jerichoholicninja

Seems like MLB is stalling on implementing the 50 game season, so the Union has less of a leg to stand on when they file their grievance. This is exactly what I read on Twitter from a writer. MLB is going to stall long enough to where the MLBPA can't greive the amount of games that are being proposed. And even then, how many players are going to play? This whole thing sucks. This shows that this was all about the owners saving money and cutting everything down to 1/3 this season to save money. Will the players strike next year to gain some leverage for the upcoming CBA negotiations? We aren't going to see meaningful baseball till like 2023. Well, ya, that's what the owners have been saying all along. They've been pretty clear this whole time about why they are doing what they are doing.

In my totally uneducated and uniformed opinion it seems neither side is even fighting for the same thing. The owners are concerned about the financials for 2020 while the players are all about trying to get the upper hand for the next CBA. Neither side really cares if there is a 2020 season because the owners will probably come out ahead if there is no baseball vs having to pay for a shortened year with no ticket sales and the players don't care if there is a 2020 season because they will then feel like they have "won" and can get the owners to agree to almost anything so that there will be a 2021 season and they can get back to making money. I've stopped caring about this long ago though. If there is baseball, great. And I've gone long enough without MLB that if there isn't any till 2021 it will make no difference in my life. The NBA looks like it is headed toward a similar mess but for different reasons.

After getting everything figured out, it looks like the NBA is about to turn into as big a clown show as MLB.

I guess it's somewhat of a trend to combine your last names into a completely new name. My wife works with someone who did that.

Do you watch spring training games? It won't be much different. I don't know why people are making such a big deal out of watching a game with no fans present. Other than when there is a loud, obnoxious person near a microphone you don't even hear them.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52975934 Here's an article for those interested. I agree it's far from concrete proof of anything but I don't why we would still believe anything that China says anymore. It wasn't just how full the parking lots were either it was based on internet searches for symptoms that are related to COVID from that time too. And there's this line that I wished they would have elaborated on more. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china-origins-expl-idUSKBN23H1HQ It will be interesting to see what comes from these countries that are starting to re-evaluate pneumonia related deaths from last year. This thing could have been around for much longer than was thought.

In no particular order: Major League, Bull Durham, and The Natural. It's been a long time since I've seen 61* but I remember enjoying it at the time. Two that I absolutely despise are Field of Dreams and The Sandlot. Field of Dreams in the kind of sentimental drivel that I hate. It's not a baseball story, it's a father/son story. Sort of the same thing with The Sandlot. It's not really a baseball movie it's a coming of age story with a lot of baseball scenes. And I'm very jealous that those kids got to grow up playing baseball every day every summer and I didn't.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52975934 Here's an article for those interested. I agree it's far from concrete proof of anything but I don't why we would still believe anything that China says anymore. It wasn't just how full the parking lots were either it was based on internet searches for symptoms that are related to COVID from that time too. And there's this line that I wished they would have elaborated on more.

This is basically two petulant children arguing over an ice cream cone. No one is actually going to get the ice cream cone because it's going to be gone and melted before they figure out how to share it.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/06/04/public-health-protests-301534?cid=apn https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/05/health/health-care-open-letter-protests-coronavirus-trnd/index.html And health officials and the medical community wonder why people have lost trust in them. Don't get to the beach, don't go visit your aunt and her kids, your haircut isn't more important than saving lives, stay inside stay safe, #flattenthecurve! But we encourage you to gather with hundreds or thousands of people and the government better not dare try and stop you because of health concerns. I don't care if people protest about whatever they want to protest about but don't tell us all that we're being selfish and endangering lives for doing the same thing you are now encouraging people to do just because you agree with their cause.

Unless I'm Kevin Bacon, I'm not a fan of having the government tracing my steps. Sure... I know they can track my cell phone and get a history of where I have been. However, if they start publishing some type of report, I would be quite disturbed. I would not want to suffer the same fate as Comrade Withers... The government is hiring thousands of people to do just this. I thought about applying to do it but decided the less I have this stupid disease on my mind the better for my mental health. Supposedly, the countries that have "beaten" the virus were doing this from the start.

Donate all ticket sales from teams that can have fans to something. Boom, months of PR hell fixed.

It is impossible to get away from without taking drastic measures. Doesn't matter what local news you watch, it is constantly the subject. National news media, lol Forget it, constant doom and gloom, blaming, dividing, just looking for reasons to bring us all down. Social media is unbearable and a complete embarrassment. I am currently taking a few days away from it all. No news, no social media, just sitcoms, dvds, and movies if I am engaging in a screen... No wonder we have so much mental illness, and the events of the past few months is only going to increase it. As a society, we have become weak and ineffective with handling our own feelings and thoughts. The wussification of America continues, and there is no end in sight. As someone who attempted suicide eight years ago....this has been a rough couple of months. Going from having outlets, knowing what works for me to keep my mind in order, knowing what keeps me happy to being screamed at that if I go outside I'm going to kill everyone's grandparents. Being told that 'everything is worth it if we save one life!' all while feeling like I was slipping lower and lower than even where I was a decade ago always made it ring false to me. I've empathized with those wellness studies more than most I suspect because, well, that's me. Being able to go out last weekend, sit at a bar, have a beer, whine about the fact that there's no baseball, and have people happy to see me may have very well saved my life. This week, people I've admitted that to have rolled their eyes and called me selfish. Well, I mean I guess. I don't want to be dead, despite what I sometimes tell myself in bad moments. Is it selfish to want to be alive? I never liked the virtual or phone aspect of talking to people. I don't feel like they're paying attention. It's stupid. I'm sure they are. But it doesn't matter because my mind convinces me they aren't. Which ends up making me feel even more insignificant and worthless and I end up ending said sessions feeling worse than when I began. But six weeks of nothing to do but check social media has taken more of a mental toll on me than most anything else I can think of. And I've noticed it's all partisan. It's all yelling and screaming. And it's all outdated with no care. Stopping looking at it has done more for my mental health than almost anything. And I highly suggest going that route. Twitter is filled with people who immediately seem any form of positivity as inherently stupid. Because intelligence can only be rated based on how snide you can be in 140 characters. It's...well it's bad. I don't know what I really wanted to say. But avoiding twitter helped me a lot for a long while. It's all a performance, though. There's a NPR article circulating now about how antibody results indicate the virus is less deadly than thought. Six weeks ago, when papers in CA and MA said the same thing and it was cited by people on the right it instantly became an echo chamber of 'results are inaccurate! No test is reliable!' Now, it's the same just with the aisles flipped. I swear the worst thing to have right now is a memory that lasts more than fifteen minutes. There's no thought, there's no real discussion on those platforms. Everything is instantly 'us vs them' and 'what about X!' I'm not sure what point I wanted to make but I felt like I had to write something. Two weeks ago I wasn't positive I'd make it to see baseball played again. Now, well I'm still not sure I'll ever see baseball played against but not for reasons involving me not being here. Tuning out Social Media helped a great deal. And I was barely on it anyway. Never read the comments. Everything you said was very personal and very real and I hope everyone appreciates your honesty. But the bolded part is so important and I hope more people realize this. There is no rational thought or logical consistency for many people over this. My friends and I have a group chat that has been going on for 4 or 5 years now. They have been very vocally pro-lockdown since the beginning. One works in the medical field and another is in local government and very much involved in handling the COVID response. The day after the supreme court struck down the Safe at Home order the chat turned into a group temper tantrum about how stupid Republicans are and they're a bunch of science deniers and they don't care if people die. I eventually put it on silent as there was no coherent or intelligent thought involved just unhinged anger. In the weeks since, what have they been doing? One decided to take a vacation the weekend after the order was lifted and the rest have gone back to regularly going to bars and restaurants. One night a few of them went out together and shared a picture of themselves together in the chat. Not one of them wearing a mask. So basically none of them really cared about the "science" or the health of others, it was just about wanting their side to win.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-italy-virus-idUSKBN2370OQ Sounds encouraging.

What a pile of crap. Owners don't borrow money for that, they strong-arm politicians and take that money from the taxpayers. I was thinking that too. This whole thing has pretty much turned into politics. No one really wants to solve the problem, just make some gotcha sound bites ripping the other side to make it look like they're trying.

How did he nail it? The prorated salary deal was based on fans being allowed in stadiums. There's no guarantee that happens making that agreement void. Owners were well within their rights to change the deal. And his rant about unfettered spending and "bailouts" can be directly tied to a good number of his clients' god-awful contracts and Boras's MO as an agent in general. Sorry, but I can't take any words from him about fiscal responsibility seriously.

If there was an agreement ready to be signed they would announce it so they could start talking about baseball stuff. Why sign on the dotted line until you absolutely have to? See what else you can squeeze out while publicly dragging your opposition through the mud right before CBA discussions. That seems to have been Tony Clark's goal the last few years at least.

Part of me thinks there is a deal already agreed to waiting to be signed at the last minute and both sides are trying to squeeze out whatever else they can beforehand. The other part of me thinks both sides are totally going to blow it. I sympathize with players concerned about health and safety issues and wanting to get every cent they can. I also understand the owners who are still writing out checks and paying bills without the usual cashflow coming in. Are broadcast rights contracts and sponsorships currently being paid out or do those only come when games are actually being play? Anyway, everyone involved with major league baseball has looked like a real dunce in all of this.

I have a friend who works for the PGA. Financially, they are doing more than fine.

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-52758024 Thought this was interesting. A statisticians look at COVID. In the UK at least, if you're under 60 you're more likely to die of anything else than you are of getting and dying from COVID. That's for the entire population which would include those with compromised immune systems and others more susceptible to illness. So the risk for a healthy individual is going to be even lower.

[sarcasm]You sound like a tobacco executive.[/sarcasm]

Real Heroes 400 was up 38% on TV from the last race. It was a three-year high for their TV broadcasts outside of Daytona... I don't know if NASCAR's ratings could get any lower. It's amazing to me how NASCAR exploded for a few years in the late 90's/early 2000 and then just as quickly crashed back to earth.

That and most parts of the country are or will open over the next few weeks. After being locked up for months I doubt many non-hardcore baseball fans are now going to sit in the house for 3 hours and watch a baseball game.

What would be nice, but I know won't happen, is for the general public to finally see how the media takes facts and uses them to say whatever they want. I read a lot of articles about COVID and none of them use the same rates statistic. I see positive test rate, mortality rate, positive test per whatever thousand, positive test per capita, etc. It's tough for me to figure out how bad this is in different places when there is no standard for comparison. And then they love to use the number of positive tests with zero context. I just read an article where the headline said "Maryland COVID cases skyrocket after opening". The story lead off by saying the state had a record number of positive tests just four days after opening up. Further down it briefly mentioned they also had a record number of negative tests the same day, meaning that was the most total tests they'd done so far. So it's not too surprising they got the most positives. Not until near the end did they include the quote from the health department that said that the positive test rate has remained basically the same and that it was almost certainly too soon for the state opening up to have any major affect on test results.

A deficiency of any vitamin or nutrient is going to lead to sub-optimal health, so this isn't really surprising.