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Having a baby triggered me to move from academia to the private sector which got me both better pay and the work/life balance that I needed to raise a kid. Plus permanent work-from-home. What a dream that is for parents.

Since when is $2 or $3 million life changing money? There are hundreds of thousands of families in this country who bring in $2 million in less than a decade. 10% of households in this country bring in over $200K/year. Not to mention passive income. It's even worse if you make the money in a couple of years since you will pay even more taxes. And for the average family who makes that kind of money, they have a career where they can count on that income until they retire. Coaching baseball isn't exactly lucrative. I would say $10 million is a reasonable threshold for life-changing money -- a threshold that you could support a family from age 35 onward without having to work again...IF you invested it properly. So maybe $15 million in career earnings if you account for taxes. What percentage of MLB and MiLB players end up with $15 million in career earnings?

We concluded that the $3,000/month number that we were paying was the correct cost for running a high quality infant/toddler daycare center with properly paid employees, a reasonable teacher:student ratio, great curriculum, etc. We're now paying in the low-$2000s but the new daycare constantly has "help wanted" signs outside, there are more kids per teacher, and the place is just generally more chaotic than the more expensive daycare. I am appreciative that the industry is highly-regulated because it keeps me from worrying too much. We got a little taste of the numbers ourselves when we initially considered a nanny share and had to draft a contract and advertise the position. Basically, watching kids is labor intensive and labor is expensive. Hence why you don't see daycares popping up all over the place right now.

Oh yeah, we burned hundreds of dollars on daycare deposits that we never enrolled at. We were paying over $3000/month for infant care while we were waiting for a less expensive option to open up. I think almost everyone I know has decided to have fewer or no children because of the constraints associated with raising kids in the current world.

Great, a victory press conference for the Manfred Man, celebrating his achievement of getting Opening Day canceled so the owners can pay lower salaries this year. He should resign.

I don't see what's going to change between now and a month or two from now. Most of the damage will be done once Opening Day is officially canceled.

I get that baseball players at the MLB level have a very rare and valuable skill set. But look at the median family income in this country ($79,900). Then look at the minimum salary of a first year MLB player ($570,500). No one is playing for free. There are very, very few people who can logically relate to the "plight" the players are feeling at the moment. I think that some owners love baseball. I wish more did. But some of them simply love making money. In the end, that's how they earned enough of it to even purchase an MLB franchise. It is what it is. Agreed. I honestly don't mind how rich the owners are. They have a high risk / high reward business. They have to pump loads of money into that businees. It doesn't bother me that they make gobs of money as long as they put some back into their teams to stay competitive. I don't like the fact that we villainize rich business owners in this country. If they made their money legit, more power to them. (this train of thought is coming from a teacher, who is married to another teacher) I'm all for capitalism, it's the foundation of our nation. Where would we be without it? That aside, when guys like Soto turn down 350 million, it doesn't sit well with ordinary average guys like me. That kind of money sets up generations of his family, not just him. The money the players make resonates with me, not the owners. Players, even those on the low end of the pay scale are set up for life if they manage it correctly. Let's say you play 5 years at 600 k, that is 3 million. Regular working stiffs don't make that in a lifetime. It's just impossible for me to take the players side when they can make 600K to 30 million per season. Oh woe is them... I don't even mind that they make that kind of money, they have a special skill set, and deserve it, but crying to the general public falls on deaf ears imho. If being born into wealth and privilege while taking advantage of a system that funnels as much money as possible to the top is "legit", then yes, I guess MLB owners make their money in a legitimate way. Juan Soto is unarguably one of the 5 or 10 best baseball players in the world right now. Could any of the MLB owners be counted amongst the 5 or 10 best business people in the world? What would happen if all 30 of the MLB owners sold their teams tomorrow and were replace with 30 different business people? Turbo, there's nothing special about the overwhelming majority of billionaire business people. There are tens of thousands of people in this world who are smart and talented and hard working enough to be in their shoes. The majority of their wealth has been gained by the exploitation of average workers. I think most people following MLB would agree that there is a large group of average minor and major leaguers who, unlike Soto, do not have the leverage to get paid more. But focusing on that is not the point here. The point is that owners and players as a whole are fighting over the split of a pool of money. The numbers don't matter, it's all about the percentage split. And if you favor the owners, you're doing so at the expense of the players. And I don't pay $50 to go to an MLB game and see the owners play baseball.

I know it's the slow sports time of year, but this kerfuffle should have been swallowed by the 24-hour news cycle several days ago. It's starting to feel like Howard smacked an Italian Sausage with a baseball bat.

I've seen this before, and if you click on the year it will give you a prompt to change the year. It's just not obvious that you can do that. I usually give websites/apps fake birthdays and other fake personal information, unless it is needed for payment or something official.

Exactly. If the stadium wasn't already there or was a piece of junk it would be a different story. But it is there and the public owns it. So the taxpayers are obligated to keep it functional. And the ROI for a lease extension makes it an easy sell. The real question is why the public owns a very expensive asset that has one billionaire tenant and no useful purpose if that tenant leaves. That also was an issue in Seattle when the prospective new NHL owners were looking for a place to play. The city basically blocked them from building a new arena and forced them to renovate the old home of the Supersonics which was an outdated money pit. Plus they transferred majority ownership of the renovated arena to the new owners so they don't have to deal with it anymore. The renovation project ran way over budget and the ownership group had to eat all of cost overruns (which they did, but have been grumbling about it).

The needle has certainly moved since 10 or 20 years ago -- but it depends on the city and the specifics of the situation. The Brewers' situation is on the simpler side of things and the recent Seattle Mariners negotiations are the most relevant comparison. Similar to the Mariners, there is no way the Brewers are going to relocate or get a new stadium. The Mariners never threatened either. What the Mariners did say is that they would not sign a long-term lease extension without a commitment from their landlord (King County) to pay for improvements to the facility over the 25-year term of the lease extension. The Mariners "threatened" to only sign a short-term lease if they didn't get public funding for the stadium. Which was a real possibility since the vote ended up being 5-4 in favor of $135 million in improvements over 25 years. The initial ask was $180 million. Had that vote gone the other way, the negotiations would have continued until something was agreed to...probably less than $135 million but certainly greater than zero. I would say $135 million is a fairly small number over the course of 25 years, but it serves as a useful baseline for what the Brewers might ask for. And as 1/3 owners of AmFam Field, the Brewers will probably offer a 1/3 match to any public funds. What matters here is that it's in the public interest to keep AmFam modern. Say what you want about the downsides "state-of-the-art" clause, but it's existence is the reason why AmFam is currently in great condition and why the Brewers have no leverage to threaten to build a new stadium or for relocation. This isn't Tampa Bay or Oakland. The Brewers will ask for public funds in exchange for a 25-year lease and it's a fair ask given that the public ownership of the stadium was locked in 25 years ago. There's also no option to do anything other than come to an agreement. There are no relocation options that wouldn't incur the same or greater challenges in terms of securing public financing for a stadium, not to mention the impossible challenge of building a fanbase that would even come close to matching what Wisconsin can offer. That wasn't the case in the 1990s, but it is now, and neither party to the lease extension can escape that.

The Brewers will absolutely ask for taxpayer contributions to stadium improvements when the lease is up. The Mariners were just in a similar situation. They asked for $180 million in exchange for a 25-year lease and they got $135 million approved. The difference is that the source of the taxpayer money will be different than the 5-county sales tax. I’m not sure how that will work. The Brewers also own about a third of the stadium which I didn’t realize until recently. It would be interesting to know what is likely to happen based on how the contract is written. I disagree about the relocation threats. There won’t be any.

The one advantage to the state-of-the-art clause is that the stadium is in really excellent condition at this point in its life. The Brewers have no leverage if they wanted to bargain for a replacement at the end of their lease. What would you ask for in a new stadium that the current one doesn’t have? That wasn’t the case in Arlington (roof) or Atlanta (location). If I were the stadium district I would just give the stadium to the Brewers for free at the end of the lease. But given that stadiums are money pits, I doubt the Brewers would want control of it. That’s the part that is pretty messed up if you think about it. Because other teams are getting a better deal than using a stadium for free.

The fact of the matter is that many small market owners are pocketing the revenue sharing, and have been for some time. So the players have a strong case there. I find it interesting that this forum is much more pro-owners than other MLB fan sites that I follow. I think it's because we benefit the most from revenue sharing as the smallest market, plus we have an owner who is clearly investing the money in the team. I like the idea of revamping revenue sharing to make it more difficult to pocket the money. It would be nice for teams like Pittsburgh and Baltimore to start losing money and paying a financial price for years of tanking and mismanagement. As it currently stands, they are incentivized to continue keeping their payroll low, regardless of how many games they lose.

The rule change experiments are the only thing that I like about Manfred. MLB is very far from ideal baseball right now and the rules changes are needed to rein in the current state of the product. Unfortunately, given everything else we know about Manfred, there's no reason to trust that rule changes will be done in good faith. Everything else about the guy is disgusting. He is laser focused on making more short-term profits for the owners. I get that it's in his job description to do that, but he doesn't even try to reduce the collateral damage to the sport caused by the obsession with profit. Whenever he opens his mouth it only causes the schisms between the owners/players/fans/media to widen. He lacks even the tiniest bit of likability or charisma and there is zero reason to empathize with anything that he says or does. It's already clear that nothing is going to get resolved this lockout and we're going to basically return to the same state of baseball, except with all the problems from the last CBA being further magnified. Great.

They care about profit. Attendance is good for profit. Salaries eat into profit. The problem, as I see it, is that the owners have decided that it is ok to lose some fans (which they are assuming will be a temporary loss) in exchange for getting the upper hand on salary negotiations (which they are assuming could influence profits for many years). Several franchises have abysmal attendance and yet are in excellent shape financially. Is that fine? Depends on your perspective. Again, what concerns me is that the much needed improvements to the game itself are the lowest priority in all of this.

The fans are an interesting topic. There is a limit to what the fans will tolerate. They learned the hard way in 1994 that the fans will not tolerate a strike in the middle of the season. There have been a couple other successful cases of fan revolts such as the McCourt situation in LA and the Marlins’ fire sale. In this case, the owners have made progress scaling back salaries in recent years and they are certainly weighing the balance between loss of fan revenue and how much additional $ they can extract from the payroll. Anything disposable, such as scouts, minor leagues, etc has been given the business efficiency treatment. The players haven’t helped by opposing rule changes that would make the game more entertaining and watchable for the fans. It’s obvious to anyone paying attention that the % of fans leaving before the end of the game has increased considerably in recent years, and the attendance decline is no secret. The warning signs are there. Nobody knows where the line is when fans will say enough is enough. Other sports, especially the NFL, have certainly pushed closer to the line but haven’t found it yet. Losing games in April is unlikely to cross that line and I think everyone knows it.

These days it is very easy to apply to jobs. I did my search via LinkedIn. You can get most of the application fields to autofill. I doubt I spent more than 3 or 4 minutes applying to what is now my current job. You can also set your status on LinkedIn to actively searching and the recruiters will find you. My view is that I’m always job hunting. You never know when a better opportunity is going to present itself, and you basically need to have other offers in order to negotiate compensation, even if you are staying at your current role.

This is the best thing that could have happened. I’m sick of apologizing for being a Packers fan, which I never had to do until this year. Rodgers ruined this season for me, the Super Bowl wouldn’t have been fun, it would have been a controversy storm. The Internet is dunking all over Rodgers right now. Best of luck to him.

To me it's always been more about matchups than the seed number. And in a year with a Milwaukee regional one would happily get bumped down a seed in exchange for getting those pseudo-home games at Fiserv.

Another vote for the Google mesh — just upgraded 2 months ago from one of the outlet-type extenders. Immediate and significant improvement in streaming on the TV and video calls. There is a switch to turn off the smart assistant. My old extender was finicky about location but the mesh is so good that I doubt it matters where you put it. And the price was great, I feel like the last time I checked they were at least double what they are now.

I'm glad that I'm not looking for a house right now. Inventory is basically zero, at least here in the PNW. In a tech city you just wait for your stock options to vest and then your down payment appears in your bank account overnight. Or just skip the down payment. Definitely don't try to save. I think the main driving force is additional bedrooms to serve as home offices. We have a 3-bedroom house but two of the bedrooms are now offices. The other is vacation homes. And of course everyone knows that the supply has not kept up with demand for a long time. Cities are never going to go out of fashion so it isn't surprising to see them rebound. Zoom towns are starting to crack down on short-term rentals. In other cases I think the idea of having a big house with a view in the middle of nowhere is going to get boring for many people. Cities are so convenient. I'd rather renovate my house than try to move again.

The Raiders sure looked happy to run out the clock, but the Chargers called that timeout and then gave up 10 yards on an obvious run situation. I bet the Raiders would have kicked from wherever they were when they ran out of time, but if was a 55 year attempt it would have been a bit more interesting of a decision.

I don’t turn on a semifinal game to see a lopsided game that requires a near-miracle to be competitive. But it’s not even like Michigan and Cincy were the wrong choices, there were simply no teams in college football capable of winning those semifinal games.

This is a nice preview of what most first round playoff games will look like when they start letting 8 or 12 teams in.