jad

Yeah, I think i was misremembering details of Pat Forde's devastating article in SI at the end of May. Looks like the accountants and bean-counters finally caught up with the myth that big-time football brings in tons of money. And UConn is hardly alone in this

You're right. That's what I meant. (Am I remembering right? Are they eliminating D-1 football? I know they had a huge deficit--over 40million for 2019. There were also some figures out, pretty shocking ones, abut the amount of money that the university paid to subsidize athletics.). You're working there, right? (or you were). What's the effect on staff?

Another shoe drops: Patriot League just cancelled fall schedule. Unless there is some radical news on the health front (which we all hope for but none of us expects), it can't be long now before the NCAA tosses in the towel. Despite that, is it really true that we have just over a week before the RS first game? (I fear I may owe Bellhorn4 $(virtual)100. but as everything this spring, "it's early yet."

I stream games when I watch, so I don't really care about the MLB package. But did I hear the other day that they are still blacking out local games? Good grief, WHY? It's not like you're going to go to the stadium and get a bleacher seat instead. (Or am I misunderstanding all this.)

Back to the topic at hand, I'm wondering how the situation in the NCAA will impact pro sports. There have been a series of 'steps' (Ivies cancelling fall sports, universities cancelling certain sports altogether--UConn, Brown, Stanford, moving to spring schedules, and the latest decision. "conference-only" schedules, which doesn't seem to address any of the real problems of playing). USC's president announced weeks ago that without students in residence, there would be no football. But there is no way USC will be 'open' (you need to just walk the campus or pass student housing to realize why). None of these decisions solves the problem but just ... well whatever metaphor you want: kicks the can down the road: throws sh*t on the wall, hoping something sticks. I would bet any amount of money, the NCAA will announce the suspension of fall sports soon. The NBA and NHL will MAYBE be able to get some semblance of a season in. But it will take an ironbound will for the MLB to do so, and given the dysfunctional relationship between management and players, I don't see how they will be able to operate in any but a best-case public health scenario, and the chances of that happening seem to be fading day by day. If the NCAA cancels, I can't see how MLB will not be right behind.

In addition, I have never seen a policy on this forum that forbids reference to politics, although I have often seen it invoked. (Since there are threads that are specifically "non-political", that implies that politics is fine.) Now as for this thread, when it was created, one of the problems (perhaps the central one) was whether MLB and the players could ever agree. They did. NOW, however, the only factor in whether the season begins or not is one of public health: i.e., the question of a major league season depends entirely on how the states and fed. government acts (or doesn't act) to control CV19. Unfortunately, that public health matter has been completely politicized (not by us, but by federal and state officials). There is thus no way to continue discussing the issue of "will the MLB have a season" without reference to the 50-70K cases per day we have seen in the past few days, or to Florida's continuing to open up even after 15,000 cases in a single day. Those cases aren't a political issue; they are facts. So the question now is how to reduce those numbers to make it safe for players and fans.

My bad. I deleted my post. But come on--5GG's post was a joke, not particularly political.

Netflix and Chill not an option if you're 16 and living at home! As for the second point: having bucket seats and NOT making out is much worse.

Meanwhile, this: https://www.si.com/mlb/2020/07/10/will-mlb-testing-plan-crack Makes sense. Whenever I have a broken arm, I always look for a clinic devoted to, say, pediatrics, with no experience in setting bones. For the system to work, there's going to need to be an accuracy rate in the high 90's. Without that, and unless all positives are re-tested immediately, the number of false positives is likely to be equal to the 'correct' positives. I.e., a lot of guys quarantined who are perfectly healthy. Also, this article makes clear that ANY kind of testing draws on resources that could have been used elsewhere in the community.

Well yeah. On the other hand, I spent many evenings in drive-ins over a half century ago, and hardly ANY of that time was spent looking at the screen.

Though I find myself more worried about being alive in March 2021 than about who the RS might have on their roster, I still don't see any reason now to think that 2021 is going to be less chaotic (simply from a sports perspective) than 2020. Thus, I can't imagine any major moves like that: more likely the season, even under the best of circumstances, is going to be mired in labor disputes, with owners screaming about poverty from the staterooms of their yachts.

:Holy crap! That's not photo-shopped???

Not so screwed up. It's a math problem: if you have a test that's roughly 95% accurate, and, say, 5% of the population tested is in fact positive, half the 'positives' you get will be false positives. But most of the negative tests will be accurate. Essentially, all positive tests need to be redone to eliminate or reduce this error.

I'm sure you've all seen the clip of Tanaka getting drilled by Stanton. It doesn't look to me like the players standing around are really interested in 'social distancing'. I'd love to have a season (particularly for the voice of Joe Castiglione droning in the background in early evening). But I'm still holding to my bet of 0 complete games played this season.

You have to think he will, no? Otherwise, any player on a big long-term contract would opt out, essentially giving up their pittance of a 2020 salary for another year of the big bucks later. (Opting out would actually be financially smart). Of course, we don't know the language of the agreement (and given the history, probably neither do the players or owners!), but I doubt they would overlook this. (Felix Hernandez opts out too.)

I don't understand this asinine statement. Isn't this a bald-faced admission that they were not negotiating in good faith?

Ha ha. Do you know where she said that? (True not matter how you take it!)

Maybe you should read Sontag so that you can respond in a relevant manner to what I was saying. (There's also likely a Wiki entry that will help you see what my point was.)

Exactly. As for the metaphors of "battle" "war on ..." "winning" "defeating" ... I'm pretty much with Susan Sontag on this.

Yup. My other two favorites on that team (and I mean this in all seriousness), were Buckner and Schiraldi, both of whom were a bad bounce away from being heroes. Buckner eventually got some redemption--fans must have realized that his crucial hit against the Angels got them into the WS. But Schiraldi, I think, never did, even though without him, there would have been no post-season at all for the RS.

Dave Henderson, 1986, whose hr's in the ACLS and WS led to the most catastrophic event in RS history. Without those, we might still be talking about Jim Lonborg.

Kman-- I think you may need to work on your 'irony-detection' skills.

1978 playoff. 9th inning. Yastrzemski took Gossage deep! I remember that as clearly as I recall the day I was born.

The title of this thread is "Red Sox Win Total." I don't see any 'rule' saying there should be no politics.

You're on! (We're talking about a COMPLETED game, right?)