handed hitters were coming up and Jays manager John Schneider compared that emergency to hearing his car alarm go off at 3:00 in the morning. Out of the dugout he came and with the wave of an arm Berrios was taken out of the game and lefthander Yusei Kikuchi came trotting in. Berrios was pitching very well as he struck out five hitters in his three plus innings of work, walked none and only gave up three hits. In other words he was on his game. The Twins took advantage of this huge break and scored two runs in the inning as Berrios was the losing pitcher while he was sitting in the dugout wondering what just happened. Guerrero falling asleep at second base in the fifth didn’t lose the game for Toronto. Not having Berrios on the mound did.

 

This move only made sense to Toronto’s analytics team because the way they look at baseball is if A happens then you must only do B and never C or D. How many times have you watched a game where everything did not fall in line perfectly from the first inning to the ninth? Never? That’s right and the Steve Urkels of every teams analytics department have been trying to show that it can be done if you just listen to them. This game is played by people and there are so many factors that determine a team winning or losing a game and a spreadsheet is not going to help you except to give you a reason to lift Berrios in the fourth inning.

 

I may not be much of a fan of today’s game but I do have some faith in baseball and one thing I know is that baseball is and always has been a copy cat sport. Tony Larussa and his pitching coach came up with this pitch count religion and now everyone does it. Now everyone it seems gets Tommy John surgery whereas before many years back in the 70’s and 80’s pitch counts were not used and pitchers were healthier. Another one is the Rays using an “opener.” Do you notice that everyone does it now? I am waiting for a team with the insight to return to real baseball where the manager manages instead of following pre-game instructions. When one does it it’s going to catch on and the computer heads will go back in their basement to play Dungeons and Dragons.

 

In closing I will give you one example of a manager using his instincts to win a game. This occurred many years before we were born but it is to me a perfect illustration of managing with your head. It was the seventh game of the 1952 World Series and the Yankees were holding on to a slim 4 - 2 lead. The game was played in Ebbets Field and the Dodgers were a very tough team to beat there and left handed pitchers especially had a hard time there because of all the right handed power the Dodgers had. Brooklyn loaded the bases with one out in the seventh and Casey Stengel brought in southpaw pitcher Bob Kuzava. Kuzava got Duke Snider and then Jackie Robinson to pop out to end the inning. He pitched scoreless ball in the eighth and ninth and the Yankees won the game and the series. Immediately after the game reporters ran to Stengel asking him why he kept Kuzava in to face Robinson in the seventh. Stengel explained that the reason why he kept him in was that Robinson had not seen hard throwing left handed pitchers much and he therefore could have trouble with the break of a left hander’s hard curve. And that is exactly what happened. A manager managing on his experience and instincts. It still can be done today.

 

...Moved, no forwarding address provided, Dept: If the percentage of women in the state of South Carolina goes down substantially in the coming years it is because of one thing. Some South Carolina Republicans are now considering abortion an offense that should be punishable by death. They’ve even gone and made it sound nice and official by calling it the “South Carolina Prenatal Equal Protection Act of 2023.” In a nutshell the term “person” would now include a fertilized egg at conception and if a woman who goes through with an abortion in that state would legally be eligible for the death penalty. Now if that doesn’t make young, single women and young couples from across the country to pack up and move to South Carolina nothing will. These legislators that propose these kind of bills always like to project how pro-life they are and how hard they work to be like that and how precious life is unless of course if you are a woman.

 

...Kelly Clarkson, who these days looks like she lives next door to a bakery, recently sang a profanity laced song about how she felt about her recent divorce from ex-husband Brandon Blackstock during a recent concert in Las Vegas. You see, she is still smarting after being forced to pay him a $1.3 million lump payment. Besides that, what really got her going was she has to pay him $45,601 per month in child and $115,000 in spousal support until January 31, 2024 despite the fact that she was given primary custody and her husband would only get the kids one weekend a month. No matter how you look at it that’s quite a lot of money and the good part about it is that he doesn’t have to live with her anymore and also does not have to restock the refrigerator every forty-eight hours. One day her kids are going to see this video clip on Youtube and they’re going to see her putting down their father and you’d be right in wondering what would be going through their minds after viewing it. If a male singer would get on stage and rant about this and use a slew of four-letter words about his ex-wife it would be considered toxic. For females it's considered empowering.

 

...A thirty-one-year-old Cleveland woman has been charged with murder after leaving her sixteen-month-old baby daughter home alone for ten days as she went on vacation. Read that again because I can’t make this stuff up. The baby was found unresponsive with no signs of trauma. Police investigators stated that “the child had been left alone and unattended for approximately ten days and had subsequently died.” The woman, Kristel Candelario, traveled to Puerto Rico and Detroit on vacation. Never in my life have I ever heard of anyone going to Detroit on vacation. She told police that when she arrived home she found her daughter to be extremely dehydrated. Really? You try not drinking for ten days and see how it’s like. She is being held in the Cuyahoga County Jail on a $1 million bond. It looks like she’ll be going on another vacation soon and this one will be much, much long than ten days.

 

...Over the summer there was a remake of Disney’s Haunted Mansion, the 2003 film starring Eddie Murphy. I didn’t know much about it except for the movie previews I saw on TV and Youtube but after reading what the director of the movie said about it I’m glad I didn’t part with my eight dollars. Director Justin Simien said that he wanted to make the movie “as black as possible.” I’m sure this is news to many of you in here because it certainly was to me when I came across the article. It was news because the whiners and complainers on Twitter (or whatever it’s called now) never said a word. What Simien said was fine with them. Now imagine if someone said that they wanted to make a movie "as white as possible" there would be a uproar and you would have damned well heard about it on every news channel and program in the country. The guy would have been immediately fired and then he would have been forced to say he was sorry over and over again on TV except of course on FOX. They’d consider him a hero. In the Eddie Murphy Haunted Mansion movie race was never mentioned in the casting. Now it is all about race with Disney, and when a director blatantly says that he wanted it "as black as possible" then it is no longer about the movie. It becomes the director’s pushed political agenda so he can make a statement and when he does that he is setting the movie up to fail. Well, in that way he was successful because the reviews as well as attendance were not good. I blame Disney for letting this happen and for looking the other way when he made this comment. They have spent $965 million on four of its most high-profile streaming and film flops this year but to be fair this movie was not one of them. But you have to consider if you lose almost one billion dollars you’d stop and look around and try to find out why.

 

...Now if any of you think I went to go and see that Barbie movie you all are out of your mind! 😄

 

...You can count me in on the number of people who are not even casually interested in the relationship between Kansas City’s Travis Kelce and singer Taylor Swift. From what I can gather it is two people getting to know each other and that’s it. If there is anything else about it then I am clearly not seeing it. Maybe it’s because I am not a fan of either one of them. Kelce plays for the Chiefs and when you are a Raider fan no other explanation is necessary. And I do not see the attraction with Swift. The woman looks like a scarecrow with teeth.

 

...It takes courageous African-American women such as Letitia James and Fani Willis to take on a tyrant and a twenty-seven year old former aide who was brave enough to testify at the public hearings concerning the January 6th, 2021 Capitol attack to show that you can stand up to a person like that and not worry about being called names. It’s called backbone and we all have it although the senators of the GOP check theirs at the door since they have not used them in years.

 

...I would definitely want to spend an intimate weekend with Paige Spiranac. But getting her to agree to it is the part I haven't figured out yet.

[Yankee4Life]

Updated to 11-19

 

...I haven’t spent any time thinking about who the Yankees are going after in free agency or who they might get in a trade because I’ll be honest with you guys I don’t care anymore. The way I see it they are an embarrassment on and off the field with Brian Cashman bringing down the team recently with his recent comments about the team itself when he said that they were “pretty f–king good.” That comment alone should have had him fitted for a straight jacket. Also his comments about Giancarlo Stanton, while being 100% true, was not something a team executive would or should say about a player currently on the roster. Sure Stanton is going to get hurt next year and probably sometime during the first ten games but to publicly show him up is not the way to go about doing things.

 

...The World Series last month between Texas and Arizona did not get good ratings despite it being an exciting and well-played one. That’s too bad because people missed out on a good series between two teams who deserved to be in there. Just because a series that does not have the big east coast cities or Los Angeles or Chicago does not mean that it’s to worth watching. I may not like all the rule changes this sport has made over the past couple of years but it doesn’t mean that I don’t want them to succeed. Selfishly I would have liked to have seen the Yankees in it but that won’t be happening for a few years now because they have more problems then you can shake a stick at but these two teams showed that you don’t have to come from a major market to put on a good World Series. Now only baseball needs to do is to figure out a way to make people tune in to find out.

 

...I was watching parts of the N.L.C.S. between Arizona and Philadelphia and I had to laugh at Phillies outfielder Brandon Marsh. This guy looks like he hasn’t washed his hair since spring training and as far as shaving it looks like it’s been a few years for him. But I had to laugh because if the Yankees got him in a trade (he is a left-handed hitter and that is what they need) he would be looking at least a ninety-minute haircut and shave due to the length of the hair and beard and the possibility of not knowing what they’d find in there.

 

                           

 

...The average time of a nine-inning game decreased from three hours and four minutes to two hours and forty minutes during the 2023 season. Yeah, well ok. But I can recall when a baseball game was completed in shorter times and that included things like unlimited throwing to first base and catcher visits to the mound. Games will not get shorter until they tell people like FOX that they are not the reason why people tune in and that they should take a back seat to what’s going on.

 

...In a very unfortunate situation an Ivy League student with a heart condition died after she drank Panera Bread’s Charged Lemonade, a large cup of which contains more caffeine than cans of Red Bull and Monster energy drinks combined, according to the lawsuit filed by her grieving parents. The twenty-one-year-old student had a heart condition called long QT syndrome type 1 and avoided energy drinks at the recommendation of her doctors so it is unclear as to why she drank this Charged Lemonade when there is a notice in front of the different flavors of this drink that informed her and everyone else about how much caffeine was in the drink. What I am wondering is if she was told by her doctors to avoid energy drinks, then why did she order one? I'm sad for her and her family but Panera isn't at fault here and it is clear to me at least that the parents are trying to get something out of Panera in the way of a settlement because they don’t want this to go to trial due to the fact that they will probably lose. I think it boils down to this. At one point, even Ivy League college students who are supposed to know everything need to figure out how to be responsible and understand what we're consuming. When you see a drink that is “charged” it should tell you that it is no ordinary drink and when the signs informed the patrons that the caffeine included in said drink was very strong should've been enough for this girl to avoid it, but she didn’t. She made as much sense as someone ordering a hot coffee from a drive-thru and acting surprised when their leg is burned if they accidentally spill it on themselves while driving.

 

...That answers that, Dept: Megan Rapinoe went down in the sixth minute with an injury she suffered in the final match of her career last week. The injury, a possible Achilles injury prevented her from returning to the match and after the game she replied that because she got hurt that there was no existence of God because as she explained that if there was a God, this (meaning her injury) was proof that there wasn’t. Well, that’s that. The question asked for thousands of years has been answered by probably the most selfish and disliked female soccer player ever and with her getting hurt I think that it proved that God may not have been that impressed with her behavior because as my mother always used to say to me when I did something wrong "The Lord punished you" and if anyone in women's soccer deserves punishment it is Megan Rapinoe with the way she conducted herself here and her insulting comments about our country. Her future may lie in providing commentary to women's soccer from now on but since no one watches we don’t have to worry about seeing her again.

 

...A Florida man (where else?) was arrested after bashed a woman's head into a tree stump because she woke him up on her way to the bathroom. And I bet some of you were thinking he had to have a reason. The couple were at the Silver Springs State Park campsite which is located in Northern Florida. The two people had been drinking before they retired to their marital sleeping bag and everything was just fine until the woman felt nature calling her and when she got up to take care of her concerns she tripped and fell over her big lug of a husband because it’s hard to find where to go when it is pitch black outside and you don’t have the luxury of turning on a light. So, proving the old adage that alcohol and logs do not go well together her husband got up and hit her with the log whereas if they were home and she did this to him he’d of just thrown the alarm clock at her.

 

...I found this out recently even though it happened a few months ago. The Colosseum in Rome may be over two thousand years old but it didn’t stand a chance between three idiots ranging from twenty-seven years of age to seventeen as they used the building to carve their names in. The first guy who did it, a twenty-seven year-old British man explained after he was caught via his lawyer that he did not know the “antiquity of the monument” when he was busy carving his name in it. At the same time I am sure he does not know the antiquity of Buckingham Palace or what that means to every British citizen. Not to be outdone a a seventeen-year-old girl from Switzerland was spotted carving her initials into a wall of the building by a tourist guide and the very next day, a seventeen-year-old student from Germany did the same thing although not in the same area. For the act on the Colosseum both teenagers risk a fine of up to $16,850 and up to five years in jail. If any of these three people are interested in becoming U.S. citizens one day they are well on their way to doing so and based on their behavior they will not have any trouble passing the test.

 

...I've been taking a break from social media because my heart breaks to see all of the horror, hate, and terror that's going on in the world. People being tortured and killed or any act of hate towards any one group is horrific. We need to protect ALL people, especially children and stop the violence for good. I’m sorry if my words will never be enough for everyone or a hashtag. I just can’t stand by innocent people getting hurt. That’s what makes me sick. I wish I could change the world. But a post won’t.

 

                                         -Selena Gomez

 

  Selena Gomez said these words not long after the start of the Isreali - Gaza war and for some reason people are giving her a hard time for it. Before I wrote this out to be included in here I read it over a few times and I can not figure out what she said to make people so upset with her. I still can’t. Besides that the world is full of people that are just looking for something to be upset about is still not a good enough reason come down on someone who doesn’t want people on both sides of this war to be hurt because this is all she has done here. The only thing I can think of is that she didn’t say what fans want to hear, so she got criticized. If a celebrity doesn’t take a side they also tend to get criticized and if they don’t say anything at all the same thing happens. Fans were complaining that they wanted her to take a position but her position is the very voice of reason the whole conflict is missing.

 

...Why do kids run around Walmart like it is one giant playground?

 

...Ever since the night that Will Smith walked up the stage and slapped Chris Rock I stopped being a fan of his and I even went as far as not watching any of his movies or reruns of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. He’ll be paying for what he did for the rest of his life because I believe some people in Hollywood will never forgive him. I haven’t thought about him that much since that happened but this week I have because his wife Jada Pinkett Smith (or whatever she is) is coming out with her memoir entitled “Worthy” and from, what I have read about it so far she is anything but worthy. In it she writes that Tupac Shakur was her “soulmate. ” This was unnecessary and for no other purpose except to degrade her husband. She also went on to say that she and Smith have been separated since 2016 despite appearing as husband and wife in public. I tried to put myself in Will Smith’s shoes for a minute and I did not like it one bit. I am beginning to see what he did to Rock that night was a way to seek approval from a woman that had no intention of giving it. He deserves a better life than this because his entire legacy has been tarnished in less than two years thanks to her. Distancing himself from this woman will get his self respect back and he will find that Hollywood can be forgiving. Other actors have made huge comebacks after some far worse behavior. Robert Downey, Jr comes to mind. If Will Smith eventually does distance himself from her she is going to find that no one is going to want to be associated with her any more as soon as book sales and the talk show circuits wind down.

 

...If you look hard enough to be offended by something you are guaranteed to find it. I have always said this in the day and age of people on twitter giving their opinion on anything and everything. These are the same people that before twitter came about no one cared what they had to say but now that they have found a voice they are making up for lost time. The latest insulting and God-wrenching problem is from a fifty-year-old Thanksgiving cartoon special called A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. In it, to sum it up in as few words as possible, Charlie Brown’s friends kind of invite themselves over for the holiday and he isn’t prepared to have anyone over since he is going to his grandmother’s house. But they come anyway and he makes them feel as comfortable he could. Complaints were made that there wasn’t any turkey or stuffing and in substitution Charlie Brown served up toast, jelly beans and popcorn.

 

The problem is for the twitter people is the scene where they are having their “dinner.” (See screenshot.) One of the kids, a black child named Franklin is sitting alone on one side of the table and the others are on the other side. The issue -if you want to call it that- is that the black child is being kept separate from the rest of the kids and is being racially profiled. One could say that kid has the best seat at the table. I mean look at all the elbow room he has there! And this my friends is what some people spend their time doing online. What really bothers me is that I am continuously surprised by this. I remember when we were in school we talked about this cartoon the next day and we all thought it was funny because they had popcorn for Thanksgiving. The people that come up with these things deserve scorn and ridicule instead of being taken seriously.

 

                               

 

...Finally I want to wish all of you located in the States a very happy Thanksgiving. For the rest of you it will be a typical Thursday without all the fuss but if you want to join in and cook a turkey go right ahead. As usual we have three NFL games on again along with one game being aired the day after. The Packers go to Detroit to take on the Lions at 12:30 p.m. on FOX followed by the Redskins visiting Dallas at 4:30 p.m. on CBS. I’ve grown to look forward to the Cowboys playing in the second game year after year because I can always put that game on and fall asleep. At 8:20 p.m. the 49ers travel to Seattle to play the Seahawks. That one will be on NBC. I won’t be watching that game at all. On Friday the 24th the Miami Dolphins will be playing the Jets in New York and that one starts at 3:00 p.m. You need to have Amazon Prime to see that one. I’m sure the NFL would even schedule a game for Saturday but they don’t want to get the college teams upset. So even if you watch one game or all four or none at all I want to wish you and your family a very happy and safe Thanksgiving.

 

                        

[Yankee4Life]

Updated to 7-28

 

...I may not be a big baseball fan like I once was and it is entirely the fault of the new rule changes which unfortunately are too many to say that I won’t go into them but even that has not kept me with at least one eye on the game. It wasn’t that long ago that Opening Day was here and I swear it almost seems like it was a few days ago. And now we await for Tuesday at 6:00 p.m. eastern time for it to be over. For me this is just as bad as your favorite team being eliminated in the playoffs because the Yankees have the annoying habit of trading top prospects for people that don’t help and everyone but Brian Cashman are aware of it. Frankie Montas immediately comes to mind.

 

What I am wondering is who is this year’s Montas going to be and how much young talent it is going to cost to get him? And just because Jasson Dominguez is injured doesn’t mean they’ll won’t trade him. Juan Soto has been all that he has been made out to be and even more but it is going to take more than him to have this team able to go deep into October and win. There are too many holes and maybe too many to fill by tomorrow evening.

 

...Maybe just maybe last night's 11 - 8 victory over those degraded people from Boston will be the spark that the Yankees need to go forward for the rest of the season. There are so many questions to be answered and addressed and there is such little time to do it in. Two months from now the season is going to come to a close and you know how fast that will get here. Will Jazz Chisholm be as helpful as the Yankees think he will be? He is coming in with the same kind of hype that Joey Gallo came in with. And I have no idea why they could not activate Stanton for this Boston series. He doesn't do a lot of things well but he is a pretty good Fenway Park hitter. So of course activate him when they get to Philadelphia. I have no idea if they are going to win this year but with the lineup that they keep on throwing out every day I don't see how and if they think that Chisholm will be the missing piece to lead them deep into October then I better find something else to watch when the World Series is on like I have been for these past fourteen years.

...As far as I am concerned Nike has done more than their share of ruining baseball today without affecting the rule changes that baseball itself has already messed up beyond repair. This company, who is just as arrogant as Apple, first ruined baseball uniforms by putting their logo on the front of every jersey. It was very small like a black smudge on a white canvas. Baseball gave them a ten-year contract for this but you know as well as I do these will never be removed. This year they went even further as they came out with a jersey that was in their words "more breathable, lightweight and stretchy." I don't know if they are breathable or stretchy but I can see that they are very lightweight. All you got to do is watch a Yankee game when they are on the road and it's a very humid day. Those jerseys are soaked through before the fourth inning is done. I have never seen a jersey do that in all my years watching baseball. Now, this goes back a little bit but there was a pitcher named Ray Burris that comes to mind. Burris was a marginal pitcher who pitched for seven different teams in his major-league career but what I remember the most about Burris was that he would sweat profusely on the mound and not just on hot summer days but while the sweat would come down off of his head his uniform never showed any signs of sweat. I thought about this every time they Yankee jerseys turned a darker shade of gray in the humidity. There have been player complaints about this and it was more predominant in the spring so I am not sure if they are used to the uniforms now or they were asked to not comment on them any further. All I know is just by seeing these uniforms on TV and in photos they look a lot cheaper and flimsy as compared to the ones last year. The only way these are not cheap is if you want to buy one for yourself. For example if you want to buy those awful looking All-Star game uniforms all you have to do is part with $194.99 and it's all yours!

 

...Bo knows lawsuits, Dept: In another example of where you can choose your friends but not your family, former two-sport star Bo Jackson won twenty-one million dollars in a civil case against his own family after an extortion attempt coordinated by his niece and nephew. The two were accused of “relentless harassment and intimidation” in attempting to extort around twenty million dollars from their famous uncle. Jackson was threatened via social media posts like one from his nephew threatening to release photos, texts and medical records of his. Jackson has more of a chance to make a comeback in the NFL than seeing one penny of the money he won in this lawsuit but his niece and nephew are now required to remain at least five hundred yards from him and his immediate family and they must remove any content about the Jackson’s family  from their social media pages and are barred from further posting about him. Now what are they going to do, get a job? Yeah I know I’m being ridiculous.

 

...I try not to write about the Kardashians because they are too easy to poke fun at and make jokes but there are times when you have to. Not too long ago Kim Kardashian, who is in no way considered to be the smart one of the family, announced that she registered with the California State Bar to study law with the hope of becoming a lawyer but because she has been too busy with her other business ventures to continue studying the law she has quietly backed away from this. It does take a lot of time and commitment to study law but when she actually took the time to open a book and study she saw Latin words in there that she did not know or understand like habeas corpus. She complained that the Latin guys she knows speak Spanish and not Latin so how come the stuff in these books are not in Spanish? Oh what a public defender this woman could've been!

 

...Not too long ago former Cleveland Browns bust Johnny Manziel opened up about his history with drug use and the end of his two-year NFL career. After Cleveland released him in 2016 he weighed 210 pounds and since he had nowhere else to go he went to Las Vegas and before he knew it he was weighing 170 pounds, a pretty dramatic weight loss. When asked how he did it he said that he was on a steady diet of cocaine. Well, that's one way to do it but if he wanted help to lose weight ozempic is way cheaper. This guy had everything except the desire to win and a willingness to work and he goes around bragging that he lost forty pounds this way. Makes you want to shake his hand and have your picture taken with him. With all the diet books that you can find in bookstores and online you can be sure that this will never be written about.

...It's bad enough that baseball lets there games be broadcast on many different streaming services but now the NFL is going to do the same thing as they gave Amazon exclusive rights to a 2024 playoff game. That means of course that if your team is fortunate enough to make the playoffs their game may be on Amazon prime and if you don't have it then you are out of luck. And so it starts. Pretty soon every NFL game will be on a paid service. Maybe not this year or next year but it's coming and maybe ten years down the road Amazon or Apple will get the Super Bowl and the NFL will act like it's the greatest thing that has ever happened. I hope I'm wrong.

 

...Last week former Denver Broncos Hall of Famer Terrell Davis was unjustly escorted off of a United Airlines flight from Denver to California when a flight attendant came by the area his family was sitting in and Davis says the attendant didn't respond when his son asked for a cup of ice. Davis then tapped the flight attendant on the shoulder and the attendant suddenly shouted out "Don't hit me" and went off to another part of the plane. When the flight landed the captain made an announcement that everyone should remain seated. FBI agents then came onto the plane and handcuffed Davis and took him off the plane for questioning. What happened next showed the proper way to handle situations like this. Davis, while justifiably confused and upset over what was happening did not react in a loud or violent way in front of his family or the other passengers on the flight. He simply got up, cooperated with the authorities and exited the plane. He set a great example and a lesson for everyone on how to act even when you are not in the wrong. United Airlines said that they took the flight attendant out of rotation while the matter is investigated which means that they are probably getting ready to fire him or that they will promote him to upper management. Davis has filed a lawsuit over what happened and it doesn't take a crystal ball to figure out what is going to happen. United is going to settle and when they do that they will make a big speech condemning what happened and saying that it never should've taken place to begin with. No kidding. In this day and age with everyone carrying around smart phones there is no way that someone is going to get away with acting up on a plane or a bus or train without people recording their every move. I'm not usually someone that agrees with all these lawsuits that seem to be thrown around these days but I'm glad he's suing them and holding them accountable.

 

...Good news for all Kansas City Chiefs fans. Brittany Mahomes is now fully recovered from a fractured back and she will be at Arrowhead Stadium for the Chiefs first game in September. Mahomes declined to say if she fractured her back carrying around her enormous ego and sense of self worth or if she hurt it after Kansas City won the Super Bowl this past February after rumors that circulated in the press about a train that she pulled in the victorious locker room. 😀

 

...The color of money, Dept: I think that Paul Skenes pitching for the Pittsburgh Pirates is one of the bright spots of this 2024 season but I still cannot help but be worried about how hard he throws on every pitch. It's like he is a Tommy John surgery waiting to happen. Sure he's on the top of the world right now and he shows that he belongs in the major leagues and it doesn’t hurt that he has a beautiful girlfriend in Olivia Dunne. One look at this couple and you have to wonder how they are together. First you have Dunne, someone who does not seem to own anything but bikinis, which of course is perfectly fine because she was made to wear them and then you have Skenes who has a mustache that belongs on a saloon keeper in the old West instead of a major league pitcher. What keeps them together? Oh yeah, money. As soon as Skenes says hello to Tommy John he will say goodbye to Olivia Dunne.

 

...It's obvious that Bill Belichick's twenty-four-year-old girlfriend is only going out with him because of his good looks and outgoing personality. I mean who can't see that?

 

...I don't want to bring up politics too much on our website but I want to salute President Biden for his decision to put the country first in his decision to step down as the leader of our country. I support Kamala Harris and I look forward to seeing the first female president in November. I think she can beat the loudmouth on the other side and as a lifelong Democrat she had my vote even before she had been officially nominated. Okay, that's it. A couple of sentences about politics is all that I want to write about.

 

...Hey, the Olympics are on! Ah hell I'm busy.

 

...Before I go on I understand that people are only going to read what they want to read and will disregard everything else. That being said I want to say that baseball's decision to allow Negro League statistics into the official major league records is one of the worst decisions that they have ever done. The player who will benefit the most from this is Josh Gibson, one of the greatest catchers the Negro Leagues has ever seen. Gibson will now surpass Ty Cobb as the all-time career leader in batting average (.372) and move ahead of Babe Ruth for slugging percentage (.718) and OPS (1.177). And he will be doing this without ever playing a game in the major leagues. Yes, I know he was prevented from doing this but as competitive as the Negro leagues were they did not match up to the major leagues and his stats were inflated for two reasons. First the competition was not as good and secondly the record-keeping in the Negro leagues was not accurate at all. That is probably the most important point. Satchel Paige was asked one time how many games he started and how many victories he had and he couldn't give an answer to it. You can also that of the reason why he did not know was because he played for so many years and lost count but there was no place for him to go back and look and accurately see how many games he won and lost. He probably had a good idea but the true wins and losses are lost to history. The same could be said for Gibson and hundreds and hundreds of players who played in the Negro leagues. Did Gibson have less hits then he was given or did the record books not record some hits that he earned? I do not believe that the Negro league records should be admitted into baseball because of this. I have no problem and I am happy that Gibson is in the Hall of Fame but I believe that is where the line should be drawn.

 

...If you want to know what real bravery is look no further than Sarah Langs. The woman knows more baseball than than I ever will and her love of the game is indisputable. What’s more she continues to work every day while fighting amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease. A disease that as we all know too well a cure has not been found. This has not slowed her down and she continues to work every day for the sport she loves. To me that is a hero.

[Yankee4Life]

Updated to 11-24

 

...Hey! It was another great year of Yankee baseball and if it seems like this is a yearly occurrence of me lamenting how disappointing the season was you’re right. I will be doing that at least just for a little bit. Considering that they won the American League pennant there is a lot to be happy about. I'm grateful for a lot of things like Aaron Judge having another good year, Giancarlo Stanton's turnaround and Juan Soto's stable and welcome presence in the lineup. There was so much to like about this team because all you had to do was think about the 2023 Yankees and you can see the difference every time they took the field.

 

As much as the eternal optimists out there can point out all the good things about them this year they cannot cover up their weaknesses and it was something that cost them the World Series. When they did not have a bat in their hand they looked very beatable. Each time a ball was hit to Gleyber Torres I expected him to turn it into an error. He, along with the rest of the team ran the bases like kids in their first year of T-ball. Fundamentals was something that other teams did. I saw teams that were in the Little League World Series tournament that had better work ethics than the Yankees. These guys were terrible at it but when it came to posing and bat flipping after a homerun and elaborate and customized handshakes they were second to none. I try to be positive about the New York Yankees but it is an extremely hard thing to do especially when you know Aaron Boone is still in the dugout and because of that nothing is going to change.

 

..Fan of the year Dept: For the first time in decades the award for the fan of the year in major league baseball does not go to someone from the cities of Boston or Philadelphia. Those two towns have habitually produced the most disorderly, drunken and violent fans in baseball. But not this year. A twenty-five-year-old Dodger fan celebrated a little bit too much during a gathering of hell-raisers in downtown Los Angeles after the Dodgers won the 2024 World Series. He somehow got his hands on some fireworks and if you haven't heard what happened you can probably guess. Remember when you were little and your mother used to say don't touch the stove because it's hot? Even though the stove wasn't on she wanted to get you into the habit of not touching it. Well, the same thing can be said if you ever plan on lighting a firework. If you have to light one, keep your hand away from it. Apparently no one told this guy because as soon as the firework went off so did two of his fingers and the meat portion between the pointing finger and the thumb area on his left hand. Since this happened he has already had two surgeries and is preparing for a third one very soon. The guy has a job as an oil driller but he is unsure if he is going to return to it. I bet his employers have a pretty good idea that he won't be. I am sure using the restroom will now become one of his biggest challenges. Either that or being able to count to ten. But his Dodgers won. At least he has that.

 

...A banana duct-taped to a wall sold for $6.24 million at a Sotheby’s auction in New York last week by someone named Justin Sun, a Chinese collector and founder of a cryptocurrency platform. Sun explained that the piece he bought was not just artwork because it represented a cultural phenomenon that bridges the worlds of art, memes, and the cryptocurrency community and he believed the piece will inspire more thought and discussion in the future and will become a part of history. I'm sorry but I don't see it. It's just a banana that I want to have with my Cheerios in the morning and this guy thinks he has a Picasso. I thought the price of groceries was high but this is way out of my price range.It seems to me that this guy is trying to justify spending over six million dollars on a banana. I want to be a fly on the wall when he sobers up. They rebuilt Steve Austin for that same price and got a lot more out of him. But now that I think about it I need to get in touch with these people somehow. I have a twelve ounce bottle of water that I have sitting on my porch steps right now that I would like to sell. I am not greedy and not looking to sell it for as much as that banana went for. I'd be happy to sell it for half that much. Three million and it's yours. 🙂

 

...This took place in Florida?, Dept: Usually you do not hear anything sane and reasonable coming out of the state of Florida but in this case that is exactly what happened. A Florida sheriff who was so tired of “bogus” school shooting hoaxes plaguing his county announced that he was going to be coming after the kids and the parents of the kids who did this prank. Fighting fire with fire is how he put it and I couldn't agree more. This guy was not fooling around. Florida law gives him the right to release the kid's photo and the video of them being arrested and the police report and for the parents he was going to come after them and charge them criminally or civilly for the cost of the investigation for endangering the child or endangering the welfare of the child. No matter what this will hit the family very hard in the pocketbook if their little angel decides to do something like this. Naturally not all people agree with this approach. Some believe the release of the video of the child being arrested and led to jail would be a form of "public shaming" where it would impact their lives. The way I see it, the kid's life was already impacted the second he picked up the phone or told people about a threatened mass shooting at school. Not just his classmates would be affected but the entire school and every single parent and teacher associated with that school would have their lives impacted also. When they want to commit or threaten to commit a crime like this then they should be able to accept all consequences of their actions.

 

...Are the Dodgers linked to every player that comes out of Japan now? Roki Sasaki is the latest out of Japan that the Dodgers have shown interest in and as soon and Sasaki converts the yen to dollars they’ll be holding another press conference. Why don’t they just sign everyone out of Japan and be done with it? And notice how no one objects?

 

...There is going to be a new woman’s basketball league that will begin play in 2025 during the WNBA’s off season. That means you’ll have more of a chance to meet women. Unfortunately your best chance at succeeding is if you are a woman.

 

...I have a lot of reasons to dislike the modern game of baseball because of the way it is played now as compared to how it was played when I was first introduced to it. I won't nitpick about all the new rules even though that has a lot to do with it. I think the biggest problem that I see is that there is an accepted lack of hustle by ball players on every single team in the major leagues. Some of these guys run so slow down the first base line that they make Gary Sanchez look like a track star.

 

Here is a perfect example which happened at the worst possible time. The Houston Astros were about to be eliminated in their best of three wildcard series with the Detroit Tigers as they entered the bottom of the ninth down by a score of 5 - 2. The first two batters were retired and Astros final hope was with Mauricio Dubon but Detroit relief pitcher Will Vest got Dubon to ground out to second base to end the game. Houston was eliminated from the playoffs and Detroit advanced to the division series. But if you look at the way Dubon ran to first base it was almost like he was going through drills in spring training. That is how slow he was going. And again this was a playoff. I'm not saying if he busted it down the line that he would've been safe but you never know what is going to happen on any given play in baseball and what this guy did was quit before he got halfway down the first base line.

 

So, I figured that the next day Dubon was going to get roasted. I checked the Houston newspapers and not one word was said about what he did. Nothing. Like it never happened. I checked the Detroit newspapers and while they were celebrating the Tiger victory, they too chose to ignore what Dubon did. No big deal! It's not important. That is the attitude that is around baseball and that is what I cannot stand the most about this game. If you don't run down the line you don't have to worry about anything.

 

I grew up watching no-nonsense managers like Earl Weaver and Whitey Herzog and Billy Martin. There were many more but none of these guys would have tolerated anything close to what Dubon or any other players do almost daily. I cannot even imagine what Martin would have done to Dubon if he made the last out of the game like that. This is the same guy that sent Paul Blair out to right field in Boston to let Reggie Jackson know he was out of the game in 1977. Mauricio Dubon would not have been on the same team as Martin the very next year let alone the very next day. These guys make more money than the players before them but they are slowly ruining was once was a great game.

 

...A Rose by any other name, Dept: My view of Pete Rose changed as the years went on. When I was a kid it was just Rose the ballplayer and nothing else. And nothing else did matter. Kids at that time saw him on the Game of the Week and when Cincinnati was in the postseason and all we knew was what the announcers told us. I knew kids I was in school with that were Reds fans because of Rose. Hey, he ran everything out and always hustled the TV guys made it sound like he walked on water. That all changed during the 1980s when the whispers of his gambling problems became louder and louder until Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti suspended him for life for betting on baseball in August 1989. By that time I did not care.

 

I am not sure but I think my disillusionment with baseball started around this time. Rose denied over and over that he did not bet on baseball and we did not find out until 2004 that he did in fact bet on baseball and on the Cincinnati Reds. During that time it was tough being a baseball fan especially if you were Yankee fan because they were at the bottom or close to it in the American league and I recall reading articles that if he was caught betting on baseball were any other players doing it too? And then a few years later the players strike came and the World Series was canceled.

 

Pete Rose was someone that was a good player but when you took the time to really look into him you saw that the only good thing about him was when he had a bat in his hand. He gambled and gambled too much. He went to jail for tax evasion. He cheated on his wives and in the 1970s carried out relationships with underage girls. Talk about the bloom falling off the rose. But all people to this day want to talk about when you bring up what he did was his baseball statistics because somehow they think it explains everything. The only thing it explains was that he was very good at hiding who he was until he couldn't do it anymore.

 

I won’t hide it. I respected him as a kid, grew to dislike him as I grew older, was entirely in Mr. Giamatti’s corner for suspending him for life and was happy every time an appeal of his went nowhere. I am however not happy he is gone because he did have a family. R.I.P.

 

... Susan Smith, the South Carolina woman who thirty years ago drowned her three-year-old and fourteen-month-old sons  into their car seats and let the car roll into a lake near her home was unanimously denied parole after she appeared before the board for the first time last Wednesday. First she lied to the police and said a black man carjacked her and kidnapped her sons and since this was South Carolina 99% of the people believed her. But as the police looked into it a lot of her story did not add up and when they confronted her she admitted to the killings. She checked all the boxes during her hearing. She was repentant and sorry. She wished she could take back what she did. She's a Christian and God already forgave her and most of all she cried and dabbed her eyes constantly. She's right about one thing and that God forgives but the state of South Carolina does not. Thinking about it, the safest place for her to be is behind bars. Remember the guy who shot John Lennon? Mark David Chapman is his name and next month it will be forty-four years that this took place. What if the parole board saw to it to give him his parole? He wouldn't last two weeks outside of jail because one or more crazed Beatles fans would literally kill him. If this woman received parole she just might fall down a flight of stairs two or three times until she didn't get back up. This is the problem with life in prison vs. death penalty. Eventually, the people who face the death penalty get the opportunity for parole. Her two children never had the opportunity to get out of the car.

 

...I took my what has slowly become my monthly trip to Walmart back on November 13th and by that time the entire store was more than ready for Christmas. I go there when they first open up the place at 6:00 a.m. for two reasons. First to avoid the crowds and secondly to avoid the children that are attached to some of them. They are loud, obnoxious and unruly. And the kids are even worse.

 

Like I said, Walmart was ready. Anything that you wanted they had. Trees, boxes, bows, wrapping, and on and on. There was one full aisle devoted to candy. I’m not someone who hates this holiday but I do dislike how long it is played out. The Hallmark channel has been playing Christmas movies non-stop since before the World Series started and they won’t be finishing up with them until after the new year. I don’t care how much someone likes Christmas that is way too much for anyone. It’s like having a hot fudge sundae for one of your meals every day; it starts out well but then you are soon sick of it. I was able to fly around the store and get everything that I needed while avoiding the store employees that were busy stocking the shelves. I had a smile on my face because I was out of there before 7 a.m. and I knew I’d be home having coffee before the store started to become crowded. As I began to drive off something occurred to me, something so small but at the same time inescapable. Walmart was not playing Christmas music inside the store when I was there. Happy holidays indeed!

 

...This Thursday is Thanksgiving and for the rest of you not in the United States it just means that it’s just a regularly scheduled Thursday. There will be more football on TV over the weekend so if you forget to stop and get something to eat that’s on you. Wednesday morning I will be in line waiting for a bakery to open up with fifty or so strangers waiting to buy desserts for their families. Ironically I do this every year even though I don’t have any of the cakes or pies that I pick up.

 

As usual there are three NFL games to keep half the household occupied because if everything goes to plan they’ll be asleep before the second game reaches halftime. That’s thanks to the Dallas Cowboys. More on them in a second. The first game which is on 12:30 p.m. ET on CBS has the Chicago Bears at the Detroit Lions and this is a Lions team that you usually do not see on Thanksgiving. That’s because they have a good team. The next game is the New York Giants vs. The Dallas Cowboys and that’s on 4:30 p.m ET on FOX. Having the Giants on is bad enough but combined with the Cowboys is like taking a valium with some NyQuil. Lastly the Miami Dolphins go to Green Bay to take on the Packers at 8:20 p.m. ET on NBC. If you survive watching all three games without having your wife, kids or any other member of your family bothering you then I want to shake your hand. And since the NFL does not know what too much of a good thing means they are going to have another game on the next day, Friday November 29th when the Oakland Raiders visit the Kansas City Chiefs. That game will begin at 3 p.m. ET on Amazon Prime. See what they did there? It’s a subtle way to get people to sign up and try out Prime. I’ll save you the trouble. Oakland will score less than ten points and they’ll lose.

 

Have a wonderful and happy Thanksgiving!

[Yankee4Life]

This came up and I had to comment on it right away before the next edition of Random Thoughts.

 

...Send in the Clown, Dept: Either baseball commissioner Rob Manfred is clinically insane or he is half way there. The rules that have been introduced in the last few years have not been agreeable to baseball purists out there which I am one of. Again, I won’t get into them because they’ve been covered before but now Manfred is talking about something called the “Golden At-Bat” which is a rule that would allow each team one chance per game to swap in its best hitter for an at-bat, even if it is not his turn. Manfred was very quick to point out that this rule was, in his words “still in the conversation-only stage” which did not comfort me at all because when people like him come up with ideas like this it is only a matter of time that they run with it and the people at FOX act like it is the greatest thing ever for the sport.

 

I immediately thought back to my grammar school days when we played baseball and the kid who could not hit was due up. Somebody else on the team would make an announcement telling all of us that “Jimmy’s hands hurt so he will hit for him today.” Everyone knew he was lying but instead of arguing about it we played on. I may have been the one who hated it the most because I was the one on the mound. Maybe that’s where I began to bean the opposition with regularity but who knows? The point is this is a playground move that baseball wants to do and it should never be considered.

 

Can you imagine the first team to screw up this rule if it ever takes place? Of course I’m thinking of the Yankees because Boone is the manager. If they make the playoffs he’ll give Judge more at-bats and all that’ll mean is he will strike out more.

 

Players all around baseball are slamming this “conversation-only” rule and I don’t blame them. What’s next after this? The bookie sites make baseball give the underdog teams some runs before the game starts? Today’s Orioles - White Sox game begins with the Orioles down 3 - 0. Or how about no Golden at-bat and one time per game you substitute the other team’s pitcher with the batting practice pitcher from your team and he feeds you some meatballs until you jack one over the fence? Sounds ridiculous? So is Manfred. My God all this time I thought Bud Selig and even Bowie Kuhn were bad. My apologies to both.

 

This is a sport that eliminated the shift because their players were too stupid to learn to hit to the opposite field. They want to attract younger viewers but they don’t want to start post season games earlier, like maybe four or five o’clock. And if you want to watch your team all the time you need an account from Apple, Amazon Prime and MLB. Did I forget any? My point is it’s going to cost you if you want to watch baseball. Address that and fans will notice. These gimmicks will not win over players or fans and as far as traditional baseball fans like myself nothing will surprise me.

[sabugo]

That golden at-bat crap is going to eventually make it's way to game.
It's just plain stupid.
 

[Yankee4Life]

8 hours ago, sabugo said:

That golden at-bat crap is going to eventually make it's way to game.
It's just plain stupid.
 

 

If this happens I am giving up baseball.