S5Dewey

IIRC I got a notification from the Sox that for Season Ticket holders they intend to credit any unused tickets toward next year's season tickets. For single game tickets they are going to honor the ticket purchased as the ticket for the designated game played later. However, anyone whom that will create a hardship for should contact the ticket office. My interpretation of that is that they're willing to refund the money, but you have to contact them first.

Moi?

...and if not for my lack of talent, so was I. There's a reason nobody wants to take a chance on Puig, and the GM's probably know more about Puig than we do.

Yasiel Pug

I can remember Bob Costas being interviewed some years ago and saying (loosely quoted) "If football doesn't do something about the concussion situation I can see them becoming as marginalized a sport as boxing." Here in my state high school participation in football has dwindled every year to the point where the State Principal's Association has instituted 8-man football for schools wishing to play it rather than 11 man. Going into the 2020 season (if there is a 2020 season) there are now 20+ teams that have gone to 8-man over a two year period.

No, because now most of them ride.

Often times it's the scarcity of something that makes it popular See: Toilet Paper. IMO it's difficult to say that one sport is more popular than the other since it might depend on saturation. Would football be as popular if people could tune in to it six nights a week? Would baseball be more popular if it were only played on Sundays?

That may or may not be true but regardless of his motivation IMO he's doing the right thing.

Robert Kraft came through! I see that he got a planeload of masks to be delivered to Boston. https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/04/02/nation/kraft-family-used-patriots-team-plane-shuttle-protective-masks-china-boston-wsj-reports/

That's kind of a stretch, in my state anyway. There's a 90 day "grace period" in my state too but it only applies to kindergarten or students transferring from another state. Since nearly all in-state students (other than K) have been immunized anyway the "herd immunity" protects all but the very, very few who may not have already received their shots. Which brings us around to the original problem of too few parents having their kids immunized and therefore vulnerable to disease.

That was the problem. 'Everyone' thought that... and then more and more parents were denying immunization until a few schools closed for short time due to a mini-epidemic of chickenpox. These parents then pointed out that their children could attend school without being immunized - and they were legally right. There was a lot of misinformation spread by the petitioners about what the law would and wouldn't change. I personally was told by a petitioner that even medical exemptions wouldn't be allowed.

We just had one of those fights up here in my state over whether or not parents have the right to prevent their children from being fully immunized in order to attend school. Up until 2019 parents were able to deny immunization based on philosophical, medical, or religious reasons but the 2019 Legislature passed a bill removing the philosophical and religious beliefs leaving only the medical exemption. Those opposed to the new law gathered enough signatures to bring the issue to a referendum and the electorate voted overwhelmingly (3-1) to support the revised and current law. There's been some 'noise' about appealing the results of the vote on Constitutional grounds but AFAIK nothing has come of it yet.

That new 'pseudo-tag line' should probably have had an emoticon attached to it.

Baseball aside, this is my more longer term concern about where the country is headed. Rhetorically asked, when will we be able to comfortably congregate like we did just months ago? Will we ever be able to do that again? And what will be the impact on our lives when we KNOW that one person can start another pandemic? IMO the only 'remedy" for what's going on is a mandatory vaccination for all people, which raises the question of whether that's even Constitutionally prohibited. This is a mess, folks, and it's not going to go away easily or soon.

Just a reminder... one of the drawbacks to online posting is that humor doesn't always carry well here. What one person posts as being funny (or sarcastic) can take on an entirely different bent to the one reading it.

In a world of absolutes of course it's true. It's also true that hindsight is always 20-20. We all walk a line of spending our money on what we think is necessary and what is frivilous - and there's room for both. Life wouldn't be much fun if we only spent our money on bare necessities. There's no doubt that we could all do without things like Spring Training, or to a lesser degree things like going to the movies or going to restaurants. I believe we all have a 'social contract' with society to do things for the betterment of all, but that doesn't mean everything we do has to be for the betterment of all. As I like to say, "All things in moderation. Even moderation."

Factually usually on target, but sometimes socially clueless.

It does seem like over time nearly everything can be joked about. The only thing that comes to mind immediately that's hasn't been a subject for humor is the Holocaust. I still haven't seen many jokes about 911 either. However, timing is everything and IMHO it's way too early to be joking about COVID-19 when people are still dying. As I said, JMO.

Having been involved in the manufacturing of paper it would seem that might be one of the most boring professions, and yet we have, "The Office".

Thanks. We're on the same page with this.

Hmm.. You're playing both sides of the fence on this issue. Do you think S's surgery was acceptable.. .or not?

That's not what I've been told. I've been told that "they" have trained, impartial observers, watching every defensive play. I've heard nothing about technology and defense.

This may or may not be pertinent to the sign stealing discussion at hand, but.... While at JBP this year I was standing at the top of the runway directly behind home plate when I was asked by one of the ushers to move along. I gave him a quizzical look because there was no one around me at the time so I wasn't obstructing any pedestrian traffic and he pointed to a big open space in the wall of the stadium directly above and behind me. "See that square opening up there?", he said. "That's got a fixed camera behind it and it and you can't stand in the way of it". I looked up and saw the opening and the camera and also saw two square objects mounted above and slightly to one side of the opening. One was gray and about four feet by four feet and the other was black and about eight feet by eight feet, about four times the size of the gray one. "Ok", I asked him as I was moving to one side, "So what are those other two things?" "Those two square things along with the camera record everything about every pitch" he said. "The positioning on the rubber, the body movement, the hand and arm position, the position of the grip on the ball, the arm slot, the spin rate, the type of pitch, the amount of break. Everything you can think of and some things you can't. That's cutting edge technology and our analytics department analyzes them after every game to work with the pitchers on their delivery." If there's the technology to do that is there any doubt that any team can steal signs using a hidden center field camera?

I think most of us who aren't "rich" would agree that the less fortunate need a chance to prove themselves. I also think that they do, but only to a point. Do you think Jared Cushner and Hunter Biden got where they are by working harder? Of course not. It's the privilege of wealth and connections that perpetuate the offspring of the rich being privileged. Not to be a smart-ass about this, but isn't that what you were complaining about? -People complaining about things they can't do anything about?