Destruction From Within
Agreed. I gave up on these buffoons a while ago. Promises get walked back. Stories change. Intentions are truly unknown. What everyone seems to want is what no one is willing to reveal.
In some ways I’m ok with this. Baseball apparently needs to hose itself to realize that they need to make a lot of changes. This is going to take a while to wash out. But we’ll get there one day……
A Place To Talk About Giants Baseball 
a good example of when the adderall wears off
With pupils like saucers, dude is constantly gacked out of his mind in public and it just passes by unmentioned.
I’ve always thought he was packing his nose heavily with an endless supply of Merck flake.
Both sides ridiculous. Mostly the owners imo. Bring back the damn games already!!!
Read long column by Passan on ESPN on phone. Bottom line there really hasn’t been any “negotiations” at all from either side. both have drawn line in the sand—MLBPA says full prorated salaries and more regular season games, MLB says salaries must be reduced due to lost fan revenue and fewer regular season games with playoffs added in appropriate timeline. Neither side has moved or compromised.
But, in the March agreement, it was for full pro-rated salaries. The sticking point with the players was the number of games, and it has all just devolved to the current state.
But agree, other than the agreement in March, there appear to have been no true negotiations…
I’m not a Passan fan, but I thought the article brought up a lot of great points.
Here is the link if anyone else wants to read it. It also includes a link to Manfred’s March agreement talking points (7 inning games?)
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/29313238/will-there-baseball-year-not-jeff-passan-breaks-mlb-ugly-labor-fight
Thanks for the link. Interesting read. Both sides just need to find some damned middle ground…be willing to give and take, and get the fucking games going. The longer they continue as they are, the more potential long-term harm to the game, and alienation of the fans.
They are shooting each other in the foot. Greed rules right across the fruited plain. Pity, that. Baseball is one of America’s last connexions to a warm, connective,supportive and and happier world. The independent American Association is gearing up to play ball in scenes like Sioux Falls, St. Paul and Fargo. Were I free to leave the house I’d take in a game or two just to help the spirit of baseball stay alive.
Unfortunate that longer they wait to resolve anything (health safety issues still to sort out too), fewer games will be played. Baseball had chance to be only thing going during dark days of sports on TV, beside NASCAR and golf, and to stay within it’s normal season borders. stupid.
Chi above mentioned the March 26 Agreement which still remains a major point of contention from both sides. In other words they can’t even agree on the agreement.
Yep, as one of are lines around here:I agree to disagree with what your saying!
Yeah I knew for sure when Manfred started the Baseball draft by saying:We will have baseball this year:
He was lying 🤥 thru his teeth.He’s such a bad commissioner that needs to be let go! FireManfredNow!!
I get it…that is why my subsequent comment said they just need to find middle ground…and agree to some give and take. The longer they piss and moan and fail to negotiate in good faith, the more potential for long-term harm to the game, and alienation of the fans.
If the owners say they can only pay 75% of a full pro rated salary I don’t understand why the players don’t just say “Fine, defer the remaining 25% you owe us to sometime 3-5 years out.”
Good idea, I don’t know if the owners would go for it but the players probably would.
You have my vote to be the Commish.
I second the vote. Manfred is a fucking loser and needs to go. Worst commissioner in a looong time. Get the hook!
Thanks for the Passan link, Bozo. Lot of interesting stuff in there. Lot of other stuff too. Did I miss something, though? Passan has a genuine copy of the March agreement in his possession, and he’s cherry-picking provisions from it to advance his discussion, but he won’t post it? There’s no link to a pdf, e.g.? (Also, was that EBITDA divagation coherent? I get the point, though. The owners are hiding their info.)
Anyway, according to Passan, there’s what appears to be an unambiguous provision in the March agreement establishing a right to full pro rata pay, and then, according to Passan, there are various references to “feasibility” and “economic feasibility” and the need for further good faith negotiations that may either modify the pro rata provision or render it ambiguous. Classic contract interpretation dispute. But you need to see the entire contract to really know.
We know why the 94 strike occurred — the owners wanted a salary cap and the union didn’t. Things are much more complicated now. The owners are much more wealthy now, with large revenue streams that didn’t even exist, at least for most of them, in 94. And the players earn a lot more money now than they did in 94. This strike, or lockout, or shutdown, or whatever it will be — this is an ugly mess.
owners are saying they’re losing a lot of revenue. Ok, wait until you start to make it back, pay these guys their 25% in deferred payments. I don’t see why this isn’t getting discussed.
Wouldn’t that require either a categorical promise of future payout from the owners or a promise to open the books when the time comes? I don’t think the owners would agree to either of those alternatives.
Unless they think they’re never going to make money again I don’t see why they wouldn’t defer it to a time (3-5 years?) when they can be reasonably certain that they will be swimming in profits again.
They could use the old Al Davis rule where the owners force the cities to buy any remaining empty seats for every game that doesn’t sell out.
well, right now, according to Passan, the owners claim they’re drowning — losing money.
mm deferred to when? right now there’s no telling when baseball would resume, nor for how long. Plus, opening books on revenue by MLB is non starter. Any talk about team ownership (who owns what complicated issue by itself) revenue would be further complicated for those teams that control local TV site.
However, I do second you for Commish
3 32 64 1
These are the personal opinions of a group of epidemiologists when asked to predict when we could get back to normal stadium sports. 32 is for the next 12 months. 64 is for 1 year plus! 1 is for never. Think about this. 65 out of 100 responders think it will be over a year before we have normal sports. Who should know better than epidemiologists?
OSF
Since the commish is merely a mouthpiece for the owners, this is what you get. The fox guarding the henhouse. They tried and almost succeeded in killing the game back in 1994. Now they appear to =have a better grasp on doing just that.
Funny thing is, our old neighbor, who lived in a converted detached garage in the back of our house in San Carlos was all set to pitch for the Rangers as a replacement player. Chris Willsher. He had even gotten his uni and was all set to fly to Texas when they ended the strike. He got some kind of money for getting through spring training and making the team, but I don’t know what it was.
The things is, unless you’re a die hard baseball fan like most of us here, no one else is paying any attention to the back and forth bickering. It’s not like this is going to hurt the game longterm, the way a strike would.
Don’t forget in another month or so, everyone is going to be talking about football starting back up anyway. I think baseball would be best served just saying in the interest of fan and player safety, we will see you in 2021.
If it’s a short season with no fans, I see very limited interest. Even if it is the only thing in town. Interest in baseball is already dwindling without this shit show. Hence all the stupid shit proposed by Manfred Mann’s shit band. This will only escalate the stupidity. No more shifts, DH in the NL, runner at 2nd in the 10th, no pitching changes past the 7th inning, etc etc etc.
Plus keep in mind, if they do start playing games without fans or very limited capacity it is going to be as boring as fuck to watch. I really was bored to death this weekend watching the golf tournament which had a pretty decent leaderboard. You just don’t realize how impactful the fans are until you watch a sporting event without them.
Are fans going to be allowed in football, college or pro do you think?
Significant player in franchise history.
RIP…
One of my all time favorites. He will be missed. RIP
McCormick was a good one. Wondering if I still possess his ’58 baseball card? For sure the autograph I got from him at Metropolitan Stadium in ’60 is long gone. It was at an exhibition contest between the Giants and their former Minneapolis Millers franchise which they swapped to Baahstin for THEIR PCL outfit, the physical plant and all but the players after the ’57 season when NYG segued the next year into the SFG’s. Got to see Mays and Mike Yastrezemski ‘s grandpa. Additional to his Cy, McCormick was part of an excellent ’62 Giants rotation, when SF garnered its first ever NL Championship.
RIP. A little before my time in Giants fandom. I still have McCormick’s ’72 Topps card, which is curious since his last season was ’71 with the Royals. McCormick was invited to Giants spring training in ’72 but didn’t make the team. And of course, he was the Giants’ lone CY winner before Timmy went back to back in ’08-09.
? for xoot: I’ve been hooked on this Animal Planet show taking place southern part of Alaska; at one point they mention Caribou Lake I think.. I’ve seen cabins built and relocated, moose hunted and meat transported, porcupine quills taken out of hind leg of horse, vegetable garden infected by pests, bears that attacked cattle drive run off, even a greenhouse moved in sections via helicopter. Wild stuff, thoroughly enjoyable.
Thoughts?
About a dozen years ago I did a 7 day float fishing trip down the Alagnak river in Southwestern Alaska. 6 hour flight SFO to Anchorage. 2 hour flight Anchorage to King Salmon. 1 hour flight on an Beaver up to the riverhead / lake in the middle of nowhere. Alaska is amazing. Huge, rough, wild. I caught pink salmon, Coho, grayling, and rainbows. Saw mama moose with calf swimming across river, followed by brown bear about 50 feet behnd (not good news for the calf once they got to the other side). Guides pack .45s for brown bear contacts, because they are everywhere in the bush. Mosquitoes as big as hummingbirds. Great experience…
We packed pistols when we ran fishermen around on the flatbottomed riverboats. The idea was to use the guns to scare away grizzlies, if we had to. I never saw a grizzly, though. I did see tracks down on the sandbar where I used to cast in the evening. Huge tracks.
I also went on that Alagnak River thing about 1984. Quite a trip. On a sandbar I saw bear track that dwarfed by footprint. Guide always carried a shotgun and keep saying , “Hey, Bear!” every time we went someplace.
I’ve been watching some of those Alaska shows during this, uh, down time. I love them. I think the one you’re describing is set on the Kenai Peninsula. A father and mother with kids and in laws? The father runs cattle, transports them over the Fox River and around the Kachemak Bay on a big ass boat? Those people are actually pretty close to civilization. The city of Homer, at the mouth of the bay, is one of the most wonderful places in the state, full of all sorts of interesting people. It’s at the end of the highway that leads back to Anchorage.
When I was working in the bush, ski- or float-plane was the way in and out. We had many similar adventures, although on a smaller scale. Black bears peered in the windows as we ate dinner. e.g. And I spent a very long hour pulling porcupine quills from the mouth of a very strong and very angry Newfoundland. (The dog’s owner, a complete fool, loaded up his .45 and went looking for the evil porcupine.)
I was only out in the bush from early March through July. I worked construction after that, to pad the bank roll. In the bush, I was on the Talachulitna River. My lodge is now some sort of members-only club, I gather, from google. I felled the swath of spruce and birch forest where they now have a small-plane landing strip. That was part of the long-range plan. The river appears to be overrun with lodges and camps these days. The people in the wild planet show aren’t part of that kind of scene. They ring true.
thx man. Yeah the extended family you describe is the one. Good stories, great scenery and wildlife, down to earth (literally) industrious and inventive people, by necessity. some climate change references too—not as much water available, less snow in winter yada yada. hmmnn
I second the Homer review.
Was there for two days, fished near there out on Cook Inlet for halibut. Caught a bunch of “chicken” halibut (20 pounds or so, good eating). Boat I was on caught a couple of ’em over 200 pounds; the swabbie uses a .410 shotgun on those big ones before bringing ’em into the boat — avoids thrashings and broken legs. Boat captain had the dirtiest potty mouth I’ve ever heard in my entire life, very creative…
I worked on a salmon boat in Petersburg one summer. When I went back up to Anchorage a couple years later, I took my commercial fishing license with me — only recently expired. The asswipes from Orange County who had bought controlling interest of the lodge on the Tal were so delighted when I showed up in their office to apply for the guide job they’d advertised. A real Alaskan! A fisherman from Petersburg! As it turned out, unfortunately, I did know more than the other people they hired. I’m still amazed that we all survived. Glad I did it, though.
Slot for 3rd round pick was $750k and giants paid 2.5million??? Story?
From what I read, Boras got involved and for Kyle Harrison to forego his commitment to UCLA, SF had to go all bonus baby on him. I guess the plan now is to sign some of the other draft picks at below the slot amounts.
Just call in Trump to negotiate…rim shot please….Flav has a sensible idea but I am typically in the players camp and dont trust owners typically in sports. I am surprised the owners have not cone out with the idea of guaranteeing all lower paid players on their final rosters at least half million for the year and try and divide the players. Half million after taxes is a decent bump for a lot of young guys.
The federal labor laws probably proscribe such bad-faith collective bargaining tactics. The current basic CBA probably does too.
You mean so he can negotiate the way he did in getting North Korea to give up its nukes? Oh snap!
Headed back to Virginny land…awesome weather for the nearly a week in Santa Cruz…
It feels like it’s been raining here in the OBX since Memorial day.
What has really pissed me off is that they really could have been hammering this out back in early May and figuring re-opening training facilities by now at least…all bullsheit….
Trevor Bauer,
So Rob, explain to us how you can be 100% sure there’s going to be baseball
but not confident there will be baseball at the same time?hmmm
What changed between those statements 🤔🤔Players told you to set the
season,but it’s too early to set the season right now..
Billionaire owners don’t have much incentive to negotiate a season in a case like this. With no fans butts in seats, they may be better off just calling off the season. Look at the Giants. $4X Billionaire major owner, casual minority investors probably shrugging shoulders about a lost season. Real estate development more than a side business. It’s not Horace Stoneham drinking 3 highballs at lunch and depending on the baseball team financing his next ration of Seagrams 7…
Agree Snarkk..Right now supposedly 8 Owners do not want the season to start.
Out of 32 teams Manfred needs 75% of Owners to agree. Yeah right this season is not happening!!
I do think no season this year would have very negative affect on putting butts in seats for MLB next year, including the O. It also costs them service time on players already signed, and amounts to zero experience for newer younger ones; wiping out minor league season doesn’t do their prospects (I. e. giants future) any good either. No chance for Kapler to get handle on what he has either. imo this jus puts any hope for Giants resurgence yet another year further out.
It’s hard not to conclude that the owners are using CV19 to hasten this management/labor showdown. If they’re “losing” money when things are booming, maybe they’ll lose less when expenses and payroll are near zero. (The Giants pay $1 per year rent on their waterfront property, don’t they?) Meanwhile, maybe the young players see some upside for their futures in sticking with the union, and the old players, who are rich, simply can afford to gamble. No season this year could become a lockout/strike next season.
I guess the upside is the owners didn’t get any bailout money. As far as I know. I mean really, these poor owners who have a monopoly on the game, don’t need to open their books to anyone, and now the poor bastards can’t openly rape their fan bases.
Boo hoo.
The players don’t come off much better, but it will always be about how much the owners can take from the players.
And the fans.
I’d like to know what Baer and whoever is now really managing the Giants business think of the fan base. A bunch of suckers to be always reamed for as much $ as possible and who will re-up season tix regardless of what happens now? Or, a fan base to be served well, and kept informed? I suggest the attitude is more towards the former…
I heard somewhere on radio the other day that with the TV money distributions, every NFL team is effectively guaranteed a profit of around $50 million / year regardless of whether there are any butts in the seats at games. If even remotely true, and I think it is, that is a pretty sweet situation. I don’t think that is nearly the case with every team in baseball, if they had games…
one way to look at this is, the owners can just wait this out. Most of them can and will own the team for the rest of their lives and maybe into the next generation or two of their family. These players, who have much less $$$ anyway, are on a finite timeline here to make as much money as they can in that window. Advantage (always): owners
If they collectively don’t shoot the gift horse in the mouth.
I just posted commenting on blade’s remarks on the sombrero game. Then I realized it was yesterday’s thread. Sigh.
Incidentally, if Jordan is the last star before the social media era, guess who the first American sports star was in the modern era? Christy Mathewson. He really was. WWI, Bucknell, tall and handsome, a gentleman. He was THE sports hero — the first of his kind.
One of these days, I am going to mosey on down to Truxton, home of John McGraw. Less than an hour away.
happy Bloomsday!
It’s all coming back to me. Pawlie, you met me at the bus stop on the “Avenues.” Almost immediately after I got off the bus, we had breakfast at a nearby restaurant. Afterwards, both you and I got on a bus to the stadium, where you had your gig on radio, selling your book to the masses. Yes, that was the Sombrero game and that was NOT the game where I gave Flavor a ride home.
By the by, I loved that Sombrero, albeit, I understand the cultural misappropriation (correct phrase?). Fortunately, I am Spanish and Mexican (along with Armenian). I wore it to another game as well. It now has a proud place in my parent’s living room, with other memorabilia.
The Sombrero game: https://oneflapdown77.com/2013/09/07/3-0-2/
That was an awesome day. I missed the group photo. Pawlie charting it up,with Marty and Beercan, pregame on the patio. It was also the day we surprised Flavor with the “We Score, We Win” shirt. Thank you Ferrethead.
Not sure how this works but it looks interesting
https://buddyguyradio.com/
Looks great. Went to his club in Chicago in 1995. Had a blast.
Can’t get it on my iPhone
I’m checkin’ that out.
Love me some Buddy.
Saw him at a blues club in Houston about 1997.
Best club gig I’ve ever been to, hands down.
His band was oustanding, no exceptions.
He walked around the floor of the club, table to table, greeting the folks and playing the guitar the last 20 minutes of the gig, non-stop. Amazing…
He did the Experience Hendrix tour at the SAnta Cruz Blues Festival a few years back that was awesome. Kenny Wayne Shepard, Los Lobos, a bunch of bands.
xoot, thank you sooooo much! I had forgotten all about Bloomsday! I started my blog The Laughorist on Bloomsday 2006, several months before going to Ireland. I better put some knickers in me pocket before the day runs out; should listen to the Airplane’s reJoyce too. Off to tweet about it. Thanks again.